William Vennes
Software Development
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Procedural Murder Mystery Generation Using Data-Driven Agents and
Personalities
This thesis project is a top-down, two-
The challenges I faced revolved around
game that utilizes data-driven methods
system. I needed to find ways for the AI
dimensional, procedural murder mystery
coupled with personality-based AI
agents. I chose this project in order to
explore additional avenues of procedural
generation in games, namely in terms
of mechanics and narrative. I wanted to
demonstrate the advantages of using
human-authored pieces in a procedural
way in order to create an interesting
agents to plan with each other to facilitate
frequent and interesting interactions. The
agents needed to use their personality
traits and relationships with other agents
to drive their behavior and responses to
the player in a way that is consistent with
how the designer intended.
experience for the player.
This project was beneficial to me because
For all stages of this project combined,
avenues of procedural generation and
including research, production, and
documentation, I worked on this thesis
over the course of four and a half months.
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design and implementation of the overall
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
it allowed me to explore additional
which ways we can use procedural
methods to utilize human-authored pieces
in interesting ways.