Generating a Dynamic Gaming Environment Using OMCS

David Gottlieb and Josh Justerdavegot@mit.edu, jjust@mit.edu

What is OMAdventure?

• OMAdventure is a game in which a player navigates around a world in order to find a goal item.

• Unlike traditional games, there are no set boundaries. The world is created on-the-fly using the OpenMind database and Altavista’s image search engine.

•OMAdventure is also a new method for inputting knowledge into the OpenMind database.

How it works

• When a player enters a new location, it’s neighbors, parent location, and objects are automatically generated.

• When the game begins, the player is given a goal item. The player must then navigate through the world until the item is found.

Magic

• At any point in the game, the player can choose to use magic in order to an add object to the room and transport to a new place. Obviously, the player cannot transport directly to the goal.

• The Magic feature enables players to add new information to the OpenMind database.

• When using magic, players are asked a simple common sense question. The program then generates a sentence which can later be added to OpenMind. This additional knowledge is stored and applied in future games.

OMAdventure Applications

• A unique approach to gaming—unlimited paths to choose from can loosely translate to the common sense thinking that goes on in the mind

• A fun and effective way to enter common sense knowledge into a database

• A more advanced version could be used for entertainment purposes

Future Work

• Cause/Effect

• Better filtering (possibly using WordNet however our first attempt at this approach was unsuccessful due its the limited common sense vocabulary)

• More ways to add Common Sense to OpenMind

Acknowledements

Henry Lieberman

Hugo Liu

Push Singh