Muriel is a prototype of a chatbot, with the responses of a person suffering from dementia.   She’s one of soon to be several ‘Residents’ who occupy a virtual memory care unit.   Ultimately a game will be built around a community of these Residents.   Players will have to interact with the bot to get it to some desired, calm state.  In this first prototype, Muriel is asleep.  She needs to go eat, but first she has to be awoken.    Once she’s awake she needs to be talked into a ‘state of compliance’ where she’s agreeable to going to eat.

The bot has an emotional state that plays a part in how cooperative the bot will be.   If she’s calm but still not compliant it won’t take much to make her agreeable.   If she’s sobbing uncontrollably, things that might have worked a minute ago will only make things worse.

There are different things you can add to, or take away from the environment which may have an affect on the emotional state of the resident.  She might feel differently about each, and how she feels about them might change.

When Muriel wakes up her state will be scrambled.   Where she thinks she is, what she thinks she’s doing, and what she wants to do, are randomly determined.   She also has a concept of the player, which will have an affect on her responses.

You can try her out here:  Muriel.

Random notes:

• Right now she’s not the most robust.   WebGL, HTML5, and Unity 5.6 beta 9.  Everything about her is experimental.   If it doesn’t work for you in one browser it might in another.
• ‘help’ — will summon the help panel.  This is not interpreted as conversation.
• ‘honor’ — will bring up Muriel’s ‘honor portrait’, sort of a dossier on her life.
• Emotional state can be set directly using the box on the left.  <10 is asleep and >50 is insane with rage.
• Sensitivity can also be set.  That’s the amount that her feelings change for different things.  The default is 5, which is kind of generous.  It’s pretty easy to get her compliant, or to have her flip her lid.
• ALL CAPS will be interpreted as a shout, or stern tone.
• all lower case will be interpreted as a softer, gentler tone.

If you do experiment with her, I would appreciate any comments.