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Pedagogical Soap 1432. IPD BackgroundIn our basic design for interactive pedagogical drama, there are five maincomponents: a cast of autonomous character agents, the 2D or 3D puppetswhich are the physical manifestations of those agents, a director agent, a cinematographeragent, and finally the learner/user who impacts the behavior of thecharacters. Animated agents in the drama choose their actions autonomouslyfollowing directions from the learner and/or a director agent. Director andcinematographer agents manage the interactive drama’s onscreen action andits presentation, respectively, so as to maintain story structure, achieve pedagogicalgoals, and present the dynamic story so as to achieve best dramaticeffect. The design of all these agents requires both general capabilities as wellas knowledge specific to the interactive drama that is being created.Our current approach to the design of IPDs is to start with a professionallywritten script and systematically deconstruct it. The deconstruction serves severalends. It provides a model of the story and how variability can enter thatstory. In particular, the deconstruction provides the knowledge to dynamicallydirect the agents in the drama. It also guides the modeling of the improvisationalagents in the drama, their personalities, their goals, their dialog, as wellas how they interact to achieve their goals. Finally, it serves to constrain thecomplexity of these models. Detailed discussion of this script deconstructionapproach and the overall IPD architecture is beyond the scope of this chapterbut more details can be found in [8].2.1 Carmen’s Bright IDEASThe story for Carmen’s Bright IDEAS is organized into three acts. The firstact reveals the back story. The second, main, act takes place in Gina’s office.Carmen discusses her problems with Gina, who suggests she use BrightIDEAS to help her find solutions. See Figure 17.1. With Gina’s help, Carmengoes through the initial steps of Bright IDEAS, applying the steps to oneof her problems and then completes the remaining steps on her own. The finalact reveals the outcomes of Carmen’s application of Bright IDEAS to herproblems.The human mother interacts with the drama by making choices for Carmensuch as what problem to work on, what Carmen’s inner thoughts are at criticaljunctures, etc. The mother’s selection of inner thoughts for Carmen impacts heremotional state, which in turn impacts her thoughts and behavior. It is Gina’stask to keep the social problem solving on track by effectively responding toCarmen’s state, and motivating her through dialog. Meanwhile, a bodiless cinematographeragent is dynamically manipulating the camera views, flashbacks,and flash-forwards.