I must admit, that the first time a played The SIMS I immediately try to get them to kill of love each other. I mean: "Looking for a job" Yeah, yeah. "Hitting the next door neighbor" Cool! Assuming that I am not the only weirdo here, and to make stuff entertaining, lets go to our example.

Consider the actor Tiffany in a game. She might have the following properties:

• Gender (M/F) := F
• Age (number) := 30
• Lust (number) := 50
• Anger (number) := 40

We have a 30 year old female that is rather neutral on her emotions lust and anger. Tiffany might be doing something. Actually, every actor is always "doing" something at a given moment. E.g. sleeping, drinking, having a shower or playing chess. This is called the "state" of the actor. Although in reality what people are doing can be limitless; a state can only be a value from a limited list. Of course, this might be a long list. Lets say Tiffany is currently "drinking". At this moment we have a 30 year old woman having a drink and feeling normal. This game doesnt sound like a lot of fun, does it? So, lets give it some action.

Tiffany is one outgoing person, to put it like that; when her lust-level is 50 or above, she needs to satisfy her lust, this will become her "goal". If you are fond of some abstract syntax you like the following notation about Tiffany:

• Goal::Satisfy lust
• State:=all
• Threshold:=lust=>50

So, it doesnt mind what she is doing, when the lust peaks, so does she. One of the strategies she has up her sleeve to fulfil this goal is to just kiss someone. But how to select a suited partner? Or a willing victim if you want. The game will have some rules to determine the target, the actor with whom to interact with.

• Target: gender=M; lust>90.

All males with a lust above then 90 can be a target. The computer will run through the list of actors in the game to search for candidate that fits the rule. If it has found one, we get to the part where you can see something happening in the game. If it has selected a strategy (kiss someone), found a suited target, it will run some predefined activities associated with this strategy: walk towards the target, say hi, do some chitchat, etc. This is all finally visible on your screen. And finally when the goal is satisfied, when Tiffany finally has her long desired kiss, this will influence her properties; perhaps in this case her lust-level will finally drop by ten points.