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Chromanoid
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« Reply #20 on: June 20, 2011, 02:41:10 AM »

But games are a tool for story telling like books or movies.
This is where I totally disagree. We already have the book, and the film. We don't need game to be doing the same thing all over again. Games are not tools for story telling, they are tools for creating playing experience. Game and story are two different things, and forced marriage usually not work.
I think it often works. Why we should not make games similar to books or movies? People need them if they enjoy them. You speak of a special kind of games that you like. You are narrowing your horizon of games to just one kind of games.
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I ask once again, did you play adventures like Grim Fandango or Day of the Tentacle? Procedural stories may be a nice feature, but games can be excellent story tellers without such procedural content.
I havent played those, because they do not interest me. Stories in those might be "good", but then I would rather read a book or watch a film about the same story. I don't see the actual game (art) and gameplay interesting in any possible way. So just the story won't do it for me.
Millions of other people like these games (as games). You should never jump to conclusions just because of personal preferences.
I don't like facebook games like farmville or gardens of time, my girlfriend does. I don't say "facebook games don't use the medium in a good way", i just say "i personally don't like those facebook games, but i am interested in those games, because some people like them and they influence the medium like any other game".

I never watch film or read a book multiple times because the story, the reason is always somewhere else. Same thing with games.
I love the (german) audio books by Walter Moers (spoken by Dirk Bach, Schrecksenmeister spoken by  Andreas Fröhlich) - I listened to them at least three times each because of a (imo) genius combination of story and story presentation.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2011, 02:51:57 AM by Chromanoid » Logged
1982
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« Reply #21 on: June 20, 2011, 03:00:23 AM »

Millions of other people like these games (as games).

Wel there is the main problem, nothings ever going to change because games are developed for masses. Is it so that ultimate formula of entertainment has been discovered and nothing needs to be change? it definitely looks like it, and that is sad. It already happened in film industry and game industry is following the same path. Worst thing is that indie developers are imitating these industries. I don't see fresh thoughts or healthy anarchism. Artists should offer people things that they don't expect, things they didn't know that they would like.

I haven't found many games that could work in a way like what I have been talking here. There are many games that implement small bits from here and there, but probably nothing massive yet. Shores of Hazeron was great effort, but sadly its not very well executed so that it could be playable... Civilization series was heading in right direction, but it didn't eventually do that. Minecraft is actually quite refreshing and it is playable, but I would like to see more serious approach, not so cartoonish. I never liked those Facebook games, because they are way too shallow in their genre.

Everything comes down to personal preferences, without it any artform would be quite dull. People want to pursue their dreams and ideas. That is the most fundamental thing.
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Chromanoid
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« Reply #22 on: June 20, 2011, 03:19:19 AM »

Everything comes down to personal preferences, without it any artform would be quite dull. People want to pursue their dreams and ideas. That is the most fundamental thing.
This.

The problem behind the kind of games you want is that making such dynamic content is a problem of artificial intelligence, linguistics and general science.

Wel there is the main problem, nothings ever going to change because games are developed for masses. Is it so that ultimate formula of entertainment has been discovered and nothing needs to be change? it definitely looks like it, and that is sad. It already happened in film industry and game industry is following the same path.
Obviously the  ultimate formula of entertainment has not been discovered. If so you would not rant about games Wink. Games you like are hard and risky to make... Games with mass appeal earn money - people need money to live their dreams. Just don't give up your dreams when you have the money to accomplish them.
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1982
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« Reply #23 on: June 20, 2011, 05:30:42 AM »

The problem behind the kind of games you want is that making such dynamic content is a problem of artificial intelligence, linguistics and general science.

Sure, its not easy, but worth looking into. Baby steps or something... But definitely more experimenting and try outs should be in this area.

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Games with mass appeal earn money

That is the main challenge in art industry. But I am still certain that more we need crazy people with enough money that are willing to take risks when those different ideas arise. We don't have that people any more... (crazy investors)
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Chromanoid
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« Reply #24 on: June 20, 2011, 06:02:58 AM »

The problem behind the kind of games you want is that making such dynamic content is a problem of artificial intelligence, linguistics and general science.
Sure, its not easy, but worth looking into. Baby steps or something... But definitely more experimenting and try outs should be in this area.
intelligent dialog systems, knowledge management, environment-aware AIs and similar stuff are popular constant targets of research. the problem is that many achievments in this area are still not feasible/robust enough for games or game makers are not aware of them. just look at ACM to find papers...

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Games with mass appeal earn money
That is the main challenge in art industry. But I am still certain that more we need crazy people with enough money that are willing to take risks when those different ideas arise. We don't have that people any more... (crazy investors)
I second this, but on the other hand games are entertainment, maybe we should solve other problems first...

@Mods: pls split this thread...
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Musenik
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« Reply #25 on: June 23, 2011, 09:24:03 PM »


After posting the backstories, I realized I should have mentioned my philosophy behind them. I write backstories that emphasis WHO the character is over what he or she wants. Because when characters get together, their personalities will generate what they want. Deciding what they want before you have a situation, puts the cart before the horse. It forces situations, and readers will sense their artificiality.

I think for professional development, plot oriented, top down writing is very productive. Character oriented, bottom up writing takes longer and requires a lot more creativity to bring a story together, but your characters will never lead you wrong. Bonus: writing from characters let's me experience their stories as I'm writing them! It's feels great!

Interactive fiction writing is a lot harder. Freewriting branching threads leads to combinatorial explosion. I find I have to stop at each branch point and come up with sufficient branches that all suit the character's involved.
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filosofiamanga
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« Reply #26 on: June 25, 2011, 11:17:35 AM »

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1982.

I also agree with you, books and cinema are perfect mediums for telling a story.
Games are not so good at storytelling, because forcing a path to the player is making it less a videogame and more like a book.

So... games are not perfect to storytelling, but they're perfect to INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING.
So.. a better story for a videogame should be one that each NPC and story bit, should react like a physics engine.

I read that It's not implemented yet, it's because seems very hard to code it right now, but there are advances.

Have you check Facade?
http://www.interactivestory.net/
It's the most advance interactive storytelling game I ever saw.
I don't think it's completely random, but It's what you seek.

Also, there's the Erasmatron of Chrish Cradwford.
Also, the AI Director of Left for Dead or Dead rising (I forgot).

The problem is that they're interactive storytelling, something diferent than videogames, people seem to confuse the two.

Also, check this academic papers about the subject:
http://www.mendeley.com/research/efficient-realistic-npc-control-systems-using-behaviorbased-techniques/
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1337891
http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/viewFile/73/72
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1982
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« Reply #27 on: June 26, 2011, 11:16:52 PM »


Have you check Facade?
http://www.interactivestory.net/
It's the most advance interactive storytelling game I ever saw.
I don't think it's completely random, but It's what you seek.

Also, there's the Erasmatron of Chrish Cradwford.
Also, the AI Director of Left for Dead or Dead rising (I forgot).

The problem is that they're interactive storytelling, something diferent than videogames, people seem to confuse the two.

Thank you, I will look into these.

Yeah well interactive storytelling as is, is just that. But it could be easily combine with more traditional games sure. Because I haven't yet tried those "games", I cannot comment on the mechanics there but what it seems like is that again there seems to be forced storytelling, although interactive (procedural too?). Seems like not dependent on the medium, we-must-tell-a-story-always. Maybe that is something that has been built into humans.

What I was more after, was to have games that have mechanics that uses complex structures which generate the action and content. Like for example causality simulation for running a nuclear plant which includes variable of "intelligent" AI as being workers of the plant. Then the story could be like:

1. Plant owner-NPC wants to run tests
2. Player, NPC1, NPC2, NPC3 are selected to supervise tests
3. Test plans are laid down for Player and NPC's to exam
4. On the test day NPC2 gets food poisoning from some other place than plants diner
5. NPC2 is replaced by NPC4 which doesn't have needed skills
6. Due the protocol owner-NPC is informed of this
7. Owner-NPC wants to still pursue running of test
8. Test is being run
9. NPC4 makes mistake
10. Plant becomes unstable
11. Player, NPC1,2,3 does counter-measures to recover plant state
12. Due bad plant design counter-measures fail
13. Reactor melts

Game over?

Now, that is a real story what I am after. You could imagine that on the next time when player plays the game, part 1. might not happen at all thus this story does not happen. Something else might happen, or nothing. They are all 'stories' of this game.

Of course this would need complex underlying mechanics of nuclear plant simulation and NPC simulation. I use the word simulation because it is easier to understand the game mechanics of this particular game when it seems that NPC's and the plant works close as possible to real life. But this is just the maybe most traditional example of such game, of course it could be whatever fantasy or not but the mechanics would allow procedural stories which cannot be known beforehand.

All this is not easy and requires some hard work and thought, like said earlier, but it definitely is not impossible, not even a epic achievement. The time and wanking should be transferred from graphical beauty and stupid stories, to underlying intelligent gaming mechanics.

!
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filosofiamanga
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« Reply #28 on: June 27, 2011, 05:07:11 PM »

Yeah, I would love to see a "roguelike" storytelling game.

From what I can grisp on Mexica system, seems like the solution will be "plot" units that need some prerequisite (a trigger), like more "love points" or "the character X is dead/alive".
These plot units can be just a word/order like Kill "X" character, but this "X" is dependant (a variable) on the player game or other plot units status.
An example, you kill a sub-boss but you discover he's under the control of other character, then the NPC order will be kill and the game choose the NPC with more "hate/love points" (the npc we hate/love more)
Then after the "plot" unit will be triggered we get a result that also can trigger others plot units.

In other words, we need "story-blocks/actions" (plot units) that need some trigger and those plot units returns an Story Action that also can trigger other plot units.

So that way we could get something like a Tetris of Plot units/story-nodes?

Yeah, I like that design.
http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/msh/Papers/MEXICA%20KBS.pdf (The link)

We can mix that with an AI chat bot, so the NPC has great dialogs, interactively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot

I think if we get a coder, and we did a design, we could get something great along this ideas.
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Musenik
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« Reply #29 on: June 28, 2011, 07:31:49 AM »

I think if we get a coder...

...everything will be so easy. :-)
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BlueSweatshirt
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« Reply #30 on: June 28, 2011, 07:39:49 AM »

Fun, quick anecdote:

In my game the "NPC" class is an extension of my "Sign" class. Guilty!  Embarrassed
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LDuncan
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« Reply #31 on: June 28, 2011, 10:07:39 AM »

We can mix that with an AI chat bot, so the NPC has great dialogs, interactively.

Chat bots do not produce great dialogue, unfortunately. They're all about the illusion of conversation, mostly by asking questions and getting you to do most of the talking for them. As much as I've been thinking about this and would love to create a useful dynamic NPC conversation system, I don't know if it's the way to go for a game. The last thing we need in a game is an NPC trying to start some vapid conversation with me about the weather.

I don't necessarily think it's impossible--I think we're not quite there yet with technology though. And even then, I'm not sure it would be appropriate for games.
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« Reply #32 on: September 13, 2011, 03:13:38 AM »

I don't necessarily think it's impossible--I think we're not quite there yet with technology though. And even then, I'm not sure it would be appropriate for games.

I've wondered before about a hypothetical game where the characters are superb chat-bots, i.e. passable impressions of a human. It struck me that unless the game's physics and engine reflect the same level of detail, 99% of your conversations would become irrelevant due to the other limitations of the game.

One for the distant future, I think...
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ollie
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« Reply #33 on: October 06, 2011, 05:13:11 PM »

I'm sure someone could crowbar Dr. Sbaitso into their game Roll Eyes
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