It's time to learn to express yourself.  What good is a fearsome visage without the actions to back it up?  You can look as bad as you wanna be, and back it up with sneers and grunts and the whole nine.  Or go the other route and let people know just how good you think you are.  Primp and strut and pose for the crowd, let them know you're here to take over and aren't going to let anybody stop you!  Dare to slap kings, try to sneak a kiss from Ares, or maybe you just want to whittle a stick... it's up to you and we're going to show you how to do it.

What Are Commands?
Commands are also called verbs. We call them verbs because that's what the programmers who designed the system called them. It makes sense because verbs are action words, and in AoH they tell your character to do something. So don't be confused if you see the terms command and verb mixed together. They mean the same thing.

Command line is another term you are likely to come across. While the term command or verb refers to a single word that is a command, the term Command Line refers to the entire line you type in. For example: if you type in PUT MY SHOES UNDER BED, then PUT is the command or verb, but the entire line is the command line.

Rules
Alliance of Heroes uses a Plain English Parsing System. What that little bit of techno-babble means is that when you type in a command line, you are going to type it very much like a plain English sentence. For example: THROW THE DART AT THE TARGET. This makes it fairly easy for you to phrase the commands you want to give.

However, like any language, there are some rules involved.

Rule #1:
The verb (or command) is always the first word in the command line.

There are literally hundreds of verbs and variations on how verbs can be used. You can find a partial list of verbs in the verb section of our documentation, but if we tried to give you all the details about every verb in the game, this guide would be the size of a small dictionary. It would also be out of date by the time we published it, because the GameMasters (those are the guys and gals who make the game work) are constantly adding new verbs and adding new ways to use the verbs that already exist. That is one of the best features of this game, that the world is constantly growing and changing, so that you have new places to explore and new things to do.

Instead of giving you a list of things to try to memorize, we decided to tell you how things work so you can figure the verbs out for yourself. That way, using them will be much easier.

Rule #2:
Uppercase or lowercase, it does not matter.

All of the examples we have given here so far have been in all uppercase letters (and italicized). We did this only to make the examples stand out. When you type commands into the game, case does not matter. You can use all upper case, all lower case, or a mixture of uppercase and lowercase.

Typing the command:
GIVE FLEECE TO HERACLES

Is the same as:
give fleece to heracles

And the same as:
Give Fleece to Heracles

And the same as:
gIVe fleEcE To hEraCles

Rule #3:
Articles are optional.

Those little words that English teachers call articles (a, an, the, etc.) are not important. You can use them or not, it's up to you.

Typing the command:
HIT THE CHIME WITH THE BLUE MALLET

Is the same as:
HIT CHIME WITH BLUE MALLET

Rule #4:
Don't use punctuation.

If you have not noticed it by now, we'll draw your attention to the fact that none of the examples use punctuation.  You don't need any periods or commas.  In fact, by not using punctuation you will find that it helps you to form your commands as very short, very simple, and very direct sentences. There are, however, exception to the rule, so you may find the need to use punctuation in certain situations, but not with everyday verbage.

How To Do Things With the Verbs
Figuring out how to do things is very easy. If you think of something you want to try to do, then simply type it in as a command. The odds are you'll get it on the first try. For example, if you see a cat and you want to pet it, type the command PET CAT. If you see a friend named Jason and want to wave to them, type the command WAVE TO JASON or just WAVE JASON.

Wave is a good example of a verb that can be used in many different ways. You can use it as we did in the example above, and wave to a person, but there are also other ways to wave. You might have just found a brand new steel longsword, and you are so excited that you just have to show everyone your prize. You rush to town, into your favorite inn, and exclaim to everyone there, "Hey, look what I just found!" Then, type the command WAVE LONGSWORD. This causes your character to wave the longsword around for everyone to see.

Another use for wave is to wave something at someone. Suppose you have a magical scepter, and when you wave it at a monster (say a hydra for example), the monster falls asleep. The command to use the scepter would be WAVE SCEPTER AT HYDRA.

This is easy. All you have to do is think about what you want to do, and type that in as a simple, short English sentence.

The Art of Being Specific
Sometimes you will need to be specific. For example, if there were three boxes on the ground, a red box, a green box, and a blue box, and you wanted to pick up the blue box, you would probably need to type GET BLUE BOX. If you type just GET BOX, you can't be sure which box the computer is going to pick. At the same time, if there are three skeletons in the room and you want to be sure attack the same skeleton over and over again, try ATTACK FIRST SKELETON, or ATTACK SECOND SKELETON, or ATTACK THIRD SKELETON.

In the same way, if there is a knapsack on the ground, and you are also wearing a knapsack, and you want to make sure you put the potion that you found in your knapsack and not the one on the ground, type PUT POTION IN MY KNAPSACK.  This is very important! If you don't include the word MY, the computer might pick the knapsack on the ground to put the potion in and you'd lose it. Most objects in the world have adjectives, like "a red box" or "a golden chakram".   It helps to identify exactly which object you mean if you include the adjective.

Using Abbreviations
Okay, so not everyone is a world-class typist, and typing ATTACK NEOMARSUPIAL WITH GOLDEN LONGSWORD over and over again is enough to wear out anyone's fingers. You can use abbreviations to make things easier.

You can abbreviate, but the computer may get confused about what you mean.

Typing the command:
ATT NEO WITH GO LONG

May be the same as:
ATTACK NEOMARSUPIAL WITH GOLDEN LONGSWORD

Wait a second, we said it may be the same. You have to be a little careful when abbreviating things. For example, suppose you use the command in the example above, ATT NEO WITH GO LONG, but there is a neomarsupial, a neomantis, and a player named Neotopulous in the room. Which "NEO" will the computer decide you mean? You may end up attacking your friend NEOtopulous instead of the NEOmarsupial. You can use abbreviations, but we recommend you pay close attention to who and what is around you to prevent problems.

We hear you asking, "How short can I abbreviate things?" You can abbreviate words as short as one letter. However, if you use one letter abbreviations, the odds are very likely that the computer is going to misinterpret most of your commands. We strongly recommend that if you use abbreviations, use at least three to five letters in order to provide enough information for the computer to interpret what you type.

In the example above, extending the abbreviation from NEO to NEOMA would eliminate the problem of possibly attacking your friend instead of one of the monsters, but even NEOMA is not enough to differentiate between neomarsupial and neomantis. You would need to go one letter longer, and use NEOMAR to make sure the computer picks the neomarsupial every time.

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