Aileen makes use of AIML, the 'Artificial Intelligence Markup Language'.
Advantages:
- the needed pyAIML library has very few dependencies (which makes it perfect for Ren'Py) and is free to use (FreeBSD license).
- there are many free-to-use AIML sets (AI personalities) available, for example here, here and here (hint: pyAIML won't work with some of this AIML files).
- very small code (only 11 lines of code are used for AIML integration in the demo script!).
- different personalities could be used, even at the same time.
- AIML is not 'real' AI, it won't learn from the players input.
- depending on the AIML set, the responses are sometimes more entertaining than useful.
- it won't run on Android (I guess), because the pyAIML library won't find it's files (I'm not sure about that due to my lack of Python and Android knowledge).
- most important: AIML won't create an interesting story out of nowhere!
- a spammer, that spams the inbox of saguaro's Basic Message System with jokes?
- a professor that you have to ask for a detail you need to advance in the game (keyword)?
- ???
Screenshots of a chat with Aileen: For those who want to modify: The Demo contains all necessary libraries and files. Simply use the game folder for modification and put the 'standard.brn' file into the Ren'Py SDK folder (otherwise pyAIML won't find it and you won't get a response). The script is public domain, do what you want with it.