A hybrid of plot-based and character-based interactive storytelling

Abstract

Interactive storytelling in the virtual environment attracts a lot of research interests in recent years. Story plot and character are two most important elements of a story. Based on these two elements, currently there are two research directions: plot-based and character-based interactive storytelling. However, plot-based approach lacks the refinement of character behaviors as character-based approach. On the other side, character-based approach does not follow a well organized story plot so that the moral of the story might be distorted. Therefore, there is a need to develop an integrated framework to achieve the balance between conveying story moral and enhancing the modeling of character behaviors. In this paper, we propose a hybrid system of the plot-based and character-based approaches. It is constructed as a multi-agent system (MAS), which involves a scriptwriter agent, a director agent, virtual actor agents and other support agents. Fuzzy Cognitive Goal Net (FCGN) is used by the scriptwriter agent to generate story plot, which includes various meaningful storylines. The director agent selects the storyline dynamically and dispatches the scenes to the virtual character agents as behaviors through the decomposing algorithms. With the system, dynamic storylines and character behaviors are generated in realtime based on the audience interactions and context changes. The audiences are able to experience different levels of interactions as an observer, a character or a director. A case study prototype called "mystery illness investigation at nanyang town" has been implemented based on the proposed system. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.