darthbator

Why right?

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I think this stems from our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors who would wait for the gazelle to run from left to right while hiding in the bushes, spear ready.

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Well, except other cultures didn't really start making games until the standard of left-to-right was set in place...

 

Is that a guess you just dressed up as fact? Because I'm pretty sure Japan was around during the beginning of video games.

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They were, but Mothra hit the big cultural reset button around ninteen odd ninety eight.

My guess is a convention that emerged from the ether.

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Is that a guess you just dressed up as fact? Because I'm pretty sure Japan was around during the beginning of video games.

...But we just finished establishing the fact that left-to-right (horizontal) was not uncommon in Japan during that time, assuming that Wikipedia quote wasn't a bold-faced lie? It for sure isn't uncommon NOW, if my six-month tenure there taught me anything! 'Cause all I really cared about was the writings, of course. U:

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...But we just finished establishing the fact that left-to-right (horizontal) was not uncommon in Japan during that time, assuming that Wikipedia quote wasn't a bold-faced lie? It for sure isn't uncommon NOW, if my six-month tenure there taught me anything! 'Cause all I really cared about was the writings, of course. U:

 

According to that quote, the change from having to read Japanese horizontally from left-to-right is considered recent -- something that was born out of the everyday use of computers and the internet. I don't think Western influence was so prevalent in the early 80s. Also, Japanese books continue to be read from right to left, even today.

 

Anyhoo: According to Wikipedia, the first side-scrolling platformer was a Japanese game called Jump Bug -- but it doesn't say which direction it went in!

 

Edit: It was multi-directional, but many levels went from left-to-right! Man, this is confusing. I think I like the ScienceTM explanation best.

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What about SHMUPS? Those kind of shrug the idea that reading direction enforces directional scrolling. One would think JP SHMUPS would move downward but I can't think of a single vertically oriented SHMUP that is not presented with the craft "ascending" to the top of the screen. I don't know if I can rightfully recall playing any kind of SHMUP that scroll from R->L either.... 

 

I'm pretty sure this stems from the tradition of Space Invaders, which serves as the base template for the SHMUP genre despite actually being a vertical scene portrayed head-on rather than a horizontal scene portrayed top-down. The perspective thing is also present in early racing games, though, so maybe it's just that top being forward feels right.

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According to that quote, the change from having to read Japanese horizontally from left-to-right is considered recent

Computers are older than video games.

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Computers are older than video games.

 

So, as soon as computers were invented the whole of Japan started reading their horizontal text from left-to-right? Wow, that's amazing. Thanks for the history lesson, Twig!  :tup:

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I would think in the case of vertical SHMUPs it's more just a matter of what feels right.  Since a ton of SHMUPs tend to involve flying in some way, going up just seems "correct", even if it doesn't actually relate to altitude at all.  Going down seems like it conveys a sense of falling rather than flying.

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So, as soon as computers were invented the whole of Japan started reading their horizontal text from left-to-right? Wow, that's amazing. Thanks for the history lesson, Twig!  :tup:

Grow up.

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Here's some ScienceTM on the matter.

 

Yeah but it doesn't go over how most if not all of Japan is comprised of left-handed people, which I hear has a great influence on the direction you read and write.

 

Also if you read into it a little bit more, Super Mario Bros. is more of a commentary on cultures who read from left to right (namely the United States), because you can go left to right, but after a certain point, you can't go back. We all just can't go back.

 

However it is possible in ancient Persia that because early on you could go back or even up and down, they unraveled the mysteries of time travel by combining all directions into one.

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According to that quote, the change from having to read Japanese horizontally from left-to-right is considered recent -- something that was born out of the everyday use of computers and the internet. I don't think Western influence was so prevalent in the early 80s. Also, Japanese books continue to be read from right to left, even today.

 

Japanese is written top to bottom in columns, or left to right in rows, not right to left. English is a left to right language and you would no more say that English is read top to bottom than you'd say that Japanese is read right to left. When you're talking about a single dimension, the most significant dimension is the one being referred to. Right to left scripts are a thing and include languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc.

 

Depending on the context, Japanese is either written in tategaki, vertically, or yokogaki, horizontally. You'll find yokogaki is more frequently used in technical writing such as scientific papers and engineering textbooks, while tategaki is used for things such as letters, newspapers, and literature, though yokogaki is becoming increasingly prevalent. For reference, yokogaki has been around since the late 1800s with the introduction of left to right languages such as German and English in the Meji era.

 

I guess I should also add that the introduction of left to right languages directly caused the initial shift because while Japanese kanji is morphosyllabic, English is not. Hence, the direction the characters run in English is critical, while in all Han character languages it doesn't make that much of a difference, which is why Japanese was adapted rather than English.

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Also, just to clarify, when it's written in columns, it's written right-to-left, by column. I think it's sorta important to recognize that, even if that's not what your initial description would be.

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2. Screen coordinates go from the top-left to the bottom-right

This sounds like the best explanation for this.

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This sounds like the best explanation for this.

I think it's a definite possibility, but I feel like designers wouldn't give a shit. Well!, you might say, Back then, the designers WERE ALSO the programmers. True! However, programmers tend to be okay with using maths to figure shit out, should such an occasion present itself.

 

Also, DirectX is top-left to bottom-right, but OpenGL is bottom-left to top-right. This isn't an important fact. I just wanted to point it out because THAT'S WHAT I DO.

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Japanese is written top to bottom in columns, or left to right in rows, not right to left. English is a left to right language and you would no more say that English is read top to bottom than you'd say that Japanese is read right to left. When you're talking about a single dimension, the most significant dimension is the one being referred to. Right to left scripts are a thing and include languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc.

 

Depending on the context, Japanese is either written in tategaki, vertically, or yokogaki, horizontally. You'll find yokogaki is more frequently used in technical writing such as scientific papers and engineering textbooks, while tategaki is used for things such as letters, newspapers, and literature, though yokogaki is becoming increasingly prevalent. For reference, yokogaki has been around since the late 1800s with the introduction of left to right languages such as German and English in the Meji era.

 

I guess I should also add that the introduction of left to right languages directly caused the initial shift because while Japanese kanji is morphosyllabic, English is not. Hence, the direction the characters run in English is critical, while in all Han character languages it doesn't make that much of a difference, which is why Japanese was adapted rather than English.

 

Very interesting! As Twig points out, it's actually written top-to-bottom, right-to-left, though. And horizontal right-to-left is used on signage. Also, my replicas of the original Japanese Speed Racer comics are read from right-to-left, too. 

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This sounds like the best explanation for this.

 

I'm not so sure. The X/Y 0,0 co-ordinates are surely arbitrary, and if anything they'd allow for easier to understand code if games scrolled right-to-left.

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I think it's a definite possibility, but I feel like designers wouldn't give a shit. Well!, you might say, Back then, the designers WERE ALSO the programmers. True! However, programmers tend to be okay with using maths to figure shit out, should such an occasion present itself.

 

Also, DirectX is top-left to bottom-right, but OpenGL is bottom-left to top-right. This isn't an important fact. I just wanted to point it out because THAT'S WHAT I DO.

 

I think it's a very real possibility - i imagine a lot of game designers/programmers in the old days had to be well versed in math, and they tend to teach math with cartesian coordinate system going positive-right and positive-up (2d). So they could've been more comfortable seeing stuff moving from left to right (because that's how most math and physics problem present themselves in school).

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Yeah. But right on the x-axis is still almost always a positive value in programming, due to using Cartesian coordinates.

Dug up this possible explanation:

The very organization of cartesian coordinates and computer and television hardware (which could themselves be language-direction-influenced) may have steered choices in scrolling direction:

- the X axis of 2D screen coordinates increases toward the right. This might be preferable as a default simply because it seems logical not to use a negative sign for forward movement.

- Similarly, background tile data tends to be drawn in rows, as arrays of memory addresses whose positions increment from left to right. Adding new tile data when scrolling right involves appending it to the end of each row, to the right of the visible screen. This maps to the concept of an end to the scenery, or level, or whatever else.

Sounds plausible that that's a big part of why it was the default direction, but that's only part of the reason because it was still always technically possible to do it the other way even if it maybe wasn't preferable.

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I think it's a very real possibility - i imagine a lot of game designers/programmers in the old days had to be well versed in math, and they tend to teach math with cartesian coordinate system going positive-right and positive-up (2d). So they could've been more comfortable seeing stuff moving from left to right (because that's how most math and physics problem present themselves in school).

 

Yes, but obviously the background scrolls from right to left -- surely meaning it would be easier to comprehend if games scrolled the other way.

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Yes, but obviously the background scrolls from right to left -- surely meaning it would be easier to comprehend if games scrolled the other way.

 

That's true. But old-school platformers didn't have scrolling backgrounds. Maybe when that became feasible, the convention had been already set.

 

(just guessing of course. I don't have answers   -_- )

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That's true. But old-school platformers didn't have scrolling backgrounds. Maybe when that became feasible, the convention had been already set.

 

(just guessing of course. I don't have answers   -_- )

 

Good point! I'd forgotten about games like Hunchback.

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Actually, single-screen games go every which way. I'm fondly remembering Jumpman at the moment, and he'd start in all sorts of different positions. Not sure how late that was in convention-setting territory, though.

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