It's tiny demo day! I've got the "game playing" features whipped into enough shape that I can walk Acuitas through a tiny text adventure of sorts. So without further ado, here's the video:
I start by setting the scene. I can enter multiple sentences and, while each is received as a distinct input, Acuitas will process them all as a group; he waits for a little while to see if I have anything more to say before generating a response.
First I tell him what sort of character he is ("You are a human"). This nameless human is entered as a character in the game's Narrative Scratchboard, but is also specially designated as *his* character. Future references to "you" are assumed to apply to this character. Then I supply a setting: I tell him where his character is, and mention some objects that share the space with him. Finally, I mention a goal-relevant issue: "You are hungry."
Given something that is obviously a problem for a human character, Acuitas will work on solving it. The obvious solution to hunger is to eat some food (this is a previously-known fact in the cause-and-effect database, which can be found via a solution search process). But there is no "food" in the game - there is only a room, an apple, and a table. Acuitas has to rely on more prior knowledge - that an apple qualifies as food - and choose this specific object as the target of his character's next action. He also has to check the necessary prerequisites for the action "eat," at which point he remembers a few more things:
To eat something, you must have it in your possession. This generates a new Problem, because Acuitas doesn't currently have the apple.
Problem-solving on the above indicates that getting something will enable you to have it. This generates a new Subgoal.
To get something, you must be co-located with it.
Acuitas' character is already co-located with the apple, so this is not a problem.
Acuitas will work on the lowest subgoal in this tree; before trying to eat the apple, he will get it. He generates a response to me to express this intention.
Now something else interesting happens. Acuitas can't just automatically send "I get the apple" to the Narrative Scratchboard. He'll *attempt* the action, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily happen; there might be some obstacle to completing it that he isn't currently aware of. So he simply says "I get the apple" to me, and waits to see whether I confirm or deny that his character actually did it. At this point, I don't have to be boring and answer "You get the apple." If I instead tell him that one of the expected results of his desired action has come to pass, he'll take that as positive confirmation that he performed the action.
Once I confirm that he's done it, the action is sent to the Scratchboard, followed by my latest statement. This fulfills one subgoal and solves one problem. Now he'll fall back on his original subgoal of eating the apple, and tell me that he does so. I confirm that he ate it and ... boom, hunger problem disappears.
Since the game-playing code has a Narrative scratchboard attached, I can generate a Narrative diagram representing what happens in the game, just as I could for one of the stories in which Acuitas is a passive listener. This diagram appears in the latter part of the video.
And that's the story for this month! I've also continued refining and adding to the abilities of the new Text Generator, but it's not ready for integration yet.
Until the next cycle,
Jenny
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