Requirements for the News Agent Speech Function

Ideas to work out:

1. There is a library/school see ($g.blackwoodschool)
where players can go to seek conversation about current 
events. Agents could be programmed
to stay there and wait. Question: how to motivate players to
visit, how to inform them about the resource (see below).

Larger Question: how can we make current events have a 'real'
impact on the gameplay?

Ideas:

Shopper Agents can be programmed with interest in different
topics, like sports, medicine, crime, military history. And,
they will prefer to visit stores where the owner can/will
converse about their topic.

We can quiz the players with a dialog that begins
Agent: did you know about the new heavyweight boxing champions\
Followed by these choices in the dialog box
a. you mean Jesse James?
b. you mean Robert Koch?
c. you mean John L. Sullivan?
d. you mean Henri Riviere?

Then the player chooses one of these experessions, and the agent
replies with either "Yes, I am glad to meet a fellow sports fan,
I will plan to shop here more often" or "No, I see you are not
knowledgeable about sports, I don't plan to shop here very
often."

Note: shopper code needs to be reviewed, and a strategy
developed so that players giving right answers will ACTUALLY
attract more shoppers. Similarly, the prizes won in the
Mini-game, described below, also need to have an impact on
shopper behavior.

Note: the quiz scheme just described will be implemented in
news_agents, not shoppers. Thus, the news_agents will need to
masquerade as shoppers. DISCUSS.

Open Question: How then, are the players supposed to become
knowledgable about sports?

Answer: the shoppers (really news_agents?) will steer them to the
school where other agents are waiting to talk about the news.
In addition, news items will appear in the weekly newspaper.

The agents in the school will conduct a Mini-game where players
score points (that can be converted into prizes, which will in
turn attract shoppers to their stores).

The newspaper office will contain a 'morgue' of stories
organized into rooms, based on the concept abstraction
hierarchy. There will be about 12 high level concepts. The
morgue rooms will have news 'tickers' where stories are stored.
NOTE (12): Birth, Culture, Death, Disaster, Economics, Entertainment, 
Government, Law, Marriage, Military, Religion, Science

The system will monitor the player's progress through the
morgue, and when they have completed visiting enough of the
rooms, they will become eligible to go to the school, play the
mini-game, and earn fabulous prizes.

The Mini-game will be modeled on the ProgrammingLand MOOseum
quiz agents. 

The following cases pertain:

1. a player connects, is visited by an agent, and agrees to a
conversation

2. a player connects, refuses a conversation, and is visited by
a second agent.

As noted in blackwood-assgn-3.txt, the agent has a record of
players, the history of visits (including the topics discussed,
and the news items referenced)

Case 1: the player agrees to a conversation, a first-time event


Case 2: the player agrees to a conversation, a repeated event


Case 3: the player refuses a conversation, a first-time event


Case 4: the player refuses a conversation, a first-time event