Virtual Babyz - Narrative Intelligence - page 221

the time.) Note that the Babyz's behavior during these new goals will be cus-
tomized to reflect the fact that the Baby has a dirty diaper. For example, appro-
priate alternate locomotion animations, facial expressions, vocal sounds and
diaper sounds will be chosen for use during the behavior. Eventually the “soil
diaper” goal's filter function will force itself to resurface as the highest-priority
goal and begin choosing from more crisis-oriented plans such as “act cranky”,
“cry”, “itch bottom”, or “babble” with baby-talk words like “poo poo” or “doo
doo”, each expressing more severe facial expressions and sounds during the be-
havior. The goal will continue choosing from this set of plans indefinitely until
the user puts the Baby on the changing table, causing the goal to begin choosing
from plans such as “happy diaper change”, “resist diaper change”, “act cranky”
or “crawl and explore”. Once the diaper is actually changed, the goal finishes
and deletes itself, thereby ending the narrative.
Note that at any time during this narrative the user could interrupt and
cause new higher priority goals to be spawned, such as “being tickled”, “being
picked up and carried”, “react to toy shaken in my face”, and so on. However
these non-narrative goals are designed to end as quickly as possible if any nar-
rative goals are waiting. Some user interactions will not disrupt an ongoing
narrative at all, but instead influence its execution, such as saying “shhh” if
the Baby is crying, or the influencing the choice of which toy to play with, as
described earlier.
Another short-term narrative example is the goal “play a prank”, perhaps
deliberately spawned by a naughty Baby's need to regularly express its person-
ality, in conjunction with the presence of another rival Baby nearby. Before
choosing a plan, the goal first scans the environment for objects tagged as good
prank toys, such as a glob of wet food or a bouncy ball. (The user can influ-
ence this choice by putting certain toys within reach.) The goal first chooses
the “pickup toy” plan with the chosen toy. Depending on what toy it picked
up,theBabymaychooseplanssuchas“throwtoyatotherBaby”or“shoottoy
at other Baby”. Depending on the outcome of the plan, as well as the user's re-
action (such as verbal praise or discipline), the goal may finish with a plan such
as “point and laugh”, “act angry”, “act shameful”. Note that if this “play a prank”
goal is interrupted by the user, for example by tickling the Baby, this goal is de-
signed to delete itself, since the nature of its narrative requires tight continuity,
and has no suspension-of-disbelief consequences for aborting. In the case of
the earlier “soil diaper” goal, it will never delete itself until the diaper actually
gets changed.