Or worse, both look like an L. Or neither do.
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I just remembered that although I rarely confuse the cardinal directions, I am befuddled by the diagonals all the time. And not just about the east/west sides, any one of the (intended) NW/NE/SW/SE can come out of my fingertips as any one of them. What does that say about me, I don’t know.
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Wow this is a fascinating thread. Quoting you specifically cos my husband constantly muddles binary options in real life, including directions, is left handed, and almost certainly autistic. It’s somewhat amusing cos he’s a space engineer in real life 
But luckily it doesn’t seem to affect his work as much as day to day stuff!
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I have no idea how I missed this thread, since this is an issue that constantly plagues me all the time, both when playing and creating IF. 
Mnemonics don’t help either. Like Hanon said, my brain just mirrors stuff and that mirror is the new reality for a while, which also mirrors the mnemonics. 
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Draw out a compass on a sticky note and post it on your screen. Then any time you play IF you can have it for reference!
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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…
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I don’t recommend playing it unless you like deliberately infuriating unfair games, and maybe not even then, ha, but Hard Puzzle 4 has a few puzzles around rotating the entire central room and it was tricky to keep track of but kinda my favorite part of the game.
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Reading this thread makes me want to implement a systematic way in my WIP for players to move around without relying on traditional directional commands. I had no idea this could disrupt the gameplay experience, so thanks to everyone who highlighted this issue—it’s really important.
I’ll have fun with it, as the story’s background allows the player’s perceptual scope to extend two rooms beyond their current location. However, it seems more intuitive to allow commands like “go to the Red Alley Street” (for visited locations) or “go to the weird dirty street” (for unvisited locations) in addition to the usual “sw”. Of course, I’m sure I’m neither the only one nor the first to think of this. I’d appreciate any advice or suggestions.
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Of course! Can’t think of any examples off-hand, but it’s a thing in quite a few games, and there are multiple extensions for Inform (probably TADS too) that implement a “go to” verb.
I’m almost helpless in French speaking countries, unable to remember difference between est et ouest on road signs.
I’d love to see some reliable statistics about how often players use that option, as opposed to typing “N E E N NW S W” very rapidly.
It’s easy, just remember that it’s the opposite of west und ost.
Hey, maybe we can take general “what about alternatives to NSEW” over to another thread since that conversation tends to explode, and keep this one for the east/west question?
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Add another vote to the “constantly mixes up EAST and WEST” tally.
Ordinals multiply the problem for me, and compass navigation typically results in a lot of frustrated bumbling around. I’m a broken record at this point. Said the same thing for years. But I guess it bears repeating. People who find compass navigation intuitive probably just don’t get how exasperating it can be if you don’t find it intuitive.
Eat Me and The Bat both list WEST before EAST in an attempt to reduce the confusion. But I still bumble around in my own games when I’m testing them.
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… let’s not forget the worst case imaginable: no shipboard direction, aboard a warship with triple turrerts in action, costantly changing course and swinging her turrets…
if one think about proper triple turret, the layout is:
that is, from the command & telemetry space in rear, the gunrooms (all these spaces are separated to the other by thick bulkheads…) can be mapped only with an ordinal and his adjacent cardinal (or the reverse…), and switching and/or divided fire creates a nightmare of changing directions, up to four three-gun turrets (think USS Tennessee and California) plus the ship’s course…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I flub the map when writing and often have to go back and fix all the descriptions because they’re always the opposite of the actual map. Then I screw it up while testing and sometimes “fix” a thing that is correct and then have to refix it later. I’m frankly amazed that I haven’t had a major issue with a published game.
In testing others’ games I always have a part in the transcript that complains about how the author is wrong about east/west, only to realize later that they are not wrong; I am. And then I quietly edit that out of the transcript.
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This thread is really interesting, and I especially find it interesting that crossing yourself in christianity might be a contributing factor. I find it a bit far fetched, but it is interesting to consider.
I read the entire thread and it seems there are confusions about east-west across the globe, so my initial assumption that this might be the culprit:
is probably wrong. Still, if you have not seen this, it hopefully will make you smile.
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The fact that E comes before W in the alphabet might also be a factor. If you’re reading from left to right, east is on the left side.
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Remind me of the old french joke, the “West” Germany being East of France…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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“[…] The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly East from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston and Southwest of East Boston is the North End.”
— Dave Barry (in memoriam)
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Now, did any of those place names in Boston make sense at one point and only became incomprehensible over time as the city grew and no one was willing to give up the names they were use to in order to make it make sense for newcomers or were they given deliberately confusing names from the start?
And that’s the downside of living on a sphere, even if you’re the west of something, you have to be east of something else. Of course, most things that are north of one thing are south of another, but there is a global most north that everything is south of, there is no global most west where everything is east of.
As for Japan and New Zealand(as an aside, where’s old Zealand?), I’m more familiar with Japan, but I thought New Zealand only had two major Islands to Japan’s four.
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