Dynamic storytelling

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Blorx
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Dynamic storytelling

Post by Blorx » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:02 pm

Okay, so we have dynamically created games. Dwarf Fortress is one of the most popular. It can create everything on a complex algorithm, an entire world, and with a second load, the entire world can change right before your eyes.

The world is detailed, it's no simple thing. Entire world geography, from mountains, to forests, to realistically mapped rivers, and even magma and volcanoes, all in one.

In LOVE, the same thing applies. The world is dynamically generated and it's in the works that the world will naturally shift and change on its own. In addition to this, based on landmasses, names for each of the geographic locations of the world are dynamically generated.

If we can do this, then who's to say we can't create a game with dynamic storytelling? What if, based on every move you make, the story could change? It could be something small, such as if you chose to train your skill in a certain weaponry, then your friend would choose differently based on your choice, or it could be huge, such as who you gather information from could affect the outcome of a specific event by knowing or not knowing certain details, or having details wrong, and could dramatically alter the course of the rest of the game.

There are plenty of mechanics ready to hold this sort of storytelling in place. It's not uncommon for games to have villagers that have dynamic sayings based on what part of the story you're in, or based on small events that are usually related to side-quests. It's not uncommon to see a rumor system.

This could greatly add to replay value. What happens if I do this differently?

Just an idea. What would you guys think of it?

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by invertin » Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:30 pm

The only real problem is that if you're making a detailed story, then it's very complicated having to code all of the different responses to all of the different possible paths and actions.

There's a little bit of that with some RPGs, where the main story is still linear, but the NPCs comment on the sidequests you do, and the things you say.

Heck I'm currently making a choose-your-own-adventure style game and it's taking me forever because there's at least 6 different ways to START the story, let alone the choices within the story.

The closest we've got at the moment is either sandbox games, where the story is what you make (Dwarf Fortress is a good example of that sort of story) but they're sort of unreliable, since they rely almost entirely on AI interactions, which aren't reliably good. Or the somewhat unsatisfactory "good/evil" system, which doesn't work as it should because the only stories to implement that are still really friggen linear, whether you've got spikes or a halo.

EDIT: I forgot about Roleplaying games as the third closest thing we have. But again, that relies on what the other players want to do, their skill at roleplaying and the person in charge of it all. If the other players want to stab the dragon when you want to talk, and the GM won't let you turn rogue on the party, then that's a potential branch of the story you can't reach.

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Blorx
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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Blorx » Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:30 pm

Well, it would be a lot for the programmer, but what if you could simply come up with pieces and they'd piece together based on what happened?

Dwarf Fortress is a create your own adventure, but it's not quite the sort of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking more like an even more in-depth choose your own adventure book, where the pieces are smaller and everything is based on player choices.

See, in something like Dwarf Fortress, all they give you is a world. There's a market for that. There's also a market for people that want the story written for them, and then they want to play along to the story, but have it change the next time they play.

I know a lot of people in the 30-40 range, especially, that think that RPGs are a waste of money because they draw you in for hours, but you can never replay them because it's always exactly the same. What if you could?

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Endoperez » Sat Apr 03, 2010 7:05 pm

It's a nice idea. It's a lot of work. The closest I've seen to the result you described, what you described is the http://www.ageoffable.net/ . It's done from man-made parts and there are only so many (few hundred or so?)of them, so they tend to repeat quite often; there's also not AI interaction. King of Dragon Pass had a similar approach.

I haven't heard of a program that could generate stories on the fly so well that it would be useful in games. That's what your "AI" suggestions would have to be - a specialized program that recognizes patterns and makes them into a story. All else is just random quests and tasks, and hunting vermin in yet another cellar would get old fast.

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Assaultman67 » Sat Apr 03, 2010 7:33 pm

I think you are worrying about intelligence and computing power too much :P ...

The difference is in a story, yea, there are basic formats, but none of them are nearly as abstract as something as randomly generated landmass ...

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Blorx » Sat Apr 03, 2010 10:01 pm

Assaultman67 wrote: The difference is in a story, yea, there are basic formats, but none of them are nearly as abstract as something as randomly generated landmass ...
Woah, totally lost me with this statement.

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Endoperez » Sun Apr 04, 2010 4:40 am

He's saying that stories need more detail than terrain, or that the kind of details that stories require are harder for computers to generate. You can sprinkle trees on a terrain pretty randomly, but adding random motivations into a quest just won't work out well.

A pine and a willow growing next to each other is strange, but you don't have to EXPLAIN why they're growing next to each other. A man hating someone but wanting to save the other person any way is strange, but the player would like to know the reasons and history. Computers can't generate that well enough yet.

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Assaultman67 » Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:29 pm

Endoperez wrote:He's saying that stories need more detail than terrain, or that the kind of details that stories require are harder for computers to generate. You can sprinkle trees on a terrain pretty randomly, but adding random motivations into a quest just won't work out well.

A pine and a willow growing next to each other is strange, but you don't have to EXPLAIN why they're growing next to each other. A man hating someone but wanting to save the other person any way is strange, but the player would like to know the reasons and history. Computers can't generate that well enough yet.
Exactly ... a completely random "story" would be the shittiest thing ever, so it would have to be good enough that it could do complex things like set up foreshadowing based upon previous events, set up themes, the proper atmosphere, etc ... even in the simplest stories there is some sort of theme or lesson behind the story. If you randomly make a story (using the term "story" loosely) you would probably get a story that sounds more like a mad lib where nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc are just thrown together ...

I honestly believe it would be hard just to achieve coherency in the story ...

This is the same reason we can't completely take out the human component out of making high quality art assets for video games without it looking like crap ... our minds have the ability to process SO many more things simultaneously as well as dynamically change its structure, optimizing itself for whatever task we need to solve or do ... whenever you learn something as a kid you are developing pathways and systems to make it possible for you to complete that task ... things that come so naturally for us after time like keeping our balance when walking and running is a huge task for a computer to do ... let alone if you made a program which makes the computer capable of learning how to walk ... you would have to define a program that could make its own programs, as well as optimize by abstractly comparing the current problem to previous ones it has encountered, essentially A.I. ...

When we solve problems, simple ones even, we are using years of experience (effectively countless numbers of brain systems that have been built and optimized to do even more experience) to determine what method would work the best ... in an instant we eliminate BILLIONS of possible solutions due to "common sense" something a computer completely and utterly lacks ...

I mean, the robotics industry has soo many problems with getting robots to just recognize objects in different conditions ... say a ball in a well lit room may not "look" like a ball in a dimly lit room, or maybe the computer uses hue to recognize a "ball" from other objects, or maybe its shape ... which would disclude footballs, deflated balls, rugby balls, etc ...

Our definitions of objects are so damn abstract that getting a robot to learn what we name things is an incredibly hard task ...

Tl;dr

Computers can't think ... humans can

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by invertin » Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:57 pm

Pretty much, to get a machine to make stories properly, it has to be able to emulate human thinking, and at that point you've made a sentient being.

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by Endoperez » Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:15 pm

A program wouldn't have to be sentient to make a decent story. It's probably possible to generate a not-too-shabby story if you have a complex story model with strong framework that has information about the virtual characters' ambitions and hopes and characteristics, and lots of examples and ready-made building blocks, and lots of other similar stuff...

However, the program probably wouldn't be able to generate more than few versions of the describing text. You know, "___ has given you a task: [kill|save|destroy|find|recover|steal|...] [person|item|place]. If you do that, I will [achieve my goal | have my revenge | die in peace | satisfy my curiosity | ... ]. "

Take a look at randomly generated Dwarf Fortress names, and imagine a whole text like that. Even with clever grammatic rules, you could get something like "I am Urist Cookeddrumsticks, a messenger from Murderedswim the Ichor of the Ochre Mushrooms". Random, nonsensical but following some sort of grammatic order. At worst, it could be "I am Urist Drummedcooked, a messenger from Logsung the Ochre of Picking".

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Re: Dynamic storytelling

Post by zamzx zik » Sun Apr 04, 2010 4:02 pm

Assaultman67 wrote:\
Tl;dr

Computers can't think ... humans can

Beautiful.

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