January 1, 2009
Wall Street Journal Article about thatgamecompany and Flower
Joysticks and Easy Riders
The indie game movement echoes the personal cinema of the 1970s
by JAMIN BROPHY-WARREN
Posted by Jenova at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
March 5, 2008
Hurricane X 2 trailer
My friends who I used to make game together with left their jobs and started up their own studio in China. They entered XNA dream build play competition last year with this game. Though they didn't win any publishing deal, they are still trying to finish it. I was lucky to get a copy of the game. It is already a solid demo. I'm eagerly waiting to see more...
Posted by Jenova at 1:38 AM | Comments (1)
December 19, 2006
Three flOw video capture uploaded (hot FPS)
Never tried to play my own game on a good computer, the FPS is so high which totally blows. You can watch the other 2 after this one is finished.
Posted by Jenova at 2:04 AM | Comments (0)
December 1, 2006
Vote flOw for Game Shadow Award
I guess this is a little bit late. flOw was nominated in the Game Shadow Award for innovation in visual effects and audio design three months ago. The competition takes form in public voting.
The deadline is 15th December, 2006 and I got a notice today that currently flOw is 120 vote away from the top 10 which is totally my fault since I haven't told anyone about it -__-
Do you think flOw deserve the award? Then Vote now!
http://www.gameshadow.com/awards/feedback.asp
If you needed any more convincing to vote, one lucky voter will win an Ultimate ATI CrossFire Gaming Kit with a retail value in excess of $2,000.
Posted by Jenova at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2006
flOw entered SlamDance GGC
I can't believe a year has pasted since the last SlamDance. I have no trouble picturing those exciting moments from the last trip simply because ... urgh ... flickr? -_- The old school radio station, the French food and Rick's argument seems just happen yesterday.
This year's finalist are much more competitive than last year. Check out the list. Braid, Everyday Shooter, the Blob are all games I respected. I feel three-months-made flOw a bit too simple for a competition like this.
Posted by Jenova at 6:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2006
flOw and TGC on Wall Street Journal
Game Theory
How a Grad-School Thesis Theory
Evolved Into a PlayStation 3 Game
Eager gamers don't need to scour eBay or retail outlets to sample a game for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3. Thanks to a graduate study on "flow theory," a prototype of a future downloadable title is already finding success on the Web...
So far this is the best article I have ever read that fully explains what flOw is. Kudos to the reporter Aaron Rutkoff.
Oops! Slashdoted...
Posted by Jenova at 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2006
flOw PS3 at gamer's day
As it gets close to the PS3 launch, we see more and more media coverage about flOw PS3. In spite of the fake trailers made of stolen preliminary videos, we see many positive reactions. Even though it is not a surprise, it still feels like a dream when you see our energetic Kellee on the gamespot interview.
Posted by Jenova at 12:32 AM | Comments (4)
July 13, 2006
Food for Hungry Gamers
I accidentally ran into this post on digg.com today.
It's called "Down home cooking with DS" as below
It instantly reminded me of "Cooking Mama". But looks much more practical. Considering I'm a starving single, I would definitly buy one. Hope it's imported and translated. I guess you all can feel the special charm in products like this. With the new pink Nintendo DS, this game will capture yet another group of new gamers after Nintendog and Brain Age.
And here's another video showing how the "interactive menu" will interact with the user and really increase the quality of communication.
Posted by Jenova at 1:12 AM | Comments (1)
April 8, 2006
What am I playing now?
The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion
It's one of those games spilling passions from the makers that I'd like to devote my time to immerse myself in. So far 15 hours are gone...
Posted by Jenova at 2:06 PM | Comments (3)
April 5, 2006
"Ever17" an interactive novel with the most stunning story I have ever seen
"If you want to tell a story in video game, how can you tell it better than other traditional media like novels and films?" As a game designer and artist, I have had this question for a long time. I couldn't find any strong examples to prove that till I played Ever 17.
Ever 17 was first published on Play Station at August 2002, then on PC and DC at 2003. Theoretically, it falls under Japan's Dating-Sim games. In Japan, fully 25% of computer software published belong to a unique genre of game called "bishoujo games" ("pretty girl games"), which are usually a kind of love simulation game in which you try to become romantically involved with beautiful anime characters as the object of the game. As a rule, you have different girls you interact with as the story develops, with many different endings, one or several with each girl. They're very challenging and very interactive, with everything from lovable, goofy anime characters to romantic love and heartbreak to very erotic sex. In Japanese these games sell tens of thousands of copies at $88 per copy, despite the fact that they're censored with a mosaic.
However, Ever 17 doesn't have any uncensored content, yet still stayed on top of the selling list for a long time. The reason behind is its mind twisting story. It generates such enlightenment after player play though the game.
The first time experience feels like a well written escape love story (like Titanic). The second time you go through the story again but choose different branches, it ends up like the movie A.I.. The third & fourth time the story seems altered. Player will play through another character's perspective. Each time player plays through, more and more questions rise. Then the fifth time, everything become clear. I don't want to expose the story, but it's something related to 4-D life form. Unlike Matrix, it's so well thought that there is no logical flaw in it.
If you are interested in interactive narrative, or have the time to enjoy a 12 hours mind tricking experience. Give Ever 17 a try. It's highly recommended...
Posted by Jenova at 1:50 AM | Comments (5)
March 15, 2006
"flOw" gallery
In three days, "flOw" got more than 100,000 visits from all over the world. Fans started posting screenshots about their creatures, which turns out to be a very artistic collection.
Posted by Jenova at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
The Video Game Revolution on PBS
Not only has a well done website documenting the history of video games, this is going to be on TV this month. I don't have a TV, but I want to see it. -_-"http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/history/index.html
Posted by Jenova at 9:46 PM | Comments (2)
March 8, 2006
"flOw" is online...
"flOw" is a simplistic game created as a practice of "player oriented flow adjustment", methodology defined through my thesis research - "Flow in games". (WIP)
Your play experience and feedback will be a huge contribution to my research, meanwhile, it will be fun =).
Posted by Jenova at 8:15 PM | Comments (1)
January 15, 2006
We are in IGF again!!
With the former success of Dyadin. Much discussed Cloud is going to be in Independent Game Festival at San Jose this year. USC IMD's second punch at the IGF.
Posted by Jenova at 7:01 PM | Comments (1)
August 26, 2005
Advancing Your Career in Game Development: The Women's Perspective
Advancing Your Career in Game Development: The Women's Perspective
September 10, Seattle
Learn how to break in and advance your game industry career, in four panel discussions with
top experts in the field. This seminar will provide useful information for women and men,
as well as new and veteran game developers.
Program topic include:
1. Breaking In: How to Acquire The Skills and Get That First Job
2. An Array of Career Options
3. The Ultimate Challenge: Balancing Work and Personal Life
4. The Executive Perspective
A free one-day Women In Games International event, sponsored by Microsoft Game Studios, International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Game Developers Conference (GDC), DigiPen, Girls in Games, Mary-Margaret.com, WomenGamers.com, BusinessWire and ThemePark Studios. Presented in cooperation with the Women in Games Conference in Dundee, Scotland.
Conference is 1 pm to 6 pm on Saturday, September 10 at Microsoft,
15120 NE 40th Street in Redmond, WA.
Attendance is free and space is limited.
Attendees are invited to reserve their spot by registering online today.
Speakers include representatives from:
Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Game Studios, Monolith Productions, Real Networks, LimeLife,
Her Interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, Wild Tangent, Mobliss, DigiPen
www.WomenInGamesInternational.org
Posted by Jenova at 9:27 AM | Comments (2)
July 8, 2005
The MMO Goes 'Mainstream'?
Here's a discussion about whether MMO is mainstream now. In my opinion, it's already mainstream in Asian market. In North American people realizes the power of a good MMO by playing World of Warcraft. Most people who played World of Warcraft ignores other PC games which proves the advances of MMO as a arising genre......
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050701/hong_01.shtml
Posted by Jenova at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
What you should not miss at this E3
I don't want to show all those big brand and sequals here. There's something freshy and cool that I wish you guys can enjoy.
Okami
From the creater of Viewtiful Joe. Really interesting to see a game closely bind the story and the creative stroke mechanics togethere.
Shadow of the Colossus
My favorite in this E3, the trailer can't give u the experience. You have to play it. There is some new emotional things coming from that game, powerful and beatiful.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Cool is all I want to say.
Flagship's Hell Gate
Although only developed 1 yr, the developer of Diablo and Diablo 2 have already made this game extreme addicting without story and quests. The highlight is nearly everything are randomly generated. So you will never feel the same each time you play it.
Posted by Jenova at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
Introduction to the World of Warcraft - Open Mic in CTIN 542: Interactive Design & Production
Having played and tested World of Warcraft for about a year, I'm very honored to introduce this marvelous game to you all, what it is, why it rules and how it is made.
Download World of Warcraft.ppt
Posted by Jenova at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2005
Student Postmortem: 6mSoft's Romeo and Juliet
I saw this on Gamasutra.com, it's a very ambitious project. Their experience is worth for sharing.
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050204/gilman_01.shtml
Posted by Jenova at 7:46 PM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2004
Cloud Boy
When I took the interview about the cloud game, Tracy gave me this very interesting idea. Instead of Jupiter alien, why not a little boy. Yes, it would be a very dream like theme. Little boy fly between the clouds. So I started do some sketch......
And here is Yun (meaning cloud in Chinese), the potential avatar for the cloud game.
Rough Story
Partly affected by my own experiences, Yun is 7 years old. He has serious Asthma since he was born. He can not leave the ward without doctor's permission. But he is very optimistic to his disease.
Instead of watching TV, Yun's favorite hobby is watching the clouds and day dreaming. He is fond of reading nature science magazine (only the picures) and guessing clouds with Fei. Fei (meaning fly in Chinese) is a 6 years old girl who shares the same ward with Yun.
Yun always believes he can fly, though doctor told him it's just his daydream. One day, some people (maybe god) tell Yun that Fei will lose her life in seven days unless some one can clean the air and clouds around. Yun started his dream travel to save his best friend......
Posted by Jenova at 11:59 PM | Comments (10)
December 17, 2004
Cloud Game Prototype Update
I'm still testing the pacing and the number of clouds in the map. Have a try, get all the clouds together...
Posted by Jenova at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2004
Most Rewarding Experience....?
Make sure your sound is on.
http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/attachments/bubblewrap.swf
Don't forget try manic mode and refresh sheet.
"Need more...."
Posted by Jenova at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2004
Pictures from ALT+CTRL Independant Game Show
This Thursday, I and people from SEE group in ICT had a field trip to UCI to watch the Alt+Ctrl Indie Game Show. A lot of independant games, mods and machinimas are there.
The all known Waco Resurrection impressed people by the voice input design. "I'm David Crush..."
Jared Leshin is addicted to a pig bulldozer game from the Indie Game Jam.
Aimee Dozois is playing the gorgeous fairy tale like puzzle game. Sorry I forget the name. Everybody love the little girl and the dream like world.
What am I doing? I'm faster forwarding the machinima DVD. A lot of game stunts there too.
An unreal tournament 2004 mod. You pick up kawayi toys to win the game instead of shooting.
Best game in the show. Spider! from Indie Game Jam. Two player controls two spiders on a single web. They can pull silks, cut web and catch flies. The whole web is simulated by spring. The physics is so great. The chaos from cutting and weaving the web is so fun to watch. I'm totally into it.
ICT folks.
Posted by Jenova at 5:29 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
Half Life 2: Thoughts
After about 10hrs play, I finished Half Life 2. A lot of people call this game the best first person shooter made ever. I do have to agree. I am amazed by the quality of both technology and the art development of this game. And no bugs from my experience.
With the life like animation and 2hrs long in game scripts. Half Life 2 gave me a new experience about storytelling. It is not interactive story telling from one perspective, because the story is one story, you can not change it or avoid it. On the other side it is an interactive experience, a very immersive story that you played as the main character through the whole game. You have an illusion that Doctor Freeman is yourself. There is no cut scenes, no talking head. You watch the whole story happened from first person view.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the ending quite much. And the G-man's true identity. I wish someone else who finished this game can clarify it deeper. Anyway, here is some real-time scene from Half Life 2. Pay attention to the details, they are all moving in the game.
Posted by Jenova at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2004
Character Sketches for Cloud Game
Here is my friend, Mengya's sketch for the human and alien in the cloud game, going to be abstract and stylized. Her sketches are always very inspiring.
Arms maybe removed.
peasant & police
Posted by Jenova at 6:57 PM | Comments (2)
Character Sketches for Cloud Game
Here is my friend, Mengya's sketch for the human and alien in the cloud game, going to be abstract and stylized. Her sketches are always very inspiring.
Arms maybe removed.
peasant & police
Posted by Jenova at 6:57 PM | Comments (2)
November 6, 2004
Recruting - Cloud Game for EA Grants spring 2005
Download
Game Description & Core System
I am currently working on the Team Prospectus. There are a couple people who already showed interests in this project. We welcome helps from anyone who is interested in making and playing this game. Currently we need people who are capable and confident for the following position:
producer
game designer
lead engineer
graphics programmer
game-play programmer
2d/3d artist
writer
If you are interested in any of the postion above. Please contact me at xinghanc@usc.edu or (213)-210-1756
Posted by Jenova at 11:58 AM | Comments (2)
November 4, 2004
Interesting Gravity Game
http://homokaasu.org/gasgames/game.gas?21
Simple rule generates complex results. This is what we were talking about on CTIN 488 - Emergence
Posted by Jenova at 11:42 AM | Comments (9)
November 2, 2004
Dyadin Comics
Here are some comics I did for the IGF game "Dyadin" this week. Although it is not a narrative game, these comics serve vague backgrounds and tasks. And I like some of the drawings very much.
Posted by Jenova at 11:05 AM | Comments (9)
October 26, 2004
On going proposal for a cloud-play game
Here is a rough idea about a game design for the EA grants coming next spring. I'm still working on the paper prototype and looking for potential teammates. If you are interested please drop me an email: xinghanc@usc.edu
==================================================================
Jupiter - Cloud Mania
Introduction
You must have played enough sand & mud. It is time to play cloud!
In "Jupiter", you play as a refugee from the dying Jupiter and need to create a "homelike" environment on earth. Yes, your ultimate goal is to create an infinite storming climate "Red Spot" for your companies. However, to create your new homeland, you have to conquer the weather on earth as well as the creatures and aggressive human beings.
As a pioneer from Jupiter, you have enough techniques to deal with the atmosphere on earth and use them as your energy source. From basic creating and shaping cloud Gozzilas to forging a magnificent hurricane, you can create and learn all kinds of weathers on earth, such as rains, fogs, snows, hails, all kinds of lightening, storms, tornados and huge hurricanes beyond the memory of men.
You started from the South Pole with a small wind current,
and finally create a none-stop ground lifting hurricane above the
Game Feature
1. Ground breaking game-play object (Cloud & earth weather)
2. Educational content living with the game-play (Game rules based on earth science & meteorology)
3. Right hemisphere play + Left hemisphere play (Creativity + rational strategy)
4. New way for game interaction (Intuitive hand gesture input)
5. Challenging graphics and simulation programming (None reference in history)
6. Challenging art direction (Abstract but easy to project reality, destructive but low violence)
Game-play Architecture
Jupiter consists of three layers supporting different game-play.
Virtual Cloud-box
On top of the architecture is a sandbox. Sandbox is a widely used feature among the game developers. It is an environment which allows player to play and create almost anything they want in the border of media.
You must have played guessing clouds in your childhood. It is our instinct to imagine and create. In Jupiter, a virtual cloud-box offers players a spacious sky as their canvas and realizes the dream of shaping your own clouds. You can casually create funny looking clouds or use cloud to draw light and shadows. This promise the possibility for self-forgetting gaming experience which we called the right hemisphere play.
Besides creating, players can also play all kinds of weathers with the knowledge about meteorology gained from the game. They don¡¯t have to follow the goal in the game. Instead, they can be cold-blooded invaders or a friendly neighborhood protecting the earth¡¯s environment.
God-like Empowerment
Continuous Rewarding
Core Systems
The whole game runs upon a highly autonomous system which
simulates the basic meteorology phenomenon.
To be continued...
Concept for tornado
Cloud Types
More cloud reference...
A wonderful photo report of storms...
Posted by Jenova at 12:00 AM | Comments (5)
October 11, 2004
Try out my CTIN 488 Project, Gold Rush Gang
Download & make your Game Map and Play!!?
Title: Gold Rush Gangs
Authors: Jenova Chen & Charles Mallison
Target Age: 10-18
Target Audience: Enjoyers of soft strategy
Number of players: 3
Time required: about 15-25 minutes
Equipment: One Hex grid board (9 grids radius)
One deck of cards
3 Nickels, decorated to represent Professional Thieves
6 dimes, decorated to represent Amateur Thieves
13 pieces of paper, decorated to represent gold
RULES
OBJECTIVE:
You control one of three rival gangs of thieves. Your goal is to achieve dominance in the illicit gold market by being the first to steal 8 sacks of gold from the board.
UNITS:
To steal gold, you have three units to control, two Amateur Thieves and one Professional Thieves. Amateur Thieves move faster than Professional Thieves, but Professional Thieves are much stronger in combat.
ACTION POINTS:
§ In order to move your thieves, you have to spend Action Points (AP). Amateur Thieves cost one AP to move one space while Professional Thieves cost two AP to move. All units take two AP to move once they pick up any amount of gold.
§ At the beginning of the game, each player gets five AP per turn. Use your AP wisely between your units. It won’t last to the next turn.
§ Once you bring X sacks of gold back to your base, the AP you can spend in each round will instantly increase X.
STORE & BANK:
§ Gold is the only resource and the objective for the players. There are three neutral stores at the border of the map where you can find one sack of gold.
§ A heavily guarded bank is in the center of the map holding three sacks of gold. In order to steal the gold from there, you have to use at least seven AP to break the defense. Once the defense is broken, there is no need for other player to break it again. If the gold from bank drops on your way back, it will return to where the bank is.
GOLD:
§ Every gang has a total of seven sacks of gold. Each Amateur Thieves guard two sacks of gold while Professional Thieves guard three sacks of gold.
§ Before the game starts, all the players have to deploy their thieves with gold on the map. They have to be deployed in their own territories. There has to be at least three grids in between your units at the beginning.
GOLD RUSH:
§ You have to protect your gold from being stolen and steal enough gold (at least eight) from store, bank or your opponents in order to win.
§ You can only carry one piece of gold a time.
§ You can not pass through gold with gold in your hand.
COMBAT:
§ During movement on the board, when multiple opposing units are in adjacent grids the combat will start. The player who starts the combat will be attacker.
§ Outcome of combat is decided by drawing cards. The player who draws the highest card wins. In the event of a tie, the attacker wins. The Ace card is the lowest card. The King card is the highest.
§ Amateur Thieves can draw one card in the combat while Professional Thieves are able to draw two. When friendly units are adjacent to each other, you can draw more cards. For example, if a Professional Thief and an Amateur Thief are next to each other, they can draw three cards when combat occurs.
§ At the end of combat, the losing unit is returned to his home base and must remain there for one turn. This only applies to the one unit which either attacked or defended. While the unit is incapacitated, leave it on the color grid in the base.
§ Any gold the losing unit was carrying remains in the space the unit was except the gold from the bank.
PROCEDURE
1) At the start of the game, players will draw one card each to determine who will have the first move.
2) On the first turn, each player places his stores and deploys his thieves.
3) Players will then alternate turns until one satisfies the requirements
for winning. Game ends.
Posted by Jenova at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2004
Unreal 3 Engine released new screenshots
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=173208
From what I've seen, unrealED seems to have a shading network like maya now.
Posted by Jenova at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2004
More Screenshots of SASO in ICT
Here is a sentence of my summer work at ICT. The following shots are all captured from Unreal Tournament 2004.
Posted by Jenova at 2:59 PM | Comments (0)
More Screenshots of SASO in ICT
Here is a sentence of my summer work at ICT. The following shots are all captured from Unreal Tournament 2004.
Posted by Jenova at 2:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 7, 2004
Flash Game blows me away finally
I haven't seen such a professional game on Flash for long. I spent about 2 hours on it. Really neat and good sound effect. Try it out to see what I'm talking about. The level up is still the most classic reward setup, which the IGF game I've been working with needs to be implemented currently.
http://www12.plala.or.jp/nextframe/flash/bs.html
Posted by Jenova at 2:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2004
CAVEUT, an easy CAVE solution
This Summer, I was doing intern at ICT. We used a game Mutater in Unreal Tounament 2004 called as CaveUT in one of our project. With simple setup, I can have Unreal Tournament running on a hemisphere screen with three projectors.
The CaveUT is a simple MOD which allows up to 32 rendering spectators, which means you can use as many projectors as you need to form a Cave. ZML has 14 screens which is really a good location to setup certain Cave. And by useing UnrealED, it's really simple to build a virtual world and put it into a Cave environment.
http://www.planetjeff.net/ut/CaveUT.html
If you guys want to try it in the ZML. Look around for a PDF of the documentation… there’s an installation section in there that will get your on your way. Download the mod from here:
http://www.planetjeff.net/ut/CaveUT2003.zip
My colleage John DeWeese at Institute for Creative Technologies did an optimization for the Mutator for UT2004. Download the UT2004 one from here:
http://www.ict.usc.edu/~deweese/CaveUT2004_update1/CaveUT.u
Posted by Jenova at 10:26 AM | Comments (4)
SASO Project at ICT
I'm working on building the environment for SASO project at ICT. It's a training program for US officers to learn how to communicate and deal with Iraqi civilians. Although we are using Unreal engine, there is no guns and actions in SASO at all. The only interaction is communication with your translaters, drivers, quad members and the civilians.
The goal for this training is to find a murderer who killed four US soldiers. However you can not rush into Iraqi civilian's residence without proven evidence. The secondary script is currently being edited.
Here is one of the scene I did a month ago.
Iraq Coffeeshop
Posted by Jenova at 8:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
IGF Game Visulization & Visual Kit Design
Light Building
Dark Building
Labyrinth Concept
Black & White Storm in the Twin Tree Garden
The 10 Min before the Big Bang
Player Movement and Ping
Posted by Jenova at 10:53 AM | Comments (1)
May 26, 2004
Coexisting World
Concept test for the game we are developing right now. Light and Dark coexisting worlds are mixed on the same screen.
Light & Dark mixing
-----------------------
Dark
Light
New Version using refraction effect and aura
---------------------------------------------------
Posted by Jenova at 8:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2004
CTCS 564 FINAL PAPER
World of Warcraft:
MMO Game’s Future & Influence
Posted by Jenova at 1:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2004
CTWR 518 Final Project
"Cockroach":
An Interactive Narrative Practice
Posted by Jenova at 1:07 AM | Comments (2)
April 25, 2004
Pattern, Pattern, Still Pattern
For a long time, I had been confused by the fact that I liked playing Tetris when I was young, but could not convince myself rationally why I liked playing it. From the study in CTCS 564, I got a reasonable answer to it. That obviously is Pattern.
People playing Tetris are trying to reach certain kind of pattern, which is psychologically or biologically comforting. Although I can’t tell why this happened on human body, I agree it happened on me.
We always talk about the reward in the game and the satisfactory feeling for game players’ pay and payoff. However, Tetris is different. No rewards but the meaningless scores, no story, graphically not interesting, simple rhythm and midi sound. But why do so many people addict to it? The answer is pattern. But how does pattern work? I started to anatomize my experiences.
When a player is trying to reach certain patterns, he or she has to concentrate on their actions. During this highly concentrated situation, people can realize an oblivious ambit of themselves, forgetting all the pressure out of this pattern making process. On certain aspects, such action can realize the same effect as film and other entertainment for fun do. So, does pattern ensure the success for game design? Not absolutely.
People’s requirement is endless. Most hard core game players love Tetris, but today few of them would agree to play Tetris alone. Thus game designer tried to give the Tetris a second life. In China, the online Tetris competition was very popular, Besides the pattern, players have reward of the satisfying from beat the others. But still, the game player who have played splendid 3D games could not enjoy the symbolized Tetris any more. One Chinese player with ten years game play history said:” I won’t waste my time and money on cheap entry level game.” So has the pattern game stopped in front of the hard core players? The answer is still no.
Looking at the popular game around today, patterns are everywhere.
First person shooting game is a pattern making game. By analyzing the most popular FPS game, counter-strike, you can find player’s pattern everywhere. Players fire AK-47 always in a certain rhythm in order to reduce the bias while shooting. When players buy weapons and armors, they press different hotkey combinations just as pianist playing their keyboard. Tactically, different players have their own pattern on moving, assaulting and defending. During the regular rounds of fighting, shooting and dieing, they all reach the level of forgetting themselves.
Real time strategy game is a pattern making game too. Psychologically, player tried to reach a balanced pattern of resource gathering and units building. Physically, by using the hotkey and mouse to command the units, most RTS player liked clicking mouse and keyboard in their own rhythm even when there is no need at all.
Racing game, action game and fighting game are all pattern playing. A pattern of using brake and turning, a pattern of different action combination and a pattern of combo and special move, they help player concentrate on their games, also provide a wide possibility for different patterns and players.
Pattern seems existing everywhere. When we design game, making some patterns in game design maybe an unconscious action. In my opinion, to consider pattern as an important game elements when we design a game need to be emphasized.
A Game Journal from Jenova Chen
Posted by Jenova at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)
FarCry: Break the Ceiling of Game Genre
On this year’s GDC, Ubisoft’s Farcry became the eye candy of various graphic cards manufacturers. Gamers talked about Farcry everywhere. But the most interesting part they talked about was not the game play or character or stories. This game is a complete technology experiment.
Before Half-life 2, Doom3 and Unreal 2 engine release, Farcry engine is doubtlessly the best and the most realistic one on the market today. The graphics in the game could be described as photorealistic. The physics engine and different effect simulation stunned all the player. For example, when a grenade explodes beside you, your ear will be filled with tingle until half a minute later. You vision will become blurred in order to simulate the dizzy eye sight. The AI is highly advanced in the game. NPC will talk to the player and communicate each other. Overall, the game play experience is rather a military rehearse than a traditional first person shooting game.
Farcry reminds me of the relationship between technology and digital game entertainment. It is a loop like all the other entertainment media. While a new technology came out, because it was new, public will like to spend money on it, because of their curiosity and vogue. But after a shoot period, when all the people had got used to this kind of technology, they started to criticize the lack of content and connotation. Certainly, Farcry is in one of these new technology waves, and it caught the right time. If half-life 2 or doom3 was released last year, Farcry will definitely be buried by these big brands. Because of Farcry was the first new generation graphical advanced game, everybody wanted to try it and raised their thumbs for the unheard-of experiences.
In Will Wright’s game design chart, Farcry could not break the boundary of the traditional game territory. However, the reaction from the public is similar to the reaction for a new game concept. FPS has already become a peak of game genre. The vertical change of this peak with the technology breaks the boundary of the ceiling. Besides looking for new genre in the unknown territory, to improve the existing height of a game genre is also considerable and practical method. However, there are limited inventions in the industry, how many games can share the benefits from technology creation? Compared with that, concept creativity is more accessible to the game designers.
A Game Journal from Jenova Chen
Posted by Jenova at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2004
Cockroach Project Started
Environment Setup
Script example
///////////////////////////////////////
//Back Ground Info //
///////////////////////////////////////
//Shon's mystery
Alex: Jill?
Jill: Huh?
Alex: I'm tired.
Jill: (Look at Alex)
Alex: I hate to say this, but I'm tired.
Jill: (Pause)You can return at anytime.
Alex: Jill, you can't stick to this.
Jill: (Stare at Alex)
Alex: What? What are you thinking? He was dead, you know it. Shon's dead.
Jill: (Silence)
//Rally point and short of water
Jill: (Sigh)
Alex: How much water have we got today?
Jill: Two gallons, not even enough for us to reach the next rally point.
Alex: It's not bad, we are still alive at least.
Jill: (Silence)
Alex: Sorry.
Jill: Never mind, it's not your fault.
Alex: (Look out of the room)
//Birth places
Alex: So...Where are you from?
Jill: Old NewYork.
Alex: Really? I've never believed it was still existing.
Jill: Not until we left.
Alex: (Pause) I'm sorry.
Jill: What's your homeland? United City?
Alex: No, actually, I came from another city. I bet you don't know it before.
Jill: The third mobile city.
Alex: Oh, man, how do you know that? You must tell me, how?
Jill: By friends.
Alex: Oh no, it's impossible. Who are your friends?
Jill: (Ignore)
//Room Info
Alex: These greedy bastards. Is this the place to sleep?
Jill: This is a cabin.
Alex: Sleep on the table? My godness!
Jill: (Ignore)
Alex: Well, this is the only one we can afford though. I wish we can earn more water tomorrow.
Jill: We have to.
Alex: All right, all right.
Posted by Jenova at 1:42 PM | Comments (0)
Cockroach Project Started
Environment Setup
Script example
///////////////////////////////////////
//Back Ground Info //
///////////////////////////////////////
//Shon's mystery
Alex: Jill?
Jill: Huh?
Alex: I'm tired.
Jill: (Look at Alex)
Alex: I hate to say this, but I'm tired.
Jill: (Pause)You can return at anytime.
Alex: Jill, you can't stick to this.
Jill: (Stare at Alex)
Alex: What? What are you thinking? He was dead, you know it. Shon's dead.
Jill: (Silence)
//Rally point and short of water
Jill: (Sigh)
Alex: How much water have we got today?
Jill: Two gallons, not even enough for us to reach the next rally point.
Alex: It's not bad, we are still alive at least.
Jill: (Silence)
Alex: Sorry.
Jill: Never mind, it's not your fault.
Alex: (Look out of the room)
//Birth places
Alex: So...Where are you from?
Jill: Old NewYork.
Alex: Really? I've never believed it was still existing.
Jill: Not until we left.
Alex: (Pause) I'm sorry.
Jill: What's your homeland? United City?
Alex: No, actually, I came from another city. I bet you don't know it before.
Jill: The third mobile city.
Alex: Oh, man, how do you know that? You must tell me, how?
Jill: By friends.
Alex: Oh no, it's impossible. Who are your friends?
Jill: (Ignore)
//Room Info
Alex: These greedy bastards. Is this the place to sleep?
Jill: This is a cabin.
Alex: Sleep on the table? My godness!
Jill: (Ignore)
Alex: Well, this is the only one we can afford though. I wish we can earn more water tomorrow.
Jill: We have to.
Alex: All right, all right.
Posted by Jenova at 1:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2004
The Philosophical Roots of Computer Game Design
Ernest Adams, freelance game designer and popular game industry commentator, spoke with great humor on Friday afternoon about philosophy, literature, and the need for new heroes in the video game world.
The Pre-Modernity of An Emerging Art
The game industry, Adams said, is in a conflicted state of being. At its heart, the industry is a technical place, composed of rectangular boxes and rectangular thinkers whose technological determinism stunts the creative growth of the medium. We believe so strongly that our technology is thousands of years more advanced than the rest of what's out there, Adams said - and yet the rest of the world sees our ability to tell stories as thousands of years behind that of other mediums.
And according to Adams, we are. Videogames are in their pre-modernity, he said, beginning an extended literary metaphor. Our Virginia Woolfes and James Joyces, the people who experiment with the art form and raise the state of the art, have yet to emerge. The world is only just beginning to understand that video games are an art, and thus we still reside in the pre-modern space where heroes and demons battle one another in the black and white reality of our ancient ancestors, with emotional apotheosis still an epoch away.
Steam Engines, Hobbits, and The Failing of the Matrix
It is rumored that the PS3, said Adams, will be one thousand times as powerful as the PS2. Does that mean PS3 games will be one thousand times as entertaining, or the experiences one thousand times as deep? Adams likened the technological development of gaming to the emergence of steam-based technologies in the Victorian era. Those innovators must have found their time very exciting, he said. Yet if steam trains had been used for entertainment, engineers would have been fools to think that a thousand times more steam would mean a thousand times as much entertainment.
Referring to Tolkien's mythological sources for The Lord of the Rings, Adams joked that the guiding vision of the videogame industry is, in essence, to create "Icelandic Nerd Poetry." How, he asked, can we expect gaming to be considered among the world's great art forms, when most of those world's great artists would feel uncomfortable even attending the Game Developers Conference? Tolkien, the greatest of luddites, would have hated GDC, Adams said, noting that the man would have reviled the "nerdiness" of the game industry as epitomizing all that is wrong with technology and industrialization. And yet, said Adams, we worship him.
What we need, Adams said, is to transcend the struggle between the experiences we create and the technology with which we create them. There is a disconnect there, he said, and pointed to the Matrix sequels as the quintessential example. Here we have a set of films that emphasize style over substance, form over function. These films are created using the latest and most amazing of visual technologies, and yet they absolutely fail in terms of narrative. That, he continued, is the core paradigm of the game industry.
The Search for New Heroes
The solution, said Adams, lies in shifting our view of which kinds of people will be the ones to push the limits of our industry. We need new heroes, he said. According to Adams, programming and technological innovation will always be at the center of what we do, but we need to turn our respect and admiration to the visual artists, sound designers, and creative thinkers who have the vision and confidence to synthesize technical innovation with aesthetic sensibilities, if we are to keep moving forward.
Once we do that, he said, the bar will begin to rise on the aesthetics underlying our games. To rise above the level of "Icelandic Nerd Poets" and outgrow our Victorian roots, we need to begin creating games in which the heart leads the mind, and in which technology and creativity are in harmony. Only then, Adams said, will the hearts of the public open before us, and finally lead the way to a post-modern video game era.
This is quite what I've been thinking for a long time. When technology become overwhelmed in film and game industry, we have to remind everybody the importance of art and creativity. Besides eye candy, what people care more is the content, and it will never be made just by technician.
-Jenova
Posted by Jenova at 5:02 PM | Comments (2)
March 26, 2004
GDC 2004
I'm so lucky to be able to go to the GDC held in San Jose recently.
Independent Games Festival Awards & 4th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (Civic Auditorium)
The festival was really successful. When the audience saw their favorite games show up on the nominated and played on the huge screen, the applause was no worse than that from Oscar. Yes, it was gamers' Oscar. Knights of the Old Republic and Prince of Persia III are the big winner this year. Although my favorite Beyond Good & Evil didn't won any prizes, it was nearly nominated in all the awards.
Though I'm a game hard core who spend 4 hours on game play everyday. I still met a lot of new games on the festival. After the festival I went to tried all these new games. Viewtiful Joe is the most impressive one. Fascinating fighting and slow motion, humorous film and comic style attracted everybody passed by. And the highlight of Viewtiful Joe was that it is a perfect game not only entertain the player but the audience behind the player.
Interesting Input Devices on GDC
Tracking Glove
Don't be confused with the glove used in Virtual Reality. This glove is fairly cheap and simple. By connect two wire on the gloves, the mechanic tracking ball can feed back the two hands positions. The latency is nearly zero. This device completely fit one of my game concept about a combat simulation. And the game on the screen is a boxing game. After tried the game, I felt that the game-play I imagined is realized in this game. The total prize including the glove only cost $90. I highly recommend you guys to try it.
http://www.in2games.uk.com/testsite/index.php
Tracking_Sabre
From the same company of the gloves above. This sabre was actually a handle, which offers two point poistion so that you can countrol the katana in the game demo. But it didn't support yaw, which is a big problem to simulate real fence.
http://www.in2games.uk.com/testsite/index.php
Mobile Key
This tablet support more than 25 isolated keys. User could assign different key on the keyboard to the tablet here. They also support macro which means u can arrange a serial combination of different keys to one key. Although the manufacturer claimed it was designed to simplify the players input method and offer them more comfortable composition of the keys, I found another useful area for this invention. Instead of put these keys on the board, why not stick them on the other devices or even on hands? However, the manufacturer said these keys are now only working on the tablet. Fortunately, they have the technology and available to do further development.
Eye Toyish Input
It works just like eyetoy, but the game they put in use is different from eyetoy, you have to use your body to control an aircraft.
Other Comment
Simplified Facial Modelling
This is a new British company. Different from FaceGen, this facial modelling software can scan the photos and make model by itself. You can also export one emotion to other faces. It is not a mature product, but will be great helpful in large number of 3d characters required game.
Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor
As I expected, Unreal Tournament 2004 renew the Unreal editor. The particle system and the mount system have been improved a lot. We can try more interesting and more complicated design in this engine.
I was lucky to be photoed in Yahoo News
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040325/480/caps10303252230
Posted by Jenova at 9:47 PM | Comments (1)
March 5, 2004
An interesting flash interactive adventure game
http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf
Posted by Jenova at 1:10 AM | Comments (0)
March 1, 2004
The Business of Computer and Video Games 2004
DFC Intelligence will release its latest report on the interactive entertainment industry, The Business of Computer and Video Games, in mid-March. This report looks at both historical and future trends and has an analysis of the major players in the video game food chain: hardware manufacturers, developers, publishers, retailers and consumers. This month we thought we would provide a brief overview of some key points discussed in the report.
Video Game Consumer Growth: Dire annual holiday warnings to the contrary, there has been a strong sales increase in the video game market over the past few years. The good news is that there is still plenty of room for growth. Household penetration of console game systems has not substantially increased in recent years. DFC Intelligence estimates that the number of U.S. household with a video game system has gone from 34 million in 1994 to 45 million today. On top of that, over 25% of video game households only own an older system. Therefore it seems clear that much of industry growth has come From increased usage with existing customers. There are still plenty of new customers waiting in the wings.
The Interactive Family: Sales figures indicate that there is clearly increased usage of game systems within households. Interactive entertainment is no longer just for the kids, it is now for the teenagers, and increasingly the parents, many of whom grew up with Atari and Nintendo systems. This means more households have several users, own multiple systems and have a tendency to purchase more software per system (higher tie rates). It also means that the system targeted to the broadest demographic may be the most attractive to the growing number of households with multiple users.
Worldwide Market Growth: For a company to be successful in the interactive entertainment business it must operate on a worldwide basis. Five years ago this was not the case, and some companies could do well focusing on a single market such as the U.S. or Japan. In recent years, the importance of the Japanese market has declined and much of the market growth has come from North America, Europe and emerging worldwide markets. Sony, with the PlayStation, was the first company to build a solid business in all three core regions (Japan, North America and Europe). Successful companies will imitate Sony's worldwide outlook. The next growth challenge for interactive entertainment companies will be to expand into emerging markets while maintaining growth in core markets. Emerging markets include South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, mainland Asia, Australia, Eastern Europe and others. Some of these countries like Australia and South Korea already have substantial interactive entertainment industries. In other emerging countries consumers have only been introduced to games for the personal computer or via illegal, pirated software. In the next few years, the console manufacturers are likely to make a major push to enter markets like China and Russia.
Soaring Development and Marketing Costs: The need to expand on a worldwide basis is critical because of the soaring cost of video games. Today's games have entire teams of programmers, graphic artists, game designers, producers and audio technicians. Many games have expensive licenses, utilize Hollywood talent and have high-quality soundtracks. Consumers now expect non-interactive introductions and cut scenes that feature movie-quality computer-generated graphics and/or video with live actors. To get consumers to notice these high-end titles usually requires a marketing budget that equals or exceeds the development budget. As an average game reaches development costs of $5 million, DFC Intelligence estimates the breakeven point is reaching 500,000 units. Unfortunately, only about 5% of SKUs will reach that level in the U.S. This means to be successful it is critical that companies 1) develop for multiple platforms and 2) release titles on a worldwide basis.
Consolidation: When DFC Intelligence started publishing reports on the game industry in 1994 almost all analysts were predicting major industry consolidation. At the time the U.S. console market was dominated by five publishers (Nintendo, Sega, EA, Acclaim and Capcom). Ten years later, the industry is as fragmented as ever. The names may have changed, but industry consolidation has not yet occurred as many predicted. Instead the recent trend in mergers and acquisitions has been for established publishers to buy small development boutiques. The big change of the past three years has been that Electronic Arts has replaced Nintendo as the perennial market share leader.
Retail Scene: As part of our research DFC Intelligence closely analyzes and personally visits over 20 retail chains. In our surveys over the holiday 2003 season we found that retail penetration of video game products has definitely expanded (see our December article) and price points have become very consistent. However, not all chains are equal. The biggest disappointment is powerhouse retailer Wal-Mart, which really surprised us with its poor selection and shoddy merchandising. In fact we were so shocked we visited several Wal-Marts, only to find them all consistently bad. In sharp contrast was mass merchant Target which had a solid selection and some excellent sales. Another big change we found was the improvement when retailers go from mall-based locations to strip-mall neighborhood locations. The leader in this area is GameStop (a merger of Babbages, Software Etc and Funco). We were also impressed with Game Crazy. Falling behind somewhat was Electronics Boutique (Target actually had a better selection), although we will say that the strip-mall based EBGames stores are a major improvement over the traditional mall-based locations. To summarize some of our findings we present the best and worst of U.S. video game retailers.
Best Selection: Amazon.com/ toysrus.com, Best Buy, Toys R Us, GameStop, Target
Best Prices: Costco, Amazon.com/toysrus.com, Target
Best Service: GameStop, EBGames, Game Crazy
Best Overall: GameStop, Best Buy, Costco, Target
Biggest Up and Comers: GameStop, Game Crazy, Costco, EBGames
Worst Selection: Sears, Sam Goody, Tower Records, K-Mart, CompUSA, Wal-Mart
Worst Merchandising: K-Mart, Wal-Mart, KB Toys
Worst Overall: K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, KB Toys
Hollywood Part 3: Back in 1994, the interactive entertainment industry was undergoing its second major flirtation with Hollywood. This was the multimedia era and Hollywood studios were investing in anything interactive in a big way. The major studios, by and large, got burned and retreated from the interactive entertainment business in the late 1990s. Well in 2004, one of the biggest stories is "they are back." The difference this time is that the marriage between Hollywood and video games may actually be a long lasting, albeit turbulent one. Hollywood ways have become an integral part of the interactive entertainment industry. This includes expensive licensing deals, negotiating with agents, packaged deals for movies/TV shows to games and even vice versa, game soundtracks, star talent in games and of course trailers featuring computer generated movie-quality videos that add nothing to game play. Consumer spending has shown that, as video games go Hollywood, they can significantly expand their appeal. However, at the same time, it means a huge increase in costs, risks and potential pitfalls. DFC Intelligence predicts that while Hollywood may be here to stay, many of the game companies that flirt with Hollywood may not.
The Business of Computer and Video Games, scheduled for release in March 2004, is a detailed 500+ page report designed to provide users a comprehensive overview of how the interactive entertainment industry functions. Coverage includes:
• A historical analysis of the six major cycles of the video game industry.
• An overview of console, portable and PC-based hardware systems.
• A look at individual hardware systems of the past ten years.
• An discussion of the differences between different markets throughout the world.
• The top-selling games of the past ten years.
• A complete analysis of game genres.
• An analysis of what makes a game successful.
• Consumer demographics and profiles.
• The players in the industry food chain, including developers, publishers, distributors and retailers.
• A look at development issues.
• Detailed business models showing different break-even scenarios for developers and publishers. Scenarios are broken down based on sales level, publishing structure and cost of licensed content.
• A complete look at the retail chain, including analysis of individual retail chains.
• Results of retail chain price point survey.
• Marketing elements, costs and case studies.
• Analysis of major trends.
• A comparison of video games with other forms of media, including the music and movie industries.
• A discussion of emerging distribution channels.
As part of our ongoing research efforts DFC Intelligence is delivering free monthly briefs on hot topics in the interactive entertainment and video game industry. You (or a colleague of yours) have signed up to receive these briefs.
Posted by Jenova at 11:58 AM | Comments (1)
February 19, 2004
Thoughts from Three Corridors
Thoughts from Three Corridors
Analyze of a custom game map in
Warcraft III: Region of Chaos & Warcraft III: Fronzen Throne
by Jenova Chen
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~xinghanc/RecentProjects/Analyze%20of%20Three%20Corridors.htm
Posted by Jenova at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2004
2003 Game Development Salary Survey
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040211/olsen_01.shtml
The designer and artist are always less value than the programmer, unless they are 6 years "old".
Posted by Jenova at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)
February 3, 2004
Bio-Feedback on Game Input
I've tried a new released game which use bio-feedback which means your heart beats and your blood underskin to control and complete the gameplay.
This game is designed to teach the player how to practice Yuga. While most game are designed to let the player be exciting or attracted by the game, this game is encourage the player to be relief.
Here is the link,
http://www.creativelivinginstitute.org/info.i?cmd=builder&pageid=32
Posted by Jenova at 5:01 PM | Comments (1)
January 21, 2004
Let There be Clouds!
Fast, Realistic Cloud-Rendering in
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight
You're standing on rolling hills beneath a brilliant blue sky. You look up and see huge spherical white blobs suspended a few thousand feet in the air. What's wrong with this picture? Perhaps you could use a better cloud-rendering system.
In videogames that simulate outdoor reality, realistic clouds can be one of the most compelling aspects of the scene. Clouds can also set the mood - dark thunderheads for an ominous scene, light puffy clouds for a happy mood. Michelangelo spent years perfecting the heavens on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but we need to render realistic clouds in milliseconds. Fortunately, we have more advanced tools to work with. This article describes the cloud modeling and rendering system that ships with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004:
A Century of Flight
Clouds in the real world consist of many types, such as altocumulus, stratus, and cumulonimbus, and cloud coverages ranging from a few sparse clouds to a dense, overcast sky. Our cloud system models this range of cloud types and coverages. Microsoft Flight Simulator allows users to download real-world weather and see current weather conditions reflected in the game graphics, which means we need to generate compelling visuals to match any scenario that could occur in the real world.
The interactive nature of games necessitates that clouds must look realistic whether the camera is far away, next to the cloud, or traveling through the cloud. Another requirement is that we need to render at high framerates. Microsoft Flight Simulator supports a wide range of machines, from the latest PCs to those dating back several years, and the performance must scale to this spectrum of machines.
Clouds need to be shaded appropriately to emulate both sunlight and light reflected from the sky, especially for games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, which take place over the course of day, spanning dawn, midday, dusk, and night. We model the dynamic aspect of clouds by introducing a method to form and dissipate them over time.
Previous Work
Over the past 20 years, graphics researchers have modeled clouds in many ways, including cellular automata, voxels, and metaballs. They also modeled cloud animation via fluid dynamics. There are two reasons that these research techniques have not been widely adopted by games. The first is performance. Many of these systems produced screenshots that were gorgeous but required multiple seconds to render. The second is lack of artistic control. Imagine that you create a cloud by running a set of fluid dynamics equations. You examine the results and decide you would like a wispier top on the cloud. You must then iterate through cycles of adjusting variables such as air humidity and temperature, and recomputing the equations, which can require hours and still may not produce the visual effect you had in mind.
Realistic results in cloud shading have been achieved by simulating the scattering of light by particles as it passes through the cloud, known as anisotropic scattering. This produces accurate self-shadowing and interesting effects such as the halo when the cloud lies between the camera and the sun. We created a simple shading model for our system, forgoing these effects in exchange for fewer computations and higher artistic control.
Many flight simulation games have featured clouds, recent examples being Flight Simulator 2002, IL-2 Sturmovik, and Combat Flight Simulator III. A common approach is to paint clouds onto the skybox texture, which has minimal performance overhead, but such clouds look two-dimensional and never get closer as the camera moves toward them. A better solution is to draw each cloud as a single facing sprite. This solution looks realistic from a stationary camera but produces anomalies as the camera rotates around it. A few recent games use clusters of textured particles, similar to our system. Some use unique textures for every cloud, which has a high video memory cost as the number of clouds in the scene increases. Other systems use small blurry textures, which results in clouds that look volumetric but lack definition. All of these systems also lack the ability to form and dissipate clouds.
Our system was inspired after hearing a GDC talk by Mark Harris, who developed Skyworks, a real-time system that created volumetric clouds from sprites. Harris dynamically generated an impostor for every cloud and achieved speeds of 1 to 500 frames per second. He also modeled the fluid motion behind cloud animation. The limitation of his system is that it cannot render large clouds, such as cumulonimbus, or dense scenes of overcast clouds, due to the prohibitively high video memory cost of generating large impostors. Our system is able to address this limitation. In addition, we tackle the problem of scaling to multiple cloud types.
Cloud Modeling
Given that we want immediate visual feedback and full control over the final result, how can we design the artistic pipeline for modeling clouds? We model each cloud as five to 400 alpha-blended textured sprites. The sprites face the camera during rendering and together comprise a three-dimensional volume. We render them back-to-front based on distance to the camera.
We wrote a plug-in for 3DS Max that creates cloud sprites based on a 3D model composed of boxes. The artist denotes a cloud shape by creating and placing a series of boxes, using default 3DS Max functionality. The artist can create any number of boxes of any size and can choose to overlap the boxes.
Figure 1. A custom tool within 3DS Max allows the artist to set properties and generate cloud sprites.
The plug-in UI contains an edit field to specify the number of sprites to generate. To create denser clouds, the artist would set a number which is proportionately higher than the size of boxes in the model. Wispier clouds would be created by setting a lower number. There are generally 20 to 200 boxes for each 16-square-kilometer section of clouds, and the number of sprites per box can vary between 1 to 100, depending on the density. The UI also allows the artist to specify a range for the width and height of each sprite, and choose between categories (such as stratus and solid cumulus) that determine the textures that will be automatically placed by the tool onto the sprites. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the tool UI.
The artist presses a button in the plug-in UI to generate the cloud sprites. The plug-in creates a list of randomly placed sprite centers, then traverses the list and eliminates any sprite whose 3D distance to another sprite is less than a threshold value (the "cull distance"). This process reduces overdraw in the final rendering and also eliminates redundant sprites created from overlapping boxes. We have found that a cull radius of 1/3 of the sprite height works well for typical clouds, and 1/5 to 1/6 of the sprite height yields dense clouds. Figure 2 shows screenshots of a cloud model made of boxes and its corresponding sprites.
The plug-in creates an initial model of sprites, and the artist can now edit them within 3DS Max. Having achieved the desired visual look, the artist uses a custom-written exporter to create a binary file containing the sprite center locations, rotations, width, and height, along with texture and shading information. These files are loaded during game execution and rendered.
Textures
To create a dozen distinct cloud types, we mix and match 16 32-bit textures for both color and alpha (see Figure 3). The flat-bottomed texture in the upper right-hand corner is used to create flat bottoms in cumulus clouds. The three foggy textures in the top row are used heavily in stratus clouds and have a subtle bluish-gray tinge. The six puffy textures in the bottom two rows give interesting nuances to cumulus clouds, and the remaining six are wispy sprites that are used across all cloud types.
Figure 2. Artists use boxes to build the shapes of clouds (left), and then let a custom tool in 3DS Max populate the boxes with sprites (right).
By creating interesting features inside the textures that resemble eddies and wisps, we are able to create more realistic looking clouds with fewer sprites. We place all 16 textures on a single 512x512 texture sheet, which spared the cost of switching textures between drawing calls to the video card. We automatically generate mip-map levels for this texture from 512x512 down to 32x32. To create more variations from these 16 textures, the artist specifies a minimum and maximum range of rotation for each sprite. When the binary file is loaded into the game, the sprite is given a random rotation within the range.
In-Cloud Experience
We would like a seamless in-cloud experience that looks consistent with the cloud's appearance as viewed from the outside, which does not often come with the commonly used technique of playing a canned in-cloud animation. In our system, as the camera passes through a sprite, it immediately disappears from view. We encountered a problem because the sprites rotated to face the camera, and during the in-cloud experience, the camera was so close to the sprite center that small movements in the camera position caused large rotations of the cloud sprite. This resulted in a "parting of the Red Sea" effect as sprites moved out of the way of the oncoming camera.
We locked the facing angle of the sprite when the camera came within half of the sprite radius. This removed the Red Sea effect but caused sprites to be seen edge-on if they locked and the camera then pivoted around them. Our solution was to detect the angle between the sprite's locked orientation and the vector to the camera, and to adjust the transparency of the sprite. The negative side effect is that the section of the cloud near the camera appears less opaque.
Posted by Jenova at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of NPCs?
By Ernest Adams
Gamasutra
[Author's Bio]
January 16, 2004
Although I don't agree with his conclusion, I still agree with his analyse for the 3d & 2d Character designing, especially the Bond stuff. It really make the idea clear by using these examples.
BTW, have you guys played Postal? Fiasco Character.
==================================================
What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of NPCs?
I haven't designed many characters over the years - certainly not action characters. In an action game, the avatar character's appearance is all-important, because he or she will be in front of the player 99% of the time. Whether it's someone tough like Lara Croft, cute like Mario, goofy like Crash Bandicoot - or a mixture of all three, like Ratchet - the visual design of the character dominates other considerations. Toby Gard has written an excellent introduction to the subject in his Gamasutra article "Building Character". Non-player characters (NPCs) tend to get similar, but less detailed, treatment - their visual appearance is tied to their role, and their role is usually either hostile or helpful, with nothing in between.
Steve Meretzky, too, has written an excellent Gamasutra article on character creation. His article, called "Building Character: An Analysis of Character Creation" discusses visual appearance and motivation as well. He offers a useful list of questions to which you should have answers if you want to create a character with a background, a person who seems to have some depth.
That guy in Postal.
There's something of an open question about how detailed an avatar character should be, because the avatar is, after all, a stand-in for the player. Most of the time they only do what the player tells them to, so their decisions are the player's decisions. Avatars have to be at least reasonably likeable, and somebody that you want to keep alive rather than actually kill off yourself (like, say, the guy in Postal). Avatars used to be a complete cipher with no personality at all, but lately they've been getting more detailed, and players don't seem to be complaining. But the place where we really have freedom to explore characterization is in the design of non-player characters. That's where the player will notice it most, and that's what I'll concentrate on in this column.
I want to take Meretzky's discussion a little farther. We often speak of characters in fiction as possessing "dimensions" - "I didn't like that movie, the characters were completely two-dimensional," and so on. What do we actually mean by this? Not spatial dimensions, obviously. Rather, we mean that the characters are lacking in some quality that would make them seem more human. I believe that the quality lacking is variety: intellectual, behavioral, and above all, emotional variety.
I'm going to propose a system for classifying characters according to their "dimensionality." It hinges upon the idea of emotional variety. Rather than try to give a formal definition, I'll use examples from the James Bond universe that I think will illuminate the idea.
Zero-Dimensional
A zero-dimensional character is one who exists in fixed emotional states, without any variability. In the Bond world, any of the Big Bad Guy's nameless henchmen is a zero-dimensional character. Ordinarily they're only alive for about five seconds, from the time it takes them to see Bond and shoot at him, to the time it takes him to shoot back and kill them. Their only emotion - if you can even call it an emotion - is a desire to kill Bond. Occasionally, for comedic effect, Bond turns the tables on them in some clever way and causes them all to run away in panic. They have no sliding scale of feelings; they just have a "hate state" and a "fear state."
In a video game these NPCs are usually found as enemies in simple action games like platformers. Not only do the characters have fixed emotional states, but those states are only relevant to the player. They have no affection or enmity towards anyone else; they don't help their buddies or even grieve when they die. In fact, they're usually not aware of them at all. The only thing they know about is the player.
One-Dimensional
A one-dimensional character has a sliding scale of emotional expression. We use this a lot in games: an affinity relationship characterized by a single variable. With one number, you can define an emotional state that runs from hate to neutrality to love, like this:
Figure 1: The emotional state of a one-dimensional character is easy to understand and predict.
In a Bond movie, this is the Big Bad Guy's love interest. She's innocent but deluded. Somehow the Big Bad Guy has managed to keep his army of ninjas, hidden missile base, and plans for world domination secret from her. (BBGs seem to prefer girlfriends who aren't too bright.) She loves the Big Bad Guy, or at least likes him enough to hang around with him, and she dislikes Bond because he's a cocky show-off. Eventually Bond is able to prove to her what scum the Big Bad Guy is. Her affection for Bond goes up, and her love for the Big Bad Guy slides down to hate. (This make's Bond's eventual triumph sexual as well as mortal - not only does Bond kill the BBG, but takes away his girlfriend too.)
Bond girls are not subtle; certainly not fully human, but they're marginally more interesting than a 0D character. They occasionally show a little anger or pride, and they quite often show fear, but their only meaningful emotion is a sliding scale between love (combined with loyalty) and hate. They have two of scales, one for Bond and one for the BBG, and they usually work in direct inverse proportion. No Bond girl ever regrets the loss of her relationship with the Big Bad Guy - the good times they used to have together, their hopes of starting a family, and so on. That would add an additional dimension that Bond movies don't explore.
This is about the level of the more sophisticated adventure game or RPG characters. Each character has an array of single-valued affinity relationships, one with the player and one each with the other NPCs in the game. The player's actions can cause that value to change, and this is reflected in the character's behavior. Less often, the other NPCs can also act to change their affinity relationships with each other as well. However, most NPCs are not designed with a desire to be liked. They don't make much effort to improve other NPCs' opinions of them.
Two-Dimensional
Now we're beginning to get somewhere. A two-dimensional character is capable of feeling a variety of emotions along a variety of scales, as long as they don't conflict with each other. In the Bond world, this is Bond himself. Bond enjoys a great many things: good food and wine; driving fast cars; taking great risks; promiscuous sex. He dislikes the KGB, drug barons, and megalomaniacs. He has a sense of duty, but not much of honor or patriotism. He feels a vague obligation to rescue his bed partners when they get taken hostage, but that's as far as his commitment goes. He only occasionally loses his temper, mostly when someone tries especially hard to kill him. (It doesn't bother Bond when someone tries to kill him once or twice. It's perseverance that really annoys him.)
The important point about Bond's various emotions is that they are never inconsistent, because they don't interfere with each other. Bond is never of two minds about anything; never uncertain what to do; never faced with a moral dilemma. If he does have a conflict of emotions (having to kill a woman that he has slept with, for example), he has a clear rule for resolving the problem: duty trumps love (or lust), and he never mourns about it afterwards. All that Bond really faces are challenges to be overcome one after another, like - ah-ha! - a player in a video game. They're mostly physical challenges, rather than emotional or intellectual challenges, anyway. Bond's emotional mechanisms are quite adequate to deal with the types of problems that he encounters.
Many years ago I had a job in which I had two bosses. One was honest but thoroughly unpleasant; the other, friendly but a bit of a scam artist. It was a weird situation. But there's nothing that says honesty must accompanied by good manners. We consider them both to be virtuous and so we expect them to go together, but they don't have to. Although these qualities are not emotions, it's a good example of a pair of variables that don't interact with each other.
Figure 2: A two-dimensional character's various personality attributes don't necessarily need to be in synch with each other-a good or bad guy could be quite dishonest, yet sickly sweet and polite at the same time.
In the world of videogames, The Sims is probably the game that most closely approximates 2D characters. The behavior of each Sim is governed by a variety of feelings and needs. Not having seen the code, I don't know exactly what mechanisms are in use, but I can tell by observation that the Sims are capable of feeling affectionate, jealous, angry, bored and so on. If they do experience contradictory emotions, there's a rule that determines which one governs their behavior at the moment. Unfortunately, their animation is not sophisticated enough to reflect a complex internal state. You can't tell the difference between a Sim who's cooking dinner while feeling jealous and one who's cooking dinner while feeling bored. Only the double cone over their heads gives a clue to their mental state, and it merely displays a univariate "happiness" value between red and green. (If Maxis had wanted to, they could have used the entire RGB color space, and displayed three values in the same mechanism; but that would have required the player to remember that blue means sleepy while yellow means alert, or whatever.)
Three-Dimensional
For a three-dimensional character we have to leave the Bond universe entirely--because it doesn't contain any. A fully three-dimensional character has the complex hodgepodge of emotions that we all feel, including some that are directly contradictory. A 3D character can love and hate at the same time. Children abused by their parents often experience this condition, which does bad things to their heads.
Figure 3: A three-dimensional character is much more human like than those discussed earlier, and adds realism to the gameplay.
This is an extreme example, however. Three-dimensionality doesn't mean that people are psychotic; it just means that they have a wide range of emotions and, if the circumstances are right, they can occasionally be faced with conflicting impulses. This happens all the time in real life: a person can be honest but greedy, find a lot of money, and have to deal with the contradictory emotions this creates.
I'm a big fan of the sea-novels written by Patrick O'Brian, two of which were recently made into the Peter Weir film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The books are set in the British Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars. They're filled with high adventure, but also a great deal of 19th-century science and culture. Most important, however, is the interaction between the two protagonists. Captain Jack Aubrey is bluff, cheerful, and politically conservative, a brilliant military tactician whose eye for the ladies and financial naïveté tends to land him in hot water ashore. Dr. Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon, is irritable, perceptive, an enlightened liberal (he believes in radical ideas like democracy, of all things), a hopeless landlubber, and an opium addict. In spite of all this they are great friends, lovers of good food and good music, and vigorous opponents of Napoleon - Aubrey from his sense of duty as a military man, Maturin out of personal conviction. Over the course of 20 novels, we come to know them very well indeed. Their strengths are sufficient to lift them above the mass of humanity and make them admirable subjects for a series of novels; their weaknesses are sufficient to have a profound impact on their lives, but not so severe as to make them unlikable or pitiful.
Part of the key to the richness of their characters is their variability. Like real humans, they are not always consistent. Though you can predict what they will say on a certain topics (Stephen bitterly opposes slavery; Jack is a firm believer in monarchy) they have good days and bad days, times when they are warm-hearted and generous and others when they are sour and intolerant. Jack, though usually jovial, suffers from occasional bouts of depression, especially after a battle. Stephen's irascibility seems to evaporate when he is around children. Their emotions don't simply change as part of the plot, like a Bond girl's. They also change for other reasons and sometimes for no reason at all, moving tidally like the restless sea with which they live.
Unfortunately, my example demonstrates one of the fundamental limitations of visual media. Words are an excellent way of illustrating internal states of mind; pictures are not. The Master and Commander movie, good as it was, displayed only a fraction of these two men's emotional ranges. A film director simply can't convey in a two-hour movie what an author can in 20 novels, or even in one if it's highly introspective. And ultimately this limitation applies to us in the game industry as well. We won't be able to conduct extended character studies in video games. Fortunately, it's unlikely that we'll need to. Video games are about interactivity, and that is where we should devote most of our attention.
That doesn't mean, however, that all our non-player characters should be the equivalent of Mario's turtles or Sonic's piranhas. There is merit in striving even for what you cannot reach, so long as you continue to get closer to it. I believe we should go on working towards the goal of creating three-dimensional characters in our games, firstly because advancing the state of the art is a worthwhile aim in itself, and secondly because it will enable us to make new games for new markets: people who are tired of cardboard characters.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury imagined what he thought of as a dreadful scenario, a future in which people don't read books, but participate in interactive soap operas through wall-sized television sets. Well, people aren't going to stop reading books, because as I've shown, books can do things that other entertainment media can't. But I would like to make the other part of Ray Bradbury's nightmare come true: the interactive soap operas. And that will require characters that we want to care about--characters that we believe are real.
Posted by Jenova at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2004
My Unreal Project
Hwew~~, during this Christmas, my ambitious project is not finished eventually.
Partly done, don't be pissed of by the scrapped sky. I'm still focusing on the environment building up. After that, I'll start my game-play coding stuff.
Welcome to anybody who have interests in my project.
Tired Jenova
Posted by Jenova at 2:49 PM | Comments (4)
November 30, 2003
Yume, MyGame Design & Proposal
Game Concept Demo
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~xinghanc/Animations/2DAnimation/YumeConcept.html
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/YumeConcept.html
This flash inherits the function from the last assignment: invisible plog branch trigger and backstage information collect.
Game Proposal
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Game Proposal.htm
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Game Proposal.doc
Additional Material
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/interactivetext.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Yume_outline.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Yehova.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Mona.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Sin.rtf
Posted by Jenova at 1:47 AM | Comments (0)
Yume, MyGame Design & Proposal
Game Concept Demo
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~xinghanc/Animations/2DAnimation/YumeConcept.html
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/YumeConcept.html
This flash inherits the function from the last assignment: invisible plog branch trigger and backstage information collect.
Game Proposal
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Game Proposal.htm
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Game Proposal.doc
Additional Material
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/interactivetext.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/Yume_outline.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Yehova.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Mona.rtf
ftp://anonymous@24.30.101.67:9000/biography of Sin.rtf
Posted by Jenova at 1:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2003
Families sue over GTAIII-inspired shooting
The families of two persons, whose cars were shot at by two teenage boys as they passed through the Great Smoky Mountains on June 25, have filed a $246 million lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment America, Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games, and Wal-Mart. Aaron Hamel, 45, was killed and Kimberly Bede, 19, was seriously wounded when their cars were fired upon by two stepbrothers, aged 14 and 16, from Newport, Tennessee.
The boys told investigators that they had gotten the rifles from a locked room in their home and then started shooting at vehicles on Interstate 40 just like in Grand Theft Auto III. It's worth noting that GTA is an M-rated game that neither of them should have been playing. The minors are currently serving an indefinite term in state custody after pleading guilty to reckless homicide, endangerment, and assault in juvenile court in August.
The suit filed earlier this week alleges that Grand Theft Auto III inspires and trains players to shoot at vehicles and persons, and claims that the game's designers, marketers, and retailers are liable for $46 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages. We'll bring you more information on this story as it becomes available.
Families suing of violence and sex has become a common news in the entertainment industry. Film, TV, Game. Will the more immersive Vitual Reality became the next target? Sure. Is it possible to avoid bad influence on the public? Not so sure.
Posted by Jenova at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)
Why girls and games are a good mix
The grim thrills of Silent Hill appeal to some women
"Anna Larke works for games developer Argonaut and has worked on titles like Croc, Buck Bumble for N64 and the Harry Potter games.
Here she tells BBC News Online where video game makers are going wrong in their attempts to appeal to women. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3248461.stm
Different from the majority in the game industry, Anna Larke prefer attracting female game players by developing game regardless of the gender instead of "for girls". Which reminds me of this abnormal phenomenon in the game market. Besides the game development itself, we neglect the change on market building and commercial media. Game magazine and website are regarded mainly for male. This must change at first. The game society and the architecture needs a revolution now.
Posted by Jenova at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2003
Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling
"Game developers are beginning to realize that mindless, violent action, and fantastic special effects supported by ever advancing hardware will not hold the interest of core gamers forever. After certain point, advances in resolution and sound won't be enough to increase sales. The added effect will be negligible. In addition, mindless games without good characters and narratives will never attract a wider market, despite photo-realistic decapitation and volcanic eruptions of blood. Sure, we can always count on x-number of boys coming up through the ranks who will buy x-number of units. But why should we be satisfied with this small market when there is a much larger market to be nurtured and exploited? As a result, some have begun to reconsider the importance of story and character development. "
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010914/littlejohn_01.htm
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Another inspireing article written by the author of Agitating for Dramatic Change.
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Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling
Introduction
Game developers are beginning to realize that mindless, violent action, and fantastic special effects supported by ever advancing hardware will not hold the interest of core gamers forever. After certain point, advances in resolution and sound won't be enough to increase sales. The added effect will be negligible. In addition, mindless games without good characters and narratives will never attract a wider market, despite photo-realistic decapitation and volcanic eruptions of blood. Sure, we can always count on x-number of boys coming up through the ranks who will buy x-number of units. But why should we be satisfied with this small market when there is a much larger market to be nurtured and exploited? As a result, some have begun to reconsider the importance of story and character development.
A rising concern is, "How do we graft a story to our action game?" Story means linear...right? The whole idea of a story is opposed to the idea of interactivity…right? The basic concern is "How do we make an effective interactive story?" So what does effective mean in terms of interactive storytelling? There are two basic ingredients. These are intuitive interface design and compelling stories. In this article, I will address one of the two ingredients, the development of compelling interactive storytelling.
My definition of a compelling story is one that grabs and holds the attention of the audience. It must move and excite them. It must take them on an emotional roller coaster. Finally, it must make them feel like they have had a worthwhile experience at the conclusion.
What is it that engages and holds on to us in stories, interactive or not? What makes a story compelling and satisfying? An art form has evolved to deal with these issues. The name of this art form is "drama". Though the word "drama" is thrown around a lot, very few could accurately describe it. So before we begin to explore how the principles of drama can be adapted to create compelling interactive entertainment, we must first briefly review what drama actually is. After a brief overview, we will explore specific tools and suggest some ways to adapt them.
What is Drama?
There are many generalized descriptions of drama, which is actually a body of arcane knowledge compiled over thousands of years. The main points of agreement are that drama is a story of human conflict communicated by means of speech and action to an audience. Moreover, that which depicts human conflict will command attention and interest. Therefore drama uses the innate human interest in conflict to engage an audience for the purpose of communicating a theme. The theme must be something that we can all relate to.
In a dramatic presentation, conflict is expressed through visible action. Of course game designers understand the need for action. But to make a project compelling, the reason for the action is more important than the action itself. The forces that cause the action are what excite the audience, making the action believable, and holding the audience in rapt attention.
What are the reasons for action? In life and in drama, the study of the human being resolves itself into an evaluation of the motivation that provokes action. Whenever there is a balance of forces in our lives, we prefer to not act. However, when there is an imbalance of forces, and the motivation to restore balance is strong enough to overcome this basic inertia, some kind of action is taken.
The motivation to act lies in our wishes, needs, and desires. When any obstacle stands in the path of the resolution of these motivations, conflict occurs. In its barest form, a dramatic work all comes down to a character, or a group of characters, that we empathize with because they want something that we can all relate to wanting, and antagonistic forces that opposes the fulfillment of our want. The clash of these opposing forces results in dramatic action.
Human motivation can arguably be divided into four basic drives: desire for response, desire for recognition, desire for adventure, and desire for security.
These are the motivating forces that control the actions of all humans.
Desire for Response: the need every human being feels for intimate contacts with others -the desire for companionship and fellowship- can be fulfilled by a dramatic work in at least two different ways. It can be a social institution. People seldom go to the theatre or to the theater by themselves. Of course massively multiplayer games hook into this aspect of dramatic presentations.
In a more universal sense, an interactive dramatic work can satisfy the desire for response by providing the participant with a chance to partake in the drive to resolve the conflict with others. The participant who is caught up in the imaginative whirl of the work feels a fellowship and an intimate personal contact with the dramatic characters — empathy, in other words. Instead of just the immediate thrill of a firefight, we also gain the desire of the participant to achieve a positive response from the characters by his or her actions. Thus, we have just made ordinary action more compelling.
Desire for Recognition
By way of the dramatic work we may enjoy all of the recognition denied us in life: fame, influence, authority, reputation, and renown. Drama is peopled with fabulous or fantastic characters to identify with. Traditionally we vicariously enjoy the homage given kings and heroic warriors. In the interactive realm we can directly receive the plaudits of a grateful society for bringing the bad guys to task. We can feel firsthand the rush of victory after a battle that would be much too dangerous in real life. If we choose to follow an outsider or anti-hero, we get the chance to feel much more special, unique, or unusual than in mundane life. But this only works if we have based our venture on the basic premise of drama: In its barest form, a dramatic work all comes down to a character, or a group of characters that we empathize with, because they want something that we can all relate to, but very difficult obstacles stand in our way. If we don't care about what the characters want, or if what we want is too easy to get, it won't move us. That is, it won't be fun.
The Desire for Adventure
No one's life is so complete that he or she doesn't desire vital new experiences beyond the possibility of attainment in ordinary life. The dramatic work is a land of action and adventure. We get to enjoy the thrills of romance and conflict that is frequently denied in life. We may grapple with the problems of a falling dynasty, or stand casually, blaster in hand, and then thwart the alien mob. We are the ones who get to protect the weak and destroy the wicked. (Or rid the cosmos of weak-minded inferiors).
The Desire for Security
In most dramatic works the hero emerges triumphant. When we identify with the hero we vicariously pass through the trials, the struggles, the crises, and remain reasonably sure that our cause will win out. This accounts for the popularity of films with happy endings. When we indulge ourselves with interactive entertainment we experience this firsthand. Some will say, "How immature! Life isn't like that." Of course, but most people do not go to the films or buy a video game to prove their maturity or to see life as it is. Life is complicated and our control of it is minimal. In our times not only our security but the security of life on earth is threatened. The feeling of helplessness in the face of it all is an every day fact of life. But in the dramatic work we get to indulge our emotional and imaginative sensitivity, to be stimulated and diverted, and to see life as it "ought" to be — more secure.
There are of course many other reasons that we seek out a good story, interactive or not. We may seek great intellectual as well as emotional values. They comment upon life and its problems, and perhaps pose specific argumentative propositions. A dramatic work can also provide deep aesthetic and artistic experiences. However, when all is said and done, the great attraction of a well done story lies in the opportunity to participate imaginatively in the dramatic action. A dramatic work can perhaps survive without art or intellect; it cannot survive without emotion.
Drama is a work that encourages empathy, but even more than that it promotes pathos — the quality that arouses feelings of pity, sorrow, and compassion. When a drama is successful, the audience is suspended in an altered state of hyper-awareness and emotion. The principles of drama are what make stories compelling.
Economy is the essence of clarity
Drama is an art form, and as such is a method of concise, powerful communication. In watching a film or a television episode we have declared our willingness to have something communicated to us. We are conditioned to think of a television or cinema screen as space within which significant things are being shown; we will therefore try to arrange everything that happens within this space into an understandable and significant pattern. Hence, anything that is unnecessary or does not contribute to that pattern will be seen as an intrusion, an irritant.
The dramatist limits and controls her imaginative flight within a well-defined dramatic structure. Her prime purpose is to project her interpretation of life clearly and forcefully, so that the experiences of the characters may become the experiences of the spectator. To do this successfully, the dramatist must follow the universal artistic process in adapting life to the stage. It is a process of informed simplification and refinement. The key steps in the creation of a work of art are:
Selection
Rearrangement
Intensification
By careful selection, the playwright chooses the conflict, theme, characters, and situation that communicate the playwrights meaning. By rearrangement, they create a dramatic and exciting sequence. The playwright may intensify by highlighting certain characters and subordinating others. They may emphasize particular ideas to the exclusion of others. The Playwright may develop some situations fully and trace others only lightly. The meaning and the power of the drama will depend upon the elements the playwright intensifies. Finally, highly selected dramatic characters are placed in highly selected dramatic situations.
The headline that proclaims "Space Ray Destroys Planet Alderaan" tells of an exciting action.
The headline that proclaims "Space Ray Destroys Planet Alderaan" tells of an exciting action. It is compelling in and of itself, but only briefly — the reader wants to know more. What drove someone to do this? How did it happen? What are the results of the action? The drama is the concise tale of the background of the climactic action stated in the headline. It traces in an exciting and clear fashion the interplay of the forces that ultimately drove the destruction of a small, peaceful planet. A dramatic presentation is the story of the struggle and conflict that caused the final action.
The Three Act Structure
The Three Act Structure
In a dramatic presentation the pattern of human conduct is developed within the framework of a particular structure or dramatic form, which, despite passing innovations, has persisted over thousands of years. The study of this structure is the next step in understanding the principles of drama.
Dramatic structure is the destruction and restoration of the balance of forces. Simply, it is the process of getting into, and then back out of, trouble. Examine any compelling story and you will find that at the outset an equilibrium exists; the potentials of struggle may be present and even boiling under the surface, but the trigger has not been pulled. During the presentation or interaction the balance is destroyed. At the conclusion of the drama balance has been regained. It may be a balance of forces completely different from that found in the beginning, but a balance is present.
This balance-imbalance-balance structure is divided into five parts. The parts are:
Exposition
Complication
Climax
Resolution
Conclusion
These five parts fall into three acts in the following way:
Act One
Act One is composed of exposition: the initial situation is described. Time, place, and the social and psychological aspects of the situation are set forth for the information of the audience or participant. The characters are introduced and the audience is given everything necessary to understanding their reasons for being. The theme is introduced, perhaps as foreshadowing, so that the spectator is aware of all the forces that will lead to conflict. Above all, the exposition must catch the interest of the audience. First you have to get their attention.
The exposition leads to the inciting action. The inciting action is the moment of destruction of the balance of forces — the trigger being pulled. Sometimes it is called the inciting moment or the overt act, meaning that it is the clear, visible action which incites the struggle.
Act Two
Act Two is composed of complications leading to a climax: once the balance of forces has been disturbed by the inciting action, the storyteller goes about the business of getting her characters into trouble. The complication is the body of the drama. It is the bringing together of the protagonistic and antagonistic forces in a series of more and more important crises in the struggle. The development of the conflict continues with increasing fury until it can go no further without resolution.
The climax is the high tide of the drama. From the spectator's or participant's standpoint, it is the high point of excitement. From the standpoint of conflict, it is the point at which the protagonist and antagonistic forces arrive at an impasse that allows no other solution but to finally resolve the difficulty. This moment is often a seemingly unsolvable problem.
Act Three
Act Three is composed of the inevitable unwinding of the conflict, governed by the turn the conflict takes at the climax, leading to a conclusion. During the resolution the tension drops somewhat, in that the audience thinks that it is able to forecast the final result, though not the method of reaching it. This unwinding must be handled without any loss of interest. Surprise and more suspense are the tools to solve this problem. Often a false climax is followed by the true climax, which is then followed by the true resolution.
The final scene in Star Wars can be an emotional pay-off because it explains nothing, but does communicates the victorious return of our heroes.
Finally, at the conclusion, the questions of the audience are logically and finally answered. In contrast, a conclusion can also simply be an emotional pay-off, as in the final scene of Star Wars, which explains nothing, but communicates the victorious return of our heroes. Whether or not the conclusion is satisfying comes back to how we relate to the characters. How do we feel about the protagonist and her goal? If the protagonist has a clear and compelling goal that we can all relate to, if we care about the protagonist and feel that she has fought an admirable and tough fight against a worthy adversary, then we will experience a purge of emotions when the protagonist finally succeeds, or fails.
The idea of an interactive computer story probably at first knee-jerk implies that many of the tools used to enhance a story with dramatic elements are now in the hands of the player instead of the writer or designer. In other words, the point of view, order of settings, and order of the story events, are now all at the whim of the "audience". Potentially lost are the balance-imbalance-balance over-structure, and the five-part (exposition, complication, climax, resolution, and conclusion) sub-structure of drama. Decreased control of these tools equals a dramatic problem.
A way that we can achieve both a non-linear, free-choice environment and keep our five-part dramatic structure is by assigning the non-linearity to the micro-level, while maintaining a scripted structure at the macro-level.
That's a mouthful, I know. For simplicity sake, let's say that areas in an action/adventure game in which the participant is allowed to freely explore are made up of two elements: the environment and NPC's. This means that the dramatist has two ways to communicate information to the participant: through environmental design and events, and through the actions and dialogue of NPC's.
One approach to achieving dramatic structure while maintaining free exploration is to create environments and NPC's that are informed by the five-part dramatic structure.
A way to achieve both is to group possible environmental events and possible NPC actions and dialogues into five libraries: exposition, complication, climax, resolution, and conclusion. In other words, the participant can explore the various environments at will and encounter the NPC's at will, but as long as we are working from the exposition library, for example, no matter what happens, the events and NPC actions will be about the time, place, the social and psychological aspects of the situation, the introduction of characters, their reasons for being, the introduction of theme, and foreshadowing conflict. When the inciting incident has been enacted, and it is time to begin on the conflict library, no matter where the player goes, no matter who the player encounters, the environmental events and the actions of NPC's will be about conflict, and so forth. In this way we maintain a large degree of non-linearity, while maintaining enough control to guarantee our dramatic structure.
Suspense
The basic task of the dramatist consists of capturing the attention of the audience and holding it for as long as required. If the audience fails to concentrate on what is happening from moment to moment, on what is being said and done, all is lost.
The creation of suspense underlies all dramatic construction. Expectations must be aroused, but never, until the last, wholly fulfilled; the action must seem to be getting nearer to the objective yet never reach it entirely before the end. Above all, in order to maintain interest, there must be constant variation of pace and rhythm.
There are many kinds of suspense: suspense may lie in a question like, 'What is going to happen next?', or in 'I know what is going to happen, but how is it going to happen?' or, indeed, 'I know what id going to happen and I know how it is going to happen, but how is X going to react to it?' Suspense can also be aroused by a quite different type of question, such as, 'What is it that I see happening?' or by the question 'these events seem to have a pattern; what kind of pattern will it turn out to be?' One thing, however, is certain: some sort of basic question must emerge fairly early in any dramatic form so that the audience can settle down to the main element of suspense. At its most basic suspense depends on the existence of at least two possible solutions to the problem.
The human attention span is relatively short. One major suspense element is not enough to hold an audience's attention throughout the course of a story. Beyond the main question or theme or story arc, the rise and fall of subsidiary arcs, arising from subsidiary suspense elements, must be superimposed. For instance, while our main interest is held by the question of why Planet Alderon was targeted, at the same time, but in a much shorter time span, we are eagerly asking ourselves how the princess now being questioned was involved and whether she had anything to do with the final action. The main suspense element inspires subsidiary suspense elements. There is an element of suspense needed for each scene or section of the action, superimposed on the main suspense element of the work.
Secondary questions, goals, or problems could be a part of the set design. For instance, a body is found; how was the character killed? The answer seems to be inside a cave, but is the cave safe to enter? What about the giant footprints leading into the cave? The machine at the entrance of the cave seems to be part of the answer, but what does it do? Or even more simply, 'The path doesn't look too safe. What is beyond that next corner?' A study of theme rides in amusement parks would offer many examples of the creation of suspense in set design.
In order to insure moment-by-moment interest, there must be a third, purely local, micro-level element of suspense at any given moment in a well-devised story — the line of dialogue or single detail of business the characters are engaged in at that moment. Good dialogue and good moment-by-moment action is unpredictable. Predictability is the death of suspense and therefore of drama. In addition, a character who never says a line which is arresting, witty, amusing or interesting, will have great difficulty in catching the audience's sympathy or, conversely, loathing.
If we are careful to design our "stages" in an evocative way, and if we populate our stages with unpredictable and interesting NPC's, we can get the player to wonder 'What is going to happen next?', or 'I suspect I know what is going to happen, but how is it going to happen?' or even 'What is it that I see happening?'.
Lessons from Other Media
It's worth taking a quick look at how drama has been adapted and expanded to accommodate new forms of communication over the years. The concepts behind these adaptations can and should be employed to create compelling interactive entertainment.
Theatre, Film and TV can be viewed as steps in an evolution of dramatic language. Interactive drama should be seen as the next evolutionary step. Let's look at how two forms of dramatic presentation differ in how the principles of drama are applied.
Stage drama, being 'live', has the excitement of spontaneity, however well-rehearsed it may be, and it has the feedback from the audience to the actors. The actors on the stage are trained to be hyper aware of audience reaction. From night to night the performers will intensify certain aspects of the presentation and minimize others depending upon what is working, for each audience is different.
Beginning during the Renaissance and lasting into the eighteenth century, traveling troupes performed the commedia dell' arte, the Italian comedy. The company's ten or more actors each developed a specific type of character, such as the Captain, two old men (Pantaloon and the Doctor), the Zanni (servant-buffoons). Along with these comic characters were the lovers. The comic characters were archetypes, well-known to an audience of commoners, and usually contrived at the expense of the aristocracy.
Before going on-stage, actors would agree on a basic plot and a general idea of how it should be performed. These plots were often well-known stories. But The actors had specific comic business (lazzi) that they developed (a bag of tricks). Though they knew the outline of the plot, no one, not even the actors, knew which comic bit would be pulled out. If the bit didn't work with the audience, another actor would throw out another one. If this worked well with the audience, another actor would throw out one that would play nicely against the successful bit. In this way the audience was kept in suspense in terms of what would happen next, even though they knew what the eventual outcome would be. It's spontaneous creativity, but within a structure that everyone knows and accepts.
This can of course have an equivalent in interactive storytelling. If AI-driven NPC's are "aware" of their "audience" (player or experiencer) through say, an interpretation of input actions, and if the NPC's could pull from a "library" of possible actions that all serve the same dramatic and narrative intent of the moment, then these "actors" could also continuously adapt their "performance" (within reason of course) to the personality of the player.
Another analogue is to be found in jazz. Often a combo will play from musical charts that note only the chord changes, number of beats for each chord, and key changes. Sometimes these charts will be based on a well-known song. Each musician improvises within this basic structure. The fun is the spontaneous emotional creation, the playing off one another, and the kind of mystical growth of theme. No two performances will ever be the same.
The photographic nature of the film and television mediums, on the other hand, allows a great degree of environmental realism, and gives the director an infinitely greater scope for varying the venue of the action. There is much greater flexibility in structuring the action. The camera and the microphone are extensions of the director. They enable him to choose his point of view (or hearing) and to move the audience there by varying long-shots and close-ups, by cutting from one face, one locale, to another at will. It is much easier to focus the audiences' attention on important details, however small or vast those details may be — from a John Ford sweeping Western vista to an Alfred Hitchcock bomb under a seat in the foreground of a shot. The psychological aspects of the use of lens, framing, and camera angle are worthy of a book and beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, "film language" has much to offer towards the creation of compelling interactive drama and developers would do well to become familiar with film making.
Japanese anime is novel, flashy, and often startlingly beautiful, but it is also generally more philosophical and character-oriented than American entertainment.
Interactive entertainment can learn something important from Japanese anime. It's novel, flashy, and often startlingly beautiful, but it is also generally more philosophical and character-oriented than American entertainment. Even in humorous anime it is the hero's struggles and lessons learned that often form the core of the story. Japanese stories often stress things that many American stories forget, such as self-sacrifice, the search for meaning, the power of helping others, and the idea of redemption for the fallen — the stuff of drama.
Finally, even the most violent and well rendered action combined with an interesting plot remains without lasting impact if the audience does not know, does not like, and is therefore not sufficiently interested in the characters. How do characters become objects of affection or interest? It is true that we relate to characters who are motivated by what we are motivated by, but there is more to it than that. In theatre, films, and television casting is very important. The personality of the actors chosen to embody the characters can help a great deal. With past limitations in the quality of 3D animation and lip-synch it has been tough to employ great CGI actors. But this is changing rapidly, and soon we will have NPC's capable of communicating emotion sufficiently well. But there is more to it than this. Witness the attraction of Lara Croft. Any dramatic presentation is also a voyeuristic experience. We want to see attractive, or at least highly interesting, unique, characters. The most compelling characters are a mixture of an attractive and original look, motivated by what motivates us, and who say surprising things.
Review
Humans are innately interested in conflict. Drama uses the innate human interest in conflict, expressed as visible action, to engage an audience for the purpose of communicating a theme. The interest in conflict is not enough — we want to know the reason for the conflict. Conflict arises out of wants, needs, and desires that are opposed by other wants, needs, and desires. We identify with dramatic characters because they are driven by the same basic motivations we are. Drama is a form of communication. The communication must be forceful, therefore it must be concise. Drama is structured. It has a beginning, middle, and end — equilibrium, disequilibrium, and equilibrium. Drama is the story of getting into and out of trouble. Suspense is used to maintain interest.
Many of the basic principles used in the development of drama can be applied directly to interactive storytelling. Instead of relying on constant violent action and awesome graphic quality, we should begin think about the reason for the conflict. We should make sure that the motivation for the conflict is centered on wants, needs, and desires that we can all relate to. This will help us to identify more strongly with the protagonist(s), the theme, and the goal that has been set forth. Since drama is a form of communication, and since communication must be concise in order to be forceful, we must end reliance on busywork side quests and such to fill out a game, and instead develop dramatic activities that are not only exciting, but which also continually support the main theme without being repetitive. Puzzles should arise out of the plot complications rather than being artificially forced upon the action because "a puzzle is needed here". In general the total structure of a well wrought dramatic work depends on a very delicate balance of a multitude of elements, all of which must contribute to the total pattern, and all of which are wholly interdependent.
This has been only the briefest overview of drama and a few beginning ideas of how drama might be applied to the interactive realm. The dramatist has many other tools that can be employed as well to make a presentation compelling and meaningful. If we become aware of and begin to use the analytical and developmental tools drama provides us, it can only help to increase the value of the interactive experience. Hopefully a discussion will begin and other strategies for incorporating these tools will be discovered.
Posted by Jenova at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling
"Game developers are beginning to realize that mindless, violent action, and fantastic special effects supported by ever advancing hardware will not hold the interest of core gamers forever. After certain point, advances in resolution and sound won't be enough to increase sales. The added effect will be negligible. In addition, mindless games without good characters and narratives will never attract a wider market, despite photo-realistic decapitation and volcanic eruptions of blood. Sure, we can always count on x-number of boys coming up through the ranks who will buy x-number of units. But why should we be satisfied with this small market when there is a much larger market to be nurtured and exploited? As a result, some have begun to reconsider the importance of story and character development. "
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010914/littlejohn_01.htm
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Another inspireing article written by the author of Agitating for Dramatic Change.
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Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling
Introduction
Game developers are beginning to realize that mindless, violent action, and fantastic special effects supported by ever advancing hardware will not hold the interest of core gamers forever. After certain point, advances in resolution and sound won't be enough to increase sales. The added effect will be negligible. In addition, mindless games without good characters and narratives will never attract a wider market, despite photo-realistic decapitation and volcanic eruptions of blood. Sure, we can always count on x-number of boys coming up through the ranks who will buy x-number of units. But why should we be satisfied with this small market when there is a much larger market to be nurtured and exploited? As a result, some have begun to reconsider the importance of story and character development.
A rising concern is, "How do we graft a story to our action game?" Story means linear...right? The whole idea of a story is opposed to the idea of interactivity…right? The basic concern is "How do we make an effective interactive story?" So what does effective mean in terms of interactive storytelling? There are two basic ingredients. These are intuitive interface design and compelling stories. In this article, I will address one of the two ingredients, the development of compelling interactive storytelling.
My definition of a compelling story is one that grabs and holds the attention of the audience. It must move and excite them. It must take them on an emotional roller coaster. Finally, it must make them feel like they have had a worthwhile experience at the conclusion.
What is it that engages and holds on to us in stories, interactive or not? What makes a story compelling and satisfying? An art form has evolved to deal with these issues. The name of this art form is "drama". Though the word "drama" is thrown around a lot, very few could accurately describe it. So before we begin to explore how the principles of drama can be adapted to create compelling interactive entertainment, we must first briefly review what drama actually is. After a brief overview, we will explore specific tools and suggest some ways to adapt them.
What is Drama?
There are many generalized descriptions of drama, which is actually a body of arcane knowledge compiled over thousands of years. The main points of agreement are that drama is a story of human conflict communicated by means of speech and action to an audience. Moreover, that which depicts human conflict will command attention and interest. Therefore drama uses the innate human interest in conflict to engage an audience for the purpose of communicating a theme. The theme must be something that we can all relate to.
In a dramatic presentation, conflict is expressed through visible action. Of course game designers understand the need for action. But to make a project compelling, the reason for the action is more important than the action itself. The forces that cause the action are what excite the audience, making the action believable, and holding the audience in rapt attention.
What are the reasons for action? In life and in drama, the study of the human being resolves itself into an evaluation of the motivation that provokes action. Whenever there is a balance of forces in our lives, we prefer to not act. However, when there is an imbalance of forces, and the motivation to restore balance is strong enough to overcome this basic inertia, some kind of action is taken.
The motivation to act lies in our wishes, needs, and desires. When any obstacle stands in the path of the resolution of these motivations, conflict occurs. In its barest form, a dramatic work all comes down to a character, or a group of characters, that we empathize with because they want something that we can all relate to wanting, and antagonistic forces that opposes the fulfillment of our want. The clash of these opposing forces results in dramatic action.
Human motivation can arguably be divided into four basic drives: desire for response, desire for recognition, desire for adventure, and desire for security.
These are the motivating forces that control the actions of all humans.
Desire for Response: the need every human being feels for intimate contacts with others -the desire for companionship and fellowship- can be fulfilled by a dramatic work in at least two different ways. It can be a social institution. People seldom go to the theatre or to the theater by themselves. Of course massively multiplayer games hook into this aspect of dramatic presentations.
In a more universal sense, an interactive dramatic work can satisfy the desire for response by providing the participant with a chance to partake in the drive to resolve the conflict with others. The participant who is caught up in the imaginative whirl of the work feels a fellowship and an intimate personal contact with the dramatic characters — empathy, in other words. Instead of just the immediate thrill of a firefight, we also gain the desire of the participant to achieve a positive response from the characters by his or her actions. Thus, we have just made ordinary action more compelling.
Desire for Recognition
By way of the dramatic work we may enjoy all of the recognition denied us in life: fame, influence, authority, reputation, and renown. Drama is peopled with fabulous or fantastic characters to identify with. Traditionally we vicariously enjoy the homage given kings and heroic warriors. In the interactive realm we can directly receive the plaudits of a grateful society for bringing the bad guys to task. We can feel firsthand the rush of victory after a battle that would be much too dangerous in real life. If we choose to follow an outsider or anti-hero, we get the chance to feel much more special, unique, or unusual than in mundane life. But this only works if we have based our venture on the basic premise of drama: In its barest form, a dramatic work all comes down to a character, or a group of characters that we empathize with, because they want something that we can all relate to, but very difficult obstacles stand in our way. If we don't care about what the characters want, or if what we want is too easy to get, it won't move us. That is, it won't be fun.
The Desire for Adventure
No one's life is so complete that he or she doesn't desire vital new experiences beyond the possibility of attainment in ordinary life. The dramatic work is a land of action and adventure. We get to enjoy the thrills of romance and conflict that is frequently denied in life. We may grapple with the problems of a falling dynasty, or stand casually, blaster in hand, and then thwart the alien mob. We are the ones who get to protect the weak and destroy the wicked. (Or rid the cosmos of weak-minded inferiors).
The Desire for Security
In most dramatic works the hero emerges triumphant. When we identify with the hero we vicariously pass through the trials, the struggles, the crises, and remain reasonably sure that our cause will win out. This accounts for the popularity of films with happy endings. When we indulge ourselves with interactive entertainment we experience this firsthand. Some will say, "How immature! Life isn't like that." Of course, but most people do not go to the films or buy a video game to prove their maturity or to see life as it is. Life is complicated and our control of it is minimal. In our times not only our security but the security of life on earth is threatened. The feeling of helplessness in the face of it all is an every day fact of life. But in the dramatic work we get to indulge our emotional and imaginative sensitivity, to be stimulated and diverted, and to see life as it "ought" to be — more secure.
There are of course many other reasons that we seek out a good story, interactive or not. We may seek great intellectual as well as emotional values. They comment upon life and its problems, and perhaps pose specific argumentative propositions. A dramatic work can also provide deep aesthetic and artistic experiences. However, when all is said and done, the great attraction of a well done story lies in the opportunity to participate imaginatively in the dramatic action. A dramatic work can perhaps survive without art or intellect; it cannot survive without emotion.
Drama is a work that encourages empathy, but even more than that it promotes pathos — the quality that arouses feelings of pity, sorrow, and compassion. When a drama is successful, the audience is suspended in an altered state of hyper-awareness and emotion. The principles of drama are what make stories compelling.
Economy is the essence of clarity
Drama is an art form, and as such is a method of concise, powerful communication. In watching a film or a television episode we have declared our willingness to have something communicated to us. We are conditioned to think of a television or cinema screen as space within which significant things are being shown; we will therefore try to arrange everything that happens within this space into an understandable and significant pattern. Hence, anything that is unnecessary or does not contribute to that pattern will be seen as an intrusion, an irritant.
The dramatist limits and controls her imaginative flight within a well-defined dramatic structure. Her prime purpose is to project her interpretation of life clearly and forcefully, so that the experiences of the characters may become the experiences of the spectator. To do this successfully, the dramatist must follow the universal artistic process in adapting life to the stage. It is a process of informed simplification and refinement. The key steps in the creation of a work of art are:
Selection
Rearrangement
Intensification
By careful selection, the playwright chooses the conflict, theme, characters, and situation that communicate the playwrights meaning. By rearrangement, they create a dramatic and exciting sequence. The playwright may intensify by highlighting certain characters and subordinating others. They may emphasize particular ideas to the exclusion of others. The Playwright may develop some situations fully and trace others only lightly. The meaning and the power of the drama will depend upon the elements the playwright intensifies. Finally, highly selected dramatic characters are placed in highly selected dramatic situations.
The headline that proclaims "Space Ray Destroys Planet Alderaan" tells of an exciting action.
The headline that proclaims "Space Ray Destroys Planet Alderaan" tells of an exciting action. It is compelling in and of itself, but only briefly — the reader wants to know more. What drove someone to do this? How did it happen? What are the results of the action? The drama is the concise tale of the background of the climactic action stated in the headline. It traces in an exciting and clear fashion the interplay of the forces that ultimately drove the destruction of a small, peaceful planet. A dramatic presentation is the story of the struggle and conflict that caused the final action.
The Three Act Structure
The Three Act Structure
In a dramatic presentation the pattern of human conduct is developed within the framework of a particular structure or dramatic form, which, despite passing innovations, has persisted over thousands of years. The study of this structure is the next step in understanding the principles of drama.
Dramatic structure is the destruction and restoration of the balance of forces. Simply, it is the process of getting into, and then back out of, trouble. Examine any compelling story and you will find that at the outset an equilibrium exists; the potentials of struggle may be present and even boiling under the surface, but the trigger has not been pulled. During the presentation or interaction the balance is destroyed. At the conclusion of the drama balance has been regained. It may be a balance of forces completely different from that found in the beginning, but a balance is present.
This balance-imbalance-balance structure is divided into five parts. The parts are:
Exposition
Complication
Climax
Resolution
Conclusion
These five parts fall into three acts in the following way:
Act One
Act One is composed of exposition: the initial situation is described. Time, place, and the social and psychological aspects of the situation are set forth for the information of the audience or participant. The characters are introduced and the audience is given everything necessary to understanding their reasons for being. The theme is introduced, perhaps as foreshadowing, so that the spectator is aware of all the forces that will lead to conflict. Above all, the exposition must catch the interest of the audience. First you have to get their attention.
The exposition leads to the inciting action. The inciting action is the moment of destruction of the balance of forces — the trigger being pulled. Sometimes it is called the inciting moment or the overt act, meaning that it is the clear, visible action which incites the struggle.
Act Two
Act Two is composed of complications leading to a climax: once the balance of forces has been disturbed by the inciting action, the storyteller goes about the business of getting her characters into trouble. The complication is the body of the drama. It is the bringing together of the protagonistic and antagonistic forces in a series of more and more important crises in the struggle. The development of the conflict continues with increasing fury until it can go no further without resolution.
The climax is the high tide of the drama. From the spectator's or participant's standpoint, it is the high point of excitement. From the standpoint of conflict, it is the point at which the protagonist and antagonistic forces arrive at an impasse that allows no other solution but to finally resolve the difficulty. This moment is often a seemingly unsolvable problem.
Act Three
Act Three is composed of the inevitable unwinding of the conflict, governed by the turn the conflict takes at the climax, leading to a conclusion. During the resolution the tension drops somewhat, in that the audience thinks that it is able to forecast the final result, though not the method of reaching it. This unwinding must be handled without any loss of interest. Surprise and more suspense are the tools to solve this problem. Often a false climax is followed by the true climax, which is then followed by the true resolution.
The final scene in Star Wars can be an emotional pay-off because it explains nothing, but does communicates the victorious return of our heroes.
Finally, at the conclusion, the questions of the audience are logically and finally answered. In contrast, a conclusion can also simply be an emotional pay-off, as in the final scene of Star Wars, which explains nothing, but communicates the victorious return of our heroes. Whether or not the conclusion is satisfying comes back to how we relate to the characters. How do we feel about the protagonist and her goal? If the protagonist has a clear and compelling goal that we can all relate to, if we care about the protagonist and feel that she has fought an admirable and tough fight against a worthy adversary, then we will experience a purge of emotions when the protagonist finally succeeds, or fails.
The idea of an interactive computer story probably at first knee-jerk implies that many of the tools used to enhance a story with dramatic elements are now in the hands of the player instead of the writer or designer. In other words, the point of view, order of settings, and order of the story events, are now all at the whim of the "audience". Potentially lost are the balance-imbalance-balance over-structure, and the five-part (exposition, complication, climax, resolution, and conclusion) sub-structure of drama. Decreased control of these tools equals a dramatic problem.
A way that we can achieve both a non-linear, free-choice environment and keep our five-part dramatic structure is by assigning the non-linearity to the micro-level, while maintaining a scripted structure at the macro-level.
That's a mouthful, I know. For simplicity sake, let's say that areas in an action/adventure game in which the participant is allowed to freely explore are made up of two elements: the environment and NPC's. This means that the dramatist has two ways to communicate information to the participant: through environmental design and events, and through the actions and dialogue of NPC's.
One approach to achieving dramatic structure while maintaining free exploration is to create environments and NPC's that are informed by the five-part dramatic structure.
A way to achieve both is to group possible environmental events and possible NPC actions and dialogues into five libraries: exposition, complication, climax, resolution, and conclusion. In other words, the participant can explore the various environments at will and encounter the NPC's at will, but as long as we are working from the exposition library, for example, no matter what happens, the events and NPC actions will be about the time, place, the social and psychological aspects of the situation, the introduction of characters, their reasons for being, the introduction of theme, and foreshadowing conflict. When the inciting incident has been enacted, and it is time to begin on the conflict library, no matter where the player goes, no matter who the player encounters, the environmental events and the actions of NPC's will be about conflict, and so forth. In this way we maintain a large degree of non-linearity, while maintaining enough control to guarantee our dramatic structure.
Suspense
The basic task of the dramatist consists of capturing the attention of the audience and holding it for as long as required. If the audience fails to concentrate on what is happening from moment to moment, on what is being said and done, all is lost.
The creation of suspense underlies all dramatic construction. Expectations must be aroused, but never, until the last, wholly fulfilled; the action must seem to be getting nearer to the objective yet never reach it entirely before the end. Above all, in order to maintain interest, there must be constant variation of pace and rhythm.
There are many kinds of suspense: suspense may lie in a question like, 'What is going to happen next?', or in 'I know what is going to happen, but how is it going to happen?' or, indeed, 'I know what id going to happen and I know how it is going to happen, but how is X going to react to it?' Suspense can also be aroused by a quite different type of question, such as, 'What is it that I see happening?' or by the question 'these events seem to have a pattern; what kind of pattern will it turn out to be?' One thing, however, is certain: some sort of basic question must emerge fairly early in any dramatic form so that the audience can settle down to the main element of suspense. At its most basic suspense depends on the existence of at least two possible solutions to the problem.
The human attention span is relatively short. One major suspense element is not enough to hold an audience's attention throughout the course of a story. Beyond the main question or theme or story arc, the rise and fall of subsidiary arcs, arising from subsidiary suspense elements, must be superimposed. For instance, while our main interest is held by the question of why Planet Alderon was targeted, at the same time, but in a much shorter time span, we are eagerly asking ourselves how the princess now being questioned was involved and whether she had anything to do with the final action. The main suspense element inspires subsidiary suspense elements. There is an element of suspense needed for each scene or section of the action, superimposed on the main suspense element of the work.
Secondary questions, goals, or problems could be a part of the set design. For instance, a body is found; how was the character killed? The answer seems to be inside a cave, but is the cave safe to enter? What about the giant footprints leading into the cave? The machine at the entrance of the cave seems to be part of the answer, but what does it do? Or even more simply, 'The path doesn't look too safe. What is beyond that next corner?' A study of theme rides in amusement parks would offer many examples of the creation of suspense in set design.
In order to insure moment-by-moment interest, there must be a third, purely local, micro-level element of suspense at any given moment in a well-devised story — the line of dialogue or single detail of business the characters are engaged in at that moment. Good dialogue and good moment-by-moment action is unpredictable. Predictability is the death of suspense and therefore of drama. In addition, a character who never says a line which is arresting, witty, amusing or interesting, will have great difficulty in catching the audience's sympathy or, conversely, loathing.
If we are careful to design our "stages" in an evocative way, and if we populate our stages with unpredictable and interesting NPC's, we can get the player to wonder 'What is going to happen next?', or 'I suspect I know what is going to happen, but how is it going to happen?' or even 'What is it that I see happening?'.
Lessons from Other Media
It's worth taking a quick look at how drama has been adapted and expanded to accommodate new forms of communication over the years. The concepts behind these adaptations can and should be employed to create compelling interactive entertainment.
Theatre, Film and TV can be viewed as steps in an evolution of dramatic language. Interactive drama should be seen as the next evolutionary step. Let's look at how two forms of dramatic presentation differ in how the principles of drama are applied.
Stage drama, being 'live', has the excitement of spontaneity, however well-rehearsed it may be, and it has the feedback from the audience to the actors. The actors on the stage are trained to be hyper aware of audience reaction. From night to night the performers will intensify certain aspects of the presentation and minimize others depending upon what is working, for each audience is different.
Beginning during the Renaissance and lasting into the eighteenth century, traveling troupes performed the commedia dell' arte, the Italian comedy. The company's ten or more actors each developed a specific type of character, such as the Captain, two old men (Pantaloon and the Doctor), the Zanni (servant-buffoons). Along with these comic characters were the lovers. The comic characters were archetypes, well-known to an audience of commoners, and usually contrived at the expense of the aristocracy.
Before going on-stage, actors would agree on a basic plot and a general idea of how it should be performed. These plots were often well-known stories. But The actors had specific comic business (lazzi) that they developed (a bag of tricks). Though they knew the outline of the plot, no one, not even the actors, knew which comic bit would be pulled out. If the bit didn't work with the audience, another actor would throw out another one. If this worked well with the audience, another actor would throw out one that would play nicely against the successful bit. In this way the audience was kept in suspense in terms of what would happen next, even though they knew what the eventual outcome would be. It's spontaneous creativity, but within a structure that everyone knows and accepts.
This can of course have an equivalent in interactive storytelling. If AI-driven NPC's are "aware" of their "audience" (player or experiencer) through say, an interpretation of input actions, and if the NPC's could pull from a "library" of possible actions that all serve the same dramatic and narrative intent of the moment, then these "actors" could also continuously adapt their "performance" (within reason of course) to the personality of the player.
Another analogue is to be found in jazz. Often a combo will play from musical charts that note only the chord changes, number of beats for each chord, and key changes. Sometimes these charts will be based on a well-known song. Each musician improvises within this basic structure. The fun is the spontaneous emotional creation, the playing off one another, and the kind of mystical growth of theme. No two performances will ever be the same.
The photographic nature of the film and television mediums, on the other hand, allows a great degree of environmental realism, and gives the director an infinitely greater scope for varying the venue of the action. There is much greater flexibility in structuring the action. The camera and the microphone are extensions of the director. They enable him to choose his point of view (or hearing) and to move the audience there by varying long-shots and close-ups, by cutting from one face, one locale, to another at will. It is much easier to focus the audiences' attention on important details, however small or vast those details may be — from a John Ford sweeping Western vista to an Alfred Hitchcock bomb under a seat in the foreground of a shot. The psychological aspects of the use of lens, framing, and camera angle are worthy of a book and beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, "film language" has much to offer towards the creation of compelling interactive drama and developers would do well to become familiar with film making.
Japanese anime is novel, flashy, and often startlingly beautiful, but it is also generally more philosophical and character-oriented than American entertainment.
Interactive entertainment can learn something important from Japanese anime. It's novel, flashy, and often startlingly beautiful, but it is also generally more philosophical and character-oriented than American entertainment. Even in humorous anime it is the hero's struggles and lessons learned that often form the core of the story. Japanese stories often stress things that many American stories forget, such as self-sacrifice, the search for meaning, the power of helping others, and the idea of redemption for the fallen — the stuff of drama.
Finally, even the most violent and well rendered action combined with an interesting plot remains without lasting impact if the audience does not know, does not like, and is therefore not sufficiently interested in the characters. How do characters become objects of affection or interest? It is true that we relate to characters who are motivated by what we are motivated by, but there is more to it than that. In theatre, films, and television casting is very important. The personality of the actors chosen to embody the characters can help a great deal. With past limitations in the quality of 3D animation and lip-synch it has been tough to employ great CGI actors. But this is changing rapidly, and soon we will have NPC's capable of communicating emotion sufficiently well. But there is more to it than this. Witness the attraction of Lara Croft. Any dramatic presentation is also a voyeuristic experience. We want to see attractive, or at least highly interesting, unique, characters. The most compelling characters are a mixture of an attractive and original look, motivated by what motivates us, and who say surprising things.
Review
Humans are innately interested in conflict. Drama uses the innate human interest in conflict, expressed as visible action, to engage an audience for the purpose of communicating a theme. The interest in conflict is not enough — we want to know the reason for the conflict. Conflict arises out of wants, needs, and desires that are opposed by other wants, needs, and desires. We identify with dramatic characters because they are driven by the same basic motivations we are. Drama is a form of communication. The communication must be forceful, therefore it must be concise. Drama is structured. It has a beginning, middle, and end — equilibrium, disequilibrium, and equilibrium. Drama is the story of getting into and out of trouble. Suspense is used to maintain interest.
Many of the basic principles used in the development of drama can be applied directly to interactive storytelling. Instead of relying on constant violent action and awesome graphic quality, we should begin think about the reason for the conflict. We should make sure that the motivation for the conflict is centered on wants, needs, and desires that we can all relate to. This will help us to identify more strongly with the protagonist(s), the theme, and the goal that has been set forth. Since drama is a form of communication, and since communication must be concise in order to be forceful, we must end reliance on busywork side quests and such to fill out a game, and instead develop dramatic activities that are not only exciting, but which also continually support the main theme without being repetitive. Puzzles should arise out of the plot complications rather than being artificially forced upon the action because "a puzzle is needed here". In general the total structure of a well wrought dramatic work depends on a very delicate balance of a multitude of elements, all of which must contribute to the total pattern, and all of which are wholly interdependent.
This has been only the briefest overview of drama and a few beginning ideas of how drama might be applied to the interactive realm. The dramatist has many other tools that can be employed as well to make a presentation compelling and meaningful. If we become aware of and begin to use the analytical and developmental tools drama provides us, it can only help to increase the value of the interactive experience. Hopefully a discussion will begin and other strategies for incorporating these tools will be discovered.
Posted by Jenova at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
UnrealEngine2 Runtime edition of the second-generation Unreal engine technology
"UnrealEngine2 is the technology under the hood of the most visually intensive, interactive and exciting computer and console games on the market. From games to interactive visualizations, whether you're working on a training simulation or are an aspiring game developer, UE2 can provide you with the platform and tools to develop your cutting-edge 3D project.
The UnrealEngine2 Runtime software is the state of the art in cross-platform, real-time 3D rendering solutions for the desktop. Taking advantage of the latest advances in hardware-accelerated 3D, the Runtime provides a stable, robust platform for interactive walkthroughs and simulations. "
http://udn.epicgames.com/pub/Powered/UnrealEngine2Runtime/
This is a really powerful engine, you can achieve a lot without programming. I'm now studying the editor of unreal engine, trying to do some interactive design based on this engine.
Posted by Jenova at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2003
Agitating for Dramatic Change
Valve has make NPCs more lifelike than ever in Half-Life 2, but at its core, the game is still a "shooter", not a drama.
"It is rare indeed to find good character development and multi-layered, gradually unfolding stories in computer games - to say nothing of good, emotionally moving drama. I have heard the justification that computer animated NPCs are simply not sophisticated enough to pull off a dramatic performance - and yet poorly animated Saturday morning cartoons can be emotionally involving (if rarely, but the point is that they are indeed sometimes moving). "
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20031029/littlejohn_01.shtml
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Agitating for Dramatic Change
Forms of computer-based interactive entertainment are heavily controlled by the idea that they are "games", which are produced for a narrow (but profitable) market of "gamers". Thus, fast, fun arcade-like experiences, artificial puzzle-solving, gaining points and "winning" have been the main emphasis in interactive design, even while the graphic and sound environments have become more and more realistic -- even as NPCs have become embedded with so-called "AI".
The idea of story is largely used to set the stage for first person shooters and role-playing games. Once the game begins, story elements become simplistic, linear or at least pre-defined, and "underwhelming" -- if they exist at all. Character development is something left behind after opening movies and seldom-read documents that come with the game, which outline who's who, and why they're doing what. It is rare indeed to find good character development and multi-layered, gradually unfolding stories in computer games - to say nothing of good, emotionally moving drama. I have heard the justification that computer animated NPCs are simply not sophisticated enough to pull off a dramatic performance - and yet poorly animated Saturday morning cartoons can be emotionally involving (if rarely, but the point is that they are indeed sometimes moving). The NPCs in Half-Life 2 are more life-like and have more ability to communicate a range of emotions than perhaps in any game before, except for the days of live-action games. Nevertheless, judging only from the E3 demo, Half-Life 2 still seems to be basically a "shooter", rather than an interactive drama, albeit in a more realistic universe than usual.
Valve has make NPCs more lifelike than ever in Half-Life 2, but at its core, the game is still a "shooter", not a drama.
No, it's not that NPCs can't emote. Instead, I think that given the emphasis of "game-think", and a market of "gamers", it's clear that the ideas of story and drama are simply a low priority.
And there's nothing at all wrong with this. Computer games serve a lucrative market. If it's not broken, don't fix it. It's just that I think a far bigger market is being left untapped.
Valve has make NPCs more lifelike than ever in Half-Life 2, but at its core, the game is still a "shooter", not a drama.
In addition, I've found that people who are not professional writers or professional storytellers, but who may be "designers", "level-designers" or "producers" hash out a story premise for a game, or will decide on a setting populated by a certain kind of characters and monsters, who live in a matrix of certain rules. Sometimes a professional writer will be brought in to take what has already been decided upon and flesh it out. The professional writer may write a background story that sets the stage for the action and/or will write up biographies for the main characters. Much of this will never been seen in the game itself, beyond opening movies and cinematics. Sometimes professional writers will even get in on dialogue writing. But in terms of actual game design, my experience has been that in general, there's little attempt or little interest in interweaving non-linear story elements, strong character development and the principles of drama into interactive designs. This hampers appealing to a mass audience as much as the insistence on developing interactive entertainments by game-think alone.
Other kinds of interactive entertainment, based on good storytelling, good character development and an adaptation of the principles of drama, targeted to consumers with computers, but who are not avid gamers -- are waiting to be designed - and profited from. I think that the masses are ready to spend money for an interactive drama that leaves the trappings of computer 'games' behind. Whoever builds this groundbreaking system is going to get rich.
This article is a follow-up to an earlier Gamasutra article I wrote, "Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling". That article has much more to say about the nature of drama. I suggest reading it first before continuing with this article. For the purpose of this article, drama is not a genre of entertainment. It is a toolset of principles developed over hundreds, if not thousands, of years to rigorously enhance communication. To quote Martin Esslin in An Anatomy of Drama, "For the expression of the imponderable mood, the hidden tensions and sympathies, the subtleties of human relationships and interaction, drama is by the most economical means of expression."
Interactivity for the Masses
I'm agitating for the creation of a new kind of interactive experience that is comfortable and compelling for the masses. This new art form would immerse the experiencer inside a reality very much like what he or she is already familiar with: film and television.
This is a search for a method of "interactive dramatic narrative presentation" and packaging.
What I see is an interactive drama for the masses who have computers, but who are not "gamers". The masses will be drawn to this experience because of three things: it's familiar like TV and film, the interface is simple and intuitive, and because the characters are emotionally evocative and their plight is understandable and just. There are no brainteasers laid artificially and superficially into the design. If there are to be puzzles, they are puzzles that evolve out of the dramatic backbone of the experience. In fact, everything that can be considered a trapping of 'game thinking' would be absent from this new kind of interactive dramatic experience. Though the designer knows that the experience will have a beginning that sets up the narrative, a middle with evolving conflict, and an end with a good resolution -- no one knows how the dramatic experience will evolve. In my vision, advancing from A to B to C will be a non-linear, yet also emotionally powerful, dramatic experience. So far experiments with interactive storytelling have failed to take into account the need to adapt the principles of drama to interactivity, and thus these experiments have been merely interesting, instead of truly emotionally involving.
In my imagined design, the moment-to-moment experience is not pre-defined. Nevertheless, a satisfactory dramatic experience demands there to be a definite beginning, middle, and end, which will support a rising level of tension until the dramatic climax and resolution is achieved. I see a system in which the dramatic and narrative principles and support elements are managed at the macro-level, in order to achieve drama, but in which these elements are active in a non-linear, non-branching way at the micro-level.
It will take a design team to create such a groundbreaking entertainment -- not just a designer. The team will be composed of a dramatist/storyteller/writer, a programming lead, an art lead, and a sound/music lead. There will be no talk of "levels" and such. There will be no talk of whether the experience will be a shooter, a role-playing game, or a massively multi-player on-line game. There will be no mention of the word "game". Instead there will be talk of "narrative environments", synthespians, synthespian directors, motivations, subtext and goals, emotional environments, and real-time adaptive music. There will be talk of the macro-level "drama engine", which provides for a three-act structure, like an umbrella, over non-linear narrative development. There will be development of interactive tools for dramatists who are not necessarily programmers.
In a nutshell I want to encourage a dramatic story-environment in which the experiencer and truly AI-smart NPCs, each with their own goals, biases, and methodologies, co-create the narrative at the micro-level, in real time, as their actions trigger the results of dramatic situations that are pre-defined at the invisible macro level by an interactive writer/ dramatist.
Considered for use at Sierra, Haptek's People Putty allows you to create a interactive 3D character, then using set of sliders, give your characters a range of emotions.
Considered for use at Sierra, Haptek's People Putty allows you to create a interactive 3D character, then using set of sliders, give your characters a range of emotions.
I have long believed that combining a story/drama world-authoring engine, perhaps something like Chris Crawford's "Erasmatron" project, with a front end something like Haptek's "People Putty", represents the major animation, management, and creator interface software components of such a project. At one time the People Putty engine was being considered for an adventure game at Sierra. I was present for long demos and was able to talk at length with the founder of Haptek, Chris Shaw. So I am very familiar with what they've done, and I'm impressed. I'm also impressed and fascinated by Chris Crawford's Erasmatron efforts, which I've been following for several years now. Yet, since his is a largely single person's effort, and since his development platform is only available for Mac users, I fear his efforts may take a very long time to pay off. Nevertheless, I encourage readers to check the Haptek and Crawford URLs.
The Drama Engine
I see rich, unplowed fields waiting for a new paradigm for the masses, a paradigm that leaves game-thought behind. Central to this new paradigm is the creation of a "drama engine" to be placed at the heart of a system.
Computer technology is advancing at an incredible rate, but few people outside of academia seem to be thinking about how to evolve the tools of drama so that they can work in a computerized, non-linear, interactive environment. Drama has always depended upon the control of audience perspective in a linear series of events. So drama must evolve now. That's my interest. But this interest needs a test bed.
I look out there and see that all of the components for a test bed are now available (though dispersed in various computer game development tools and non-entertainment projects). If combined, these elements could lead to a new kind of interactive entertainment - call it interactive drama - or interactive drama worlds - call it working towards an evolution of drama towards preparation for a real Star Trek Holodeck experience.
I envision a system combining interacting modules into a system to support life-like NPC's with the ability to "act" - call them "synthespians", as some have. The list of modules would include at least the following: Adaptive Learning, Pattern Recognition, Expert Systems, Speech Processing, and Text Parsing. But I do not envision creating autonomous agents that are truly "aware", of course. (If you are reading this in a way that does not allow the use of the above hyperlinks, see the section "Parts and Pieces").
As a metaphor for what I see, let me give an example: stage sets are only designed to the degree that they will be used. If a door in a flat is to be used, it is built strongly enough so that actors can repeatedly open and close a door and move through the doorway without the prop falling apart or shaking the flat in which it's embedded. However, if the door will never be used, there doesn't even have to be an opening in the flat - just a door painted on the surface.
Drama is smoke and mirrors - its elements only need to seem real. Bringing the metaphor back to AI, there doesn't need to be "real" understanding by the machine, or any "real" communication to make interactive drama work. It must only appear to the experiencer that NPCs are capable of real intelligence, understanding, needs, goals, emotion and communication.
I envision an interactive entertainment in which synthespians and the experiencer interact in a "drama-world" made of theatrically atmospheric environments saturated with exposition (story elements), dramatic potential and events orchestrated by a "drama-engine". I see a dramatic work arising from an environment where, given certain starting criteria, there can be an emergent and yet dramatic story involving believable, likable characters and characters who can be loathed, and yet be three-dimensional.
I am especially interested in the potential of an autonomous "sidekick" or "partner", who would inspire empathy in the experiencer, and who would help instigate an adventure/ quest. I envision a human stranger in a strange land, with the sidekick being the liaison, as well as potential friend, helper, and fighting partner. This sidekick would be an AI-smart synthespian who can learn and apparently reason, and who is obviously afflicted with needs and desires, as we all are, and who is motivated by a strong, just and dramatic goal that is in conflict with the state of the drama-world. These abilities are important if we are to empathize with the character. We must empathize before we care. We must care before we are emotionally involved. We must be emotionally involved if we are to experience the emotional roller coaster and payoff of good drama. We must care about our friend and his or her just cause. We must worry when our friend is threatened, or when the cause is threatened.
Invisible in all of this is the "dramatist" in the background - behind the curtain, who uses a new kind of tool to "direct" the theatrical potential of the unfolding experience by inputting narrative elements, inherent conflict, characters (with wants, needs, goals, schedules and action abilities that will collide in conflict) and dramatically "soaked" environments.
This new kind of production tool would be designed for a dramatist who is not necessarily a programmer. To program well takes years of dedication. To become an excellent composer takes years of dedication. To become a talented animator takes years of work. And to become a writer-dramatist takes years of dedicated work too. It makes sense to let each talent area work at what they do best. It is unrealistic to think that a single person can be a talented AI programmer, a compelling writer AND an insightful dramatist. I'm sure that somewhere such a renaissance person exists, but can we realistically expect one of these rare people at each interactive company?
This new development tool for the non-programmer writer-dramatist would allow for the development of at least characters and interactive story elements. The tool would need to plug into world-creation tools, such as existing level editors.
Synthespians in an Interactive, Dramatic World
This is what I mean by synthespians: I'd like to explore the potential of creating autonomous agents with believable "dramatic character". In other words, I'd like to see autonomous agents with goals, biases, and abilities who carry out apparent "intent" - all inspired by the principals of drama.
Synthespians within the drama world would be designed to a) do certain things on a certain schedule b) unless they are interfered with c) are tied to "communication libraries" and d) are autonomous in that they have goals and biases and abilities which allow actions to be taken towards their goals.
Like a real person, a synthespian may need to get up at a certain time, travel to work, stay at work for a certain period of time, stop by the store, come home, and stay at home for a certain period of time. But, because the agent has various goals (which may conflict) and is autonomous, the agent may try to work other actions into the overall schedule. If internal needs are strong enough, the agent may even violate the daily schedule in order to get something else done. But there would be a price to be paid for violating the overall schedule -- getting fired -- pissing off the mate, etc. I'm speaking here in mundane terms to illustrate the point. The "price that is paid" is part of the dramatist's pre-defined setup.
If a normal daily schedule is a goal, a synthespian may run up against other agents with goals that are in conflict with his or her or its goals, which initiates a change of goal priorities. In addition, if two or more synthespians have conflicting goals, then you have drama. As Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski illustrated so succinctly in his The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, CHARACTERIZATION + DESIRE = GOAL. GOAL + CONFLICT = STORY -- in this case, emergent story based on broad dramatic principles. That synthespians would have conflicting goals is part of the dramatist's pre-defined setup.
Synthespians may suffer conflicting wants and needs, which would lead to conflicting goals. This creates character. These inner conflicts are a part of the dramatist's pre-defined setup.
The sidekick could guide by helping to steer the character toward interesting places and away from areas that are boring or the player is not ready for. Sure, the player could ignore the advice, and the sidekick would still try to bail them out; but always trying to lead them back onto the path of the conflict that is at the heart of the drama world status quo, and thus towards emergent story and drama. The conflict at the heart of the drama world status quo is part of the dramatist's pre-defined setup.
Synthespians could interact with the experiencer by employing the tactics used in Commedia del Arte. Commedia del'Arte performances and techniques spread throughout Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, with offshoots in France, Spain and England. In this form of performance the players follow the outline of a well-known story with well-known archetypal characters. But neither the audience nor the players know exactly how the story will be told until they begin to perform. Each player has a well-rehearsed repertoire of "tricks", or "skit pieces". The players will throw these tricks back and forth at each other at whim - each will react to the other's tricks by pulling out their own tricks to throw back. It's like jazz musicians following a chart, but not knowing who will play or what notes will happen in what order until they get there, and in the process they inspire and challenge each other. As the players do this, they are very aware of the audience. If the audience doesn't seem to be interested in one set of tricks, they'll try others, and in this way attempt to keep the audience entertained until the conclusion of the story. It's loosely scripted improvisation.
How is that applied to interactive drama and synthespians? Each of the characters the experiencer can potentially interact with can have a library of various things that they can do or say - a library of tricks. We don't know the course of the emergent drama/story because we don't know where the experiencer will explore first, second and third, and we don't know who the player will communicate with first, second and third. And in those communications we don't know how the experiencer will react. But (as the directors behind the curtain) we can make sure that in "Act I" all of the synthespians can be attached to their Act I libraries. In Act 2 they will all be attached to their Act II libraries and so forth, so that we get the growing dramatic tension of moving through acts, like in a play or movie. They could each have three libraries of activities and schedules, so that they are always doing appropriate things for each sequential act. Further, the major goals and biases for the main synthespian could be in libraries too. While we don't know how the story/drama will emerge, the dramatist will know essentially what story/drama will emerge, and will have content control of synthespians at the motivational level, and control of the dramatic structure at the act level.
It is necessary for synthespians to be like improvisational performers, in that they will develop ways of getting out of conversations, or leading conversations that are consistent without breaking character. If a synthespian doesn't have the information required by the experiencer, or isn't willing to share the information that it has, then there should be a method within its database which allows for dealing with this situation while staying in character.
I do not mean that the libraries attached to synthespians would include pre-written scripts. I am pretty sure that the stories in both Diablo and Blade Runner were implemented with a methodology similar to what I have described. But in those games it was painfully obvious that agents only knew a few things to talk about until the next level was triggered; where everyone suddenly had new stuff to talk about. Instead, more sophisticated options are necessary. We may need to look outside of the game/ entertainment industries for the tools we'll need. More on this below.
The idea of having Synthespians attached to libraries that are broken up into dramatic acts can work with story as well. In a linear story you can think of a string of pearls, where each pearl is a scene and the thread is the through-line of action. In an interactive drama world, think of a broken string of pearls, where the experiencer can explore and discoverer each pearl, like an ant discovering the pearls from a broken necklace on a tabletop. Each pearl can be seen as a location or an event that has embedded in it dramatic story elements. But what if the pearl, which contains the "end" information, could be found first, rendering the rest of the pearls a moot point?
To solve this problem, the pearls could be put into three groups. There would be "gates" between each group. Now our 'ant', the experiencer, can wonder at will through group "A" pearls, which include Act I information. Act I is designed to fulfill the exposition needs of the following acts, and work as a benchmark dramatic tension level. Group "B" pearls continue with the following story elements and up the ante in dramatic tension, and so forth. This way the experiencer has a non-linear trip at the micro level (finding the pearls within a group), and yet is lead to greater and greater heights of dramatic tension in an organized way, because of the macro level structuring of the pearls into three groups, each with its own dramatic purpose. I'm assuming here that the gating mechanism would be invisible, or at least not obvious. The content that is embedded in each "pearl" is part of the dramatist's pre-defined setup.
Posted by Jenova at 9:37 PM | Comments (3)
How to Break Into The Games Industry Event Announced
"Representatives from the Austin Game Initiative, producers of September's Austin Game Conference, have announced a new event that will discuss how professionals and students can get a career in the video game industry.
The half-day event will take place at the Commons Center on the JJ Pickles Research Campus in Austin on November 15 from 8:30am to 3:00pm. Further details can be found at http://www.austingame.com/breakin/"
I don't know how many of you guys are interested in doing something in the game industrial. I believe this will be interesting.
I'm now starting a survey in my mother university in Shanghai. My friend there gave me some recent info happened in the campus. Students in campus become more and more serious about game. They setup game discussion, game competition. And runner-up of Warcraft III coming back from Korea is warmly welcomed as if he came back from Olympic. I think it is a great change after I leave the university. Anyway, I'll do it during recent weeks.
I'm now collecting questions, if you guys have something you want to censor during the college students in Shanghai, China, please email me.
Posted by Jenova at 8:53 PM | Comments (0)
Games for Health Initiative Launched
"Representatives from the Serious Games Initiative have launched a new discussion list named Games for Health. This is the first part of an effort to develop a specific community of researchers, healthcare professionals, game developers and educators to build a new generation of video games that can help improve public health."
Individuals and organizations interested in participating in the list are invited to sign up by visiting the following Web site:
http://listserver.dmill.com/lyris.pl?join=games-for-health
It's a pity that after I sign in the web site, it still need some time to approach. Until now I can not see there discussions. But it is really a potential area in the entertainment industrial. What if we can make people do body building or losing weight during games? There is a classic example, Dance dance revolution. This game was crazy hot when it first came out. And there come bunches of similar games after that. But the health effect is not obvious just by jumping =)
Posted by Jenova at 8:32 PM | Comments (1)
October 28, 2003
How to create emotive images and animations
"When I went through the entries for EXPOSÉ 1, it was clear that there is a lot of talent out there in the technical areas of modeling and texturing. However, it was much rarer to see truly inspiring and expressive works of art, and I am not talking about just the aesthetics of fine art here. It’s much more about creating work with great appeal, and consequently, great value the viewer.
You, as artists really need to focus on evoking emotions in your work. If you create an image that evokes a strong emotion then you have created something that has great appeal and will generally be considered more worthwhile to view. Sadly a lot of digital, particularly 3D work is best described as “flat and boring”, technically good, but generally unappealing to the majority of audiences who may not understand 3D."
Beyond the highly advanced CG technology, I'm keen to feel something from the graphics. This article gives me some inspirations. Like film and any other successful media. The best artworks are always the ones who can evoke people's cherished feelings.
I've been wallowing in the technic area for a long period. Nearly neglect the power of emotions. If time's enough, I'll make a 3D static to validate the power of this rules.
Posted by Jenova at 10:51 PM | Comments (2)
October 26, 2003
Game Makers Aren't Chasing Women
"A visit this past Saturday afternoon to a busy video-game store in San Francisco was a snapshot of a gaming industry that continues to be run by post-adolescent males for post-adolescent males.
Of the 25 or so people in Electronics Boutique, six were women. Three of them looked bored -- they were accompanying their gamer boyfriends. Two Korean-American girls were in the store on their own, but they were buying a copy of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne for a male relative. And the last woman? She was working one of the cash registers. "
From my personal experience in China, the number and the ratio of female game players in China is furhter more than that in the America.
Most female game players play simple STG lan games like counter-stirke in the internet bars, while another large group are playing MMORPG in their dorms or homes. The most popular genres are comic and cute cartoon style. They prefer games with pet and fashion which could support various kinds of their appearances in the game.
But is that all what female game player want?
Posted by Jenova at 9:49 AM | Comments (5)
October 5, 2003
Concerning of GOLEM, a Game Designed for Interactive A.I. Entertainment
Background
Overview
Technology and Theory
Personal Experience
Aspects of Interaction
PAY and PAY OFF
Constructive Suggestion
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Download Golem101.zip Http, Golem101.zip Ftp
Download Word File, Rtf File
Game Title:
Game Interface
Teaching Screenshot
Combat Screenshot
The Designer who's my teammate in SJTU Wondergust Group.
| Short | Full Name | Object | Interaction |
| ACT | Action games |
H/M | Actions, reactions |
| ARPG | Action Role Playing Games | H/M | Dialog, actions, environment |
| AVG | Adventure Games | H/M | Text, environment |
| FTG | Fighting Games | H/M or H/H | Attack, defend, counterattack |
| PUZ | Puzzle Games | H/M or H/H | Puzzle, riddling |
| RAC | Race Games | H/M or H/H | Driving |
| RPG | Role-playing games | H/M | Dialog, environment |
| SLG/RTS | Simulation Games or Real Time SLG | H/M or H/H | Strategy, management |
| SRPG | Simulation Role Playing Games | H/M or H/H | Strategy, dialog, environment |
| STG | Shooting Games |
H/M or H/H | Attack, defend, strategy |
| TAB | Table Games |
H/M or H/H | Variety |
| MMO |
Massive Multiplayer Online Games |
H/H | Variety |
| ETC | Etcetera Game | H/M or H/H | Variety |
| Golem | A.I. Education Simulation Games | H/H or M/M | A.I. influence on NPC |
Posted by Jenova at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)