Wanna try out Jim?

Jim is the current incarnation of the emotion-based character. He doesn't have a pretty 3D interface, but he does use emotions and also demonstrates learning, at least to some degree.

If you want to give him a try, you can download a windows version or a pre-compiled linux version.

I'm keeping the code under wraps, for the time being. At least until I've finished most of the demonstrations etc. related to the project.

Version 0.1 (the version released so far) comes with a relatively untrained character, so you will need to train it yourself. Brief instructions are included in the downloads.

Conference Paper

Today my conference paper has been submitted. This will be published, and also I'll be presenting it later in May!

For your reading pleasure, you may view the PDF version of my conference paper here.

Character Brain Working

Well the brains of the character seems to be working OK, I'm currently going through a process of trying to train it what actions are appropriate responses for the different user actions. It's getting there.

At present only a Linux version exists, and the last time I tried it wouldn't compile on Windows (something to do with the enormous arrays used to hold the "appropriateness" data...)

Something I have also thought of doing is introducing long-term memory. Using an external file the emotional state could be saved at the end of a session and loaded at the beginning of the next one... this could be an interesting addition.

At the moment the character doesn't really display any goals, but I'm not sure how to factor this into the current algorithms. It may be impossible at this stage.

I'm still upset that the visual aspects have had to be ignored. Unless a miracle happens, it seems unlikely that this will be able to be integrated before the end of the project. Still, the investigation into use of emotion as a decision making tool has been quite interesting!!