Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper considers various schemes for implementing hyperlinks between video programs, and proposes a way of representing hyperlinks inspired by the TV industry that is well suited to video content. By representing links in a TV-like manner, we found that hyperlinks could be incorporated in a way that does not detract from the fundamental nature and appeal of video media. In addition to proposing a new way to implement hyperlinks, the paper also describes a prototype system with a full range of hyperlink-handling capabilities including a link description format, a link creation function for the script production environment, a link representation function for the playback environment, and a link management function for the distribution system.

We introduce an anime blog system that enable users to create blogs containing animation by searching for and selecting animations or images from a database by using simple words. This system collects animation or image data using consumer-generated databases, in the manner of Web 2.0. If users cannot find appropriate data, they can easily upload new data that they have created. Our animation database, Animebase, correlates natural language with three-dimensional animation data. When an animation is uploaded, the system applies motion data of this model to other models and generates new anima-tions, which are then stored in Animebase. Our basic concept is that the animation data corresponding to natural language is useful for enabling novice users to create content. We discuss the difficulty of this approach to collecting animations and mention future work.

Summary results of the assessment of new tools for the generation of reconfigurable screen media (ShapeShifting media) and of eight experimental ShapeShifting screen media productions covering genres including news, documentary and drama, are presented from the project New Millennium, New Media. The new tools for creating interactive and reconfigurable narratives depend upon a Narrative Structure Language which is briefly described. Evaluations suggest that whilst not all the productions could be marketed as they are, all the production formats have commercial potential. The tools, whilst presenting some difficulties in use in their current state, offer a control over the development of narrative found in no existing commercial software.

Day of the Figurines (DoF) is a pervasive game for mobile phones that uses text messaging. DoF is driven by a strong scripted narrative that is combined with various interactive elements to create a shared experience. It is also a slow game, unfolding over twenty four days of its players’ lives, requiring them to send and receive only a few messages each day. Our experience of staging multiple performances of DoF to more than seven hundred players revealed key issues concerning the design and experience of time in such a pervasive game. Most players engaged episodically, raising issues of how to manage reengagement with the game and sustain social relationships. Our experience has led us to propose a framework for how to design time in shared interactive narratives in which five distinct layers of time – story time, plot time, schedule time, interaction time and perceived time – are mapped onto one another.

Interactivity is a key feature of new multimedia content and services. However, the storytelling of these non linear forms of content requires today not only artistic skills but also expertise in specific technical tools, even including software programming. Whatever the form, be in theatre, movie, cartoon, video-games, training and simulation, the process for creating interactive content poses new challenges for authors and production teams. Indeed, this process calls for the combined knowledge of different domains such as cinema, 2D or 3D modelling, animation, cognitive and computer sciences.

The proposal of this research project is to develop a standard connection mechanism to make narrative environments and the external systems that control them interoperable. Thanks to a new communication interface called RCEI, different knowledge-based storytelling systems will be able to perform interactive drama using different narrative environments that were available. The controller has a reasonable level of granularity, being the only additional requirement the development of valid adapters for both extremes of the connection. Open source implementation of this protocol and language is provided in order to save extra parsing and serializing efforts and make software more interoperable.

Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” is a well-known narrative structure mainly used in cinema and literature. This paper deals with an application of this structure as a template for interactive storytelling in video games. It first presents an architecture for adaptive execution, gives the outline concerning this model and shows how to adapt it to an interactive context. A new interactive pattern is being introduced, as a model for dynamic computation of narrative.

During the fast evolution of automatic direction of Interactive Digital Storytelling many description of similar ideas have appeared in the academic literature. System architectures and workflows are usually presented using informal descriptions and diagrams, what makes difficult to identify what are the real contributions of each publication. In the way of establishing a safe ground for future research on this topic, this paper is a first step towards the formalization of a particular paradigm for developing automatic storytellers. The chosen paradigm is Role-Playing Game Mastering, which computational model is presented using UML.

Overview of the FearNot! system for demonstration.

FearNot! is a story-telling application originally created in the EU FP5 project VICTEC and now extended in the FP6 project eCIRCUS [eCIRCUS 07]. It has applied ideas from Forum Theatre [Boal 79] to the domain of education against bullying. In Forum Theatre, sections of an audience take responsibility for a specific character in the unfolding drama, played by an actor who always stays in role. Episodes in which the actors improvise within an overall narrative framework are broken by interaction sections in which the audience sections talk over with ‘their’ character what they should do in the next dramatic segment. The actor is free to reject advice that seems incompatible with their role, and may also suspend a dramatic episode if it seems necessary to get further advice.

Story-worlds are virtual worlds inhabited by synthetic characters that provide an environment in which users participate actively in the creation of a narrative. Implementation approaches range from plot-driven to character-based [4,7]. Character-based approaches require synthetic agents with autonomy and personality. Affective agent architectures [13,2] are used to construct such autonomous personality agents, and computational models of emotion are seen as a prerequisite for the required emotional and social competences. The present paper reports on ongoing work based on the experiences gained in earlier work, in particular TABASCO [6] and ActAffAct (Acting Affectively affecting Acting [8,10]). The following section reviews details of the earlier approach towards creating a story-world to generate cliché stories, while the later sections present the changes in scope and approach adopted in our current work.