Did this thread remind anyone else of the “I thought you said ‘weast’” joke from that old Spongebob episode where Mr Krabs leads Spongebob and Patrick on a treasure hunt?
Anyways, I don’t think I’ve ever mixed up east and west in a parser, though I sometimes get northeast and northwest and southeast and southwest mixed up when a hub has a fork to the north or south.
Also got left and right mixed up a lot as a kid.
As for real life, compass directions work for me if I’m dealing with a proper square/rectangular grid where all the streets run north/south or east/west, but compass points lose all meaning once curves and non-right angles get involved.
Though, now I’m curious about parser games that implement inverted controls or feature a mirror world/mode… imagine trying to navigate a space that flips the player’s directional commands, but can do so on different axis… and imagine sswaping along ne-sw so North and west swap and East and south swap…