premchaia_pre4: (akari)
Late Prems, Mostly ([personal profile] premchaia_pre4) wrote in [personal profile] davidn 2014-10-06 12:42 am (UTC)

“Sidestep to your” is four sodding syllables long!

Depending on the scenario, I might start along the lines of:

  • Move {left, right, front, back} (not “fore” because it's too easily confusable with “four”; “forward”/“backward” might work) [duration].
  • Turn {left, right, up, down} [duration].
  • Halt. (possibly “Stop”)
  • Seeing ‹informative, foreshortened description of the area…›. Fin.

For an FPS I'd split “Move” into “Dance” (move chaotically but with a bias toward a particular direction, for helping dodge enemy projectiles) and “Straight” (move in a direction in a line; this is conveniently phonetically similar to “Strafe” for the sideways cases). Descriptions of enemies and the like would get similar shortened, unambiguous forms. If there's analog movement control, I'd add speeds, probably {slow, steady, fast}.

Durations can be calibrated to a set of fixed stops, probably starting from the controller end if there's two-way communication: request two or three gradations of each control and then have the sender represent the timings in those units. Continuous could be better, but the controller might have too much trouble keeping it linear. “along” can represent an indefinite duration until a halt request.

Now the tricky part is to do it open loop—where the controller cannot speak at all. Dare you take on this challenge? Bwahahahahahahaaa!


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