Dynamic Planning for Agents in Games Using Social Norms and Emotions

As environments in games have become more and more realistic graphically, a new big challenge has emerged for gaming companies. Both the computer controlled agents and player controlled avatars now also need to act in a believable manner so that the illusion of reality created by exquisite graphics and physics is not broken. There is a requirement for agents to react to the environment around them as well as to act in a certain manner when introduced to social situations. For agents to be life-like they need to have basic human traits like emotions and the ability to make decisions. In this thesis we describe a way of tackling this challenge using a three pronged solution. We have incorporated a social norms model into the agents using social rules. These rules tell the agents how to act when engaged in social situations. Secondly we added an emotional model which affects the agents’ emotional state and gives them the ability to vary their responses to situations in the environment. Both these models reside in an appraisal module that is based on emotional appraisal theory. The appraisal module will appraise how events triggered in the environment affect the agents both emotionally and socially and will give the agent instructions on how he might cope with that situation. To complete the cycle a planner will make the decisions on what can be done, what should be done and how it should be done. The resulting system provides the illusion that the agents are life-like individuals that can act differently to similar situations depending on what they think is important to them at that time. Kvik áætlanagerð fyrir vitverur í leikjaumhverfi, sem byggir á félagslegum venjum og tilfinningum