creating objects "on the fly"while an app is running

Hashtables would be indeed another solution yet it stores pairs of keys and values. So I think you should use classes for a more flexible implementation of your objects. I assume (from your posts) that you're somehow new to programming, especially to OOP (no offense). So, you can create a class which will define all of your object's properties and will provide methods to retrieve and modify them: class Bad_guy { protected string Name; protected int level_of_danger;//couldn't come up with something else...it's just an example public Bad_guy(string name, int level) { Name=name; level_of_danger=level; } public string getName() { return Name; } //...any other methods } Basically this is the idea. Then, in your main class (UI perhaps) you can use arrays of Bad_guy type to manipulate as many bad guys as you want: Bad_guy[] badguys=new Bad_guy[10];//10 or else badguys[index]=new Bad_guy("somename",2);//again, just an example The index (must be an int) will allow you to access any member of the array.

Ojects in an array are not acessed by name but by index. Maybe another solution for you is to create an hashtable instance and put the badguys in that collection.

what will each bad guy be named?how is the name for each object in the array created?