IC Forum Archive

internisus · Posts: 961

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but this really is basically a dating sim sort of thing, right?

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

I was intrigued by the fact that Takashi also supposed it to be a horror game.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Inty wrote:

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but this really is basically a dating sim sort of thing, right?

No, you're missing it.

Jeff Garneau wrote:

i think that a flowchart detailing possible narrative flows would be more what dark steve is looking for though. i'm looking for it as well.

Yeah, I'm sort of tinkering around with one right now, although not so much narrative flows as how the AI routines governing them would work, in a broad way. What kind of happened up there is we got bogged down in setting the parameters of the game and fighting spambots, rather than what I think the (much more interesting) thrust of the topic is. Not so much imagining a game we want to play, but dreaming up a theoretical framework for how a procedurally generated narrative would look under the hood.

GrimSweeper · Posts: 530

Attempt #2! Wherein this poster goes on a rambling comparison...

...with Rogue-likes.

I keep thinking of this topic is trying to work towards is what the rogue-like genre does primitively; give pseudo-random EVENTS that can come in any order and the effects can greatly vary. From these EVENTS, you can build up a framework of suitable responses that work towards the maximum amount of success.

For example, Angband. In the first levels, there isn't a huge difficulty in defeating the normal enemies. You don't really have to think much about what you're doing; you just do it (there are exceptions; magic-wielders have a tougher time at it). However, a few levels down you encounter Smeagol. He's invisible, moves erratically, and can teleport when in touch-range of you. First response is, "Can I see him?" If you can't see him, there's a greater degree of difficulty in battling him. Second response is, "Can I take him down at range?" Smeagol cannot get away very rapidly unless he can touch you, so shooting him with things-that-hurt is the best strategy. There are other responses, but the first two pretty much define what the player is going to do. In the same way, this game idea seems to want to make the player draw a framework; a strategy that will bring them closer to their defined goal. With a 'limitless' plot, it seems it will be player-defined.

The EVENTS aren't strung together in any old fashion; there may be trends in certain areas but they won't always be there. They MIGHT happen and so they are worth keeping in mind and possibly having a backup plan if they DO occur. In Angband, being poisoned can happen at the very start. Once poisoned, the player's health drops by 1 each move until it is flushed from their system, which takes a random number of moves. Purchasing a potion of Neutralize Poison might be worth considering, or working towards memorizing the spell Cure Poison as soon as possible. Progressing in a certain manner each time in this outlined scenario of farmer and daughter might lead to the same interactions every time, but there might be an EVENT totally out of your control that throws the whole framework off-kilter.

Hmm, looking back it seems this whole paragraph is a little pointless from the "How will this work?" question being worked on. Since I'm losing track I'll stop here, but I'm sure there are more parallels to draw from rogue-likes.

A Rag Man · Posts: 22

My main unresolved question for you, Takashi, is whether the character can move around and interact with objects in a game world (as in most games: Final Fantasy, Mario, etc.) or if the idea is to present, basically, an interactive slideshow (ala Myst, many dating sims) with some really interesting programming running beneath. I'm not asking because I'd be critical of either version, but because, at some point, that's going to affect the discussion.

Jeff Garneau wrote:

i think that a flowchart detailing possible narrative flows would be more what dark steve is looking for though. i'm looking for it as well.

I think that the point is that there is no flowchart of events. The game's programming would produce events procedurally (improvised from a basic kernel of programming). In this case, the basic kernel would be one of the genres/atmospheres listed under "Script" in Takashi's original post. The game would begin (randomly?--I'm actually asking) with one of the Scripts, and the effects designated to that Script would filter down to the Farmer and Daughter characters. If it's a comedy, they'd act comedically, but not by working from rote plot trees or by triggering set-in-stone events. Instead, the Player is limited by the prevailing logic of the streaming situation. The Script dictates how the Player can react and, therefore, what types of variables He can produce: If the Farmer makes a joke about his weight you're left with some kind of choice between a positive or a negative, which wouldn't be availlable if, say, it started as horror and the Farmer had asked you to murder his Daughter. (Incidentally, in the real world this is called "mutual determinism")

The game's plot would then progress by how the Player deals with the options given to him. Maybe if the Player is incredibly negative (boosting the Negative Intensity) at every given opportunity during the Comedy Script the Actor (again, see the original graphs) will begin to feel Fear. That fear filters into the Ghostwriter AI, making it shift towards the Horror script, which makes the AIs act more...horrifying, which forces the Player to react in a limited fashion, which perpetuates the game, which is what we, as gamers, tend to call Fun.

Q:Why is this somewhat convoluted system a better means to an end than just have a plot tree system? A:It's subtler and more replayable. With every plot-treed game, you're going to begin with and then later encounter at least some overlap. The procedural nature of this game concept allows for a seamlessly flowing game that will almost always be different, not just because you change, but because the game changes how you change.

At least, that's how I'm reading this whole thing. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Takashi.) Also: you want it to have a meanigful ending, right? So, do you mean a single meaningful ending, like a frayed rope, coming together to a final point? Or do you mean multiple endings that organically develop, which the player brings meaning to?

This is probably the most interesting topic on this forum, right now. I'm glad it's surviving on the backs of people who care about interesting ideas!

Decinoge · Posts: 129

i was gonna make a reply, but in the midle of the text i realized that was something more like NPC personality, and thats beyond the point that is beeing discussed here... we are talking of how the characters react (NPC)
making a history and characters grow up.

butt tthe things that u will always have a basic pre-made plot line... something that is the objectivve of the game, or at least an object that is given to u, the interact of the other chars. however this last case will be a pre-defined event, and not exactly... again... the theme in discussion. if those events do not exist... the thing will basicly evolve to a probably more advanced... sims... like some sayd.

the basic plot line is always nessessary, so will probably probably kill the... theme in discussion... but i'm mostt certaintly wrong Oo... wich is great...

but one thing that it makes me thing... even with a so slight plott line... isn't it possible to express any kind of morality. its not hard to make a "riding red hood" kinda plot... and u know what u've always heard about those storys: "whats the story moral?"... whats behind all that? thats a cute question... but i'm again... getting... away... from the subject -_-

oke... again i've done it... whatever... i'll post it anyway

Takashi · Posts: 820

A Rag Man wrote:

I think that the point is that there is no flowchart of events.

Well, is there is no possible flowchart, then it can't be programmed.

I used the idea of a random start of the script, here. You can see a original simple interaction, and a more complex interaction. This depends on what stage the Script AI is set. Second interaction is inspired by MIT's MAKEBELIVE. It's still not very good at explaining the concept globally, but this takes a bit of time to design.

A Rag Man wrote:

My main unresolved question for you, Takashi, is whether the character can move around and interact with objects in a game world (as in most games: Final Fantasy, Mario, etc.) or if the idea is to present, basically, an interactive slideshow (ala Myst, many dating sims) with some really interesting programming running beneath

The problem with interactive screenshows, is that they require a higher level of polish - either of text or of script, to be interesting. By having a open game world, then the plot is significant in the way it affects characters more than in how it is presented to us.

GrimSweeper wrote:

Wherein this poster goes on a rambling comparison...

...with Rogue-likes.

And that's a very good point, since rougelikes are actually the original procedurally-created universes. Well, that and Elite. Both games share this same idea, except those are created as features of the universe, and here I'm thinking of aplying them to an all encompassing plot.

Decinoge wrote:

but one thing that it makes me thing... even with a so slight plott line... isn't it possible to express any kind of morality. its not hard to make a "riding red hood" kinda plot... and u know what u've always heard about those storys: "whats the story moral?"... whats behind all that? thats a cute question... but i'm again... getting... away... from the subject -_- .

Albeit I didn't want to thread on morality, nothing says we can't add to the Script concepts of morality. Meeham's TALE-SPIN tries to writes Aesop-inspired stories, for example. It's, however, unfair to compare any computer written script to a human, for obvious reasons.

GrimSweeper wrote:

Also: you want it to have a meanigful ending, right? So, do you mean a single meaningful ending, like a frayed rope, coming together to a final point? Or do you mean multiple endings that organically develop, which the player brings meaning to?

I think that's really up to the implementation. My idea was to give a given time when you're locked in the universe, and then provide an exit. An artificial event can also be added that forces the universe to a conclusion. The script may decide when the story ends, as well - normally when it sees a conclusion.

professor_scissors wrote:

I think it would be better if you could just press the circle button and it would show a 5 minute cinematic of how the player tricks the narrative.

The whole concept is to exploit tricking the narrative, sequence branking and so.

km wrote:

Basically, without a form of natural expression, there cannot be a "limitless plotline." This is perhaps one reason why games have infinite space but limited plotlines - there is no true mechanism for a suitably dynamic storyline, and so there is compensation in the form of enhanced freedom outside the story, which doesn't suffer from the same pitfalls.

That's correct! My belief, however, is that in the same way we can generate a large number of random dungeons (and yet not a infinite one), we can also generate a large number of incidental plotlines.

internisus · Posts: 961

A Rag Man wrote:

Q:Why is this somewhat convoluted system a better means to an end than just have a plot tree system? A:It's subtler and more replayable.

A lot of people seem to assume this. There is no reason why a tree system can't be extremely subtle and nuanced and incorporate many different levels of decision-making, from small actions like bowing out of respect to big choices like whether to kill or follow an NPC. This is why I dislike Way of the Samurai; it has too much in common with KOTOR in that the NARRATIVE FREEDOM is too blatant and explicit.

I still don't see how the kind of self-managing system this thread is about can function practically while coming up with significant drama. It seems contradictory, since significance has to be written by a person.

Edit: Wait, I have to look at the new flowchart and recent posts.

A Rag Man · Posts: 22

internisus wrote:

I still don't see how the kind of self-managing system this thread is about can function practically while coming up with significant drama. It seems contradictory, since significance has to be written by a person.

That's what makes this interesting to me: maybe it can't be done, or maybe it's just something that most programmers would avoid. But conceptualizing it is a good abstract mental exercise, and it's fun to plan stuff like this. It's the kind of concept that a gamer can understand, think about, and hypothesize in a way that a non-gamer couldn't.

Also, if anybody were to try this out you can't deny that you'd be intrigued. Even if it spiralled out of control: what would that be like? I always thought that Dr. Mario was more fun when you rubbed it across the carpet, and played it with glitches. It was like Cubist Dr. Mario.

internisus · Posts: 961

Would someone do me a small favor and take The Sims as a starting point for explaining what this would be like to play, no matter how different the two might be? I'm still trying to get the basic idea that's being offered.

Takashi · Posts: 820

I can try.

It's like the Sims, instead of being driven by needs, were all being controled by a individual, more powerfull AI. That AI gives you a diferent "objective" as you set your Sims. So, if you mistreat a son in traumatic ways, that AI may tell you your objective is to be a serial killer and make people more terrified of you. But if you try and perform comedic situations, then the AI will make the people react absurdly, and provide with a suitable objective (like for example, marry a person of a higher class, or with exccentric parents, etc).

However, unlike Sims, we're applying this AI to few individuals and to actions a human being can affect, directly.

As said, this is a mental exercise. Some ideas may work, most won't. The ideas here, aren't new - only they are applied to language output, not to games.

Flackon · Posts: 163

I think having a look at interactive storytelling texts might be a good idea. Like the kind of stuff Chris Crawford is working on. If I'm not mistaken, this are the kinds of things we are talking about, right?
These are some good starting points:

http://www.quvu.net/interactivestory.net/links.html
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/
http://www.storytron.com/
http://www.erasmatazz.com/

internisus wrote:

A Rag Man wrote:

Q:Why is this somewhat convoluted system a better means to an end than just have a plot tree system? A:It's subtler and more replayable.

A lot of people seem to assume this. There is no reason why a tree system can't be extremely subtle and nuanced and incorporate many different levels of decision-making, from small actions like bowing out of respect to big choices like whether to kill or follow an NPC. This is why I dislike Way of the Samurai; it has too much in common with KOTOR in that the NARRATIVE FREEDOM is too blatant and explicit.

The fact is, a manually set up tree with enough detail and account for all possible outcomes would be extremely time consuming, hard to write and, of course, debug, while a more procedural, algorithmical approach could handle narrative instances easier (once the problem of actually coding the procedural engine has been solved).

It's the engineers approach of: "Work a lot now so it can be automatized later".

On the subject of dramatic significance, it's true that complete author created content would more easily achieve a greater dramatism, but the key here is to work with a set ofvague "settings" molded with a lot of variables, be them character centric, relation centric or situation centric.

I feel that such a system could yield interesting and in many cases unexpected results (the so-desired "emergent" narrative)

Screwtape · Posts: 81

Long-time reader, first-time poster, so... be gentle. :)

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Okay, so far you have Curiousity, Anger, Fear, and Sympathy that you can emote to either the Farmer or Daughter. Their reactions to you and to each other depend entirely on the context of the situation they find themselves in.

This grabbed my attention a few days ago, and it's been humming away in the back of my head ever since. I don't know where Mr. Mechanical got his Four Basic Emotions from, but there seems to be a nice symmetry involved... here, have a diagram:

(The little labels on the axes read 'Unknown', 'Known', 'Self' and 'Other')

It occurs to me that you could construct a game where every character has a 'mood', which you could represent as an (x,y) position in the above diagram. NPCs would have their state tracked by the game, the player would have to make do with their own biological Emotion Engine.

So, every character has an emotional state, which is all very well, but that's not very interesting until the characters meet and interact. Here, have another diagram:

(In this diagram, coloured circles correspond to 'states' and coloured arrows correspond to 'interactions'. So for example, if you met the Daughter while she was in the 'Curiosity' state (green circle) and you acted with 'Anger' toward her (red arrow) she would be nudged toward the 'Fear' state)

The diagram above is... well, diagrammatic, ideally this would be more analogue than digital: if you act angrily toward someone who is a little bit curious, they'll become a little bit fearful, but if you act angrily toward someone who's very, very curious, they'll just become ever so slightly less so. It occurs to me that maybe the destination of the arrows might depend on the degree of the emotions in question rather than the type... but I can't figure out how to draw such a diagram, so I'll dismiss it as 'too complicated'.

That's a diagram of one-on-one interactions, but things would get even more interesting in a scene with both the Farmer and Daughter involved. If the Farmer is Angry, and sees you acting with Curiosity toward somebody he feels Sympathy towards (the Daugher), maybe he gets more Angry towards you, or more Afraid towards her, or both. And maybe she gets more Curious about you, until you happen to act Angrily towards the Father whom she has Sympathy with, and she gets more Angry at you... these three-way interactions would be the meat of the game, but until I think of a way to draw a diagram that wouldn't just look like rainbow spaghetti, you'll have to use your imaginations.

All these engine design thoughts don't do much good unless you have some kind of way for the player and the characters to express these particular emotions. Sadly, the simplicity of the 'emotional state' system does not lend itself to genuinely human reactions, so in the grand tradition of game designers through the ages we'll cheat by changing the rules.

I imagine the game would be played by 'scenes' - a brief establishing shot, the player chooses an action, the results are displayed, we move on to the next scene. Rather than have a set sequence of scenes as in a dialog tree, each scene would have pre-conditions and post-conditions, and the game would randomly select a scene whose pre-conditions matched the post-conditions of the previous scene.

While a lot of conditions would be based on emotional state ('this scene becomes available when the Farmer is between 20% and 30% Angry, and the Daughter is between 60% and 70% Sympathetic'), there would have to be other conditions too: in one scene, an Angry Farmer might break a chair, which means the game can't offer any scenes that assume the chair is functional - but the game might start offering scenes where the player can repair the chair.

For added replay value, the initial state of the Farmer and Daughter could be randomised every time you hit New Game - the scenario could play out differently as if they'd just had a big argument five minutes before you showed up for the first time.

You'd probably have to burn a lot of script-writer time churning out Scene scripts, but I expect it would be easier than trying to write a single, cohesive dialog tree.