Tutorial: Introduction to Interactive Story Creation with Generative Tools and Systems
8 November, 2011
Half-day Tutorial
ACE 2011 conference
(International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technologies)
8-11 November, 2011,
Lisbon, Portugal
Registration: Attendees must be registered at the ACE 2011 main conference in order to attend the Tutorial. Please register via the ACE conference registration form at http://ace2011.org/
Tutorial Abstract: The tutorial covers basics of conception and processing of interactive stories by making use of generative tools and systems. It can also serve as a general introduction to AI-based Interactive Digital Storytelling (AI = Artificial Intelligence). AI-based story engines are able to support meaningful responses to player interactions within an interactive discourse, by generating new courses of events on the fly.
Participants learn about novel creative principles for interactive story formalization and abstraction. This includes thinking of acting situations and conditions for narrative actions and events, categorizing actions and events of a storyworld in abstraction layers and approaching story creation in terms of modeling a dynamic system. We show three kinds of such formalizations: a) abstraction of conversational material, b) modeling a storyworld by goals, tasks and obstacles, and c) modeling a database of dramatic actions with their occurrence conditions and effects, suited to be processed by planning software.
Target group: game designers, authors and creators of interactive media and games, who are familiar with basic story creation principles.
Take away: Attendees gain insights into novel technical approaches of several story engines that are presented in an introductory and low-tech way. Simple versions of these engines are made available for exercises. Even in case these engines are not in the scope of being used by participants, the principles may help to improve story structuring for interactive performances.