Chapter 17 - Knowing what you're talking about: Natural language programming of a multi-player online game

Abstract

Enabling end users to express programs in natural language would result in a dramatic increase in accessibility. Previous efforts in natural language programming have been hampered by the apparent ambiguity of natural language. The large part of the solution to this problem is to know what one is talking about—introducing enough semantics about the subject matter of the programs to provide sufficient context for understanding. This chapter presents MOOIDE (pronounced “moody”), a natural language programming system for a MOO, an extensible multiplayer text-based virtual reality storytelling game. MOOIDE incorporates both a state-of-the-art English parser and a large commonsense knowledge base to provide background knowledge about everyday objects, people, and activities. End-user programmers can introduce new virtual objects and characters into the simulated world, which can then interact conversationally with (other) end users. In addition to using semantic context in traditional parsing applications such as anaphora resolution, commonsense knowledge is used to ensure that the virtual objects and characters act in accordance with commonsense notions of cause and effect, inheritance of properties, and affordability of verbs. This leads to a more natural dialog.