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I'm making a game with tiles and I need a good word for describing whether or not a character can stand on a certain tile.

There is "walkable", but this describes movement, which is not the case.

Also, this is a boolean property of the tile, the answer is either yes or no. So there is no "safe to stand on" and "fairly dangerous", just "possible" and "impossible".

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If you give us more context or other words you have used to fit the pattern or style, it might be easier to come up with a good match. – Caleb May 21 '11 at 20:30
@Caleb: Well, like pebbles in a river, you can stand on some, on others you can't. Walkable, standable (probably not a word), etc. For example, you can't stand on an air tile, you can stand on a stone tile, and since this is an gaming environment chances are you can't stand on a lava tile either. – nightcracker May 21 '11 at 20:33
For the opposite I've noticed that parts an airplane's wing that cannot be stood on are labelled "NO STEP". – hippietrail May 22 '11 at 15:10

8 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

How about occupiable or accessible?

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+1 for occupiable, though this may not necessarily imply literally standing on the tile, it's very close. – nightcracker May 21 '11 at 20:43
+1 for accessible. – Cerberus May 21 '11 at 22:36
Passable, as an antonym for impassable terrain (though beware; clearly a totally different word to impassible). – Nicholas Wilson May 23 '11 at 19:25
up vote 5 down vote

Having dealt with a similar question while making games, I'm pretty sure there's no exact word that describes that state.

Some of the closest:

  • Inhabitable
  • Passable
  • Tenantable
  • Obstructed / unobstructed
  • Accessible
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Inhabitable seems to imply intentions for living there (which would be appropriate if the context were "a legal tile for settling your base"), passable seems to imply movement through the tile, accessible doesn't seem to imply intentions to stand on the tile, for example, a cabinet is accessible, but I have no intention to stand on it. – nightcracker May 21 '11 at 20:37
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+1 @nightcracker: Every word has different meanings or connotations in different contexts; in the context of a tile in a board game, I think accessible and passable would be immediately clear. – Cerberus May 21 '11 at 22:39
up vote 3 down vote

To pitch in, how about terra firma?

Meaning from The Free Dictionary:

Solid ground; dry land.

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up vote 2 down vote

I just thought of "mountable."

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up vote 2 down vote

I think you should give them a class name rather than directly describe the property of the class. For example, call them "surface" tiles or some other name that intuitively connotes "walkability". "Air" tiles obviously cannot be walked on by a ground unit.

Here are some of the terms I was playing with:

  • Playing pieces can only land on the following tiles
  • Markers cannot land on the following tiles
  • Tiles you cannot land on include
  • Ground units can only move onto unoccupied surface tiles
  • Ground units may freely move onto ground tiles
  • Air tiles are inaccessible to walking units
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up vote 1 down vote

How about naming tiles as a solid, it's a boolean variable so it's perfect and it's used in the Game Maker.

enter image description here

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up vote 1 down vote

Perhaps "platform" or even "foothold" would fit the bill.

You said you didn't want an action word, but I thought I would suggest "traversable" as an alternative to your "walkable".

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I'm sorry, no, that would be a word for the tile itself, I'm looking for a word to describe a property of the tile, namely the property of being able to stand on it. – nightcracker May 21 '11 at 20:38
It's possible for objects to act with the characteristics of other objects, in which case it's ok for them to use the other objects name as an adjective or capacitive quality. – Caleb May 21 '11 at 20:55
+1 for foothold – Pitarou Feb 18 '12 at 11:17
up vote 0 down vote

The term currently in wide use seems to be:

landable

There are
landable planets -- on which you could (possibly) land
landable sites -- where you could land and then move on (kind of stepping stones?)

How to find out the last landable field on a form -- display_only fields are ignored.
Titanic Memorial Platform (Landable) -- A landable platform marking the site of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean. Scenery has an NDB with a 75 NM range and a commerative stone monument describing the wreck site below.
enter image description here

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