Extending character-based storytelling with awareness and feelings

Most Interactive Storytelling systems developed to date have followed a task-based approach to story representation, using planning techniques to drive the story by generating a sequence of actions, which essentially "solve" the task to which the story is equated. One major limitation of this approach has been that it fails to incorporate characters' psychology, and as a consequence important aesthetic aspects of the narrative cannot be easily captured by Interactive Storytelling. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to Interactive Storytelling, which aims at reconciling narrative actions with the characters' attributed psychology as stated in the narrative. Our long-term goal is to be able to explore Interactive Storytelling for those narrative genres which are based on the characters' psychology rather than solely on their actions. We used as a starting point the formalisation by Flaubert himself of his novel Madame Bovary, which includes a detailed account of characters' desires and feelings. We describe a prototype in which characters' behaviour is driven by a real-time search-based planning system applying operators whose content is based on a specific inventory of feelings. Furthermore, the actual pattern of evolution of the character's plan, as measured through the variation of the search heuristic, is used to confer a sense of awareness to the characters, which can be used to generate feelings about its overall situation, from feelings of boredom to hope

Interacting with Virtual Characters in Interactive Storytelling. In:

ABSTRACT In recent years, several paradigms have emerged for interactive storytelling. In character-based storytelling, plot generation is based on the behaviour of autonomous characters. In this paper, we describe user interaction in a fully-implemented prototype of an interactive storytelling system. We describe the planning techniques used to control autonomous characters, which derive from HTN planning. The hierarchical task network representing a characters' potential behaviour constitute a target for user intervention, both in terms of narrative goals and in terms of physical actions carried out on stage. We introduce two different mechanisms for user interaction: direct physical interaction with virtual objects and interaction with synthetic characters through speech understanding. Physical intervention exists for the user in on-stage interaction through an invisible avatar: this enables him to remove or displace objects of narrative significance that are resources for character's actions, thus causing these actions to fail. Through linguistic intervention, the user can influence the autonomous characters in various ways, by providing them with information that will solve some of their narrative goals, instructing them to take direct action, or giving advice on the most appropriate behaviour. We illustrate these functionalities with examples of system-generated behaviour and conclude with a discussion of scalability issues

Emergent situations in interactive storytelling

Interactive storytelling can either be based on explicit plot representations or on the autonomous behaviour of artificial characters. In such a character-based approach, the dynamic interaction between characters generates the actual plot from a generic storyline. Characters' behaviours are implemented through real-time search-based planning techniques. However, the top-down planning systems that control artificial actors need to be complemented with appropriate mechanisms dealing with emerging ("bottom-up") situations of narrative relevance. After discussing the determinants of plot variability and the mechanisms that account for the emergence of narrative situations, we introduce additional mechanisms for coping with these situations. Thes

Narrative Generation in Entertainment: Using Artificial Intelligence Planning

From the field of artificial intelligence (AI) there is a growing stream of technology capable of being embedded in software that will reshape the way we interact with our environment in our everyday lives. This ‘AI software’ is often used to tackle more mundane tasks that are otherwise dangerous or meticulous for a human to accomplish. One particular area, explored in this paper, is for AI software to assist in supporting the enjoyable aspects of the lives of humans. Entertainment is one of these aspects, and often includes storytelling in some form no matter what the type of media, including television, films, video games, etc. This paper aims to explore the ability of AI software to automate the story-creation and story-telling process. This is part of the field of Automatic Narrative Generator (ANG), which aims to produce intuitive interfaces to support people (without any previous programming experience) to use tools to generate stories, based on their ideas of the kind of characters, intentions, events and spaces they want to be in the story. The paper includes details of such AI software created by the author that can be downloaded and used by the reader for this purpose. Applications of this kind of technology include the automatic generation of story lines for ‘soap operas’

A conceptual framework for interactive virtual storytelling

This paper presents a framework of an interactive storytelling system. It can integrate five components: management centre, evaluation centre, intelligent virtual agent, intelligent virtual environment, and users, making possible interactive solutions where the communication among these components is conducted in a rational and intelligent way. Environment plays an important role in providing heuristic information for agents through communicating with the management centre. The main idea is based on the principle of heuristic guiding of the behaviour of intelligent agents for guaranteeing the unexpectedness and consistent themes

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity

Using Out-of-Character Reasoning to Combine Storytelling and Education in a Serious Game

To reconcile storytelling and educational meta-goals in the context of a serious game, we propose to make use of out-of-character reasoning in virtual agents. We will implement these agents in a serious game of our design, which will focus on social interaction in conflict scenarios with the meta-goal of improving social awareness of users. The agents will use out-of-character reasoning to manage conflicts by assuming different in-character personalities or by planning to take specific actions based on interaction with the users. In-character reasoning is responsible for the storytelling concerns of character believability and consistency. These are not endangered by out-of-character reasoning, as it takes in-character information into account when making decisions

The Virtual Storyteller: story generation by simulation

The Virtual Storyteller is a multi-agent framework that generates stories based on a concept called emergent narrative. In this paper, we describe the motivation and approach of the Virtual Storyteller, and give an overview of the computational processes involved in the story generation process. We also discuss some of the challenges posed by our chosen approach

Affect and believability in game characters:a review of the use of affective computing in games

Virtual agents are important in many digital environments. Designing a character that highly engages users in terms of interaction is an intricate task constrained by many requirements. One aspect that has gained more attention recently is the effective dimension of the agent. Several studies have addressed the possibility of developing an affect-aware system for a better user experience. Particularly in games, including emotional and social features in NPCs adds depth to the characters, enriches interaction possibilities, and combined with the basic level of competence, creates a more appealing game. Design requirements for emotionally intelligent NPCs differ from general autonomous agents with the main goal being a stronger player-agent relationship as opposed to problem solving and goal assessment. Nevertheless, deploying an affective module into NPCs adds to the complexity of the architecture and constraints. In addition, using such composite NPC in games seems beyond current technology, despite some brave attempts. However, a MARPO-type modular architecture would seem a useful starting point for adding emotions

Museum Experience Design: A Modern Storytelling Methodology

In this paper we propose a new direction for design, in the context of the theme “Next Digital Technologies in Arts and Culture”, by employing modern methods based on Interaction Design, Interactive Storytelling and Artificial Intelligence. Focusing on Cultural Heritage, we propose a new paradigm for Museum Experience Design, facilitating on the one hand traditional visual and multimedia communication and, on the other, a new type of interaction with artefacts, in the form of a Storytelling Experience. Museums are increasingly being transformed into hybrid spaces, where virtual (digital) information coexists with tangible artefacts. In this context, “Next Digital Technologies” play a new role, providing methods to increase cultural accessibility and enhance experience. Not only is the goal to convey stories hidden inside artefacts, as well as items or objects connected to them, but it is also to pave the way for the creation of new ones through an interactive museum experience that continues after the museum visit ends. Social sharing, in particular, can greatly increase the value of dissemination