Hi,
I’m working with a friend to build a game over the next two months for a competition.  He’s doing art and design…I’m coding.  Anyhow I’ve been absent from Robitron for the past week in order to start this project. I’ve got a nice isometric editor working to support the creation of a virtual world.

The reason this is significant is that I would like to begin building a chat bot this year that ‘lives’ in a virtual world.  I would like to use the game engine I’ve developed over the past two years for the bot.  I’ve very interested in ‘connecting’ the bot to his/her world.  Comms would begin through ‘text messaging’.  This should serve as a sufficient testbed for implementing the abstract symbolic language I’ve referenced above.

Of course, these projects do take time. =)

I’m excited to see phase II for Robitron. I’ve enjoyed the contact and sharing of ideas with everyone so far.

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck,
Are you using Direct X 10 and Visual Studio ? 
Is it 3D like a first person shooter ? 
What modeling, animation and rendering packages are you using ?

Hi 8pla,
I’m still using DX9 and VS2005.  It’s more like a top-down 2D game…but shown in isometric.  Here are some of the latest screenies. This uses “placement art”...not the actual stuff to be using during the game….just there for development.

http://www.chuckbolin.com/gc15/screen14.jpg  //shows editor interface and a world being ‘painted’
http://www.chuckbolin.com/gc15/screen17.jpg  //shows editable map for generating 50x50 world.

All the art in the screenies have been built using a combination of Microsoft Paint (I’m old school) and Paint.net.  All the movement and animation is controlled by code.

I’ve actually got the 3D BASS audio library working. I’m building a wrapper to manage sounds. What’s neat is I can assign sounds to various positions in the game level. As the player walks closer to a noise source it gets louder.  This is my first attempt to immerse the player into a “cacophony” for forest sounds…that’s my 1st time using the word cacophony in a forum =).

So, with a virtual chat bot, it would be possible to observe what he/she “sees” and “hears”.  I’m interested in bots process of saving this ‘experience’ and then using it in chats.

Regards,
Chuck

Hi,
Just dropping by to say I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. =)  My friend and I have logged 200 hours in 3 weeks building an isometric editor and art.  Like many of you hobbyists we do that after normal working hours. We’ll know in about 5 weeks if we have produced something that might be financially viable.  In April I should be free to begin building my first virtual world chat bot.  Here are some features that I would like to experiment with up front:

* Bot roams his environment exploring.  Need to abstract and store “experience”.
* Bot sleeps, works, and relaxes.
* Bot text messages human and process basic received messages.
* Bot ‘hears’ ambient sounds.  I’m not sure how to simulate “hearing” yet…just a few ideas.  The code will not analyze the audio waveform like a robot might be able to recognize speech.  I’ve got a pseudo hearing system in mind.
* And the list goes on and on.

Simple enough?? =)

Regards,
Chuck

Hi,
Have you noticed how easy it is to become distracted when you are working on a short-term project?  Something catches your fancy and you become tempted to spend time investigating the new area of interest at the detriment of your project.  I can say that I’ve been struggling to stay away from chat bot programming until I finish a game with my friend.  But I’m managing. =)

It’s been nearly 6 weeks now and I’ve completed the editor. Here are some test levels.  My friend will use the editor to construct the 22 levels (his brain child).

http://www.chuckbolin.com/gc15/screen25.jpg
http://www.chuckbolin.com/gc15/screen26.jpg

Tonight I began work on the game engine…to put all the levels together.  I hope to have a good working beta in 4 to 6 weeks.  I hope… =)

I’m anxious to begin design on my first program featuring a chat bot living in a virtual 2D world.  I’m thinking it may be a bit ‘over the top’...but it does sound like an interesting project to develop over a long time.

Regards,
Chuck

Good luck with the contest Chuck! I like your chatbot ideas.

Robby

@Chuck: we definitely need to talk! We’d love to make the 3D header of Chatbots.org more interactive. It would be great to have walking chatbots in that header which you can ask questions about ... chatbots!

@Robby,
Thanks!  It’s difficult to find anyone within 100 miles interested in AI and chatbots.  It’s not your typical fodder for conversation. =)

@Edwin,
That would be a cool idea.  Of course I’m only in the concept phase.

@Update
I’m not actually coding yet but I do like to think about this problem.  With the bot operating in a 2D top-down world, I think I should work on the “Where are you?” problem.  The bot would be programmed to recognize trees, bridges, water, buildings, etc. However, he would be introduced to a new and unexplored part of the world.  The bot would explore and learn ‘locations’ on his own.  Then the goal would be to design the bot to answer questions or commands such as:

* Where is the yellow barn?
* How far away is the large apple tree?
* Go to the north side of the bridge.
* How big is the ‘Johnson’ house?
* What do you see to the north?

As you can see, from a language parsing perspective, there are dozes of problems to solve. 

* Virtual vision system for the bot.  This would give the bot ‘eyes’ in his world.
* Object recognition.
* Use of prepositions.
* Use of relative words like bigger, smaller, closer, etc.
* Navigation…path finding.
* Development of habits, since people are ‘habitual’, such as walking the same path.
* Exploration.

The list goes on. In fact, when I ponder problems like this my respect for anyone who has ever created a chat bot increases significantly.

Regards,
Chuck

@Chuck:

Are questions like ’ How far away is the large apple tree?’  not yet a bridge to far?

The results in semantic algoritms are quite promising, but don’t even solve these kind of questions.

They answer questions like ” what was the weather on the day Martin Luther King was born’.  It find the date and looks up historical data.

But ’ The’  large apple tree is subjective (what is a ’ large’  tree?) and personal (which tree does a person know, and which of them are on top of their minds?).

Hi Erwin,

Are questions like ’ How far away is the large apple tree?’  not yet a bridge to far?

Definitely!  It only takes a few minutes to ponder “how” to get the bot to solve the problem to realize that dozens of problems must be solved first.  It’ll be wise to break it down and start working on smaller milestones.

I spent a few hours yesterday working on a few AI problems. For example, there are several ways to solve pathfinding problems in games. However, people often don’t ‘think’ that way.  So, I was diagramming a method that I would prefer in exploring a new area…such as a new part of town a museum.

Thanks Erwin for “reeling me in”. =)

Regards,
Chuck

Gary Dubuque - Jan 4, 2010:

* trick questions
- logic questions (“What color is a blue apple”)
- mindpixel questions (“Is an elephant bigger than New York?”, “Is water dry?”, “Is the sky green?”)
- deduction questions (“How many legs do two cats have?”)
- decision questions (“what is the difference between a dog and a handkerchief?”)

Do you actually have an example of a bot who gets that right? I’d like to talk to it.

And also having a comparator is never a bad idea.