Direct Commands

Commanding Your Pet

Direct Commands


You and others can tell Fido what to do by saying his name and the command you want him to do, like “fido sit”. Fido starts off knowing some commands (instincts), and you can teach him new ones (tricks). Anyone can give Fido most commands, but some commands are reserved for the owner only.

For example, the “heel” command is reserved for you as Fido’s owner. When you say “fido heel”, he will stay or walk by your side until you give him some other command.

These are the simple one-word commands Fido knows to start with:

  • sit
  • stand
  • down (lay down)
  • bang (play dead)
  • beg
  • bellyup
  • shake
  • rest
  • come
  • wag (wag your tail)
  • speak (bark)
  • sniff
  • fetch (requires “redball”, free in the VKC Toy Box)
  • get
  • getbone (only applies to dogs)
  • howl
  • wander
  • rove
  • roll
  • itch
  • pounce
  • touch
  • playwag (does not apply to rabbits)
  • go *
  • run *
  • on *
  • greet *
  • tp *
  • hidefrom *
  • heel (follow you)
  • follow (someone or something) *
  • help
  • manual
* You must name a destination with these commands. For example, you could say, “Fido greet Solcar”, or “Fido go redball”. Only the owner or a friend can use the commands "heel" and "follow".

Rather than explain what these commands do, I’ll let you discover them for yourself. (They’re pretty self-explanatory, really.) For example, say:

fido sit

Fido sits down. If you want to give Fido a command without anyone else hearing, start your command with “/1”, like this:

/1 fi sniff

These are the commands that all pets know. You can find out about commands or features that are unique to a particular breed in the meet the breeds pages and you can find out about which poses each breed has in the pose chart.


Controlling who can command your pet

Normally, anyone can give your pet these commands and he will obey. But we’ve all run into those annoying people who keep commanding your pet when you have something else in mind. You can use the command “mute” to make your pet ignore other people. Follow the command by at least the first few letters of the first name of the person you want to mute, and your pet will ignore that person (along with any others whose first names start with those letters.) For example, to mute me you would say:

fido mute enrico

You can only mute one name at a time. To clear a name, say:

fido mute none

To mute everybody but yourself, say:

fido mute all

(Actually, if you have given the "friend" command, your pet will still obey both you and the friend.)


Keeping Fido Where He Belongs

There are two commands to make Fido stay in an area, and three to release him:

  • stay
  • settle
  • roam
  • release stay
  • release settle
You can make Fido stay within a square area by saying “stay” followed by a number. That number is the length of a side of a square area, with Fido placed in the center. For example, you’re visiting a friend’s house and you want Fido to stay in the front yard. Put Fido in the center of the area where you want him to stay and say:

fido stay 10

Then he’ll stay in that 10×10 meter area.

Alternatively, you can say “settle”. Fido will stay on the parcel he is on when you give the command. This is particularly good if you want to keep your pet on your own property or on a particular parcel when he is visiting somewhere. Make sure Fido is standing on the correct parcel and say:

fido settle

Then he will not leave the parcel.

You can combine these two commands to refine the size and shape of an area inside of which Fido will remain. If, for example, you have a pool full of fish and splashing prim water at the north end of your parcel, you can use a "stay" command to keep Fido away from this very interesting attraction. But, depending on the shape of your parcel, “stay” may allow Fido to go into your neighbor’s yard. So, if you add "settle" to the "stay", Fido will keep away from the fish pond and out of your neighbor’s yard. Place Fido well away from the pond and use the command “stay” with a number of meters that will keep him away from the pond, then add the “settle” command to keep him at home. For example, say:

fido stay 20 settle

To release your pet from both the “stay” and “settle” commands, say:

fido roam

To release your pet from only the "stay" command while maintaining “settle”, say:

fido release stay

To release your pet from only the "settle" command while maintaining his “stay” area, say:

fido release settle


Controlling Your Pet’s Movements

There are four movement commands that cause Fido to move to a person, place or thing. The commands are:

  • go (walk) — most commonly used
  • run — faster but less accurate
  • on — slower but more accurate
  • follow
Each command is followed by the person, place or thing you want Fido to go to or follow. Similar to Fido’s name, you only have to type the first few characters of the name of the person, place or thing for Fido to understand. For example, if you want Fido to go to me, Enrico Genosse, you can say,

fido go enrico

Alternately, you might say,

fi go enr

As long as Fido can see me, he’ll come.

Fido can go to certain objects around him, too. He senses objects that are active (like vehicles, doors, anything with a running script) but he can’t sense passive objects (like trees or walls). For example, if you have an object named Rocking Chair, say:

fido go roc


Remembering Locations

Fido can remember locations you show him and go to those when you say so. To teach Fido the location of his bed, for example, use the command “mark". Once he has learned where his bed is located, you can tell him, “Fido on bed” and he will trot off to bed.

Let me explain further. Let’s say, for example, that you have a pet bed that you want Fido to sleep in. First, put him in the bed (right-mouse click on him and select “Edit”, then use the colored arrows to move him onto the bed), then say:

fido mark bed

From then on, Fido knows where to find his bed. Any time you want him to go to his bed, say:

fido on bed

(Fido keeps track of marks by region, so you can have a bed in two different regions and Fido will go to the one in his region.) But just going to his bed is not everything. You’ll want him to lie down when he gets there, right? You can chain together commands in a sequence to make this happen by saying,

fido on bed down


Adding Commands Together

The ability to chain together commands is where Fido really gets interesting. Here’s an even better example:

fido on bed sniff wait 1 down

That makes a pretty realistic sequence of actions! I’ve already explained all those actions except "wait" which causes Fido to wait whatever number of seconds you say before continuing to the next action. There is another command for enhancing the tricks — "repeat" — which causes Fido to repeat the next command he is given. For example, say:

fido repeat 3 speak

This command will make Fido bark 6 times ("speak" makes him bark twice).

(Please remember these are example commands and while they should work in most cases, your pets’ success with them will depend on their individual surroundings, including pathfinding configuration and other objects in the vicinity.)


Making a Friend for Your Pet

Many commands are protected, so only the owner or a selected friend can give those commands. (Please refer to the command list to see which commands are protected.) You can give a friend full control of you pet by using the “friend” command. With your friend nearby, say "friend" and the full name of the person. For example:

fido friend Enrico Genosse

or

fi friend enrico.genosse

Since the introduction of Display Names, single-user names, and the firstname.lastname format, it has become ever more confusing to know which format of the name to use or even how to find out what it is. To this end, the "friend" command is now significantly smarter, making it much more forgiving and easy to use.

You don’t need to worry about upper and lower case.
You don’t need to add “Resident” to single-user names. (But if you do, it won’t matter.)
You can use the firstname.lastname format.

When the "friend" command works, the pet will walk over to the person whose name you gave him, beg, and then lie down. If the command does not work, the pet will go into the "rest" pose. You’ll see the friend’s name displayed when you say "fido status", even if the friend is not nearby or even offline.

To clear the “friend” command, say:

fido friend no

After that, no one will have special privileges with your pet. Only one person can be a friend at a time.


Artificial Disobedience (VKC Cats only)

VKC Dogs are renowned for being very obedient and eager to please. But VKC Cats are different. They’re not content to be just an ultra-obedient virtual pet. They have even more of a mind of their own than the dogs. Sometimes they do what you want and sometimes not. Approximately half of the time when you tell him to do something, your VKC Cat will disobey your command and perform a different action instead.


Getting Your Cat to Obey You

There are two ways to ensure that your cat always obeys your commands:

Use channel 1. For example, if you type: /1 felix sit, the cat will always sit.

You can turn the Artificial Disobedience on and off with the "obey" and "disobey" commands.

obey — turns off Artificial Disobedience so the cat will obey every command he hears.
disobey — restores Artificial Disobedience so the cat will obey about half the time and do something else when you command him.


VKC Cats Always Obey Some Commands

There are some commands, however, that are immune to the Artificial Disobedience because you probably don’t want to have to chase the cat around just to get her to settle on your land or something like that. So the following commands are always obeyed:

  • comehere — a pseudonym for “come” but always obeyed. This command is only for the cats.
  • help
  • mode
  • name
  • obey
  • pf
  • ping
  • roam
  • settle
  • stay
  • setpet
  • status
  • tp
  • water



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