Bowman Overview

Bowman is a tool that allows authors to create planned interactive stories. As a Windows-based client application, Bowman provides a graphical user interface for the describing the story world, communicating with the Zocalo story planner, and graphically depicting possible story plans.

Although the goal is for Bowman to be targetted toward users unfamiliar with automated planning, it is being developed in layers of increasing abstraction. The current implementation of Bowman can serve someone familiar with planning concepts. Bowman provides both a GUI editor of plan domains and plan descriptions, and a graphical navigator through the plan space and individual plans.

Features

• Implemented in .NET for .NET 1.1.
• Written in C#, available as a Windows executable.
• Planning domains and planning problems can be saved locally in XML format.
• Bowman works through Fletcher to invoke Zocalo-based planners.
• All planner communication is XML-based.