ABOUT PAOKINATOR

Name

Paokinator - The AI-powered character guessing game

Synopsis

Paokinator is a fun, web-based game that attempts to guess a character you are thinking of by asking a series of questions. It's an AI-powered game inspired by the original web sensation, Akinator. Our goal is to create a fun and engaging experience for everyone.

Description

The idea for Paokinator was conceived by Olisemeka Nmarkwe. The name "Paokinator" is a tribute to Dr. Kuo-Pao Yang, a respected professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. It's a creative blend of his name and the game "Akinator," reflecting the project's academic and playful roots.

How It Works

Paokinator uses an advanced AI system to guess what you're thinking. Here's how the magic happens:

When you start the game, Paokinator begins with equal probability for all items in the selected domain. As you answer each question, the system uses machine learning to narrow down the possibilities. Your answers (Yes, Probably, Somewhat, Probably Not, No) help the AI calculate which items are most likely matches.

Each question is carefully selected to maximize the information gained. The system analyzes thousands of possible questions and picks the one that will most effectively eliminate candidates based on your previous answers. This intelligent question selection is what makes Paokinator so efficient at guessing correctly.

The confidence bar shows how certain Paokinator is about its top guess. When confidence is high enough, it makes a guess. If wrong, the system adapts and continues asking smarter questions until it either guesses correctly or you stump it!

Multiple Users & Games

Paokinator is built to handle many players at once. Each game session is completely isolated, so your game doesn't interfere with anyone else's. The system uses modern cloud technology to keep things fast and responsive—even when hundreds of people are playing simultaneously.

Behind the scenes, the AI engine is shared across all users, making it memory-efficient and blazingly fast. Sessions automatically clean up after 30 minutes of inactivity to keep the system running smoothly.

Learning & Growing

The database grows smarter over time as moderators approve user-submitted questions and items. When you teach Paokinator about something new, that knowledge becomes part of the system and helps it guess better in future games. This collaborative learning approach means Paokinator is constantly improving and becoming harder to stump!

Authors

This project was brought to life by a dedicated team:

Olisemeka Nmarkwe - Project Lead, Idea & Back-end
Angel Njoku - Team Member
Tyler Guidry - Team Member
Chris Walt - Frontend Help

Maintenance

Olisemeka is committed to keeping Paokinator running smoothly. He will continue to host the website, moderate content to ensure a positive gaming experience, and refine the game's algorithms to improve its accuracy.

While future versions of Paokinator are closed-source, Olisemeka is in the process of archiving and open-sourcing previous versions. This will allow anyone to use the older code for learning and experimentation. Thank you to all who have contributed in the past!