Patent ID: 8328637

Claim:
A method of operating a game environment, comprising: receiving input from a user indicative of an operation of a game controller; assessing a situational awareness status of a user-controlled player including at least one player condition, at least one opponent condition and at least one object condition in the game environment, the at least one player condition including a plurality of attack zones that are centered about the user-controlled player, the at least one opponent condition including a position of the opponent relative to the plurality of attack zones, and the at least one object condition including a position of the object relative to the plurality of attack zones; identifying a plurality of possible actions for the player for execution in the game environment, each of the plurality of possible actions having one or more prerequisites that need to be fulfilled in order for the corresponding action to be performed, at least some of the one or more prerequisites being associated with the plurality of attack zones; utilizing a processor that is a component of a computing device to identify two or more of the plurality of possible actions for the player as having had their prerequisites fulfilled based on the operation of the game controller and the situational awareness; selecting one of the two or more of the plurality of possible actions for execution in the game environment, the selection of the one being based on priority rankings of the two or more of the plurality of possible actions; receiving a second input from the user indicative of the operation of the game controller after selecting the one of the two or more of the plurality of possible actions; assessing a second situational awareness status of the player that is different from the first-mentioned situational awareness status; and selecting a second action for the player that is different from the one of the two or more of the plurality of possible actions based on the second input and the second situational awareness status.