Selected Publications of the project

Twelve scientific papers are available. Feel free to download and give feedback!

 

3D Simulated Interactive Drama for Teenagers coping with a Traumatic Brain Injury in a Parent.
    with Nicolas Habonneau, Urs Richle and Jean Dumas
In D. Oyarzun et al. (Eds.) Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Interactive and Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), Nov. 12-15 2012, San-Sebastian, Spain, LNCS 7648, Springer Verlag, p. 174–182.

Authoring is still considered a bottleneck in successful Interactive Storytelling and Drama. The claim for intuitive authoring tools is high, especially for tools that allow storytellers and artists to define dynamic content that can be run with an AI-based story engine. We explored two concrete authoring processes in depth, using various Interactive Storytelling prototypes, and have provided feedback from the practical steps. The result is a presentation of general issues in authoring Interactive Storytelling, rather than of particular problems with a specific system that could be overcome by 'simply' designing the right interface. Priorities for future developments are also outlined.

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Authoring Issues Beyond Tools.
    with Ulrike Spierling
In Proc. of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2009, Guimarães, Portugal, 09 - 11 Dec. 2009, LNCS 5915, p. 50-61.

Authoring is still considered a bottleneck in successful Interactive Storytelling and Drama. The claim for intuitive authoring tools is high, especially for tools that allow storytellers and artists to define dynamic content that can be run with an AI-based story engine. We explored two concrete authoring processes in depth, using various Interactive Storytelling prototypes, and have provided feedback from the practical steps. The result is a presentation of general issues in authoring Interactive Storytelling, rather than of particular problems with a specific system that could be overcome by 'simply' designing the right interface. Priorities for future developments are also outlined.

Download: pdf

A Computational Model of an Intelligent Narrator for Interactive Narratives.
In Proc. of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2009, Guimarães, Portugal, 09 - 11 Dec. 2009, LNCS 5915, p. 280-291.

One goal of interactive narrative and drama is to create an experience while utilizing computer where the user is one main character in the story. This goal raises a set of practical and theoretical challenges to Artificial Intelligence. In particular, an Intelligent Narrator has to dynamically maintain a satisfactory storyline and adapt to the user intervention. After reviewing the existing approaches to Interactive Drama, an original model is described, based on several theories on narrative. This model is based on a rule-based component for the generation of meaningful narrative actions and on a model of the user for the ranking of these actions and the action selection. A simple but authorable text generation system is also described, for the display of the actions on the computer. The system is implemented on a real-size scenario and experimental results are discussed. We conclude by discussing the possibility of a wider application of our approach within the field of AI.

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PastMaster@Storytelling: A Controlled Interface for Interactive Drama.
    with Manolya Kavakli
IUI 2006: International Conference on Intelligent user Interfaces, Sydney, Australia, 29 January to 1 February 2006, p. 288-290.

In this paper, we describe a controlled interface for Interactive Drama, PastMaster@Storytelling. PastMaster is used for interacting with an Interactive Drama engine. The paper discusses the test results regarding the usability of the interface.

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The Control of Agents' Expressivity in Interactive Drama
    with Maurizio Mancini
In Gérard Subsol (Ed.) Proc. of the International Conference on Virtual Storytelling, ICVS 2005, LNCS 3805, Strasbourg (France), Nov.-Dec. 2005, p. 115-124.

This paper describes how conversational expressive agents can be used in the context of Interactive Drama. This integration requires some automatic tagging of the generated text, according to the current dramatic situation. Experimental results of the implemented prototype are presented.

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Authoring highly generative Interactive Drama
    with Olivier Marty and Jean-Hugues Rety
2nd International Conference on Virtual Storytelling (ICVS 2003), Toulouse (France)
November 20–21 2003.

Authoring non linear narratives is a difficult and challenging issue. In this paper we focus on the process of authoring with the IDtension system, an interactive drama system designed by one of the authors. We report an experiment of realizing a
real-size scenario and start from this point to think about nonlinear narratives and the possibilities and limits of the IDtension writing tool. We introduce the linearization/delinearization cycle, as a basic principle of abstract interactive writing .

Download technical report IDT0301: pdf

Stepping into the Interactive Drama
2nd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2004), Darmstadt (Germany)
June 2004. S. Göbel et al. (Eds) LNCS 3105, Springer Verlag.

Achieving a successful Interactive Drama, where the user can act as a character in the story, requires not only finding an algorithmic solution for combining interactivity and narrativity, but also interfacing those algorithms with the user. This paper focuses on the way the user can enter the actions of the character she controls. Three specific issues are discussed: the variety of choices proposed to the user, the need for the user to be able to anticipate her future possibilities for actions and the time necessary to enter the action. This allows us to propose a taxonomy of different user interfaces, and to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of each category of interface. This should serve as a guideline for the design of user interfaces for Interactive Drama.

Download: pdf

Authoring highly generative Interactive Drama
    with Olivier Marty and Jean-Hugues Rety
2nd International Conference on Virtual Storytelling (ICVS 2003), Toulouse (France)
November 20–21 2003.

Authoring non linear narratives is a difficult and challenging issue. In this paper we focus on the process of authoring with the IDtension system, an interactive drama system designed by one of the authors. We report an experiment of realizing a
real-size scenario and start from this point to think about nonlinear narratives and the possibilities and limits of the IDtension writing tool. We introduce the linearization/delinearization cycle, as a basic principle of abstract interactive writing .

Download technical report IDT0301: pdf

IDtension: a narrative engine for Interactive Drama
1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2003), Darmstadt (Germany)
March 24–26 2003.

This paper presents the IDtension system in details.
From a range of narrative practices and theories, we derive our own theoretical model of narrative. This theoretical model serves as a basis for a computer model of narrative, which handles low level narrative elements: characters, goals (quests), acts (including speech acts), tasks, obstacles, values.
Two experimental simulations are presented: the first works on an automatic mode (non interactive), while in the other the user chooses which action the main character must perform. These results show the variability of the generated story, as well as the richness of interactivity.

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Structural models for Interactive Drama
The 2nd International Conference on Computational Semiotics for Games and New Media, Augsburg (Germany)
September 2-4 2002.

Computer based Interactive Drama requires narrative models able to both simulate the narrative on a deep level, and allow the user to interact with it.

In this paper, we examine the nature of these narrative models. In particular, we discuss the extent to which structuralist models are useful for Interactive Drama, both in general and for the IDtension projet. Then we review the main components of IDtension. Finally we discuss the limits of Structuralism for our model.

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A New Approach to Interactive Drama: From Intelligent Characters to an Intelligent Virtual Narrator
AAAI Spring Symposium on AI and Interactive Entertainment Tech. Rep. SS-01-02 2001 pp. 72-76

This paper starts from the limits of current forms of interactive drama:

  • Interactive character based stories are poorly interactive, the plot remaining nearly linear;
  • Interactive virtual worlds are poorly dramatic, with no plot at all;
  • The role of the user is not clearly defined.
We give guidelines on how those problems should be tackled, by putting Artificial Intelligence in the right place, within an Interactive Drama system. We introduce the idea of adaptive narrative, which might solve some critical issues of Interactive Drama.

Download: postscript

Interactive Drama on Computer: Beyond Linear Narrative
AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence Tech. Rep. FS-99-01 1999 pp. 150-156

In the first published paper on the project, we explain our vision on Interactive Drama: combining interactivity at the story level with strong dramatic intensity. From various theoretical sources on narrative and drama, several principles are put forward. These principles serve as a basis for building computer systems of interactive drama.

Download: postscript  pdf