In many games nowadays, you could break the actions the player can do into verbs Move (at pace X) Stand Still Take Drop Throw SHOOT Tell X to go to place Y Tell X to shoot Y Place UNIT x in position Y. in RTS and Sim type games. Talk to X So this is a fairly limited "vocabulary/ player toolkit", what sort of actions could we add to this list?

Jump

Inspect (read, poke, look, smell, listen, examine, etc.)
Jump
Duck
Fight (any number of things, punch, kick, sissy-slap, etc.)
Morph (to animal, into stealth, etc.)
Mount (bird, car, boat, horse etc.)
Collect
Push/Pull

Is this an all encompassing list for any given game? Because in theory any verb could be used to describe action in a game environment...

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Original post by Cosmic One Is this an all encompassing list for any given game? Because in theory any verb could be used to describe action in a game environment...

I think this is important too. A short, pruned "generic" list could be useful for discussion purposes, but for any specific project I think very specific verbs would add much more colour.

It's very tempting to try to come up with a good generic list, I must admit. I almost started a huge post on it.

Each game will have specific actions so you won't be able to catch them all.
But if you really want to do it, I guess you should do a more logical analisys and group functions other way.

Say, you have continuous (walking), one-pass (attacking, opening) and back-forth (crouch for a while) movement types. All those types will have an action at the beginning, sometime at the middle and at the end. Once defined your base function types you can add some constants that allow you to bind a game action to the movement type.

There is a lot of reasoning to do this way but I guess the result will be more adaptable than just creating a lot of functions for each possible action in a game and have the same code repeated again and again.

Luck!
Guimo

One of my favorets that they took out of the Unreal Tourname 2003 series.

Play dead.

Is your goal to create more actions for players to perform, or give them more verbs they can use to execute those commands, or both?

My approach in my graphical MUD is to implement a collection of core commands and map syntaxes to them. Some examples of core commands:

talk - character says something
moveto - character moves toward an object
fight - character performs an attack
do - character performs a skill

The command parser has a collection of syntaxes it uses to turn player input into core commands. Some of the simpler ones:

say $quote => talk $quote
announce $quote => talk $quote
go to $target => moveto $target
approach $target => moveto $target
move toward $target => moveto $target
attack $target => fight $target
kill $target => fight $target
hit $target => fight $target

The core command "do" is especially important due to its flexibility. It accepts three arguments: the name of a skill, a target upon which to use the skill, and a tool to use. For example, if a player wants to use his firearm skill on a thief, and he is armed with a revolver, the command would be "do firearm thief revolver." To give the player more natural ways to execute the commands, we can define these syntaxes:

"shoot $target with $weapon" => "do firearm $target $weapon"
"shoot $target" => "do $target gun" (assume character has a weapon with the keyword "gun")
"fire $weapon at $target" => "do firearm $target $weapon"
"fire $weapon" => "do firearm null $weapon" (character just shoots at whatever is in front of him)
"shoot" => "do firearm null gun" (same, with keyword assumed)
"fire" => "do firearm null gun" (same, with keyword assumed)

The advantage to this method is that it gives the player a wider vocabulary to use, so less time is spent trying to guess the right command.

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Original post by DaTroof Is your goal to create more actions for players to perform, or give them more verbs they can use to execute those commands, or both?

The former, I think. In some contexts the two are synonymous.

When you break it down into tokens, all game verbs are just "change property X of" where "property X" could be position, health, colour, ammo level, etc. Walking and shooting and so on are just ways of dressing that up to make it more interesting - "execute a diving roll" is more interesting than "move to X,Y." As such, beating a game is the process of going from some initial configuration of properties to some desired configuration (e.g. player position = 100,100; player health > 0).

So I think you'd be better off looking for more interesting properties to be changing. A quick few off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions: opacity, density, spicyness, voltage, sexuality, political inclination.

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Original post by superpig Quote: Original post by DaTroof Is your goal to create more actions for players to perform, or give them more verbs they can use to execute those commands, or both? The former, I think. In some contexts the two are synonymous. ...A quick few off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions: opacity, density, spicyness, voltage, sexuality, political inclination.

True Superpig, I'm asking what more in the way of actions to perform and tools to give the player

Talking of things that can change sexuality
http://erictheunred.blogspot.com/2005/01/gay-bomb.html

On a simple level, one could give the player different "tools" that allow them to change these properties.
Giving the player ways to manipulate character's emotions / moods, ie. making the enemy soldiers so depressed they roll into a ball and weep :(.

In a hotdog eating contest. Swapping the mild chili sauce on your rival's hotdog for an extra-hot one! (Ouch!)

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Original post by Ketchaval True Superpig, I'm asking what more in the way of actions to perform and tools to give the player

That definitely depends on the type of game. If it involves combat, here are some other options to consider:

disarm - knock the weapon out of an opponent's hand
trip - put him on his back
stun - opponent can't move for a couple seconds
grapple - put him in a hold
slam - ye olde professional wrestling maneuver (maybe require a successful grapple before you can do this)

Jumpkick, headbutt, elbow... the list can go on and on.

If you give the player a wide variety of actions to perform, they should also have a wide variety of benefits, disadvantages, and results.