A NEW PLOT/CHARACTER-BASED INTERACTIVE SYSTEM FOR STORY-BASED VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Building interactive storytelling systems has been a growing topic of research over the past decade. Prior research has identified key problems, such as the trade-off between interactivity and storytelling, the duality between character and plot, narrative causality, the problem of narrative control, the relations between story generation and presentation, and the tools that artists can use to create interactive story worlds. Due to the tradeoff between narrative progression and user interaction, striking a balance between the two is a big challenge. Therefore, there is a need to develop an integrated framework to achieve the balance between conveying a story and enhancing the modeling of character behaviors. This paper attempts to address these problems, in particular, the relations between character and plot by modeling not only the story plot but also the character behavior in a unified smart user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) platform called Bcreative. The idea is derived from the study of linear logic, Petri nets (PN) and cinematography in interactive storytelling. The system structure is composed of two engines: a story engine and a character engine. The story engine models the story plot based on linear logic and the PN as an operational model, while the character engine enhances the modeling of character behavior based on filmmaking theory. This paper discusses the development process of our proposed system, illustrating the design and implementation in detail. Comparisons with existing techniques are included, and the advantages of our proposed system over existing ones are examined. Evaluation and practical performance results are also demonstrated.