Cheers, I know people have already said it, but it's awesome to read such detailed and informative posts, even as hypothesis all the information about old school programming is still incredibly coolAC10 said:
Why do games always go from Left to Right?
- Thread starter Alfador_VII
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there are lots of reasons but I think one is just about the thumb.
the d-pad is on the left side.. moving your thumb to the right is an extension, moving your thumb to the left is a retraction.
might be a crazy thought but it's one I have occasionally, especially when playing fighting games.. a lot of moves are easier to do on one side or the other because of how the thumb works.
the d-pad is on the left side.. moving your thumb to the right is an extension, moving your thumb to the left is a retraction.
might be a crazy thought but it's one I have occasionally, especially when playing fighting games.. a lot of moves are easier to do on one side or the other because of how the thumb works.
While I found the programming reason really interesting my answer would be the psychological one. When looking at a 2D (or 3D) screen we almost always associate going from left to right as going forward and right to left as backwards. this is true for animation and video games and even pictures. We get a greater sense of progress when going right, and when we do come across a level that goes left it feels weird and almost uncanny.
why is it like this? I don't know, and I'm not qualified to take an educated guess. In my mind that's just the way we are.
why is it like this? I don't know, and I'm not qualified to take an educated guess. In my mind that's just the way we are.
I used to agree with this viewpoint also, until I realised that manga is read from right to left, which would imply there's some sort of psychological disconnect between static pictures on a page, and moving pictures on a screen, for Japanese gamers.Xariat said:
Personally I agree about left-scrolling levels feeling weird, and it's not too rare to hide secrets to the left of the starting point of a level. Very few of us even think of looking in that direction!
Lot of interesting stuff here. Never thought of the programming implications, especially why it would be advantageous to put the (0;0) coordinates in the top left corner.
As for the psychological reasons, in euro-american culture, it definitely goes very deep. Partly maybe because it is the direction in which we write, but ever since the Romans the right side was always considered "right" (...see?), whereas the left one was the wrong side (latin for left is "sinister" - see what it means in English?). Even in other European languages you get these parallels. Christianity also developed this a lot, e.g. in allegories whenever there is a crossroad the road to the right is always the righteous one, the road that goes to the left leads to the Devil.
For Japan, I´m no expert but I think that it may be a bit trickier because they basically have two ways how to write, the traditional one that would be right to left but is more exactly *from the top down with only lines going from right to left* but also a modern one where lines go from the top down and when they do, the text on the line always goes from left to right. Cultures that are 100% right to left would be Jews and Arabs that go right to left with lines going from the top down. Given the prevalence of left-to-right games, I doubt theirs would go in the opposite direction but it is interesting to notice that advertisement that shows pictures "before" and "after" (the use of the product or whatever) show the "before" on the right side and the "after" on the left side in countries that speak Arabic which really means that their "natural way" to look at things would be this direction. In Japan, I think they put the "before" on the left, though...
This is also very interesting and might be one of the reasons, I´d think.Altorin said:
As for the psychological reasons, in euro-american culture, it definitely goes very deep. Partly maybe because it is the direction in which we write, but ever since the Romans the right side was always considered "right" (...see?), whereas the left one was the wrong side (latin for left is "sinister" - see what it means in English?). Even in other European languages you get these parallels. Christianity also developed this a lot, e.g. in allegories whenever there is a crossroad the road to the right is always the righteous one, the road that goes to the left leads to the Devil.
For Japan, I´m no expert but I think that it may be a bit trickier because they basically have two ways how to write, the traditional one that would be right to left but is more exactly *from the top down with only lines going from right to left* but also a modern one where lines go from the top down and when they do, the text on the line always goes from left to right. Cultures that are 100% right to left would be Jews and Arabs that go right to left with lines going from the top down. Given the prevalence of left-to-right games, I doubt theirs would go in the opposite direction but it is interesting to notice that advertisement that shows pictures "before" and "after" (the use of the product or whatever) show the "before" on the right side and the "after" on the left side in countries that speak Arabic which really means that their "natural way" to look at things would be this direction. In Japan, I think they put the "before" on the left, though...
while the japanese may not read from left to right that does not mean people dont do that in general.The Wykydtron said:
normally when a person is looknig around usually he will look from left-up to right-down. some peopel do it differently, but majority does it like that. its jsut how naturally we evolved, sort of liek most peopel are right-handed and some left-handed without an actual realistic benefit to either.
There are plenty of 2d platformers where you go all ways actually.
Oh i so hate that.AC10 said:
Y is down - and up + and everything that requires me to do it backwards must be invented to torture me
It's because most people are right handed and it's easyer to push something that direction with your right hand. So it kept people playing longer on quarter eaters.Alfador_VII said:This mainly applies to 2D games, but regardless of genre, they primarily scroll from left to right.
Yes, sometimes you have to backtrack for a while, but I can't think of any exceptions to this, other than ones that go up or down of course
You'd expect Japanese games to scroll the other way, as Japanese text, and manga is read from right to left, but even those games go left to right.
Anyone got any bright idea why this is?
Even on a mouse it is a natural thing to do. Just play a RTS, what direction do you drag select units?(top left to bottom right,siply because it feels comfortable).
Incorrect! In the NES game Abaddox you actually have whole levels where you fly DOWN.Alfador_VII said:
The more you know *shooting star*
Indeed. Well ok, sometimes down is possible as well as up. And we've seen some sections where right to left is done, but I mean in nearly all cases it's right or up. Exceptions are good thoughKoudelkaMorgan said:
Maybe because the vast majority of us use left-to-right writing systems. We read left to right, and I think think left-to-right as well, and I'd assume most other people would be broadly similar. Perhaps platformers would be different if they were developed by a native Arabic or Hebrew speaker with no prior knowledge of game conventions, seeing as they write from right to left.