ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,397,228, issued on Aug. 26.
"Communication with in-game characters" was invented by Jocelyn Tan (San Jose, Calif.) and Sean Rossi (Pinole, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for coordinating reactions of a virtual character with script spoken by a user involves specifying keywords in the script, making a first prediction of times for individual keywords and for responses by a virtual character, displaying the script, sensing the time that the user reaches a first keyword, recalculating the predictions based on the syllables in the script the time the user reaches the first keyword, sensing the time that the user reaches a sec...