IVA Authoring Tools (Fall 2013 - Present)
After watching IMMERSE struggle with crippling authoring burdens, I began proposing my advancement topic on authoring embodied characters. More to come as I continue advancing!
IMMERSE as seen in graph form!
A. Grow, S. Gaudl, P. Gomes, M. Mateas, N. Wardrip-Fruin. “A Methodology for Requirements Analysis of AI Architecture Authoring Tools,” to be presented at Foundations of Digital Games, 2014. SlidesIMMERSE (Fall 2012 - Present)
Michael Mateas aquired a DARPA grant for the "Next Generation Facade" experience in authoring cultural training exercises for soldiers. The project is huge and sprawling, involving many institutions. My personal contribution has involved programming chunks of behaviors in ABL/Java code, specifically performing small talk in groups of arbitraty size, and passing objects between characters.
D. Shapiro, J. McCoy, A. Grow, B. Samuel, S. Andrew, S. Reid, T. Mike, and M. Mateas. "Creating Playable Social Experiences through Whole-Body Interaction with Virtual Characters." In Ninth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference. 2013.Gamelan (Spring 2013)
A friend of mine, Joe Osborn, spearheaded a general game-authoring and game-playing language. I aided in analysis of previous board games, the language design, and future authoring tool ideas.
J. Osborn, A. Grow, and M. Mateas. "Modular Computational Critics for Games." Ninth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference. 2013.Character Creator/Heart of Shadows (Fall 2011 - Fall 2012)
CiF: I further updated social network systems from Mismanor to include lies and deception, as well as generalizing the system for use as a module in other projects.
GrailGM: Expanded GrailGM system to accommodate the different quest and story management from Mismanor, and connected this system to the new Android application.
Game Design: Guided and grounded game design with Jane Pinkard for the young woman (18-22) demographic. Applied this game design to the new systems, CiF and GrailGM, as well as managing general utterances to be used to make speech plans for natural language generation.
GrailGM/Mismanor (Winter 2011 - Fall 2011)
CiF: I updated current social network systems to work in a more robust social space and RPG domain, including non-universal knowledge and items.
Mismanor Story: I worked with authorrs and helped fill out the story world and characters for use in our RPG system.
Mismanor System: I helped design a social RPG system with social stats (rather than combat stats), designed RPG and deception-based social interactions, and created complex social-based quests (rather than "Go Kill X").
Grail GM: I am currently helping design and implement quest and plot point structures in order to guide a procedurally generated story arc.
SpyFeet (Summer 2010 - Spring 2011)
SpyGen: I morphed Marilyn Walker's Personage system into one that works in an RPG domain. I began encoding emotions, writing Deep Syntatic Stuctures for character utterances, and documenting the system for other programmer's use.
Android Phone Application: I created original mock-ups of the game system in Adobe Flash and worked on physical prototypes for the game system.
Story: I co-authored the chosen story with Anne Sullivan, helped design the first mission within the story world, and helped write original utterances in the unique revelation-inquiry dialogue system.
A. Reed, B. Samuel, A. Sullivan, R. Grant, A. Grow, J. Lazaro, J. Mahal, S. Kurniawan, M. Walker, and N. Wardrip-Fruin, “SpyFeet: An Exercise RPG,” Foundations of Digital Games, June 29 - July 1, Bordeaux, France. 2011.