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[[Interactive Storytelling and Narrative Theories]]

Vladimir Propp

2011-01-10T18:13:14Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''

===Authors===
Vladimir Propp

===Histo-geographical placement===
V. Propp's book has been edited in 1928 in Russia. It belongs to the litterary movement called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_formalism Russian formalism], active from 1910s to the 1930s.

===Type of story===
The analysis initially covers Russian folk tales. But it suits to many other folk tales from other countries. To some extent, it can also be applied to more complex stories.

===Parent Theories===
Russian formalism applied to narrative structure

===Child Theories===
Myth analysis by C. Lévi-Strauss, [[Narrative units]] by R. Barthes, [[Roles and processes]] by C. Bremond.

===Brief Description===
From a set of 100 Russian folk tales, Propp derived a clear distinction between the variable and constant elements of the fables. He determined that they can be reduced to a sequence of 31 functions. All, or a subset of these functions are present in the folktale and are sufficient for describing the story. While not every function appears in each folktale, the ordering must not change. This is rather logical since, for example the hero cannot accomplish his task before he accepts the quest.
The functions (in order) are:
*Prologue - setting the scene, is not part of the 31 functions
#Absence - a character (family member) goes off to accomplish a task (work, visit, ...)
#Prohibition - the hero receives an order of -you must not, can be equally interpreted as you must
#Transgression - the hero disobeys the order. This is where a new character is introduced, usually the hero^s adversary
#Request for information - At this stage, the goal is for the adversary to learn delicate information
#Obtainment of information - either directly or indirectly, the adversary learns what he was after
#Trickery - the adversary takes on a disguise and attempts to trick the hero
#Involuntary complicity - the hero falls for the trick and unwillingly aids the adversary
#Misdeed - the function that gives the story direction. The 7 preceeding functions can be considered a build up to this one
#Transition/Proposal for the hero to undertake a quest- news of the misdeed is divulged to the hero. The hero is introduced (as the hero)
#Acceptance of quest
#Departure - Hero embarcs on quest, introduction of donor
#Hero is tested/Donor's first action - donor's validation of hero for reception of magical object/transmition magical object (magical object as a metaphor for an element the hero will need to accomplish quest)
#Hero's reaction to donor - the relationship (positive or negative) is established between hero and donor
#Transmission of magical object to hero - Since this necessary success element can take many forms, and the tests can be many (p55-58), this is an interesting entry point for multiple paths in IS, often seen in games where there are quests within quests within ... (solve this puzzle to unlock this box to find the potion to make the sorceress sleep to take the..., etc.)
#Hero's transfer between worlds - Hero arrives at location with source of quest. It can occur that this function cannot be isolated from the previous as an independent occurence. At the end of this one or the previous one, the hero must be at the right location. (how he got there can and cannot be specified - again pertinent to IS)
#Hero enters combat - Hero and adversary affront
#Hero is branded - An identifying mark is transferred to the hero
#Hero is victorious - Adversary is vanquished
#Misdeed is set straight - story climax
#Return - Hero embarcs on return journey
#Hero is persued - Another obstacle prevents the hero from getting home - another potential path
#Hero is rescued - obstacle is overcome
#Hero returns home in disguise - hero returns unrecognised
#False hero presents himself - An imposter pretends to have achieved quest
#Difficult task proposed to the hero - hero must prove himself
#Hero accomplishes task - can refer to something that happened in the past, knowledge/mark only the real hero would know/have
#Hero is recognised
#False hero is unmasked - often times linked to the previous.
#Metamorphosis of hero - hero cleans up
#False hero is punished
#Hero is rewarded/married - however happily ever after translates for the specific tale

Propp also identifies 7 roles that the characters assume as the fable unfolds; the antagonist, the donor, the helper, the princess or her father, the dispatcher, the hero, the false hero. A character can take on one or more of these roles within the story, but what is important to understand, is that within each fable, any role a character assumes stems from one of these 7. Between the 31 functions, and the 7 roles, Propp provides the lowest common denominator for describing a fairytale, and reversely for creating one.

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
Multiple points of view can be taken regarding Propp's contribution to IS. On one hand, the formulaic approach to folk tale deconstruction lends itself well to digitial story construction.
As stated by (Cavazza and Pizzi, 2006) the narrative functions can be used as a ready to use formalism. Yet in the same text, it is stated that the strict ordering constraints on the functions prohibits branching, a property generally considered necessary in the IS domain. However, functions like 14 and 15 can allow for the entire series (or a subset) of functions to be reapplied (as a substory) and completed before continuing with the main story.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
The Propp model has been widely used for story generation and IS.

* Back in the 1970s, Klein and coll. (1976) used it to automatically generate tales. Each function is represented symbollically and variable binding occurs in realtime to generate different tales.

* More recently, the Propp model was used to select relevant scenes in an IS system (Grasbon & Braun, 2001). Grasbon and Braun's tool uses Propp's functions model to define rules and algorithms for the runtime engine.

* [http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/home.html fairy tale generator]
*Hartmann, Hartmann and Feustel (2005) developed an authoring tool using Propp's functions (motifs as they call them) to classify scene descriptions.

*The Director Agent and SAGA used in [[Teatrix]] establish both story functions and user roles based on Propp's morphology

*IAGE (Internet Adventure Game Engine): Propp's functions are used as building blocks that the game author can use to create the story base from which the player can act upon (Rawson-Tetley, 2002).

===Links===
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

===References===
*Cavazza, M. & Pizzi, D. (2006). Narratology for interactive storytelling: A critical introduction. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, TIDSE '06, Springer, vol. 4326 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 72-83.

*Grasbon, D. & Braun, N. (2001). [http://netzspannung.org/version1/extensions/cast01-proceedings/pdf/by_name/Grasbon.pdf A Morphological Approach to Interactive Storytelling], In Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, CAST '01, Living in Mixed Realities, Sankt Augustin, Germany.

*Hartmann, K., Hartmann, S. and Feustel, M. (2005). Motif Definition and Classification to Structure Non-linear Plots and to Control the Narrative Flow in Interactive Dramas.In:Gérard Subsol (Ed.): Virtual Storytelling Using Virtual Reality Technologies for Storytelling, Third International Conference, ICVS 2005, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3805 Springer, 158-167.

*Klein, S., Aeschlimann, J. F., Applebaum, M.A., Balsiger, D.F., Curtis, E.J., Foster, M., Kalish, S.D., Kamin, S.J., Lee, Y.-D. and Price L.A. (1976). Simulation d'hypothèses émises par propp et Lévi-strauss en utilisant un système de simulation meta-symbolique. Informatique et Sciences Humaines, 28, 63-133, Mars 1976.

*Machado, I., Brna, P. and Paiva, A. (2004). 1,2,3...Action! Directing Real Actors and Virtual Characters. In: Stefan Göbel, Ulrike Spierling, Anja Hoffmann, Ido Iurgel, Oliver Schneider, J. Dechau, Axel Feix (Eds): Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International Conference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105 Springer, 36-41

*Peinado, F. and Gervás, P. (2004), Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive Digital Storytelling. In: Stefan Göbel, Ulrike Spierling, Anja Hoffmann, Ido Iurgel, Oliver Schneider, J. Dechau, Axel Feix (Eds): Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International Conference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105 Springer, 48-54.

*Propp, V. (1928/1970). Morphologie du conte. Seuil, Paris.

*Rawson-Tetley, R. (2002). Internet adventure game engine (IAGE). http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/iage/ (accessed 2009-09-28)

Virtual Storyteller

2011-01-10T18:13:13Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
The Virtual Storyteller is publicly available on the [http://virtstoryteller.sourceforge.net project homepage].

===Technical Description===
The Virtual Storyteller builds on the emergent narrative approach as used in [http://iris.scm.tees.ac.uk/public-wiki/index.php/Fearnot Fearnot]. Stories are not prespecified, but emerge as a consequence of the interaction of autonomous virtual agents playing the roles of story characters in a storyworld simulation. Novel is that these agents are not only self-interested, goal-directed characters, but also drama-directed, collaborative actors. This means a distributed drama management approach is being adopted. As characters, the agents adopt character goals and create plans in order to attain these goals. As actors, the agents select external events and retrospectively fill in details of the initial state of the simulation, in order to justify the adoption of new goals and facilitate the creation of goal plans (Swartjes, Kruizinga & Theune 2008).

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
The Virtual Storyteller generates simple stories that result from autonomous character interaction. Currently, there are several experiment domains, most notably, one about pirates and one based on the Little Red Riding Hood folktale. Creating these domains was done with a focus not on achieving specific aesthetic goals, but on better understanding the authoring process involved. Descriptions of this process and resulting stories can be found in (Swartjes & Theune 2009).

===Authoring Description===
For The Virtual Storyteller, an iterative authoring approach is adopted in which the task of the author is to create a space of possible stories. This space follows from the story content (goals, actions, events, etc.) and processes (goal adoption, action selection, etc.) created by the author. This space cannot be totally preconceived. Often, the authored content and processes give rise to event sequences that the author had not anticipated, but are nevertheless valuable. Hence, authorial intent is envisioned to take shape <i>during</i> authoring, and story generation feedback from the system is considered important (Swartjes & Theune 2009).

===Strong Points===
<ul>
<li> Emergent narrative approach: narrative is not explicitly represented but emerges from autonomous characters.
<li> Agents are not just self-interested characters but also drama-interested actors. The implementation of this second role is informed by techniques used in improvisational theatre (Swartjes & Vromen 2007). They can select external events and retrospectively adapt the initial state of the story for dramatic reasons.
</ul>

===Limitations===
<ul>
<li> No emotion model or support for authoring character emotions.
<li> Model for global narrative control remains limited.
<li> Currently no interface for user interaction.
</ul>

===Main Publications===
<ul>
<li> Swartjes, I., & Theune, M. (2009). [http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/~swartjes/documents/publications/ICIDS09_swartjes.pdf Iterative Authoring Using Story Generation Feedback: Debugging or Co-creation?] In I. A. Iurgel, N. Zagalo, & P. Petta (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling (Vol. 5915, pp. 62–73). Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer.

<li> Swartjes, I., Kruizinga, E., & Theune, M. (2008). [http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/~swartjes/documents/publications/ICIDS08_swartjes.pdf Let's Pretend I Had a Sword: Late Commitment in Emergent Narrative]. In U. Spierling & N. Szilas (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling (Vol. 5334, pp. 264–267). Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer.

<li> Swartjes, I., & Theune, M. (2008). [http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/~swartjes/documents/publications/BNAIC08_swartjes.pdf The Virtual Storyteller: Story Generation by Simulation]. In A. Nijholt, M. Pantic, M. Poel, & H. Hondorp (Eds.), BNAIC 2008, Proceedings 20th Belgian-Netherlands Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 257–264). Enschede: University of Twente.

<li> Swartjes, I., & Vromen, J. (2007). [http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/~swartjes/documents/publications/AAAI07_FS06_swartjes.pdf Emergent Story Generation: Lessons from Improvisational Theater]. In Intelligent Narrative Technologies: Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium (pp. 147–150). Menlo Park: AAAI Press.

<li> Swartjes, I., & Theune, M. (2006). [http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/~swartjes/documents/publications/Tidse06_swartjes.pdf A Fabula Model for Emergent Narrative]. In S. Göbel, R. Malkewitz, & I. Iurgel (Eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (Vol. 4326, pp. 49–60). Heidelberg: Springer.
</ul>

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
The Virtual Storyteller draws inspiration from improvisational theatre (Swartjes & Vromen 2007). In the poetics of improv, character interaction yields the additive collaborative construction of a story, in contrast to the neo-[http://iris.scm.tees.ac.uk/public-wiki/index.php/Aristotle Aristotelian poetics] in which author-given plots determine the necessary character behaviour.

The fabula of the generated narratives is captured and respresented by the system, using a formal model based on Trabasso's causal network theory of story comprehension (Swartjes & Theune 2006).

===Computational Model===
The Virtual Storyteller is a Multi-Agent System in which agents are implemented using a BDI-based character model. The agents use an adapted version of partial-order planning.

U-Director

2011-01-10T18:13:12Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
Non distributed prototype.

===Technical Description===

Utility-based Director Agent (U-Director) is a director agent that monitors the storytelling according to narrative objectives, user states and storyworld states. It offers a narrative architecture that uses the dynamic decision network (Dean & Kanazawa, 1989).
It selects the action to be performed during the unfolding of a story according to players' interaction and the storytelling. Narrative utility is maximized, according to various criteria such as plot progress, narrative flow, location flow, etc.

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
U-DIRECTOR had been implemented in the Crystal Island storytelling environment. It consists in unfolding the specific story on Crystal Island.

"The user’s character awakens from a good night’s sleep and the adventure begins. At this juncture, several elements in the plot graph are
available for her to address. For example, she could find her father paralyzed in his bedroom, she might notice that a plate with leftover food is in his office, or she might discover other facts such as that her good friend, Teresa, has also been stricken with the mysterious illness."

===Strong Points===
U-DIRECTOR exploits recent advances in approximate Bayesian inference via stochastic sampling.

It is an emergent narrative approach that is directed by storytelling means.

===Limitations===
Results of the study indicate that the clustering algorithm’s running time has the greatest variability and may not satisfy the performance requirements of interactive narrative.

===Main Publications===
* Mott, B. W. and Lester, J. C. (2006). U-director: a decision-theoretic narrative planning architecture for storytelling environments. In Proceedings of the Fifth international Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (Hakodate, Japan, May 08 - 12, 2006). AAMAS '06. ACM, New York, NY, 977-984. [http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1160633.1160808]

* Dean, T. and Kanazawa, K. (1989). A model for reasoning about persistence and causation. Computational Intelligence, 5(3), 142-150. [http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/tld/publications/archive/BoutilieretalJAIR-99.pdf]

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
-

===Computational Model===
[[Bayesian networks]].

Three-Act Paradigm

2011-01-10T18:13:11Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Authors===
Syd Field

===Histo-geographical placement===
USA, Europe, 1979

As a head of the story department at Cinemobile Systems, Syd Field read more then 2000 screenplays in two years and selected only 40 to present for possible film production.

===Type of story===
Screenplays

===Parent Theories===
[[Aristotle]]

===Child Theories===
-

===Brief Description===
In his book “Screenplay” (Fields, 1979) Syd Field outlines a paradigm that most screenplays follow. To the fundamental question “What is a screenplay” he answers simply:
“A screenplay is a story told with pictures.” (Screenplay, 1979, p. 8).
He then asks: What do all stories have in common?
He argues that a story is to be understood as a whole, but is made up of:

*The action
*Characters
*Scenes
*Sequences
*Act I, Act II, Act III
*Incidents
*Episodes
*Events
*Music
*Locations

All these parts make the story hold together as a whole. What holds all these parts together to a story, is the structure. “it is the relationship between these parts that holds the entire screenplay, that whole, together.” (p.9) That is what Field calls the paradigm of dramatic structure. He defines a paradigm as a model or conceptual scheme and proposes the following for screenplays:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Beginning
!
! Middle
!
! End
|-
| Act I
|
| Act II
|
| Act III
|-
| Setup
|X
| Confrontation
|X
| Resolution
|-
|==============
|=========
|==============
|=========
|=========>>
|-
|
|Plot Point 1
|
|Plot Point 2
|
|}

Every screenplay has a beginning, a middle and an end, called Act I, Act II and Act III.

1. Act I is a unit of dramatic action held together with the dramatic context known as Setup.

2. Act II is held together with the dramatic context known as Confrontation. Here the main character tries to achieve their dramatic need and encounters obstacles.

3. Act III is held together with the dramatic context known as Resolution, it resolves the story.

The ends of Act I and Act II are marked by Plot Points.
Both, Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2 are an incident, an event or an episode that drives the story in a new direction. The Plot Point 1 is a function of the main character that drives them to the dramatic need. The Plot Point 2 happens at the end of Act II and leads the story to Act III where the resolution takes place.

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
The Three-Act Paradigm can be used in IS system, but the strong linearity of the model makes it less useful for generative approaches.

This model (and similar screenwriting approaches) insists on the main character "quest", and the obstacles this character meets when pursuing the quest. This is a premise of a goal-based approach, that is common in Artificial Intelligence and that have been widely applied in IS systems.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
While several systems don't impose the three act structure, they offer a framework allowing such decomposition. For example [[Dramachina]] ''could'' implement the Three-Act Paradigm with the scene object.

The [[Rencontre]] system borrowed the concept of a hierarchical decomposition into acts and scenes to create the hypersection structure. However, with Rencontre the author can also write various hierarchical structures.

[[IDtension]] is based in part on the concept of obstacles, according to this model.

===Links===
The three-act structure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_act_structure

Official website of Syd Field: http://www.sydfield.com/

===References===
Field, S. (1979). Screenplay, Dell Publishing.

Thespian

2011-01-10T18:13:11Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
Not available now. Check the pages of [http://people.ict.usc.edu/~meisi/ Mei Si] and [http://people.ict.usc.edu/~marsella/root/root.html Stacy Marsela].

===Technical Description===
Thespian is a character-based approach to Interactive Drama. The choice of the actions in the narrative is based on character's internal state. Character modelling is based on ''PsychSims'' developed previously by Stacy Marsella and David Pynadath. Characters have goals, beliefs, and available actions to perform in order to reach their goal. To choose an action, a lookahead mechanism enables to assess the achievement of goals after several actions and other characters' possible reactions. The belief model not only contains beliefs of the storyworld's state but also beliefs about other characters' beliefs, in a recursive manner.

Such a character-based approach is complex and finding the right parameters to produce an interesting story is a tedious task. Therefore, a major feature of Thespian is a fitting algorithm, that allows to automatically calculate the character's parameters according to some desired path, that is story examples that are given by an author.

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
In the specific interactive drama called "TactLang", to teach soldiers language and culture awareness, Thespian is integrated within a 3D environment. User moves within this environment, and play the role of a character, in a subjective view. To interacti with characters, the user speak in natural language, which is automatically translated into dialog acts by the system.

===Authoring Description===
Authoring consists in choosing the goals of the characters, as well as actions that can be achieved towards the goals.

Several weighting parameters intervene to obtain suitable agent's behaviours and personnality. To tune these parameters, authors can benefit from a fitting algorithm, as mentioned above. This process simplifies authoring because the authors enter possible story paths rather than abstract parameters for agents. After entering one or more possible story paths, the system calculates the parameters and the author can experiment with the system and possibly add new story paths if necessary.

Another automatic mechanics for authoring is the simulation of potential users. After fitting the parameters, the system generates new stories by simulating user actions. The generated stories can then be shown to the author, who gives feedback that feeds the fitting algorithm (cyclic design).

===Strong Points===
An advanced character model and the authoring process.

===Limitations===
As any character-centered approach, it is unsure how global narrative qualities can be achieved by solely tuning agents' parameters.

===Main Publications===
* Mei Si, Stacy Marsella, and David V. Pynadath (2007). [http://people.ict.usc.edu/~marsella/publications/SiIVA07.pdf Proactive Authoring for Interactive Drama: An Author's Assistant], in 7th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, (Paris, France).

* Mei Si, Stacy C. Marsella, and David V. Pynadath (2005). [http://people.ict.usc.edu/~marsella/publications/SiMarsPynAAMAS05.pdf Thespian: Using Multi-Agent Fitting to Craft Interactive Drama], in Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, (Utrecht, Netherlands), pp. 21-28.

* David V. Pynadath and Stacy C. Marsella (2005). [http://people.ict.usc.edu/~marsella/publications/PynMarsIJCAI05.pdf PsychSim: Modeling Theory of Mind with Decision-Theoretic Agents], in Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 1181-1186.

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
No explicit reference to a narrative approach is provided.

===Computational Model===
The agent model is based on Partially Observable Markov Devision Problems, a variant of reinforcement learning.

===Type of interaction===
Classical 3D interaction + speech recognition.

Theory of possible worlds

2011-01-10T18:13:10Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''

===Authors===
Umberto Eco

===Histo-geographical placement===
Italy, 1960's

===Type of story===
The theory is based on written text, but can be extended to other media.

===Parent Theories===
-

===Child Theories===
-

===Brief Description===
According to Umberto Eco, an author-written text is an unfinished work and requires a reader to complete the effort. A text lives for the value added significance introduced by the reader. More specifically, a text is emitted for someone capable of actualising it; i.e., the text needs to be correlated to an accepted code system. The code system in question needs to be part of the reader’s set of competencies, and to achieve a fair match (between intention and result) the author must consider what Eco calls the Ideal Reader. The author must make a plan for all possible reader interpretations for the Ideal Reader to be able to interpret meaning into the text. More than a set of competencies possessed by a reader, the Ideal Reader is the set of felicity conditions/success conditions that need to be satisfied for a text's potential content to be fully actualised (Eco U., 1965, p.77)

A text should be represented by a system of nodes, indicating which node requires cooperation from the (ideal) reader (Eco U., 1965, p.84). If, when faced with one such node, the reader experiences divergence between the world of their experience and the world of the text, he may momentarily suspend belief (or disbelief) until the next clue (as to the appropriate interpretation) is presented. The reader has to turn to the linguistic rules and competencies offered by the language of the text and their own mastery of the possible interpretations. By choosing for the reader the author shapes their text and defines more specifically, what/who the Ideal Reader is.
The language in which the text is written provides (linguistic) rules and expects a certain encyclopedic competency for its interpretation (again the level of mastery of these two desired by the author are what makes the Ideal Reader, ideal).

The following list describes various cooperative passages where the author and the reader accept a common understanding necessary for the message and the interpretation to coincide:

*base dictionary
**what the words imply: positioning. The story landscape drawn by our understanding of the words.
*rules of co-reference
**subject-verb agreement from sentence to sentence. The link between the second and first sentence exists only in the second, the first does not need to mention something that will be found in the second.
*circumstantial and contextual selection
**what experiences of the past allow to derive or reinforce an interpretation ("jurisprudence")
*rhetorical and stylistic hypercoding or ideological hypercoding
*shared scenario inferences
*intertextual scenario inferences

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
In interactive narrative, recognising moments of (possible) divergence and the different types of "clues" that can be offered to the reader can provide an appropriate framework for where to provide a reader with options and indicate on what level (and in what direction) the different options will take the story.
Depending on a reader's interpretation, potential outcomes vary. As a linear story unfolds the room for interpretation on the reader's behalf needs to narrow to successfully capt the author's intended message. In IS, these possible interpretations could be used as eventual story paths. Understanding where the reader's interpretation and the author's intention can deviate, opens the way to provide alternate story paths.
According to (Louchart, Swartjes, Kriegel and Aylett, 2004) an emergent narrative establishes a cooperative contract with the interactor, and it is his decisions (interpretations) that determine the story landscape, and possible actions. Within the paradigm of emergent narrative, the denser the landscape the better (more story options). Eco considers the more a text is open and the less the contract of understanding is specified (between author and reader) the more possible worlds will result from the reader assuming the author's intention. In IS this is ideal especially concerning emergent narrative.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
The Ideal Reader concept has been borrowed by [[IDtension]] to design the "model of the user".

===Links===
* [http://www.signosemio.com/eco/a_cooperation.asp Textual cooperation, signosemio website]

===References===
*Eco, U., (1965). L'oeuvre ouverte. Paris: Le Seuil.
*Eco, U., (1985). Lector In Fabula: Le rôle du lecteur. Grasset.
*Louchart S., Swartjes I., Kriegel M., and Aylett R., (2008). Purposeful Authoring for Emergent Narrative. Proceedings of the 1st Joint International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling: Interactive Storytelling. LNCS vol 5334. pp. 273 - 284.

Text on suspense, games and IS

2011-01-10T18:13:09Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

===Full Text (Klimmt, Vorderer, Roth)===
Interactive storytelling can facilitate diverse and complicated modes of user experience. One experiential quality that is likely to occur when users become immersed in interactive narratives is suspense. Suspense has been theorized extensively in communication science and literature studies (Vorderer, Wulff & Friedrichsen, 1996), and there are also conceptual proposals that suspense occurs frequently in interactive entertainment, most importantly video games (Grodal, 2000; Klimmt, Rizzo, Vorderer, Fischer & Koch, 2009). A construal of suspense in interactive storytelling needs to address the interactivity component with priority, because the opportunity to affect the course of the narrative (e.g., to contribute to the solution of conflict) is likely to have consequences for the emergence and quality of suspense experiences.

Users of interactive storytelling applications know that they are offered some possibilities to act (e.g., make a character talk, pick up items, manipulate objects, or shape the development of a dialogue with an autonomous agent). In some situations during exposure to the applications, users are free to implement their action possibilities. In other situations, the narrative will require users to become active and execute a specific action in order to facilitate story progress (e.g., to “save” an autonomous agent that is in danger or to solve a puzzle that the user is facing). For user enjoyment, it is crucial whether they enter an episode that features very low or no immediate pressure to act or if they begin an episode that includes a strong necessity to act (e.g., dangers approaching, undesirable developments of the storyline emerging).

In the first case, users can apply their possibilities to act to explore the world of the interactive story. In the absence of pressures, they can try out character moves and commands, move around freely and detect new areas and challenges, or simply cover distances to times or places when/where there is more „to do“. Exploration is, according to curiosity theories (e.g., aesthetics theory: Berlyne, 1960, interest theory: Krapp, 1993; cognitive-epistemic theory: Groeben & Vorderer, 1988) an enjoyable process in most cases. That is, exploration should be „successful“ in the sense that the individual finds something new in the environment that reduces the uncertainty of the actual exploration stage. Discoveries breed satisfaction, feelings of competence, and optimism, which all contributes to game enjoyment. As a consequence, the enjoyment process of low-pressure-to-act episodes can be construed as exploration action: At the beginning, users select from their repertoire of available actions (which depends on the narrated situation and on their individual skills) in order to explore a certain part of the story world (e.g., geographic exploration, testing of new tools). They execute the chosen action and observe the result of their action in the narrative’s context, that is, the discoveries they made (for instance, finding an interesting room, learning about new uses for a piece of equipment, or building a relationship with an autonomous agent). The curiosity that accompanies the exploration action and the positive experiences that come along with successful discoveries contribute to the sustained, intense enjoyment of interactive narratives. For episodes with low pressure to act, then, curiosity, uncertainty about the environment, and the reduction of this uncertainty through successful discovery (Berlyne, 1960) are theorized as “fun factors”.

However, exploration does not “work” successfully every time. If no significant discovery is made, frustration or boredom arise, which undermine enjoyment (Ragheb & Merydith, 2001). To the extent that exploration action leads to a positive outcome, however, curiosity and exploration processes are suggested important elements of the appreciation of interactive storytelling applications.

In other situations during exposure to an interactive narrative, users are confronted with a strong necessity to act. Opponents, dangers, time limits, traps and other difficulties that story systems “send out” towards the user reduce the degrees of freedom in her/his decisions and actions. While in exploration episodes (see above), users are free to try out action options and experience enjoyment because of the absence of pressures to act in a specific way (or to act at all), these kinds of episodes force users to respond to given circumstances and to avoid undesired episode outcomes, such as dead of the user character or sympathetic autonomous agents. Strong-pressure-to-act episodes thus create the necessity that users select a suitable, task-appropriate action from their available options and implement this action in a correct, effective and succesful way. If they fail to select a goal-oriented action option or to implement that action (e.g., due to low speed of movement or erroneous keyboard input), the opposing forces will cause significant disadvantages for the users. In other words, failure is costly in situations with high pressure to act. At the beginning of such narrative episodes, then, users are confronted with a necessity to act (e.g., approaching antagonists), which also implies that users formulate a goal: They define a desirable outcome of the episode (e.g., defeat of the antagonist and survival of the user character). However, initially, it is in most cases unclear if the users will achieve that desired outcome and thus shape the interactive narrative in the preferred way, because the episode outcome depends on the narrated situation (e.g., intentions and resources of the antagonist agent) and the skills of the user (e.g., experience with the input interface, creativity to find a solution to the current threat).

The configuration of a necessity to act with a desired outcome of the episode and uncertainty about whether the desired outcome will be achieved is a direct equivalent of what Zillmann (1994; 1996) has proposed as ingredients of suspense in drama spectators. According to his affective disposition theories (see Raney, 2006, for a recent overview), suspense in viewers comes out of hopes and fears related to the faith of (main) characters in the film/drama. For those characters that viewers like (positive disposition), good outcomes (e.g., saving the world, marriage with a beautiful character, public acknowledgment) are hoped for and bad outcomes (e.g., killed-in-action by villains, public ignorance) are feared. Complimentarily, for those characters that viewers dislike (negative disposition), positive outcomes (e.g., the bad defeats the good) are feared, and negative outcomes (e.g., the deserved punishment of the villain) are hoped for. This double mixture of hopes and fears co-occurs in drama/movie viewers with uncertainty about the actual outcomes for the characters: Typical “suspense” movies leave the solution who wins and who loses open until the very end by sustaining the uncertainty about which side will prevail. This way, viewers hopes and fears are operating as long as possible. Very similarly, video game episodes with a high necessity to act create the configuration of hopes (e.g., the wish that the player character survives the enemy attack) and fears (e.g., the fear that the hostile forces will prevail) with uncertainty about the outcome of the episode. Consequently, suspense is the emotional experience of players at the beginning of a high-necessity-to-act episode (Klimmt, 2003; Grodal, 2000; Klimmt et al., 2009). The same suspense mechanics are likely to occur in interactive storytelling when users are confronted with narrated events that ‘demand’ user activity.

While suspense is not a pleasurable emotional state per se, it is frequently appreciated by media audiences and obviously an important part of media entertainment, as the many successful movies and television shows that (can) evoke suspense experiences suggest (Vorderer, Wulff & Friedrichsen, 1996; Vorderer, Klimmt & Ritterfeld, 2004). Thus, suspense is identified as one major component of the enjoyment of interactive stories, specifically during episodes that feature a necessity to act for the user.

Suspense experiences that arise from uncertainty about the further progress of the narrated events and the desire for a specific type of progress typically come along with corresponding relief experiences. Relief is the emotional response to the observation of ‘happy ends’ in drama episodes (i.e., when a movie comes exactly to the end the viewers have hoped for), and similar affective reactions have been argued to occur after the successful resolution of suspenseful video game episodes. Zillmann (1996a) has introduced excitation transfer theory to explain the remarkably strong positive experience of such ‘happy-end events’. This theory suggests that physiological arousal levels change quite slowly. High arousal (such as the arousal that occurs in situations of high suspense) needs relatively much time to go down to normal levels again, especially compared to the time demands of most cognitive processes. Zillmann (1996a) argues that media users hold high levels of arousal throughout the reception of suspensful stories, because arousal is an important component of suspense (Vorderer et al., 1996). Once the ‘happy end’ occurs, that is, the story turns into the outcome that media users had hoped for, the uncertainty and perceived negativity of the suspense stage of the story vanish immediately. They are replaced by positive evaluations of the situation (happiness, relief, cheerfulness, etc., see Bosshart & Macconi, 1998). While this positive re-evaluation of the situation – as a cognitive process – is performed very quickly, the high level of arousal from the suspense stage cannot go down to normal that fast and remains although its reason (uncertainty, anxiety concerning the story characters) is already gone. Consequently, the arousal of the suspense stage is transferred to the stage of positive situation evaluation when the happy end occurs. The combination of positive cognition and (still) high arousal is experienced as “euphorya” (Zillmann, 1996a) and is the psychological reconstruction of the relief that most media users display in happy-end sequences of movies and dramas.

Because of the similarity between suspense in movie viewers and in players during video game episodes with a strong necessity to act (see above), it is also reasonable to assume an excitation transfer process for video game players in the case of positive episode outcomes (Klimmt, 2003). For instance, in episodes with approaching enemies, suspense is evoked due to the players’ hope to “survive” the attack, the desire to defeat the enemies and the uncertainty about whether they will achieve their goals. If the players’ actions are successful and their goals are achieved (positive outcome), the same process of excitation transfer should occur in video game players that was proposed for movie viewers: Players evaluate the episode outcome positive and still hold an increased level of arousal from the uncertainty stage of the episode. Thus, they have a “happy-end experience” that is modeled by excitation transfer theory.

One aspect of this positive relief experience that is special to video games has to be discussed here, because it is bound to interactivity, which is a feature both of video games and interactive storytelling applications. Klimmt (2003) argues that the positive emotional experience of successfully mastered game episodes is even stronger in game players due to video game interactivity. The reason for this assumption is that in contrast to readers or movie viewers, video game players can (and must) achieve their action goals by themselves. Their action, their skill, their courage is needed to generate positive episode outcomes. Readers and viewers, however, have to rely on the action, skills, courage, etc. of the characters that occur in the non-interactive story or film. They cannot claim the glory for success, because they are mere observers of media characters’ actions. But game players can attribute positive episode outcomes to their performance, as they have used the game’s interactivity to achieve the positive result. Because players can and must interact with the game to resolve suspenseful situations, they can attribute positive episode outcomes to themselves. Motivational theories (e.g., Weiner, 1985) argue that if individuals believe they are responsible for positive events, self-esteem is increased due to feelings of pride and competence. Video game interactivity allows players to claim their performance as reason for the positive episode outcome; consequently, their self-esteem is pushed upwards, and pride (as a strong positive emotion) is evoked. Players truly feel as winners and perceive themselves as competent and powerful. The boost of self-esteem is specific to interactive video games (compared to non-interactive entertainment media) and is assumed to intensify the positive experience of excitation transfer when positive episode outcomes occur (see above). Thus, a dual mechanism of game enjoyment is triggered by suspenseful episodes that end in the way players desire: (1) Happiness/relief experiences due to excitation transfer (Zillmann, 1996a) and (2) increase of self-esteem that manifests in feelings of pride and competence (Weiner, 1985). Because interactive storytelling applications share with video games the element of user impact on displayed events, we argue that the same dualism of relief and increased self-esteem based on feelings of success and competence is at work if users of interactive stories manage to resolve an episode in the way that matches their intentions. The experience of suspense that results from hoping for a specific outcome and the uncertainty about the outcome transforms into a strongly positive experience of relief and pride. However, if users shape the plot events in a way that leads to an undesired outcome (e.g., an autonomous agent becomes angry instead of providing positive feedback to the user), the stage of suspense will not turn into this double-positive experience, but rather shift to a state of frustration (due to the lack of relief and the impression of own failure, because users have to attribute the undesired outcome to themselves just as they attribute positive outcomes to themselves). The ups and downs of desirable and less desirable episode outcomes can generate significant affective dynamics of suspense, relief/pride, and frustration, which can result, over a longer period of time, in a highly pleasurable meta-experience of participating in the interactive story. Suspense is, as the precursor both of relief and frustration experiences, a key element of this affective dynamics, and it is an important tool to keep users involved and curious about how the story can and will proceed.

===References===

*Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal, and curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

*Bosshart, L. & Macconi, I. (1998). Defining "Entertainment". Communication Research Trends, 18(3), 3-6.

*Grodal, T. (2000). Video games and the pleasures of control. In D. Zillmann & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Media entertainment: The psychology of its appeal (pp. 197-212). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Groeben, N. & Vorderer, P. (1988). Leserpsychologie. Lesemotivation – Lektürewirkung [The psychology of readers: Motivation to read – effects of reading]. Münster: Aschendorff.

*Klimmt, C. (2003). Dimensions and determinants of the enjoyment of playing digital games: A three-level model. In M. Copier & J. Raessens (Eds.), Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference (pp. 246-257). Utrecht: Faculty of Arts, Utrecht University.

*Klimmt, C., Rizzo, A., Vorderer, P., Koch, J. & Fischer, T. (2009). Experimental evidence for suspense as determinant of video game enjoyment. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 12 (1), 29-31.

*Krapp, A. (1993). The construct of interest. Characteristics of individual interests and interest-related actions from the perspective of a person-object theory (Studies in Educational Psychology No. 4). Munich: University of the Bundeswehr.

*Ragheb, M. G. & Merydith, S. P. (2001). Development and validation of a multidimensional scale measuring free time boredom. Leisure Studies, 20 (1), 41-59.

*Raney, A. A. (2006). The psychology of disposition-based theories of media enjoyment. In. J. Bryant & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of entertainment (pp. 137-150). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Vorderer, P. (2000). Interactive entertainment and beyond. In D. Zillmann & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Media entertainment: The psychology of its appeal (pp. 21-36). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Vorderer, P., Klimmt, C. & Ritterfeld, U. (2004). Enjoyment: At the heart of media entertainment. Communication Theory, 14 (4), 388-408.

*Vorderer, P., Wulff, H. J. & Friedrichsen, M. (Eds.). (1996). Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Zillmann, D. (1994). Mechanism of emotional involvement with drama. Poetics, 23, 33-51.

*Zillmann, D. (1996a). Sequential dependencies in emotional experience and behavior. In R. D. Kavanaugh, B. Zimmerberg, & S. Fein (Eds.), Emotion: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 243-272). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Zillmann, D. (1996b). The psychology of suspense in dramatic exposition. In P. Vorderer, H. J. Wulff & M. Friedrichsen (Eds.), Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations (pp. 199-231). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Teatrix

2011-01-10T18:13:07Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''

===Availability===
Teatrix demos and documentation are available at [http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/teatrix website].

===Technical Description===
Teatrix is made up of two main components; a world and agents. The world is a 3D stage divided into scenes and composed of animated (agents) and inanimated objects. The agents, intelligent synthetic characters, are the heart of the Teatrix system. An agent has 5 components controlling its behaviour; mind, body, effectors, sensors and inventory. The mind stores the agent's knowledge both about the world and itself. As well, the mind controls actions goals and the emotional state of the agent. The body is the agent's physical (2D) representation in the world. The effectors tell the agent how to perform an action and verifies that preconditions for the action are met, executes the action and finally updates the world according to the effects of the action. The sensors gather information about the changes to the world state and communicate them to the mind. The inventory is where an agent keeps all his possessions.

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
Teatrix is a 3D virtual environment for story created, targeted at 8-10 year olds to help them develop literacy skills. The environment helps children create a story where each character's behaviour can be controlled by a (live) participant. 3 modules exist, each corresponding with a phase of the learning/story writing cycle.
#Backstage : create storyworld by choosing characters, scenes and props
#On stage : this is the story creation phase. participants choose their characters and can then control the actions of that character.
#Audience : in this module, the story that was played out can be watched as recorded movie

===Strong Points===
*It was tested in classrooms with children.
*Engagement and enthusiasm of users.
*Final result usable (and understandable) by children.

===Limitations===
-

===Main Publications===
*Prada, R., Machado, I. and Paiva, A. (2000). [http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/teatrix/papers/teatrix-its2000.pdf TEATRIX: Virtual Environment for Story Creation]. In proceedings of ITS 2000, Springer Verlag,2000.
*Machado, I., Paiva, A., Prada, R. (2001). [http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/teatrix/papers/teatrix-agents2001.pdf Is the Wolf Angry or... Just Hungry?] In proceedings of Autonomous Agents 2001, ACM Press.
*Machado, I., Brna, P., and Paiva, A. (2001) Learning by playing: supporting and guiding story-creation activities. In Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, San Antonio, TX, 2001, pp.334-342
*[http://gaips.inesc-id.pt/teatrix/ Full list]

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
The support and guiding mechanism of Teatrix is provided by the Director Agent along with SAGA.
The definition of story, which determines how the system works, is based on [[Vladimir Propp]]'s narrative morphology. As well, the roles available for the children to chose from are based on Propp's morphology.

===Computational Model===
-

Suspense

2011-01-10T18:13:06Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Authors===
Suspense is a concept that has been investigated in literature studies and media psychology. Terminologically, it is derived from the everyday phenomenon that consumption of certain types of (textual, audiovisual, other types of) stories comes along with a specific emotional experience that is a mixture of aversive and positive states. So “Suspense” is not a theory, it is rather a phenomenon that frequently occurs in readers, viewers, and users of stories that is to be explained by a theory of suspense.

Various authors have proposed theoretical accounts that explain the emergence of suspense in story audiences (see Vorderer, Wulff, & Friedrichsen, 1996 for an overview). Knobloch (2003) highlights the contributions by Richard Gerrig (Stony Brook University, USA), William F. Brewer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), and Dolf Zillmann (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA).

===Histo-geographical placement===
Reflections on suspense can be traced back to ancient Greek drama theorists, especially Aristotle. Much contemporary reasoning about the conditions and processes of suspense mirror Aristotle’s thinking about drama audiences’ responses to the faith of characters (see Hiltunen, 2002). Especially Zillmann’s framework recurs explicitly to Aristotle’s propositions. Modern lines of suspense theory have grown from psychological research in arts perception, especially literature studies. Although there is much reasoning about suspense in the humanities as well (e.g., Dollerup, 1970), the social-scientific approaches reviewed here offer the advantage that they have been built mostly on experimental studies with readers of (non-interactive) stories. Today, suspense research is branching out to cover audience experiences in various modes of narrative and non-narrative (yet dramatic) communication settings, such as different story genres (e.g., mystery, thriller, surprise stores) or media categories (e.g., live sports spectatorship, tabloid news). A few attempts have also been published to reason about the impact of interactivity on suspense processes (Vorderer, 2000; Klimmt et al., 2009).

===Type of story===
All theories of suspense specify elements of characteristics of stories that are required to facilitate an experience of suspense (see “brief description” section). In general, most theorist agree that readers (users) must perceive a sense of uncertainty about the progress and outcome of a story in order to feel suspense. If the ending of a story is perfectly clear, uncertainty is absent, and no suspense will arise. However, if the readers cannot predict who will win a conflict, master a challenge, or win a competition, for instance, uncertainty is present, and there is a reasonable chance that suspense will occur. References to story requirements of uncertainty can be found in the propositions by Gerrig (1996), Brewer (1996), and Zillmann (1996) – see Knobloch (2003).

A second important requirement for suspense, which is highlighted especially by Zillmann is the perceived story relevance. Readers / users must find that what is happening in the story is important (to them). Without an (emotional) interest in the story, it does not matter whether there is uncertainty about its outcomes or not, people will simply not care. However if for instance they care what will happen to the characters they are interested in, suspense can arise. Common techniques to attract story readers’ interest in plot development are to present interesting, appealing, sympathetic characters that bind readers’ emotional commitment (empathy, cf. Zillmann, 1991). According to Zillmann’s theory, emotional commitment to characters stems mostly from moral judgments of characters: “Good” characters “deserve” positive outcomes and audience interest in what will happen to them; “bad” characters (e.g., villains in a gangster movie) “deserve” bad outcomes and warrant audience observation whether they will receive their punishment. Addressing readers’ sensitivity for social justice thus plays a key role in attracting interest and raising perceived relevance.

===Parent Theories===
[[Aristotle]]’s drama theory (see Aristotle, 1961) may be taken as a parent theory for Zillmann's suspense concept. Another important conceptual root is Zillmann’s three-factor theory of emotion (see Bryant & Miron, 2003). In general, theories from cognitive psychology and the psychology of emotion were used to derive specific theories of how suspense will arise (see Vorderer et al., 1996). The theoretical genealogy of suspense in humanities approaches is of course rather routed in philosophical domains.

===Child Theories===
N/A

===Brief Description===
Zillmann (1996) models suspense as a dualistic affective state that is based on readers’ emotional investment in the story’s characters. Readers make moral judgments about characters and assign empathetic, positive emotional responses to those characters that execute morally good actions (e.g., heroes) and negative, “counter-empathetic” reactions to those characters that do morally wrong actions (e.g., villains). Moral evaluations increase the affective relevance of the characters and their faith that is narrated in the story. Readers who are emotionally committed to the characters are then confronted with uncertainty about the ongoing events in the story: Will the sympathetic, likeable protagonist achieve his goals and restore justice? Will the hated antagonists receive the punishment they deserve? Authors and directors typically maintain such uncertainty for long sequences of plot because the combination of emotional investment (readers are strongly interested in what will happen to the characters, and have formed preferences on what should happen to them) and uncertainty results in a mixture of two emotional processes: hoping (for the desired development of the story) and fearing (the undesired development of the story). As long as uncertainty is maintained (e.g., it remains unclear whether the protagonist survives and the antagonist is captured), these hopes and fears continue and rise, and this emotional condition of hoping and fearing is Zillmann’s psychological construal of the reader experience of suspense. It flows into a highly positive emotional condition in the very moment readers realize that the story has taken a desired or desirable ending (e.g., marriage of the hero with the beautiful female character he has fallen in love with plus death of the antagonist in the final shoot-out). Zillmann’s well-established excitation transfer theory explains the physiological mechanisms behind this sudden switch from the rather aversive (yet enjoyable) state of suspense to the “happy end relief” (see Bryant & Miron, 2003).

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
Suspense experiences that arise from uncertainty about the further progress of the narrated events and the desire for a specific type of progress typically come along with corresponding relief experiences. Relief is the emotional response to the observation of ‘happy ends’ in drama episodes (i.e., when a movie comes exactly to the end the viewers have hoped for), and similar affective reactions have been argued to occur after the successful resolution of suspenseful video game episodes.
Because players can and must interact with the game to resolve suspenseful situations, they can attribute positive episode outcomes to themselves. Motivational theories (e.g., Weiner, 1985) argue that if individuals believe they are responsible for positive events, self-esteem is increased due to feelings of pride and competence.
The boost of self-esteem is specific to interactive video games (compared to non-interactive entertainment media) and is assumed to intensify the positive experience of excitation transfer when positive episode outcomes occur (see above). Thus, a dual mechanism of game enjoyment is triggered by suspenseful episodes that end in the way players desire: (1) Happiness/relief experiences due to excitation transfer (Zillmann, 1996a) and (2) increase of self-esteem that manifests in feelings of pride and competence (Weiner, 1985). Because interactive storytelling applications share with video games the element of user impact on displayed events, we argue that the same dualism of relief and increased self-esteem based on feelings of success and competence is at work if users of interactive stories manage to resolve an episode in the way that matches their intentions.

The experience of suspense that results from hoping for a specific outcome and the uncertainty about the outcome transforms into a strongly positive experience of relief and pride. However, if users shape the plot events in a way that leads to an undesired outcome (e.g., an autonomous agent becomes angry instead of providing positive feedback to the user), the stage of suspense will not turn into this double-positive experience, but rather shift to a state of frustration (due to the lack of relief and the impression of own failure, because users have to attribute the undesired outcome to themselves just as they attribute positive outcomes to themselves). The ups and downs of desirable and less desirable episode outcomes can generate significant affective dynamics of suspense, relief/pride, and frustration, which can result, over a longer period of time, in a highly pleasurable meta-experience of participating in the interactive story. Suspense is, as the precursor both of relief and frustration experiences, a key element of this affective dynamics, and it is an important tool to keep users involved and curious about how the story can and will proceed.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
* Research within the [[mimesis]] project includes some computational implementation of suspense theory. It means that the generation of story events is calculated to maximize the experience of suspense for the reader (Cheong & Young, 2008).
* [[Facade]] is an example where suspense may occur in users of an interactive story. The dynamics of the interpersonal constellation among two virtual agents (Grace and Trip) and the (limited) possibilities of the user to affect it may cause both empathetic involvement with the characters plus unsecurity how the drama will go on, especially how it will go on depending on what the user decides to do within the storytelling environment.

===Links===
-

===References===
*Aristotle. (1961). Poetics (translated by S.H. Butcher). New York: Hill & Wang.

*Brewer, W. F. (1996). The nature of narrative suspense and the problem of rereading. In P. Vorderer, H. J. Wulff, & M. Friedrichsen (Eds.), Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations (pp. 107- 127). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

*Bryant, J. & Miron, D. (2003). Excitation-Transfer theory and three-factor theory of emotion. In J. Bryant, D. R. Roskos-Ewoldsen & J. Cantor, (Eds.), Communication and emotion: Essays in honor of Dolf Zillmann (pp. 31-60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Cheong, Y-G. & Young, R. M. (2008). [http://liquidnarrative.csc.ncsu.edu/pubs/icids2.pdf Narrative Generation for Suspense: Modeling and Evaluation]. In Spierling & Szilas (Eds.) Proc. Interactive Storytelling - ICIDS 2008 (pp 144-155). Springer Verlag.

*Dollerup, C. (1970). The concepts of "tension", "intensity", and "suspense" in short-story theory. Orbis Litterarum, 25 (4), 314-337.

*Gerrig, R. (1996). The resiliency of suspense. In P. Vorderer, H. J. Wulff & M. Friedrichsen (Eds.), Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations (pp. 93-105). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Hiltunen, A. (2002). Aristotle in Hollywood. Bristol: Intellect Books.

*Klimmt, C., Rizzo, A., Vorderer, P., Koch, J. & Fischer, T. (2009). Experimental evidence for suspense as determinant of video game enjoyment. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 12 (1), 29-31.

*Knobloch, S. (2003). Suspense and mystery. In J. Bryant, D. R. Roskos-Ewoldsen & J. Cantor, (Eds.), Communication and emotion: Essays in honor of Dolf Zillmann (pp. 379-396). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Raney, A. A. (2003). Disposition-based theories of enjoyment. In J. Bryant, D. R. Roskos-Ewoldsen & J. Cantor, (Eds.), Communication and emotion: Essays in honor of Dolf Zillmann (pp. 61-84). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Vorderer, P. (2000). Interactive entertainment and beyond. In D. Zillmann & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Media Entertainment: The psychology of its appeal (pp. 21-36). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

*Vorderer, P., Wulff, H. J. & Friedrichsen, M. (Eds.). (1996). Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Zillmann, D. (1991). Empathy: Affect from bearing witness to the emotions of others. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Responding to the screen: Reception and reaction processes (pp. 135-168). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Zillmann, D. (1996b). The psychology of suspense in dramatic exposition. In P. Vorderer, H. J. Wulff & M. Friedrichsen (Eds.), Suspense: Conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations (pp. 199-231). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Storytron

2011-01-10T18:13:06Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
Homepage of Storytron: http://www.storytron.com

Currently, the StoryWorld Authoring Tool "SWAT" is available for download: [http://www.storytron.com/SwatClient.zip SWAT], the tool is under development and regularly updated by a new version. It can be used to create storyworlds, which are playable online with the "Storyteller". This player cannot be downloaded; storyworlds can only be played with an Internet connection.

Official playable example: [http://www.storytron.com/players.php "Balance of Power - 21st Century"]

===Technical Description===
The Storytron system is character based and contains the following components:
* Storyteller - plays the storyworlds
* Deikto - a simplified version of the english language used by the player
* SWAT - the Storyworld Authoring Tool to create and edit storyworlds, it contains editors for Verbs, Actors, Stages, Props, Relationships and Operators
* Sappho - a scripting language used by the author

The stories have to be created with SWAT, which can be done offline. But to play them you have to be online to connect to the server.

The central concept of Storytron is the definition of actions which are called verbs. With the verb as the core element, a sentence is created around it by adding other word sockets like actors, props, stages and more. The result is a simplified version of the english language, called Deikto. By adding suffixes to the word sockets Deikto sounds more natural.

The pictures below show the properties window of the verb "offer a deal" and the corresponding sentence display editor.

[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Verb_offer-a-deal.png]]
[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Sentence_Display_Editor.png]]

A story is defined as a sequence of events that always include a verb. When the story engine has to execute an event, each actor receives a set of reactions to that verb, the set is called role, a single reaction is called option. To assume a role, the actor has to meet its conditions. An option is another verb with the specifiation of rules to fill the word sockets of the corresponding sentence and inclinations to perform that action.

The pictures below show three different roles for the verb "move for sanctions" and three options (verbs) for the role of the "Instigator".

[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Verb_Roles.png]]
[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Verb_Options.png]]

All computations, e.g. for conditions and inclinations, are done with Sappho, a graphical scripting language that structures the script in a tree-like manner.

The picture below shows a script that will provide a list of the possible actors that will fill in the direct object word socket of the previous example.

[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Verb_Acceptable.png]]

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
In the official example storyworld [http://www.storytron.com/players.php "Balance of Power - 21st Century"] the player assumes the role of the president of the United States
after the incident of 2001-09-11. He plays inside a "geopolitical strategy storyworld" and has to advance american interests by interacting with the leaders of other countries. Therefore he has a wide range of interactions like setting goals, offering deals or asking other countries to do something he likes.

All interactions are initiated by the use of Deikto. The player has to create sentences and can choose from many predefined options. After the sentence is finished, the reactions are shown.

The whole system is text-based, but can show pictures for illustration and pictograms for the mood of other countries (actors).

The picture below shows the users expercience of the story. On the left the last story events are displayed, on the right the user creates a sentence with Deikto by chosing alternatives from a drop down menu.

[[Image:Storytron_Screenshot_Story.png]]

===Strong Points===
Storytron potentially offers a huge variety for authors to define dramatic acting situations, in which complex contextual information can be taken into account (as preconditions) to differentiate between meaningful alternatives. The potential actions of end-users (player-actors) and virtual characters are defined in the same way and are (theoretically) interchangeable. The Deikto interface provides a representational level with symmetric balance of end-user input and system output, as both is being represented in the same toy language.

===Limitations===
Potential authors face a huge learning curve due to the system's complexity. (This circumstance, as a real-world experience, is true for most of current IS systems, if provided with an authoring tool or not.) Using the own words of the system's creator, many concepts are counterintuitive, because of some necessary "backward thinking".

The potential levels of expression and representation of actions are limited to the use of the Deikto "linguistic toy interface".

===Main Publications===
There are no scientific publications on the Storytron system.

Useful information can be found on the Storytron [http://www.storytron.com/ homepage] and in the [http://storytron.com/ipb/ forum] and [http://storytron.pbworks.com/ wiki]. There's an [http://www.swatbugs.com/smf old] and a [http://storytron.com/ipb/ new] version of the forum. In the [http://www.swatbugs.com/smf old one] early versions of tutorials are available. In the [http://storytron.pbworks.com/ wiki] the most current version of the tutorial is located.

Parts of the technology behind Storytron are derived from Erasmatron (1998). Some of Chris Crawford's design concepts and ideas regarding Erasmatron can be found [http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Erasmatron_Design_97/Index_1997.html here]. The main publication of Erasmatron is:

*Crawford, C. (1999). [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/michaelm/www/nidocs/Crawford.pdf Assumptions underlying the Erasmatron interactive storytelling engine]. In Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, Technical Report FS-99-01. AAAI Press, Menlo Park, 112-114.

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
None.

===Computational Model===
-

Scenejo

2011-01-10T18:13:05Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
http://www.scenejo.org.
Currently the system is not directly downloadable, but the developers are working on a downloadable version. The tool in the recent finished version (of 2007, running the KillerPhraseGame) is available on request by first contacting the developers.

===Technical Description===
The goal of the 'Scenejo' project is to provide an experimental platform for 'Interactive Digital Storytelling', which can be used to experience emerging dialogues or conversations between a number of virtual and human actors.
Scenejo connects several [http://www.alicebot.org A.L.I.C.E.] chatbots in a conversational loop of turn taking, which is controlled by a software component called ‘drama manager’. By text-chat via a standard keyboard, users can join in the conversation at any time.

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
"The Killer Phrase Game" was developed as a first learning application to be created for Scenejo in 2006 within the project ‘Interparolo’ at the FH Erfurt. This project aimed at creating digital learning material on the topic of ‘Moderation and Mediation’ for E-Learning. The resulting game could be test-played with students. It tackles the topic of how to identify and react to so-called ‘killer phrases’ within a discussion. Killer phrases are ‘creativity killers’, often used in a knee-jerk manner, which can destroy new ideas before they are discussed with solid arguments. The designed game assumes a scenario with two parties, planners and residents, arguing about upcoming plans for an airport expansion. The partly predefined conversation between the two parties, carried out across a table, contains such killer phrases. The learner plays the role of the moderator and has to manage the meeting. User interaction is handled through typing natural language text into a chat window. These verbal contributions are transformed into verbal actions (‘dialogue acts’) that may have a meaning within the prepared discussion.

Utterances of all parties in the conversation can influence parameter states in the game, two of which are the most important: The ‘Killer Phrase Level’ as kind of a stress level of the whole debate, and an ‘Agreement Level’. In the best case, the player can influence the stress level in a negative way so that the chances for constructive arguments are higher. Certain arguments increase the ‘Agreement Level’, and the game can end successfully for the moderator. In the worst case, the increasing ‘Killer Phrase Level’ reaches a threshold value that makes the discussion end with an escalation.

===Authoring Description===
Authoring of the conversations is supported by a graphical interface, and can also be accomplished by directly writing AIML code (an XML-dialect, see www.alicebot.org). Single utterances are defined on 2 levels: an abstract dialogue act, such as "PARKING COMPLAINT", and a concrete wording of the utterance, such as "You should try coming home in the afternoons, you'd be hard pressed to find a parking space." Possible abstract dialogue acts of one character (bot) are then arranged to form either sequences or reaction possibilities to utterances coming from either another bot or the user. In order to accomplish sequences of turn-taking between 2 bots, the output of one utterance of Bot A has to be input as a pattern for another utterance of Bot B.

Dialogue sequences / utterances are groups within dialogue graphs, which are associated to an actor in a scene. Several scenes can be combined as a high-level plot graph, defining the overall structure of the conversation.

===Strong Points===
Scenejo enables the definition of multi-partner conversations with high-frequency interaction possibilities for users. A strong point is its accessibility for authors stemming from non-programming areas, who can quickly experiment with creating small conversations that can be directly experienced, without knowledge in programming. Therefore, it is well suited for people making their first steps in experiencing typical authoring issues in Interactive Storytelling.

===Limitations===
Scenejo is currently limited to the design of verbal interaction with "talking heads" by typing text-chat. As it is based on the ALICE chatbot philosophy, combined with a low-level dialogue manager, recognition of user utterances is limited to author-defined patterns, the design of which is challenging.

===Main Publications===
Spierling, U., Weiß, S.A., Müller, W. (2006). Towards Accessible Authoring Tools for Interactive Storytelling. In: Goebel, Malkewitz, Iurgel (eds.): Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Conference Proceedings, Darmstadt, Springer Verlag LNCS. [http://www.ai.fh-erfurt.de/fileadmin/AI_Dokumente/Dokumente_der_Mitarbeiter/Mitarbeiter/Spierling/2006-TIDSE06___TowardsAccessibleAuthoringTools.pdf]

Spierling, U. (2007). Adding Aspects of “Implicit Creation" to the Authoring Process in Interactive Storytelling. In: Cavazza, M., Donikian, S. (eds.): Virtual Storytelling, ICVS 2007, Conference Proceedings, Saint Malo, France; Springer Verlag LNCS. [http://www.ai.fh-erfurt.de/fileadmin/AI_Dokumente/Dokumente_der_Mitarbeiter/Mitarbeiter/Spierling/2007-VS07___AddingAspectsOfImplicitCreation.pdf]

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
The tool was designed without any background of narrative theories.

===Computational Model===
The computational model was built around the philosophy of A.L.I.C.E. chatbots (http://www.alicebot.org). The first version included the Program D variant. On top of that, there is a shallow dialogue manager named "dramatic adviser", which is responsible for turn assignment and selection of next utterances.

Roles and processes

2011-01-10T18:13:04Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Authors===
Claude Brémond

===Histo-geographical placement===
1965-1975. French structuralism.

===Type of story===
All narrative in general.

===Parent Theories===
[[Vladimir Propp]], [[Narrative grammars | Tzvetan Todorov]]

===Child Theories===
None.

===Brief Description===
Building on Propp’s methodology for analysing the folk tale, Brémond breaks down the narrative into a lowest common denominator of elements as well. However, where Propp divides the tale into a series of functions, sequentially dependant on each other, Brémond groups these functions into a more general and flexible categorisation. Furthermore, where the 31 functions presented by Propp are sufficient in and of themselves regardless of who carries them out, Brémond insists on the role of who carries them out. He defines a function in terms of the action a character takes and its effect on the story.

We are provided with a new terminology as well as with a structure for the terms.

*Actions are called processes
*A character has the role of patient or agent
*A Patient is affected by a process
*An Agent initiates a process
*Processes are carried out either by agents or patients
*A function is the relation between a character and a process and its effect on the unfolding of the narrative
*A process is divided into 3 steps: eventuality, action, result
*Processes can be sequential, imbricated or parallel

How a patient can be affected by a process:
modifying processes, conserving processes

Let A be the state of a patient P at time t
Let A' be the state of P at time t' (where t'>t)

If A equals A' then either
#no modifying processes exist
#a modifying process exists but is not complete
#a conserving process exists and completed successfully

if A does not equal A' then
#a modifying process exists and completed successfully
#a conserving process may exist but failed

An agent involved in a process can be either voluntary or involuntary and their role is dependant on what part of the process they are involved in (eventuality, action, result)

If a patient could undergo a modifying process, then there must be a modifying agent. The same logic allows us to introduce the existence of conserving and influence agents. In each case all varieties of potentialities exist around the agent.

For example:
:Eventual Agent of a task, abstaining from undertaking the task
:Eventual Agent of a task, undertaking it successfully
:Eventual Agent of a task, undertaking it unsuccessfully.
In layperson terms, we can say that given a particular situation, a person can either deal with it or ignore it, if they deal with it, they can either succeed or fail.

Brémond adds states to each role at each stage of a process, which determines the potentialities that ensue from each given process.

States add conditions such as:

An agent can be informed or not informed of an information that has implications on available potentialities to choose from.
:An eventual agent can know that they can undertake a task or they can not know.
:They can be the patient of an information process that renders them aware of an ability (existence) to undertake a certain task which transforms them to an agent of that task

Generally, the characters that make up a story alternate between the roles of agent and patient. While a character is a patient of a certain process, they can be the potential agent of another, and vice versa.

When a patient undergoing a process, receives influences that motivate them to act (initiate a process), they becomes a potential agent of the new (potential) process.
When an agent initiates a process whose end result might modify the agent's own state, they becomes the potential patient of that (potential) process. The potentialities are applied to each part of an action (eventuality, action, result) as well as each possible role(patient agent). The systematic approach to moving between processes according to the actualisation (or non actualisation) of a potentiality is pertinent to IS.

the sequence of roles described in the following diagram, is cyclic :

Patient --> Agent --> Patient --> ...
(potential (potential (potential
agent) patient) agent)

;An example that summarises the above:
"Bob wanted to get home and watch the game on tv.
Mary wanted to watch a documentary and hoped Bob would
get distracted on his way home. She thought of calling
him so he could get a few errands done on his way home."

Bob: Eventual agent of process of watching the game
Mary: Eventual agent of obstructing process (from watching the game)
If Mary undertakes the task then
Bob: Eventual patient of eventual obstruction process
If Mary succeeds then
Bob: agent of a failed process (watching the game) and patient of a successful obstruction process

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
Brémond's approach to describe an eventuality as an "acting situation" contains the formulation of "possibilities" to act, including the deliberation of agents about the consequences. Therefore it suits Interactive Storytelling much better than e.g. Propps's approach, who simply described the sequence of happenings/actions. It relates to the plan-based modelling of agents who consider pre-conditions before actuating an action, as well as to the options an author can give to the user in certain situations.

Brémond provides a skeleton for how movement between processes occurs in a story.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
* [[IDtension]] has been inspired by Brémond, both in the definition of generic types of actions (influences, sanctions, etc.) and in the implementation of processes, which link pairs of actions.
* Storynet (Schäefer, et al. 2004) follows Brémond's process triplet as a layer over branching options.
* [[I-Storytelling]] adapts Brémond's roles and rhetorical functions (advice, seduce) to a character-centred dialog engine.

===Links===
http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/publicat/schneider/story/node45.html

===References===
* Brémond, Claude (1974) La logique du récit. Paris: Le Seuil.
* Brémond, Claude (1980) "The Logic of Narrative Possibilities". New Literary History 11.3: 387-411.
*Schäfer, L., Stauber, A. and Brokan, B. (2004). Storynet: An Educational Game for Social Skills. In: Stefan Göbel, Ulrike Spierling, Anja Hoffmann, Ido Iurgel, Oliver Schneider, J. Dechau, Axel Feix (Eds): Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International COnference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105 Springer, 148-157.

Roles

2011-01-10T18:13:03Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

#REDIRECT [[Roles and processes]]

Rencontre

2011-01-10T18:13:03Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
A web site dedicated to the project is under construction. No public release is available for the moment. Please send an e-mail to Jean-Hugues Réty (jh.rety @ iut.univ-paris8.fr) if you are interested in experimenting the software.

===Technical Description===
Rencontre is a research project dedicated to interactive narrative with both a theoretical and a practical approach. In this project, a computer model for interactive narrative is defined, as well as authoring and reading softwares based on this model. Authors are also involved in order to experiment and evaluate the tools. The Rencontre software environment is composed of an editor and several readers. The editor is developed in Java and exports XML files (interactive scenarios). Readers can be developed in various programming languages (Java, Flash, etc.). Readers import interactive scenarios as XML files.

When authoring a narrative within Rencontre, an author creates fragments, and groups these fragments into a hierarchy of containers called hypersections (see figure below). A fragment is mainly a content piece that can be displayed to a user. Hypersections can contain fragments, and can also contain other hypersections. Hypersections are structured into a hierarchy (i.e. a tree structure). This hierarchy of hypersections and fragments (fragments are leaves in the tree structure) and their type determine a set of reading paths on fragments.

[[Image:Rencontre1.jpg|thumbnail|center|640px|Hypersections]]

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
When a user is reading an interactive narrative authored with Rencontre, he follows one particular reading path. At each reading step (each time the user is reading a fragment), the set of all fragments that can come next is computed (in other words, every fragment that is the next step into at least one reading path is included into this set). The user then interacts with the system: he selects one fragment among this set of fragments. Then the system computes a new set of fragments that can come next, and so on.

Several "readers", software to present the story to the user, have been implemented. One example is shown below.

[[Image:Rencontre2.jpg|center|thumbnail|640px|Rencontre end-user screen]]

The Rencontre project primarily focuses on electronic literature and more generally on interactive scenario.

===Authoring Description===
The author writes fragments and group these fragments in a hierarchy of hypersections. A graphical authoring tool is provided.

===Strong Points===
This project aims at providing authors intuitive and simple tools for interactive narrrative. Authoring tools are accessible to writers without heavy training and without strong knowledge in video game design. The graphical authoring tool helps the the author manage a large number of fragments.

Readers (software that imports interactive scenarios written with our authoring tool) can propose to the user different modes of interaction with the story, and different ways of visualizing fragments.

===Limitations===
For the moment, the system focuses on fragment ordering. For instance, constraints on characters, objects or actions cannot be taken into account.

===Main Publications===
* Réty, J.H., Szilas, N., Clément, J., Bouchardon, S. (2008). Authoring Interactive Narratives with Hypersections. In proc. of ACM International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, Athens, Greece, september 2008.
* Réty, J.H., Bouchardon, S., Clément, J., Szilas, N. (2008). An experimental tool for digital literature, Elit in Europe conference. Bergen, Norway, septembre 2008.
* Réty, J.H. (2007). Rencontre : un système informatique pour l’écriture et la lecture de récits non déterministes, in actes de H2PTM’07, Collaborer, Echanger, Inventer : Expériences de réseaux, 2007 (in French).

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
Rencontre is not based on narrative theories like the ones of [[Actancial model|Greimas]] or [[Roles and processes|Bremond]]. The roots of our work are closer to literary hypertext theory (George Landow, Mark Bernstein).

===Computational Model===
Rencontre is based on the formal description of hypersections. A model is written in XML and it is then used by an execution engine was developed in Java (Réty, Szilas, et al., 2008).

===Type of interaction===
Interaction depends on the reader software. It can be simple click on words (reader software developed to date implement interaction as « click on words ») but in the future, could become moving a character in a 3D world.

Petri nets

2011-01-10T18:13:02Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Computational Models]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
=== Background ===

Petri nets is a mathematical model suited for modeling process control and resource sharing. It has mainly been used to model and validate network protocols and systems in production. In such systems Petri nets are used to perform real-time control and supervision, but they can also model path finding (mainly scheduling problems).

=== Description ===

==== Intuitive representation ====
The following figures gives an intuitive presentation of Petri nets and its dynamics.

<gallery>
Image:PetriNetsP1.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 1
Image:PetriNetsP2.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 2
Image:PetriNetsP3.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 3
Image:PetriNetsP4.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 4
Image:PetriNetsP5.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 5
Image:PetriNetsP6.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 6
Image:PetriNetsP7.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 7
Image:PetriNetsP8.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 8
Image:PetriNetsP9.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 9
Image:PetriNetsP10.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 10
Image:PetriNetsP11.jpg|Petri Nets - Figure 11
</gallery>

==== Formal description ====
A Petri net is a four-uple R = < P, T, Pre, Post > where:
# P is a set of places
# T is a set of transitions
# Pre: P x T -> N is a set of arcs (input arcs, the point of view is the one of transitions)
# Post: P x T -> N is a set of arcs (output arcs)

W = Post - Pre is also used and call weighted function.

===== Petri net with marking =====
N = < R, M > where:
# R is a Petri net
# M is the initial marking (M(p) is the number of tokens in place p.

===== Enabling and firing transitions =====
A transition t is enabled iff \forall p \in P M(p) \geq Pre(p, t)

A transition is enabled iff all its input places got a token count greater than 1 (as a simplification).

A transition enabled means that this transition can be fired.

The transition firing consumes one token in each input place (decrease the token count by one) and produce a token in each input place (increase the token count by one). These operations (consume and produce) are atomic.

<math>\forall p \in P M'(p) = M(p) - Pre(p,t) + Post(p,t)</math>

===== Conflict =====
Structural conflict: two transitions a1 and a3 are said to be in structural conflict iff they share at least one input place.

Effective conflict: two transitions a1 and a3 are in effective conflict for a marking M iff they are in structural conflict and they are enabled.

===== The set of accessible marking =====

The set of accessible marking is an oriented graph (coverability tree) defined by the set of all the making that can be reach for a given initial marking.

A node represents a marking and an arc the transition firing that changes the making from the initial node to the ending one.

Remark: the accessible marking can be unbounded.

===== Rule system =====
A Petri nets may have various point of view:
# a graph with two kind of nodes and a dynamics behaviour
# a set of matrix

It can also be considered as knowledge rule system (If then rules).

==== Properties analysis ====

Properties have been split into two:
# initial marking dependent properties. The proof is generally based on the accessible marking graph.
# structural properties. The proof is generally based on the matrix analysis

==== Representing time in Petri nets ====
A Petri net is a discrete event model meaning that time increases with each event (transition firing).

In Petri nets time is represented by the ordered sequence of transitions firing.

It has been extended to take time into account (mainly for scheduling problems).

Time is considered either as a delay (time Petri nets) or as intervals of dates (timed Petri nets). In both cases time annotation can be attached to places or transitions.

A p-time Petri net is a Petri net whose token has to wait a delay before being used to enable a transition.

In a t-time Petri net, the time can be considered as the duration of the firing transition.

Timed Petri nets were introduced to model watchdog problems. A t-timed Petri net has a time interval attached to transitions. These intervals are the ones where the transition can be fired.

A p-timed Petri net has intervals attached to places and corresponds to the period where the token is valid and can be used to fire transitions.

==== Stochastics Petri nets ====

A stochastic Petri net is a Petri net where each transition is associated with an exponentially distributed random variable that expresses the delay imposed on firing transition.

=== Application to Interactive Storytelling ===
PN have been used as a model for interactive plot by C. Brom. A sequence of transitions gives the sequence of actions in a narrative. The authors underline the possibility of having a model made up of modules (a set of Petri nets with each one giving a partial view of the system) and also exploits the hierarchical representation.

The interactivity comes from the fact that the actions are modelled by transitions and these can be bound either by the "internal narrator" as well as by the user input.

The drawback of using petri nets for IS is that the PN has to be completely specified a priori. It is similar to a tree structure for the narrative base, except that the graph covering a Petri net may not be finite.

=== Examples ===
*Hussein Karam Hussein Abd El-Sattar (2008). A New Framework for Plot-Based Interactive Storytelling Generation, Proceedings of the 2008 Fifth International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation, Pages 317-322.
*Brom, C., Sisler, V., Holan, T. (2007). Story Manager in 'Europe 2045' Uses Petri Nets, ICVS 2007: Saint-Malo, France, 38-50.

=== References ===
* Murata, T. Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 77, No. 4, pages 541-580. April 1989
(http://embedded.eecs.berkeley.edu/research/hsc/class/papers/PetriNets.pdf)

Pddl

2011-01-10T18:13:01Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Computational Models]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''

===Planning Background===
In Planning the task for the planner is to achieve some objective/goal from some initial state of a world (a snapshot of the world). In order to achieve this task the planner is given: (i) a description of the world in terms of actions that can be performed in it; (ii) a description of a problem/task written in terms of an initial state and a goal. The solution to the task is a plan which consists of a collection of actions that perform that task.

====Actions====

Actions model the things that can change in the world. They specify what needs to be true in the state before the action is performed and what will be true in the state after it is performed. Note that there will be other aspects of the world that the action has no effect on. As an example, consider a transport planning world which includes an action called (drive truck london edinburgh) that requires that the truck is in london before the action can be performed and that after the action has been performed the resulting state of the world will have the truck in Edinburgh. The action doesn't say anything about the locations of any other trucks since they aren't relevant to the movement of truck.

====Variables====
An example action written using PDDL syntax is shown below:

(:action DRIVE-TRUCK
:parameters
(?t - truck ?from - location ?to - location ?d - driver)
:precondition
(and
(at ?t ?from)
(driving ?d ?t))
:effect
(and
(not (at ?t ?from))
(at ?t ?to)))
)

This features variables: any text that starts with a ? is a variable. The variables of interest for an action are listed as parameters (e.g. ?t - truck) and they can be thought of as containers that can take on a value of an appropriate type (the type follows the variable, so in this example the type of ?t is truck. Part of the job of the planner is to reason about and select appropriate values for the variables in the actions. In the final plan that is output the name of each selected action is given with the values that have been chosen for solving this particular problem.

====Problems====
A specific problem is specified in terms of an initial state of the world and a goal state. The initial state of the world is required to be a complete snapshot of the world. For example, in the transport planning domain, the initial state would need to include a description of the locations of all objects that we were interested in, such as all trucks and all drivers. The goal state however only needs to be a partial description of a state as long as it describes the desired state of any object we are interested in.

====Plans====
The job of the planner (a piece of software) is to find a collection of actions, with some orderings between them, that when performed in an appropriate order will result in a state of the world in which the goal is true.

=== Application to Interactive Storytelling===
====Planning====
Planning has been widely used as the technology of choice for narrative generation in IS since a narrative can be seen as a collection of actions with temporal orderings between them and once a domain model and problem instances have been specified for the story world any planner could be used to generate narratives. However there are still many open research questions to be addressed: both from a planning and an IS perspective. For instance, until recently the focus in much planning research has been to use the cost of plans as a measure of quality (i.e. those with the fewest actions) and clearly this is very important if we are planning the movement of trucks. But in some application areas, such as IS, we need different measures of plan quality. One recent extension to PDDL, which seeks to address this, is the use of constraints and preferences (constraints allow us to specify which things we want to be made true on the way to a goal and preferences are things which are desirable but not essential in the plan).
====Examples====
Teesside University has produced first versions of Goldfinger, Madame Bovary and The Merchant of Venice which are intended to give a feel for how domains and problems can be modelled using PDDL. To accompany these models please refer to [[notes on PDDL]].

The Goldfinger model includes a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bond_Examples/bond_domain.pddl pddl domain file]] (and a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bond_Examples/bond_domain.txt domain file]] written in a more text like format), a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bond_Examples/bond_problem1.pddl problem file]] and an [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bond_Examples/bond_problem1_PLAN example plan]] for this problem.

The Bovary model includes a
[[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bovary_Examples/bovary_domain.pddl pddl domain file]] (and a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bovary_Examples/bovary_domain.txt domain file]] written in a more text like format), a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bovary_Examples/bovary_problem1.pddl problem file]] and an [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/Bovary_Examples/bovary_problem1_PLAN example plan]] for this problem.

The Merchant of Venice model includes a
[[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/merchant_examples/merchant_domain.pddl pddl domain file]], a [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/merchant_examples/merchant_problem.pddl problem file]] and an [[http://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/users/u0024363/merchant_examples/merchant_plan example plan]] for this problem.

=== References ===

More information about the latest version of PDDL can be found in:

*Gerevini, A. & Long, D. (2006). Plan Constraints and Preferences in PDDL3: The Language of the Fifth International Planning Competition (2006). [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/papers/pddl-ipc5.pdf]

*Gerevini, A. & Long, D. (2005). BNF Description of PDDL3.0. [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/papers/pddl-bnf.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/papers/pddl-bnf.pdf] (URL last accessed Sept. 27 2009).

PaSSAGE

2011-01-10T18:13:00Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[IS Systems]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Availability===
link to the system (website, download)

===Technical Description===
brief explanation of the tool

===Result Description (end user perspective)===
brief explanation of the type of story that unravels or is generated

===Authoring Description===
link to WP3

===Strong Points===
what differentiates the system from others? what is particularily well accomplished?

===Limitations===
what are the limits of the tool?

===Main Publications===
list of relevant publications about the system

===Supporting Narrative Theories===
list the narrative theories underlying the story created by the tool

===Computational Model===
describe the computational model used within the tool

Notes on PDDL

2011-01-10T18:12:59Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

===Modelling Domains using PDDL===

These notes are intended to give some background for those of you who may be unfamiliar with planning and planning terminology.

====Planning Background====
In Planning the task for the planner is to achieve some objective/goal from some initial state of aworld (a snapshot of the world). In order to achieve this task the planner is given: (i) a description of the world in terms of actions that can be performed in it; (ii) a description of a problem/task written in terms of an initial state and a goal. The solution to the task is a plan which consists of a collection of actions that perform that task.

=====Actions=====

Actions model the things that can change in the world. They specify what needs to be true in the state before the action is performed and what will be true in the state after it is performed. Note that there will be other aspects of the world that the action has no effect on. As an example, consider a transport planning world which includes an action called (drive truck london edinburgh) that requires that the truck is in london before the action can be performed and that after the action has been performed the resulting state of the world will have the truck in Edinburgh. The action doesn't say anything about the locations of any other trucks since they aren't relevant to the movement of truck.

=====Variables=====
An example action written using PDDL syntax is shown below:

(:action DRIVE-TRUCK
:parameters
(?t - truck ?from - location ?to - location ?d - driver)
:precondition
(and
(at ?t ?from)
(driving ?d ?t))
:effect
(and
(not (at ?t ?from))
(at ?t ?to)))
)

This features variables: any text that starts with a ? is a variable. The variables of interest for an action are listed as parameters (e.g. ?t - truck) and they can be thought of as containers that can take on a value of an appropriate type (the type follows the variable, so in this example the type of ?t is truck. Part of the job of the planner is to reason about and select appropriate values for the variables in the actions. In the final plan that is output the name of each selected action is given with the values that have been chosen for solving this particular problem.

=====Problems=====
A specific problem is specified in term of an initial state of the world and a goal state. The initial state of the world is required to be a complete snapshot of the world. For example, in the transport planning domain, the initial state would need to include a description of the locations of all objects that we were interested in, such as all trucks and all drivers. The goal state however need only be a partial description of a state so long as it describes the desired state of any objects that we are interested in.

=====Plans=====
The job of the planner (a piece of software) is to find a collection of actions, with some orderings between them, that when performed in an appropriate order will result in a state of the world in which the goal is true.

====Planning for Interactive Storytelling====
Planning has been widely used as the technology of choice for narrative generation in IS since a narrative can be seen as a collection of actions with temporal orderings between them and once a domain model and problem instances have been specified for the story world any planner could be used to generate narratives. However there are still many open research questions to be addressed: both from a planning and an IS perspective. For instance, until recently the focus in much planning research has been to use the cost of plans as a measure of quality (i.e. those with the fewest actions) and clearly this is very important if we are planning the movement of trucks. But in some application areas, such as IS, we need different measures of plan quality. One recent extension to PDDL, which seeks to address this, is the use of constraints and preferences (constraints allow us to specify which things we want to be made true on the way to a goal and preferences are things which are desirable but not essential in the plan).

====PDDL examples: Goldfinger and Madame Bovary====
For both story worlds we've included a domain and problem file written in pddl (with a pddl suffix) and for the domain files there is also a text version thats been translated from the pddl source which we hope is a bit more readable (with a text suffix).

=====Goldfinger=====
The domain and problem cover the initial phase of the story (up to the end of card game and golf game when Bond has been threatened off by Goldfinger). In the problem file there is one goal included which is (feeling-of-power goldfinger high) but given that this is already true in the initial state (ie at the outset goldfinger is feeling powerful) no planning needs to be done. In the problem file we have included a number of constraints which force the planner to reason about solving some intermediate goals and in order which reflects the original narrative.

The constraints are:

(always (at m london))
(always (assistant goldfinger jill))

and this requires, for example, that m is always in London and which in turn forces the planner to reason about getting bond to London to be given his mission.

(sometime (seduced bond jill))

This requires that at sometime bond must seduce jill but there is no requirement about the ordering of this relative to other things (other than it is made true at some stage of the plan.

(sometime-after
(got-mission bond) (won-cards bond goldfinger card-game))

This requires that bond gets his mission at some point in the plan before bond wins the game of cards against goldfinger (and that both getting the mission and bond winning cards become true at some point).

=====[[Madame Bovary]]=====
The Bovary model is also supplied as two files: bovary_domain.pddl and bovary_problem.pddl.

Narrative units

2011-01-10T18:12:58Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Authors===
R. Barthes

===Histo-geographical placement===
The reference text for this theory was the introduction of the journal "Communication 8", in 1966, which gathered important texts from French narratology. Roland Barthes is a main figure in French Structuralism.

===Type of story===
General to any story, but more focused on literature. Examples range from Flaubert to Flemming.

===Parent Theories===
-

===Child Theories===
-

===Brief Description===
The analysis proposed by R. Barthes is a broad model of narrative, in the sense that it does not provide detailed rules regarding the structuring of the narrative. It is contemporary to other more detailed narratological studies and provides a kind of abstraction of the works of [[Roles|Brémond]], [[Actancial model|Greimas]] or [[Narrative grammars|Todorov]].

The model is guided by the following three main principles:
* The narrative can be decomposed into narrative units, each of which have a meaning in the narrative (there are no useless parts)
* Each unit has a different function in the narrative, which is described by associating a ''type'' to each unit.
* The meaning of a narrative, the meaning of the corresponding units and their relations, is hierarchical. A micro organisation is included in a larger organisation, up to the most global units' organisation.

Two types of units, each decomposable into two further subtypes, can be distinguished:
;Functions
:They are the most significant units. A function is systematically correlated to another unit. For example, a telephone ringing event is correlated to the action of someone answering the phone. Functional analysis can be qualified as “horizontal”, because they relate two chronological distant units. Functions are then subdivided into:
* Cardinal functions (or nuclei): They open and close significant possibilities. They are like “dispatchers”, because they drive the story to one direction rather than another. They are qualified as “risky”.
* Catalysis: They “fill the blanks” between cardinal functions, and contain a limited degree of risk or uncertainity. They are expansions of cardinal units.
;Indices
:Not being correlated with another unit like functions, they have a diffuse meaning. They expand a cardinal function by providing useful information. Two types of indices are distinguished:
* Pure indices: Their signification is implicit. It includes all connotations regarding a description for example.
* Informants: Their signification is explicit. They provide a piece of information, for example the age of a character, that help the story refer to the real world and improve its realism.

Cardinal functions are organised into ''sequences'', a sequence being a set of cardinal units that are not only temporally ordered but organized such that each function is correlated with an antecedant unit and a consequent unit, with the exception of the first one, which has no antecedent, and the last one, which has no consequent.

Sequences are hierarchically organised, the highest level sequence constitutes the main narrative structure.

The classification of narrative units is also related to the story vs discourse distinction. The cardinal functions and the sequences they build cannot be altered without altering the plot itself. But modifying the catalysis and indices changes the discourse.

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
This typology of narrative units can constitute a first step in the design of an IS system. The definition of cardinal functions as “dispatchers” is a clear indication that they can consitute the user choice points in an interactive narrative. The distinction between cardinal functions and catalysis can also correspond to the distinction in IS systems between narrative actions and behaviours, usually organised hierarchically.

Current planning-based formalisations are hierarchical and can reproduce the different levels discussed by R. Barthes. The polysemy of each unit is however not implemented in current systems.
The concept of indices is interesting, as it tends to be discarded when designing an IS system. If a system could dynamically compute certain indices (in the form of a specific animation, dialog line, lighting, etc.) to inject into the narrative, it would improve both variability and quality of interactive storytelling experiences.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
[[I-Storytelling]] explicitely refers to this theory to describe the hierarchical decomposition of goals and subgoals.

===Links===
-

===References===
The reference paper, "Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits" by R. Barthes can be found from different sources:
* Communication, 8 - 1966. [http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/comm_0588-8018_1966_num_8_1_1113 Online version]
* in Poétique Du récit, Seuil Points, 1977.
* English version: Introduction to the structural anaylsis of narrative. in Image, Music, Text, Transl. Stephen Heath.
* Italian version: L'analisi del racconto.

Narrative grammars

2011-01-10T18:12:58Z

IRISwiki: 1 revision

[[IRIS Wiki]] - [[Narrative Theories]] - '''{{PAGENAME}}'''
===Authors===
Todorov

===Histo-geographical placement===
1960's, France

===Type of story===
All narrative

===Parent Theories===
[[Vladimir Propp]]

===Child Theories===
[[Roles|Brémond]]

===Brief Description===
Following the same methodology as [[Vladimir Propp]], but with a different corpus, Todorov proposes 3 aspects that make up narratology.
#semantic aspect: The sense of the story, what is being transmitted in terms of content, values, messages.
#syntactic aspect: The combination of units (narrative propositions) and the relationships that link them. The notion of order like in Propp is introduced, but the rules governing how to pass from one proposition to another are revisited. While Propp proposed a strict sequencing order, with Todorov (as with [[Roles|Brémond]]) these rules are generalised.
#verbal aspect: The actual sentences used to convey the story.

Todorov considers a sequence to be a series of linked narrative propositions.

Two propositions can be linked by a logical, temporal or spatial relationship.
The logical association links a cause proposition to an effect proposition. A temporal association links propositions in time. The spatial relationship is not developed.

The narrative proposition is made up of 3 main categories; proper name, adjective, verb. The proper name can be considered the agent and is represented by a capital letter from the end of the alphabet X, Y, Z. The adjective is an agent's state, property or status. A state can be changed over time for example a mood (happy/unhappy) while a property is more durable (tall, dark haired) and finally status refers to the agent's biologic, religious or social situation (a rich, protestant man) and is represented by a capital letter from the beginning of the alphabet A, B, etc.
Lastly, the verb is the action of the agent or on the agent and can be of 3 types: state modifying verbs (noted a), disobeying verbs (noted b), punishing verbs (noted c).
Todorov considers the verb (a) to be the most important of the 3 and says that an entire story can be reduced to this verb. The modifying verb can have several forms:
*mask or unmask: while the situation might not actually be modified, someone is made to believe it is modified.
*words - calm a situation, hurt a situation
*physical - attack or resistance
*seek help - by evoking compassion or asking for advice
*change of location
*exchange - through payment or giving freely
The next 2 verb types are closely related and often one is the consequence of the other.
(b) characterised by a misdead is an action done by an agent and often followed by (c) punishment, an action done to an agent.

Temporally related propositions such as emphasis or inversion can be represented as follows:
emphasis -> XA + ........ + XA
the same proposition is repeated at a later moment in time

inversion -> XA + ........ + X-A
the opposite proposition occurs at a later moment in time

Causally related propositions such as renouncing or punishment can be represented as:
renounce -> (XA)optY + ....... (XA)-optY
an action is renounced at a later moment in time

punishment -> Xb -> Y-cX
YcX
an action is either done or not done in response to a misdead

===Relation with Interactive Storytelling===
The grammar proposed by T. Todorov is relevant for the generation of narrative actions in IS, because:
* As [[Roles and processes|Brémond]]'s approach, it departs from a linear description of narrative
* The model is detailed and formalized.

===Systems/Tools using this theory===
The narrative logic in [[IDtension]] is inspired in part by the list of narrative actions proposed in the theory.

===Links===
-

===References===
Todorov, T. (1969). Grammaire du Decameron. The Hague - Paris: Mouton.