Towards minimalism and expressiveness in interactive drama

ABSTRACT

Having found it difficult for authors to be creative with current interactive drama systems, we propose an alternative author-centered approach allowing authors of nonlinear media to express themselves easily and smoothly.

At the level of character animation, a bottleneck in Interactive Drama, our idea is to build authoring tools and author-centered engines for interactive drama that make it possible for an author to create virtual worlds, characters and animation instantly. To achieve this goal, a minimalist design for each of those features is proposed. A Use Case is described to better illustrate the approach.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ruth Aylett , Sandy Louchart , Joao Dias , Ana Paiva , Marco Vala , Sarah Woods , Lynne Hall, Unscripted Narrative for Affectively Driven Characters, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.26 n.3, p.42-52, May 2006 [doi>10.1109/MCG.2006.71]
• 2: Bremond, C. 1973. Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil.
• 3: Crawford, C. 1996. Is interactivity inimical to storytelling, from www.erasmatazz.com/library/Lilan/inimical.html
• 4: Crawford, C. 1999. Assumptions underlying the Erasmatron interactive storytelling engine. Paper presented at the AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, Technical Report FS-99-01.
• 5: Stéphane Donikian, HPTS: a behaviour modelling language for autonomous agents, Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents, p.401-408, May 2001, Montreal, Quebec, Canada [doi>10.1145/375735.376382]
• 6: Greimas, A. J. 1983. Du sens. Paris: Seuil.
• 7: Louchart, S., & Aylett, R. 2003. Solving the Narrative Paradox in VEs-Lessons from RPGs. Paper presented at the Intelligent Virtual Agents: 4th International Workshop, IVA 2003.
• 8: Loyall, A. B., & Bates, J. 1991. Hap: A Reactive, Adaptive Architecture for Agents (No. CMU-CS-91-147). Pittsburgh, PA: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon Universityo. Document Number)
• 9: Magerko, B. 2002. A Proposal for an Interactive Drama Architecture. Paper presented at the AAAI Spring Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment.
• 10: Mateas, M., & Stern, A. 2000. Towards Integrating Plot and Character for Interactive Drama. Paper presented at the Working notes of the Social Intelligent Agents: The Human in the Loop Symposium.
• 11: Mateas, M., & Stern, A. 2004. A Behavior Language: Joint action and behavioral idioms. In H. Prendinger & M. Ishizuka (Eds.), Life-like Characters. Tools, Affective Functions and Applications: Springer Verlag.
• 12: Mateas, M., & Stern, A. 2005a. Procedural Authorship: A Case-Study Of the Interactive Drama Faççade. Paper presented at the Digital Arts and Culture (DAC).
• 13: Mateas, M., & Stern, A. 2005b. Structuring content in the Facade interactive drama architecture. Paper presented at the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE 2005).
• 14: Janet Horowitz Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, The Free Press, New York, NY, 1997
• 15: UVa User Interface Group, Alice: Rapid Prototyping for Virtual Reality, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.15 n.3, p.8-11, May 1995
• 16: Pelachaud, C., & Bilvi, M. 2003. Computational Model of Believable Conversational Agents. In M.-P. Huguet (Ed.), Communication in Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication Languages and Conversation Policies, LNCS 2650 (pp. 300--317). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
• 17: Perlin, K. Emotive Virtual Actors. 2008, from http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/emotive-actors/
• 18: Portugal, J.-N. 2000. La fiction interactive: contenu cardinal des médias digitaux?,. Les Dossiers de l'Audiovisuel, 92, 9--11.
• 19: Portugal, J.-N. 2006. L'avenir dira ce que nous avons créé. In N. Szilas & J.-H. Rééty (Eds.), Création de récits pour la fiction interactive (pp. 133--165). Paris: Lavoisier.
• 20: Schmitt, A. Le Pixel Blanc. 2008, from http://www.gratin.org/as/txts/lepixelblanc.html
• 21: Skorupski, J., Jayapalan, L., Marquez, S., & Mateas, M. 2007. Wide Ruled: A Friendly Interface to Author-Goal Based Story Generation. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Virtual Storytelling - ICVS 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
• 22: Smith, S., & Bates, J. 1989. Towards a Theory of Narrative for Interactive Fiction (No. CMU-CS-89-121). Pittsburgh, PA: Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University.
• 23: Spierling, U. 2007. Adding Aspects of "Implicit Creation" to the Authoring Process in Interactive Storytelling. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Virtual Storytelling - ICVS 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
• 24: Spierling, U., Grasbon, D., Braun, N., & Iurgel, I. 2002. Setting the scene: playing digital director in interactive storytelling and creation. Computers & Graphics, 26(1), 31--44.
• 25: Spierling, U., & Iurgel, I. 2003. 'Just Talking About Art'- Creating Virtual Storytelling Experiences in Mixed Reality. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Virtual Storytelling -ICVS 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
• 26: Szilas, N. 1999. Interactive Drama on Computer: Beyond Linear Narrative. Paper presented at the AAAI 1999 Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, Technical Report FS-01-02.
• 27: Szilas, N. 2001. A New Approach to Interactive Drama: From Intelligent Characters to an Intelligent Virtual Narrator. Paper presented at the Spring Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment.
• 28: Nicolas Szilas, A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF AN INTELLIGENT NARRATOR FOR INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES, Applied Artificial Intelligence, v.21 n.8, p.753-801, September 2007 [doi>10.1080/08839510701526574]
• 29: Nicolas Szilas , Jason Barles , Manolya Kavakli, An implementation of real-time 3D interactive drama, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.5 n.1, January 2007 [doi>10.1145/1236224.1236233]
• 30: Szilas, N., Marty, O., & Rety, J.-H. 2003. Authoring Highly Generative Interactive Drama. Paper presented at the Virtual Storytelling: Using Virtual Reality Technologies for Storytelling: Second International Conference, ICVS 2003.
• 31: Todorov, T. 1970. Les transformations narratives. Poétiques, 3, 322--333.
• 32: Wages, R., Grützmacher, B., & Conrad, S. 2004. Learning from the Movie Industry: Adapting Production Processes for Storytelling in VR. Paper presented at the Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment: Second International Conference, TIDSE.
• 33: Young, R. M., Riedl, M. O., Branly, M., Jhala, A., Martin, R. J., & Saretto, C. J. 2004. An architecture for integrating plan-based behavior generation with interactive game environments. Journal of Game Development, 1(1), 51--70.
• 34: Zagalo, N., Göbel, S., Torres, A:, Malkewitz, R., Branco, V. 2006. INSCAPE: Emotion Expression and Experience in an Authoring Environment. TIDSE 2006: 219--230.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence
            Subjects: Intelligent agents

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques
          Subjects: Interaction techniques; Ergonomics

  J. Computer Applications
  J.5 ARTS AND HUMANITIES
      Subjects: Fine arts; Linguistics; Literature; Performing arts (e.g., dance, music)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
animation engine, author centered design, authoring, interactive drama, interactive narrative, minimalism