[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Interactive text system.

[Robert Flesch]

We are looking to add an interactive text system to our virtual world.
We are going to use it to teach people how to bargain for items. Along
with other kinds of teaching.

For example.
The user would approach the bot. The bot can sense the person
approaching and say.
BOT - CONTEXT 1 - "Welcome, can I help you find something?"
USER - 1 -> n choices
BOT - looks up users response and if it finds an match based on the
opening context, sends the response back to the user. Then changes
context.
i.e. USER - "How much for this lamp"
     BOT  - "What is it worth to you?" - switch to context 2.0
OR
i.e. USER - "Lovely day today"
     BOT  - "Yes it is, and I have a hat that would look lovely on you"
     - switch to context 2.1

So you would end up with a deep contextual tree, that would either use
AI response from something like pandorabots, or go back to a "I dont
understand your question, please state it in a different way". (We
already use Pandora Bots as our bartenders, I have seem some hilarious
arguments between them and people who didnt realize they were bots.)

I had some ideas on how to write my own, but I suspect that this is a
well known subject in the MUD world. Can anyone point me to a paper, a
library(API), or some source code that could help me not reinvent the
wheel?