Imaginative Recall with Story Intention Graphs

Intelligent storytelling systems either formalize specific narrative structures proposed by narratologists (such as Propp and Bremond), or are founded on formal representations from artificial intelligence (such as plan structures from classical planning). This disparity in underlying knowledge representations leads to a lack of common evaluation metrics across story generation systems, particularly around the creativity aspect of generators. This paper takes Skald, a reconstruction of the Minstrel creative story generation system, and maps the representation to a formal narrative representation of Story Intention Graphs (SIG) proposed by Elson et al. This mapping facilitates the opportunity to expand the creative space of stories generated through imaginative recall in Minstrel while maintaining narrative complexity. We show that there is promise in using the SIG as an intermediate representation that is useful for evaluation of story generation systems

A Customizable Generator for Comic-Style Visual Narrative

We present a theory-inspired visual narrative generator that incorporates comic-authoring idioms, which transfers the conceptual principles of comics into system layers that integrate the theories to create comic content. The generator creates comics through sequential decision-making across layers from panel composition, object positions, panel transitions, and narrative elements. Each layer's decisions are based on narrative goals and follow the respective layer idioms of the medium. Cohn's narrative grammar provides the overall story arc. Photographic compositions inspired by the rule of thirds is used to provide panel compositions. McCloud's proposed panel transitions based on focus shifts between scene, character, and temporal changes are encoded in the transition layer. Finally, common overlay symbols (such as the exclamation) are added based on analyzing action verbs using an action-verb ontology. We demonstrate the variety of generated comics through various settings with example outputs. The generator and associated modules could be a useful system for visual narrative authoring and for further research into computational models of visual narrative understanding

Investigating the Use of Word Embeddingsto Estimate Cognitive Interest in Stories

Narrative processing is an important skill to model bothfrom a cognitive science perspective and a computa-tional modeling perspective which applies to intelligentagents. Communication between humans often involvesstorytelling patterns that make the mundane exchange ofinformation more interesting and with proper emphasison important communicative goals. Current narrativegeneration models evaluate their generations basedon either a priori domain semantics (e.g. game statefor an in-game conversation with player agents) orgeneric text quality measures (e.g. coherence). However,in utilizing storytelling as a communicative tool forreal-world interactions, domain-specific approaches failto generalize and text quality measures fail to ensurethat the narrative is perceived as interesting. Hence, suchgeneration needs to consider the cognitive processesinvolved in the perception of narrative. Using theories ofcognitive interest, we present results of an investigationof whether word embeddings (e.g. GloVe (Pennington,Socher, & Manning, 2014)) could be used to model andestimate cognitive interestingness in stories

Emergent social NPC interactions in the Social NPCs Skyrim mod and beyond

This work presents an implementation of a social architecture model for authoring Non-Player Character (NPC) in open world games inspired in academic research on agentbased modeling. Believable NPC authoring is burdensome in terms of rich dialogue and responsive behaviors. We briefly present the characteristics and advantages of using a social agent architecture for this task and describe an implementation of a social agent architecture CiF-CK released as a mod Social NPCs for The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimComment: Originally a chapter for Game AI Pro, contains 14 pages, 3 figure

The Role of Models and Communication in the Ad Hoc Multiagent Team Decision Problem

Abstract Ad hoc teams are formed of members who have little or no information regarding one another. In order to achieve a shared goal, agents are tasked with learning the capabilities of their teammates such that they can coordinate effectively. Typically, the capabilities of the agent teammates encountered are constrained by the particular domain specifications. However, for wide application, it is desirable to develop systems that are able to coordinate with general ad hoc agents independent of the choice of domain. We propose examining ad hoc multiagent teamwork from a generalized perspective and discuss existing domains within the context of our framework. Furthermore, we consider how communication of agent intentions can provide a means of reducing teammate model uncertainty at key junctures, requiring an agent to consider its own information deficiencies in order to form communicative acts improving team coordination

Elections in Berlin 2021: Selected background information and Preliminary Results

The election year 2021 is something very special for Berlin. Never before have eligible voters had so many votes at once. A total of six choices had to be made by voters on the same election day, Sept. 26, 2021. Voters elected parties and candidates for the Bundestag (two votes), the Berlin House of Representatives (two votes), the District Assembly (one vote) and decided on a Berlin referendum “Expropriating Deutsche Wohnen and Co”. The 2021 elections posed major challenges for the responsible bodies: The Bundestag and Berlin elections were based on different laws; till July 1st, 2021 it was unclear whether the referendum was to be held; and ultimately the Covid pandemic lead to an increased organizational effort. A total of 13 million ballots of 403 different types were printed, more than ever before. Background information is provided with regard to the cutting of constituencies and the responsible bodies. The procedure for postal voting is presented, as is the counting process. Initial results are also presented with reference to previous elections

Investigating the interplay between camera viewpoints, game information, and challenge

Players perceive information about game environments through a virtual camera. While a significant discussion in the industry and in academic research circles has centered around effective camera control, it is focused mainly on occlusion free placement and smooth movement. The relationship between information communicated by the camera about game state and the selection of camera parameters has not been investigated. In this paper, we systematically investigate the effect of different camera profiles on player experience in a 3D prey/predator test-bed game. We describe a constraint-based dynamic camera system that maintains the position and orientation of the camera based on the constraints imposed by given camera profiles. The impact of different profiles on the amount of game information provided to the player and the player's game challenge preferences is investigated through a user experiment. An artificial neural network model of challenge constructed using artificial evolution reveals the nonlinear mapping between challenge and information features.peer-reviewe

User modelling and adaptive, natural interaction for conflict resolution

Confronting conflicts and coping with them is part of social life, since conflicts seem to arise in almost every context and developmental stage of human life. The personal and collective gains that follow conflict resolution have motivated scholars across many research fields to advocate the use of pro-social mechanisms for resolution. The Siren serious game aims to support teachers' role to educate young people on how to resolve conflicts, by employing affect-aware, user- and cultural adaptivity to provide interesting and relevant conflict scenarios and resolution approaches.peer-reviewe

Towards data-driven drama management : issues in data collection and annotation

One of the key questions in the design and development of interactive drama is structuring an experience for participants such that an engaging, coherent narrative is presented while enabling a high degree of perceived meaningful interactivity. This paper proposes a new approach to the design of intelligent drama managers (DMs) where DM strategies are learned from a corpus of data collected from pen-and-paper RPG game sessions with expert human game masters. In particular, this paper focuses on the issues relating to the collection and annotation of relevant data from recorded gameplay sessions.peer-reviewe