How to shorten words

[redmedved2]

I wanted to sort the spells in my game somehow because there are 8 magic types, but since some are just really long, they all need to be standardized.

So I decided to shorten them to 3 letters, but are there any rules for shortening words to 3 letters? I have no idea.

Here's list of types:


But I just don't know. If I shorten by the first 3 letters, the earth would be EAR. Would you shorten the word this way? Or water, it's even better, WAT.
So it seems that it is better to shorten it by odd letters, for example, water could be WTR and it sounds better, but then how to shorten fire? Is it FRE or FIE? Along with ERH, WID, LGT, EETO and DAK.

This is a very important and serious topic, help...

 

[KenKrath]

I don't think there is a universal standard for this. Maybe try this:

FIR
ICE
ERT
WTR
WND
LGT
ELC
DRK

 

[redmedved2]

I don't think there is a universal standard for this. Maybe try this:

FIR
ICE
ERT
WTR
WND
LGT
ELC
DRK

That's... nice, I think. Doesn't seem like such a difficult topic anymore.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

Will these abbreviations be seen by the player? If so then I wouldn't shorten them so tightly, it makes them less immediate (especially for players who don't have English as a first language). Since "Electro" is the only really long one, you could replace it with "Spark" and then everything is 5 letters or less.

 

[redmedved2]

Will these abbreviations be seen by the player? If so then I wouldn't shorten them so tightly, it makes them less immediate (especially for players who don't have English as a first language). Since "Electro" is the only really long one, you could replace it with "Spark" and then everything is 5 letters or less.

Indeed, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe I can actually do it that way, thanks for the idea.

 

[ATT_Turan]

There isn't a standard, as such, but the most common practice is to eliminate vowels first, as KenKrath demonstrated.

That being said, I agree with Aoi - you often saw things like this in older games because of system limitations (what could be stored in a given type of variable, available syste memory, or how much space you had in the UI).

Without those limitations, I don't think emulating that kind of game is a good reason to do something not-player-friendly (it's kind of absurd when I'm playing Phantasy Star and I need to look up an FAQ to see what the spells do).