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Old 02-13-2004, 11:15 PM   #1
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Default Façade : A one act interactive drama

I was browsing through this year's list of IGF finalists and I happened to spot a curious little offering...

Façade - a one-act interactive drama





http://www.quvu.net/interactivestory.net/#facade

Quote:
Façade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we are completing a three year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we are building a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the user (hereafter referred to as the player) experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Façade will be publicly released as a free download / cd-rom in early-to-mid 2004.
I feel that the gameplay is somewhat akin to an IF title, only with AI and real-time rendered 3D characters.

Quote:
This work is unlike hypertext narrative or interactive fiction to date in that the computer characters actively perform the story without waiting for you to click on a link or enter a command. Interaction is seamless as you converse in natural language and move and gesture freely within the first-person 3D world of Grace and Trip’s apartment. AI controls Grace and Trip’s personality and behavior, including emotive facial expressions, spoken voice and full-body animation. Furthermore, the AI intelligently chooses the next story “beat” based on your moment-by-moment interaction, what story beats have happened so far, and the need to satisfy an overall dramatic arc. An innovative text parser allows the system to avoid the “I don’t understand” response all too common in text-adventure interactive fiction.
Hmm...very interesting.

It is due for release in mid 2004. It has been in development for three years.

The duo responsible for this are Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern.
They are giving a lecture at GDC 2004 on Beyond Finite State Machines: Managing Complex, Intermixing Behavior Hierarchies
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Old 02-13-2004, 11:21 PM   #2
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8-) It's about time.
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Old 02-14-2004, 02:15 AM   #3
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Yeah, this thing has been talked about for a long time. A few months ago I had an opportunity to play it, but I was tired and went home instead. I now regret it. The best place to keep track of Facade's development is http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/ Check the archives for some very interesting discussions, some of them involving graphic adventures.
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Old 03-08-2004, 08:10 AM   #4
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Ok. Someone got to play the game and posted this.

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~huni...t/ifnotes.html

Leeched from http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/ .



Quote:
Grace and Trip are on the same level – they interact with each other with complete clarity. They get each other. This is true from a character standpoint as well as a mechanical one. As you type into the window, the conversation often moves on without you (maybe you missed a queue, maybe you didn’t know what to say…). When this happens, their synchronicity is reflected back at you – a counter-example to your relationship to them as a couple. You really are an outsider.



And in a way, that’s the whole point. The “game?? is that you can develop a higher level of intimacy with one of them by choosing sides – or try to keep them together. While it’s interesting to try to nudge Grace towards a breakdown with repeated digs, it’s sometimes difficult to tell if your words are having any real effect. At those times, they seem intent to dialog - with or without you - and that hurts.
Hmm...I'm even more compelled to play it now after reading this. If only to find out what it is exactly about.
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