Message-ID: <3D0DF2BE.2030900@csi.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 10:31:26 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: [CONTENT] Directionless IF
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Jaap van der Velde wrote:

>On Sat, 15 Jun 2002 15:16:35 -0400, John Colagioia
><JColagioia@csi.com> wrote:
>
>>Interestingly, I never really thought of directions in IF this way.  I
>>tend to think of them as an abstraction of "some" coordinate system.
>>That is, north is just shorthand for "thataway," and east is shorthand
>>for "to the right of north."
>>
>That's interesting though, I do the same, but I was wondering:
>what direction do you expect the character to face initialy?
>Does it depend on the scenery? (you're in a bedroom and the
>door you see is probably to the east, as the door in your
>actual bedroom is too?) I catch myself usually assuming my
>character is facing north whenever the character arrives at
>a new location.
>

I tend (and this may sound a little weird) to assume the early direction
of motion is "north."  Which, when I think about it, sounds pretty
strange, because this literally means that I'll make notes to myself
like "OK, it's to the north, which is west..."  That's right, despite
having to type "s" quite a few times, I firmly believe that the road is
north of Arthur Dent's house...at least from that abstract point of view.

So, I guess the answer is, I assume that the player is facing north
through the first Go verb.  Kind of.

Interestingly, after I've reoriented the map, I don't really give much
thought ot which way the PC faces.  I suppose I've always assumed that
the PC is sort of always in motion (to see what's around), rather than
standing, waiting for his next command.

