Generating a Dynamic Gaming Environment Using OMCS David Gottlieb and Josh Juster

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