Coding Natural Language, Fall 2021, Final project

Choose one of the following two options:

(a) Create a text-based game out of a text.

Use the game tree code that we worked on together as a starting point. Create an all new collection of game states. Work with your text to make sure that this game structure somehow connects with the text. It can be complementary to the text or challenging in some way, but the relationship between the two must have some significance.

You can work with only one text if you'd like, but it should be at least 640 KB as a plain text file. That means you may need to stitch two texts together. Novels would work well for this option, but you can get experimental.

As we worked on together, augment the game tree code with the markovify library to generate sentences. Try to make your sentences fit in with your game tree.

Try to make the user choices also make sense with the sentences and with the game tree. Perhaps use a part-of-speech tagger to aid in this process.

Your game will be evaluated on the degree to which it:

• makes sense with the text(s) that you have chosen
• is fun or somehow otherwise engaging and in some way brings the text to life
• is dynamic and generative so that multiple plays do not feel repetitive.

(b) Investigate a collection of texts, asking an interesting question of them and trying to find an answer.

Start with a collection of at least three texts. They can be all the same thing (for example, all by the same author, in the same genre, of the same time period), or all different (for example, all from different authors that are related in some way, or all from different comparable time periods). There should be a clear rationale to your selection. Think scientifically — in other words, introduce one or two controlled variables, but not so many that it feels random.

Start with an interesting question about these texts and a hypothesis about what the answer might be.

User the TextBlob library and the part-of-speech tagger, as well as looping techniques to count, average, or otherwise aggregate some features of the collection of texts.

Your inquiry will be evaluated based on the degree to which:

• the selection of texts are coherent and afford the opportunity to investigate some question
• the question is interesting, engaging, provocative, meaningful, and/or has real stakes
• your investigation makes some progress toward developing thinking in response to the question. (Note, you do not need to explicitly "answer" the quesiton in a simplistic way.)

Milestone

Due Sunday, December 5, 10pm.

Create a Google Doc in your Google Drive folder. In it, indicate: which option you are choosing and why, which texts you plan to use. A short write-up explaining your plans (200-300 words). If the game option, describe what your game play will be like. If the investigation option, describe what your questions might be and why they are meaningful.

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