Quest Patterns for Story-based Computer Games

As game designers shift focus from graphical realism to immersive stories, the number of game-object interactions grows exponentially. Games use manually written scripts to control interactions. ScriptEase provides game designers with generative patterns that generate scripting code to control common interactions. This paper describes a new kind of generative pattern, quest patterns, that generate scripting code to control story plot. We present our quest pattern architecture and study results that show quest patterns are easy-to-use and reduce plot scripting errors

A Demonstration of ScriptEase Ambient and PC-Interactive Behavior Generation for Computer Role-Playing Games

ScriptEase is a visual tool that enables game designers to create complex interactive stories for computer role-playing games, without programming. In particular, ScriptEase automatically generates the scripting code for ambient and PC-interactive non-player character (NPC) behaviors from a set of behavior patterns. Without ScriptEase, a game designer would have to write scripting code manually to specify NPC behaviors. This demonstration describes the steps of generating complex and non-repetitive ambient and PC-interactive behavior scripts using generative behavior patterns with ScriptEase. We show how ambient behavior patterns are used to re-generate and improve the behaviors of all ambient NPCs in the Prelude module of the BioWare Corporation's Neverwinter Nights official campaign. We also demonstrate PC-interactive behaviors for a guard NPC in a custom Neverwinter Nights game module. With ScriptEase behavior patterns, game designers can easily and quickly populate a story with an engaging group of NPCs

Generating Ambient Behaviors in Computer Role-Playing Games

Abstract. Many computer games use custom scripts to control the ambient behaviors of non-player characters (NPCs). Therefore, a story writer must write fragments of computer code for the hundreds or thousands of NPCs in the game world. The challenge is to create entertaining and non-repetitive behaviors for the NPCs without investing substantial programming effort to write custom non-trivial scripts for each NPC. Current computer games have simplistic ambient behaviors for NPCs; it is rare for NPCs to interact with each other. In this paper, we describe how generative behavior patterns can be used to quickly and reliably generate ambient behavior scripts that are more realistic, entertaining and non-repetitive, even for the more difficult case of interacting NPCs. We demonstrate this approach using BioWare Corp.'s Neverwinter Nights game

A Demonstration of ScriptEase Motivational Ambient and Latent Behaviors for Computer RPGs

This demonstration describes the generation of ambient and latent NPC behavior scripts using generative behavior patterns with ScriptEase. Our behavior model supports behavior roles, a powerful mechanism that allows an NPC to change behavior sets during the story. Our motivation model for selecting ambient behaviors generates more realistic NPC behaviors and our novel collaboration protocol simplifies and extends the NPCs' collaborations with a broader range of NPCs. We demonstrate motivational ambient and latent behaviors for a guard NPC in a custom Neverwinter Nights game module. With ScriptEase, game authors can use, adapt, and create behavior patterns that generate complex, versatile, and engaging NPC behavior

Interactive Story Writing Using ScriptEase

ScriptEase is a tool for writing interactive stories in roleplaying games that frees the author from doing explicit computer programming. A story is created by selecting and customizing patterns for the plot, encounters, behaviors and conversations. It has been implemented as a front end to BioWare's Neverwinter Nights game. We will describe our experiences using ScriptEase as part of a high school English curriculum

Automatic Story Generation for Computer Role-Playing Games

Scripting the plot in a computer role-playing game requires a large number of scripts that are difficult to track and maintain. Game adventures often have simple plots, called sub- quests, that are independent from the main plot. Sub-quests are important, as they add value to the open-world appeal of the game, but they still have to be scripted. We have created a prototype of a tool that helps by automatically producing design pattern specifications for sub-quests. The specifications can be entered into an existing tool, called ScriptEase, to generate scripting code for Neverwinter Nights adventures, without doing any manual scripting. The sub-quest patterns produced are logically consistent, ensuring the story can be completed by the player. The sub-quests are also designed to produce a better story by having the author adjust the amount of interactivity between the sub-quests. The entire process is done with little input from the author

A Demonstration of SQUEGE: A CRPG Sub-Quest Generator

Scripting the plot in a computer role-playing game requires a large number of scripts that are difficult to program, track and maintain. Game adventures often include simple plots, called side-quests, that are independent from the main plot. Side-quests are important, as they add value to the open-world appeal of the game (e.g., for acquiring experience or resources), but they still need scripts. We have designed a tool to aid in the rapid creation of side-quests. The game designer provides the game setting and a list of objects in the setting. Our tool uses this information to create an outline for the side-quests. Then we use ScriptEase, a generative design pattern tool, to generate scripts from the side-quest outlines for the Neverwinter Nights game. A game designer can also adapt these outlines after the generation process, to add value such as humour to the side-quests

Invited Talk Interactive Story Writing Using ScriptEase

ScriptEase is a tool for writing interactive stories in roleplaying games that frees the author from doing explicit computer programming. A story is created by selecting and customizing patterns for the plot, encounters, behaviors and conversations. It has been implemented as a front end to BioWare's Neverwinter Nights game. We will describe our experiences using ScriptEase as part of a high school English curriculum