Sensible variable names for a text adventure action

Question

This is a difficult one, I've been racking my brains but I just come up with a sensible name for these variables. Someone will probably instantly hit on one.

Take these example actions:

• "throw bottle at wall"
• "push John into door"
• "attack Ogre with sword"

action thing at/with/on/in/to thing

I need a sensible name for the first "thing", and a sensible name for the second "thing" if I had to define a variable for each. So... like "Interactor" and "Interactee"... but a proper name.

I've been trying to explain this to a few people and I can't seem to get the concept across, so feel free to ask me to clarify.

Answer 1

The two "things" in your example seem to me the "direct object" and the "indirect object."

See Grammar Monster's explanation.

Answer 2

When I last worked on a text adventure, I just went with subject and object, their grammatical names.