AN AUTHORING TOOLKIT FOR SIMULATION ENTITIES

Instructors and analysts within the military community have noted the possibility of using video games for training or analysis purposes. Game developers, however, often deviate from actual doctrine. Unfortunately, the instructor or analyst is often left with no means to modify the entity behavior to conform to doctrine. At the same time, there has been interest in the Artificial Intelligence research and game development communities as to whether it is possible to create an “AI toolkit.” Developers could use such a kit to create the entity behavior in a game quickly without having to start from scratch. In the ideal case, a kit would consolidate the existing branches of useful work in the field, thus providing developers easy access to the fruits of mature research. In this paper we describe some initial steps towards a solution for both communities. There are two parts to our work. First, we have created an authoring tool that enables a developer to create entity behavior using a graphical “drag and drop” interface to quickly build up complex behavior. Second, we have created a runtime engine that works in conjunction with a simulation to operationalize the behaviors defined in the editor. The authoring tool allows authors to rapidly build complex behavior, while the runtime engine is built on well-understood game technology. Biographical Sketches Daniel Fu is a project manager and software engineer at Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (SHAI). His research interests are in Artificial Intelligence (AI) autonomous agents and planning. While at SHAI, he has applied AI techniques to a number of intelligent tutoring systems and autonomous agents projects. Dr. Fu holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Chicago. Ryan Houlette is a project manager and software engineer at SHAI. His primary interests lie in the areas of intelligent interfaces, autonomous agents, and interactive narrative. During his stay at SHAI, he has participated in the development of a wide range of AI systems. Mr. Houlette is currently leading a project to develop a mixedinitiative scheduling system that will include as a core component a rich capacity for human interaction and collaboration. He holds an M.S. in computer science from Stanford. Oscar Bascara is a consulting software engineer at SHAI. His interests include behavior network modeling and user interface design. He holds an M.Eng. in electrical engineering from Cornell University and an M.A. in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. AN AUTHORING TOOLKIT FOR SIMULATION ENTITIES Daniel Fu, Ryan Houlette, and Oscar Bascara Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. San Mateo, California fu@shai.com, houlette@shai.com, bascara@shai.com