Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Interactive Narrative is an approach to interactive entertainment that enables the player to make decisions that directly affect the direction and/or outcome of the narrative experience being delivered by the computer system. Interactive narrative requires two seemingly conflicting requirements: coherent narrative and user agency. We present an interactive narrative system that uses a combination of narrative control and autonomous believable character agents to augment a story world simulation in which the user has a high degree of agency with narrative plot control. A drama manager called the Automated Story Director gives plot-based guidance to believable agents. The believable agents are endowed with the autonomy necessary to carry out directives in the most believable fashion possible. Agents also handle interaction with the user. When the user performs actions that change the world in such a way that the Automated Story Director can no longer drive the intended narrative forward, it is able to adapt the plot to incorporate the user’s changes and still achieve dramatic goals.

In this paper, we present an extensible framework for interactive multimodal contents, with emphasis on augmented reality applications. The proposed framework, EDSUN, enables concurrent and variable narrative structures as well as content reusability and dynamic yet natural experience generation. EDSUN’s main components include a canonical specification of 5-state lexical syntax and grammar, stochastic state transitions, and extensions for hierarchical grammars to represent complex behavioral and multimodal interactions. The benefits of EDSUN in enabling classical contents to support the affordances of AR environments and in complementing recent published works are also discussed.

Context-aware systems are conceived for diminishing the cognitive load of users that perform tasks such as retrieving information or accessing services. A wide range of applications is available, with emphasis on tourism, cultural heritage and e-commerce. This work explores the possibility of using an agents based context-aware architecture for controlling the evolution of a story on the basis of different types of context, including the user profile, the location, the user history and time. In order to prove the suitability of such architecture to the domain of storytelling, a real novel by a famous Italian writer was rewritten in the form of an interactive 3D world where users play the roles of the different characters of the story.

Hypervideo is one of several possible ways for interactive non-linear media. In its characteristics it is closely related to the purposes of digital narratives. The techniques of hypervideo could be used for the presentation of digitally told stories and vice versa. Many projects in both fields of work show the impressive possibilities each. But there seems to be a lack of using narrative intelligence in hypervideo. This paper shows how both fields of work could benefit from each other. Therefore two projects are introduced and their combination is discussed. The hypervideo environment HyPE includes an authoring tool, a stand-alone player for hypervideos and offers an API for the use in higher-ranking applications. Secondly the storytelling system called Jeherazade is introduced, which bases on the idea to enhance the classical theory of Aristotle to the new form of digital narrative. It is primarily developed for the use in presentations in distributed exhibitions but it is planned to be used for e-leraning as well.

In this paper we present our continuing efforts to generate narrative using a character-centric approach. In particular we discuss the advantages of explicitly representing the emergent event sequence in order to be able to exert influence on it and generate stories that ‘retell’ the emergent narrative. Based on a narrative distinction between fabula, plot and presentation, we make a first step by presenting a model based on story comprehension that can capture the fabula, and show how it can be used for the automatic creation of stories.

is a real-time multi-user 3D virtual environment used to explore the relationships between a linear story and the virtual world in which it unfolds. The prototype uses as its narrative spine an illustrated lecture on film design by Christopher Hobbs. It provides a stage for interaction featuring a customized 3D environment based on this material, with the necessary actors and objects in it. The main design issues were mapping the linear talk onto the virtual space, and the implementation of various interactive features within it. We argue that a careful use of spatial design supports a degree of non-linear story-telling without compromising the core linear content.

Most research in Interactive Storytelling (IS) has sought inspiration in narrative theories issued from contemporary narratology to either identify fundamental concepts or derive formalisms for their implementation. In the former case, the theoretical approach gives raise to empirical solutions, while the latter develops Interactive Storytelling as some form of “computational narratology”, modelled on computational linguistics. In this paper, we review the most frequently cited theories from the perspective of IS research. We discuss in particular the extent to which they can actually inspire IS technologies and highlight key issues for the effective use of narratology in IS.

After offering reasons why film can offer insights into computer entertainment and reviewing the concept of ‘schemas’, the results of a qualitative investigation of viewer’s talk about a short film, Ice Cream Dream, are reported, related to genre, character relationships, use of props, schematic sequences, locations and sound. This material is extended and deepened by drawing on an ongoing cognitive analysis of another short film, The Wrong Trousers.

This paper is a review of a story generation system called Minstrel. It uses complex but hand-crafted Lisp knowledge structures to generate short computer-generated stories within the King Arthur domain. The knowledge representation model of Minstrel is reimplemented using a W3C standard language to analyze the pros and cons of technology updates over this kind of classic AI projects.

A generic structure for media-oriented modular storytelling is presented. The concept is based on a simple container and content model. We also show how various paths along a continuous storyline and branching threads can be organized. An initial implementation is compared with a second, more general and flexible structuring approach.