Course number

CIS 7000-001 - Interactive Fiction and Text Generation

Prerequisites

At least one of the following courses

CIS 4190/5190

CIS 5200

CIS 4210/5210

CIS 5220

CIS 5300

Course Description

We know now that artificial intelligence (AI) can play chess or even Go, but can AI play text adventure games (also known as interactive fiction)? What about roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons? In this course, we will be looking at the subfields of automated story generation (teaching computers to tell stories), interactive fiction (teaching computers to play through stories), and their intersection (teaching computers to tell and then play through the stories). This class will teach you about computational creativity and help develop your skills in natural language processing and cognitive modeling.

Learning Objectives

• Understanding the challenges of creating text-based games and automatically generating stories.
• Implement and appraise the value of different technologies (Neural Language Models, Dialogue Systems, Scripts, Planning, and Commonsense Reasoning) in story generation/interactive fiction playing.
• Argue for the appropriate components of a working story generation system or interactive fiction–playing system.
• Create your own story generation system or interactive fiction–playing system.

Website

interactive-fiction-class.org

Instructors

Chris Callison-Burch

TAs

Andrew Zhu

Anson Runsheng Huang

Kyle Jaewoo Song

Discussion Forum

Ed Discussion

Time and Place

Spring 2024, Tuesdays & Thursdays from 1:45-3:15pm EST in Towne 327

First day of class is January 18, 2024

Last day of class is April 30, 2024

Final project presentations will be held on May 7th from 9am-noon in Towne 100.

Office Hours (see the Staff page for office hour locations)

Chris - Thursdays from 3:15-5pm in Towne 280

Andrew - By appointment

Anson - Fridays noon-2pm on Zoom

Kyle - Mondays 4-6pm in the Levine 6th floor bump

Course Materials

There is no textbook for this course, but you will be required to puchase a varitey of materials including games, software, and API credits. If any of these are prohibitively expensive for your budget, please let the instructor know.

Games

Labyrinth The Adventure Game - $35 on Amazon

Action Castle - Free (you can optionally buy it in the rad Parsley book in print or PDF) - $20-30

Materials

ChatGPT Plus subcription - $20/month

Midjourney subscription - $10/month

Grading

There will be six homeworks and a final project. In addition, you will be required to present academic papers in class.

• 15% Paper Presentations + Class Participation
• 55% Homeworks (6 in total)
• 30% Final Project

Paper Presentations

Over the course of the semester, each student must prepare one or more 10-15 minute presentations on a research paper relevant to the course. Since these presentation will be a substantial component of the learning experience in the class, slides must be prepared and emailed to us at least 72 hours in advance of the lecture they will be presented in (e.g., by 3PM on the Monday before the presenation date), so that we can provide feedback on them. Failure to send us the slides ahead of time will result in a grade penalty on the presentation.

Collaboration Policy

Unless otherwise noted, you ARE allowed to work in pairs on the homework assignments, and teams of 3-5 for the final project.

Late Day Policy

Each student has five free “late days”. Homeworks can be submitted at most two days late. If you are out of late days, then you will not be able to get credit for subsequent late assignments. One “day” is defined as anytime between 1 second and 24 hours after the homework deadline. The intent of the late day policy it to allow you to take extra time due to unforseen circumstances like illnesses or family emergencies, and for forseeable interruptions like on campus interviewing and religious holidays. You do not need to ask permission to use your late days. No additional late days are granted. Late days only apply to the homeworks. They cannot be used on the final project, which must be finished by the final day of class. Late days may not be used for paper presentations.