Interactive Drama on Computer: Beyond Linear Narrative
AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence Tech. Rep. FS-99-01 1999 pp. 150-156

In the first published paper on the project, we explain our vision on Interactive Drama: combining interactivity at the story level with strong dramatic intensity. From various theoretical sources on narrative and drama, several principles are put forward. These principles serve as a basis for building computer systems of interactive drama.

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A New Approach to Interactive Drama: From Intelligent Characters to an Intelligent Virtual Narrator
AAAI Spring Symposium on AI and Interactive Entertainment Tech. Rep. SS-01-02 2001 pp. 72-76

This paper starts from the limits of current forms of interactive drama:

• Interactive character based stories are poorly interactive, the plot remaining nearly linear;
• Interactive virtual worlds are poorly dramatic, with no plot at all;
• The role of the user is not clearly defined.

We give guidelines on how those problems should be tackled, by putting Artificial Intelligence in the right place, within an Interactive Drama system. We introduce the idea of adaptive narrative, which might solve some critical issues of Interactive Drama.

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Structural models for Interactive Drama
The 2nd International Conference on Computational Semiotics for Games and New Media, Augsburg (Germany)
September 2-4 2002.

Computer based Interactive Drama requires narrative models able to both simulate the narrative on a deep level, and allow the user to interact with it.

In this paper, we examine the nature of these narrative models. In particular, we discuss the extent to which structuralist models are useful for Interactive Drama, both in general and for the IDtension projet. Then we review the main components of IDtension. Finally we discuss the limits of Structuralism for our model.

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IDtension: a narrative engine for Interactive Drama
1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2003), Darmstadt (Germany)
March 24–26 2003.

This paper presents the IDtension system in details.
From a range of narrative practices and theories, we derive our own theoretical model of narrative. This theoretical model serves as a basis for a computer model of narrative, which handles low level narrative elements: characters, goals (quests), acts (including speech acts), tasks, obstacles, values.
Two experimental simulations are presented: the first works on an automatic mode (non interactive), while in the other the user chooses which action the main character must perform. These results show the variability of the generated story, as well as the richness of interactivity.

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Authoring highly generative Interactive Drama
    with Olivier Marty and Jean-Hugues Rety
2nd International Conference on Virtual Storytelling (ICVS 2003), Toulouse (France)
November 20–21 2003.

Authoring non linear narratives is a difficult and challenging issue. In this paper we focus on the process of authoring with the IDtension system, an interactive drama system designed by one of the authors. We report an experiment of realizing a
real-size scenario and start from this point to think about nonlinear narratives and the possibilities and limits of the IDtension writing tool. We introduce the linearization/delinearization cycle, as a basic principle of abstract interactive writing .

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Stepping into the Interactive Drama
2nd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2004), Darmstadt (Germany)
June 2004. S. Göbel et al. (Eds) LNCS 3105, Springer Verlag.

Achieving a successful Interactive Drama, where the user can act as a character in the story, requires not only finding an algorithmic solution for combining interactivity and narrativity, but also interfacing those algorithms with the user. This paper focuses on the way the user can enter the actions of the character she controls. Three specific issues are discussed: the variety of choices proposed to the user, the need for the user to be able to anticipate her future possibilities for actions and the time necessary to enter the action. This allows us to propose a taxonomy of different user interfaces, and to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of each category of interface. This should serve as a guideline for the design of user interfaces for Interactive Drama.

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