1. Lecture 1 CS148/248 UC Santa Cruz School of Engineering michaelm@cs.ucsc.edu 3 April 2007

2. UC SANTA CRUZ Class Mechanics

3. UC SANTA CRUZ What is interactive narrative?  Somehow combine “interactivity” and “story”  What is interaction?  What is story?  The two terms seem to be in conflict “I won't go so far as to say that interactivity and storytelling are mutually exclusive, but I do believe that they exist in an inverse relationship to one another… Interactivity is almost the opposite of narrative; narrative flows under the direction of the author, while interactivity depends on the player for motive power…” Ernest Adams in Gamasutra

4. UC SANTA CRUZ The holy grail of interactive narrative?

5. UC SANTA CRUZ Live in a storyworld

6. UC SANTA CRUZ Questions about the holodeck  Are all holodeck experiences story?  What are the limitations of a pure, first-person, realist perspective?  Are there stories for which it is inappropriate (or at least unlikely) for the player to be the protagonist?  Let’s look at other examples that have been called interactive stories

7. UC SANTA CRUZ Example 1

8. UC SANTA CRUZ Example 2

9. UC SANTA CRUZ Example 3 ZORK I: The Great Underground empire Copyright (c) 1981, 1982, 1983 Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved. ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc. Revision 88 / Serial number 840726 West of House You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. >open mailbox Opening the mailbox reveals a leaflet. >read leaflet (taken) "WELCOME TO ZORK! ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!" >

10. UC SANTA CRUZ Example 4

11. UC SANTA CRUZ Example 5

12. UC SANTA CRUZ Artificial Intelligence and Story  Story generation  Story understanding  Drama Management  Autonomous Characters

13. UC SANTA CRUZ Story generation I: Morphemes & grammars  Morphemes – story events or “functions”  Vladimir Propp analyzed Russian folk tales  Example morphemes: The hero leaves home, the hero is given a difficult task, the hero defeats the villain  Grammars – hierarchic combination rules  Story grammars – use story functions by analogy to linguistic elements

14. UC SANTA CRUZ once upon a time there lived a dog. one day it happened that farmer evicted cat. when this happened, dog felt pity for the cat. in response, dog sneaked food to the cat. farmer punished dog. Joseph story generator – R. Raymond Lang story  setting + episodes episodes  episode + episodes episode  story_event + emotional_response + action_response Sample output & story grammar

15. UC SANTA CRUZ  Model authorial knowledge beyond story structure  Examples: Authorial goals, plans, knowledge about the world Story generation II: Author simulation

16. UC SANTA CRUZ Terminal Time Collaborators: Paul Vanouse, Art Department, SUNY Buffalo Steffi Domike, Design Department, Chatham College

17. UC SANTA CRUZ History engine Goal trees (ideology) Historical events Audio-visual elements Audience feedback

18. UC SANTA CRUZ Knowledge Base Event Rhetorical Goal Trees Biased event Storyboard Rhetorical Devices Natural Language Generation Media Retrieval & Sequencing To multi- media front end Terminal Time architecture

19. UC SANTA CRUZ Interactive Drama Plot structure Tension/Complexity Time Exposition Inciting incident Rising action Crisis Climax Falling action Denouement Characters Personality Emotion Self motivation Change Social relationships Consistency Illusion of life

20. UC SANTA CRUZ The Enemy  Author has control but  All interaction paths must be pre-coded by author  Can only make very small stories  Bits of story can’t be incrementally added Story AI: authorship and interaction

21. UC SANTA CRUZ Drama management  Policy for “story piece” selection  An alternative to explicitly coded links Story library Selection policy Actual sequence

22. UC SANTA CRUZ General interactive drama (story) architecture