A Methodology for Requirements Analysis of AI Architecture Authoring Tools

Authoring embodied, highly interactive virtual agents (IVAs) for robust experiences is an extremely difficult task. Current architectures for creating those agents are so complex that it takes enormous amounts of effort to craft even short experiences, with lengthier, polished experiences (e.g., Facade, Ada and Grace) often requiring person-years of effort by expert authors. However, each architecture is challenging in vastly different ways; it is impossible to propose a universal authoring solution without being too general to provide significant leverage. Instead, we present our analysis of the System-Specific Step (SSS) in the IVA authoring process, encapsulated in the case studies of three different architectures tackling a simple scenario. The case studies revealed distinctly different behaviors by each team in their SSS, resulting in the need for different authoring solutions. We iteratively proposed and discussed each team’s SSS Components and potential authoring support strategies to identify actionable software improvements. Our expectation is that other teams can perform similar analyses of their own systems ’ SSS and make authoring improvements where they are most needed. Further, our case-study approach provides a methodology for detailed comparison of the authoring affordances of different IVA architectures, providing a lens for understanding the similarities, differences and tradeoffs between architectures

Computationally-Mediated Interactions with Traditional Textile Crafts

Crafting is a fundamental part of humanity; it gives us purpose and satisfaction, and it produces items that are beautiful and functional. At the same time, our relationship to traditional physical crafts has seen a massive upheaval due to technological advancements. The freedom and support to create textile crafts for pleasure and passion rather than necessity has never been more widespread. Interdisciplinary explorations of computer science and textile crafts have been increasing due to more people being intrinsically motivated to craft, more forms of supportive technology constantly being built, and more interconnected communities growing via the internet. The work in this dissertation begins to coalesce these user-focused and craft-based experiences by presenting crafting as a series of interconnected and nested processes covering the design, manufacture, and experience of textile craft products. Within these processes, I examine how crafters experience physical and digital forms of agency, both high and low, as well as ludic engagement or the lack thereof, as a means of evaluating user perception of technology related to textiles. As exemplar artifacts, I present my own, as well as collaborative, research on design support software, a manufacturing machine appropriated as a game console, and a pair of electronic textile-based fidget toys. This research illustrates how many varied design choices affected audiences' agency and ludic engagement by examining crafters' perceptions and skill levels, as well as the craft domain interpretations by accompanying software and hardware. The interdisciplinary work presented in this dissertation crosses the boundaries of creativity support software, computational creativity, game studies, human-computer interaction, and crafting communities outside the realm of academia. More importantly, this research begins to explicitly join predominantly feminine craft and masculine technological communities across all ages for the enrichment of all those involved

Extending CRPGs as an Interactive Storytelling Form

Abstract. Computer role-playing games (CRPGs) have strong narratives, but in general lack a density of interesting and meaningful choices for the player within the story. We have identified two main components of player interaction within the story—quests and character interaction—to address in a new playable experience, Mismanor. In this paper we focus on the character interaction aspect. In particular, it describes how we use the Comme il Faut system to support emergent social interactions between the player and the game characters based on player’s traits and the social state of the game world. We discuss the design and creation of the game as well as the modifications to the systems required to support this new CRPG experience

A compiler for 3D machine knitting

© 2016 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. Industrial knitting machines can produce finely detailed, seamless, 3D surfaces quickly and without human intervention. However, the tools used to program them require detailed manipulation and understanding of low-level knitting operations. We present a compiler that can automatically turn assemblies of high-level shape primitives (tubes, sheets) into low-level machine instructions. These high-level shape primitives allow knit objects to be scheduled, scaled, and otherwise shaped in ways that require thousands of edits to low-level instructions. At the core of our compiler is a heuristic transfer planning algorithm for knit cycles, which we prove is both sound and complete. This algorithm enables the translation of high-level shaping and scheduling operations into needle-level operations. We show a wide range of examples produced with our compiler and demonstrate a basic visual design interface that uses our compiler as a backend

Creating Playable Social Experiences through Whole-Body Interaction with Virtual Characters

This paper describes work towards the goal of enabling unscripted interaction with non-player characters in virtual environments. We hypothesize that we can define a layer of social affordances, based on physical and non-verbal signals exchanged between individuals and groups, which can be reused across games. We have implemented a first version of that substrate that employs whole body interaction with virtual characters and generates nuanced, real-time character performance in response. We describe the playable experience produced by the system, the implementation architecture (based on the behavior specification technology used in Façade, the social model employed in Prom Week, and gesture recognition technology), and illustrate the key behaviors and programming idioms that enable character performance. These idioms include orthogonal coding of attitudes and activities, use of relational rules to nominate social behavior, use of volition rules to rank options, and priority based interleaving of character animations

A step towards the future of roleplaying games: The spyfeet mobile rpg project

Meaningful choice has often been identified as a key component in a player’s engagement with an interactive narrative, but branching stories require tremendous amounts of hand-authored content, in amounts that increase exponentially rather than linearly as more choice points are added. Previous approaches to reducing authorial burden for computer RPGs have relied on creating better tools to manage existing unwieldy structures of quests and dialogue trees. We hypothesize that reducing authorial burden and increasing agency are two sides of the same coin, requiring specific advancements in two related areas of design and technology research: (1) dynamic story management architecture that represents story events abstractly and allows story elements to be selected and re-ordered in response to player choices, and (2) dynamic dialogue generation to allow a single story event to be revealed differently by different characters and in the context of dynamic relationships between those characters and the player. This paper describes SpyFeet, a playable prototype of a storytelling system designed to test this hypothesis

Deviations from Prescribed Prompting Procedures: Implications for Treatment Integrity

Abstract The acquisition of new skills may be hindered when teaching procedures vary from previously validated approaches or contain errors. In the present study, we compared the acquisition and maintenance of response chains taught using a perfectly implemented system of least prompts and a multiple verbal prompts procedure (i.e., addition of multiple verbal prompts and failure to follow through with more intrusive prompts). Four children, aged 6-9, participated in the study. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of learning during the system of least prompts and the alternative system of least prompts. Results were consistent with those obtained in previous studies in that the perfectly implemented and alternative prompting procedures were effective in teaching new skills for all participants. However, the perfectly implemented treatment required fewer trials to mastery for 4 of the 5 evaluations. Response chains taught under the multiple verbal prompts condition had poorer maintenance for 2 of the 5 evaluations. The results of the current study suggest that deviations from empirically identified teaching procedures may reduce the speed with which new skills are acquired