Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
They can crawl around their virtual house and pick up objects, throw them,
use them, eat them, carry them to different places. Through voice recognition
Babyz can respond to simple words spoken by the user in the form of praise,
discipline, and the names of objects. Babyz will “learn” to speak back these
words in the form of “baby talk”, allowing them to truly say what they (seem
to) want and feel.
The Babyz live in a virtual house with all the traditional baby accou-
trements such as cribs, highchairs, and changing tables. Many of the toys al-
low for mischief and fun, such as mushy food that can be thrown and splat-
ted, rubber balls that tend to bounce around the room and knock things over,
cookie jars placed on challengingly high countertops, goofy clothing and out-
fits, and so on.
The Babyz personalities are based on well-established cartoon archetypes,
such as “the clever naughty kid”, “the spoiled brat”, and “the sweet little an-
gel”. By making the Babyz sound and act in these recognizable ways, it made it
much easier for us to design understandable and entertaining narratives. (In-
terestingly, in the history of traditional animated cartoons there have been few
baby characters, perhaps because cartoons are often a bit violent, for which
babies are not as well suited as cats and mice or coyotes and roadrunners.)
Short-term narratives in Babyz: Poops and pranks
A narrative in Babyz is a sequence of actions and behaviors that follow some
sort of recognizable continuity. There are a variety of short-term narratives that
can occur, lasting anywhere from twenty seconds to several minutes each. Two
examples are described later in this section: soiling a diaper (leading to a diaper
change), and playing a mischievous prank on a fellow Baby.
The Babyz behavior architecture is designed to allow only one short-term
narrative to be occurring at one time. However, if needed, a short-term narra-
tive can be briefly diverted for short amounts of time to allow for unpredictable
interruptions, such as user interaction (e.g., being briefly tickled, picked up,
spoken to, or offered a toy), or in response to internal metabolism (e.g., the
character may be hungry and decide to quickly eat some food that happens to
be nearby). After the interruption is over, the narrative will attempt to resume
where it left off. But if the narrative is distracted for more than ten or twenty
seconds, it will probably abort and allow for a different narrative to begin.
Short-term narratives are implemented as high level behavior goals, each
goal having multiple possible plans that can be executed in a non-linear order.
