Let's Discuss Which way is north? A discussion on directions in the game.

Personally, I think of directions in mekorama as being northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest. The land of mekorama is a diamond-shaped country. That way, I don't have to remember which 45 degree angle gets called "south" upon opening a level.

That also means the quadrants are the four 8x8 squares in the north, south, east and west.

Once someone is playing through a level, normally they start talking about landmarks as opposed to ordinal directions, from what I've seen. If describing a solution in a spoiler, for example, it's easier to reference what's in view instead of attempting to remember which direction is which, especially since often one is long past the point of having just opened a level, and suffering from the lack of an in-game compass.

I'm not saying that one shouldn't try something new, and it might be that adopting such a descriptor set might catch on. I do think, however, that it is extremely non-intuitive to try to remember from which direction the sun rose in each individual country/level in the mekorama world, especially in those countries where one hasn't really stayed long enough to memorize such things in the way someone would remember that the sun rose in the direction of, say, that pile of bricks, or that little pond with a zapper robot blocking the front gate. Since there's no sun in the first place, that robs even that element from such a usage.

 

That's exactly the way I picture it. I have a hard time assigning North to any direction other than the upper right of the opening shot, especially any direction not square to the grid.

 

Yes, me too. I had not thought about N, E, S or W before, but immediately after it was mentioned that's the way I pictured it. I think one reason is that most items are "facing South" when opening the editor mode so when talking about directions I immediately associate it with the robot's left, right, front and back.