Currently I have shipboard directions as the default, because they’re the “marked” option (the unusual one from most players’ perspectives) and thus it’s less likely that people will actively choose to turn them on.
Using the shipboard directions is a decision I made back at the start of this project months ago, and I’ve regretted it a few times since then because only having cardinal directions is really annoying for making a map, but I’ve tried to stick to my guns on it. Better than trying to work with “fore-starboard” and such.
on mapping a ship, for well-known reasons I have seen thousands of deck plans, and all has the bow on the right side, that is, the east side of a map, so for me, is natural having E as Fore and so on. (this should also explain Lord Inform’s choice in Jigsaw’s Titanic…)
The same for me. However, since I’m not a big fan of diagonals anyway and didn’t use any, I didn’t realize until very late that it would have been a problem.
I tend to do that too, but am very conflicted. Probably familiarity is more important than realism for most players. Another option would be to make a query before the game starts, but I’d rather avoid that.
If you also want to submit this to IFComp this year, we should coordinate (in order to have as little attack surface as possible with the critics ).
What is your command to change the default? Mine is:
Understand "nautical movement/directions/-- on/--" as enabling nautical movement.
Understand "switch nautical movement" as enabling nautical movement when nautical movement is false.
Understand "nautical movement/directions/-- off" as disabling nautical movement.
Understand "switch nautical movement" as disabling nautical movement when nautical movement is true.
I’m using the Boolean Variables extension with the option named “shipboard directions”, so the commands are SHIPBOARD DIRECTIONS ON, SHIPBOARD DIRECTIONS OFF, and SHIPBOARD DIRECTIONS on its own to toggle it.
That’s another good thing to ask the audience, though. Is SHIPBOARD DIRECTIONS a reasonable way to refer to these or would you prefer NAUTICAL?
As a native speaker, you can judge this better than I can, so I will go along with your decision.
And since I always wanted to do a survey and here is an opportunity:
What should be the default setting to move around on a ship?
shipboard directions (fore, aft, port, starboard)
compass directions (n, s, w, e)
0voters
What should be the command to change the default setting?
I assume the map would be top down and showing each floor by itself? If there was minimal movement in the port/starboard axis then you could show a side profile of the ship, but if that was the case you probably wouldn’t have asked…
That’s exactly how they do it in the IFComp 2021 (I think?) golden banana winning game, I Contain Multitudes. I really liked it but it got really low. I guess it’s poor implementation but I thought some higher scored games were much worse.
Anyway, the map is quite nice but I’m going really off topic. Over and out.
This is tricky; my instinct is usually to favor player comfort which would be compass directions, however I find shipboard directions to be one of those delightful little parser quirks that are just fun. So in the end I voted for shipboard directions (with the understanding that ships should almost always be heading east).
I’d vote for shipboard directions [on/off] to be the advertised command. But I’d tacitly accept other commands as well.
Indeed; my understanding (from looking at the diagrams dott. Piergiorgio provided and playing Obra Dinn) is that this is how diagrams of ships usually work, and also lines up nicely with parser map conventions.
Yeah, that was my thinking when I voted for this option. We should always try to anticipate other wordings, but I think this one, to me, sounds more precise. “Nautical” directions sounds to me more like bearing / heading (i. e. where the ship is going, not where I want to go while on the ship).
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