Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
Great topic John! To me one that is at the heart of VR storytelling. However my basic philosophical problem with nonlinearity is that it is not nonlinear at all. It is parallel-linear (actually tree-shaped). No butterflys in Brazil causeing hurricans on Eastern Sea Fronts. You can set up the parallel-linear in several ways. A can lead to B or C, B can lead to C or A (time travel :), all lead to D. One beginning, multiple paths, one ending. A can lead to A-1,2,3. A can lead to B. B can lead to C. B can lead to B1,2,3. There can even be looping back and crossovers to make the authoring easier. Alternate realities all with multiple endings. However it is done, the butterflies better have a good reason to be affecting the weather before I will go to the extra work to program them to do so. IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHO DETERMINES WHAT THE ALTERNATIVE STORYLINES ARE? A team of writers, and let me emphasize, A TEAM. Since it is only entertainment, and not real life but close enough for entertainment, A story could be given much more coherency by a single author, but given the present tools I agree with Kahuna. Teams. Integration is problematic though. The author does, of course! Therefore there is an inherent hard-limit on the number of potential storylines within the same story. Worse yet, forcing an author to create N good stories instead of 1 good story may lead to a lack of quality in all N stories. That isn't a function of the medium though. Just the fact there aren't enough hours in the day. This is why the team approach makes sense. Questions: - Is this worth doing? How many people on this list are going to say no to this? :) - Does this add nothing more than replay value to the story? It adds what ever a good story teller can put into it. Hear, hear!! It increases the palette the storyteller has to work with, so it should completely alter the way stories are told. Hard to do for now. The formulas are still being worked out. Right here and now in fact! I love this list. - If the story was written to serve a moral, what purpose does it serve to allow characters to change the course of events to corrupt that moral being told? (I can just imagine a nonlinear story for kids about staying away from drugs, and having the user -- who is now in control of the story -- able to do whatever he/she wants... might be scary if the story was not intelligently written to account for all possibilities) If we are to believe the teachings of many prophets, you can learn from any event, whether it is positive or negative. The task of the writer is to plan for this in advance. Practically speaking, not all possible outcomes can be included in the script. Just don't write in and ending where taking drugs and winding up happy is a possible outcome. The alternative is to simulate the human brain in characters' reactions, which I don't quite think we can handle yet. VRML AI has a long way to go, but just as characters are central to any story, (seemingly) intelligent characters are central to VR storytelling. We'll just have to fake it for now. These first attempts should be dedicated to more of a hands on developement of plots and subplots and linking them together. Achieveing that will give us insight into human interaction, and plot interaction. I agree, we have to start experimenting with it. There are bound to be failures along the way, but it is the only way. So,,, lets do it, lets create a nonlinear interactive story, and stop talking about it. Working on it! It isn't easy. :) So it seems to me, at the current level of technology, that the following is true: - true nonlinearity is technically impossible currently If not outright nonexistent, technical or no. Time makes everything linear. - creating branching stories is N times harder than 1 good story Yes. Also N times more satisfying for the 'reader' (I hope). - creating branching stories is N times harder to tell a moral Every story has a moral of some sort or another. I don't see why it would be any harder in a branching story. Unless you were telling N morals. - linear stories may still be the best way to go NO, NO, NO!! VR = interactive. Interactive = nonlinear. VR = nonlinear. If the last assumption is the best, my original question stands: How can VRML and linear storytelling co-exist? 3D and linear can co-exist. VR (immersive and interactive) cannot. By interactive I mean actually affecting the storyline with interaction, not just being able to roam around 3D space or move the story down its linear path by clicking. I have a question. Has anyone ever seen a nonlinear story (if you choose to kill the villan go to page 167) that they thought was any good? I haven't. What makes us think that VR can do it any better? I obviously do, but sometimes I'm not so sure that this isn't just blind faith. Dennis
RE: More on nonlinear storytelling
-Original Message- From: Kahuna [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] That is correct, but my arguement is that it is a waste of the z coordinate to limit yourself to a non linear story. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Yes. It is essential to ask what the z-coordinate buys you other than the ability to look at the back of the character's head. I think it would be a little too dificult to write an algorithm that would create behaviors on the fly that are enfluenced by the viewers activities in the non linear world. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] It depends on the *affect*iveness of the variable. Again, a simple world can use a simple token of exchange and get complex behaviors. A lot depends on how much you can know or define about the roles of the interactors. Some folks can drink a lot of beer and nothing changes, some only need a smell. It also depends on what you want to control with the token: the interactor's perceptions of the world, the bots, the environment, etc. Beer changes everything. :-) For that reason, response behaviors would be canned. That is to say they would be limited to an anticipated action. Anything deviating from the anticipated action would either evoke reproach, or loss of enterest, or guideness from the characters populating the non-linear environment. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Yes. Having "guide behaviors" is a good way. Lots of kids games use that technique. Bernstein had a term for these that I can't remember. The difficulty would be in having too many variables that can influence behaviors. If you mean, self-modifying code, I concur. OTOH, if as you suggest, multiple characters are being created by multiple builders according to some template, you don't know in advance what the services of the objects are (only interfaces), and you can still get emergent behaviors. I was thinking over lunch about that. The behaviors still have to fit within the definition of a role or not non-linearity, but randomness occurs. Unless one is just a cruel author, building a world where asking for a kiss gets a 38 slug to the head is just not cricket. OTOH, it is possible, but so what? Does it drive the purpose or point of the world? It is important to note that non-linearity and serendipity in the process of creating the work are very similar. Think of all the iterations in the design of IrishSpace vs what we finally came out with based on the contributions. I kept modifying the story to fit the conditions of the contributors and what was possible with the plugin. Yes, one can easily apply the chaos or complexity theory techniques that lead to "butterflies and storms", Not that easy given the fact that we want to do this over the net, and we want to avoid using Java. True, it could be done in Javascript, but my experience tells me that JavaScript is much slower than Java. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] I meant, one can think in terms of these theories but the complexity of the world is limited by the tools, so we are in agreement here. However, as the original weather models proved, very simple systems can create very complex behaviors. should consider Markov models for predictability. That is can I predict one step ahead, two steps ahead, etc. based on a recognizable pattern. Pricely what I propose we do. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Yes. It can be by a complex calculation that increases non-linearly (eg, non-regular intervals), or some very simple value that increases linearly (regular intervals). Looking at it this way, the linearity may not be a measure of the branching, but of the driver itself. The dependence of I see it as less of a Tree, and more as route. When you travel down a street in route to your distination, it doesn't matter so much that there are several other routes branching off to other distinations untill you accidentally turn the wrong way. Your accident causes a series of minor events that were not predicted by you when you originally started out from point a to point b. A smart person carries a map, and can thread his way through the tangle of streets, avenues, courts, and reach his distination. However, in the game of life we have no map, but a lot of heros and villans who think or want us to believe they have the map. [Bullard, Claude L (Len)] In fact, the adventure is in making the map. Still, look at the concept that the interval created by the feedback can be non-linear. So even if the reactions are all canned, sometimes it takes the intersection of two or more events to get the big jump in the reaction from "Pardon Me?" to "Buzz Off,
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
A chart is a good idea. How about using an interface for common behaviors so authors can change behaviors from time to time? It goes without saying that all behaviors would be protoed for reuse. I thought we would use the psychcological profiles for each set of behaviors. The last time I took psycholoy they were; Ectomorph , Endomorph, and Metamorph there characteristic are in order Passive Agressive, introverted physical traits are slinder , nervious activity. Assertive, extroverted physical traits tend towards fatness, sedentary. Agressive,assertive, extroverted physical traits musclular and athletic or we could go for pure psychological profiles Agressive , passive-agressive, Assertive, nuerotic, compulsive. If you want another dimension of depth, some character/roles should evolve. As in your example, the fishwife can certainly get meaner, but that is not evolution (emergent behavior); just adjustment of range of behavior. Getting the character across a threshold adds more depth because it surprises the user. In a plot line, say, you try to kiss the fishwife, and she smacks you with a fish. One day, you buy a fish and feed it to the stray dog within sight of the fishwife. Next time you pass her, she gives you a fish and blows you a kiss. IOW, plot develops based on dependencies Certainly an option, that won't inflate the code too much, my only argument would be what importance would it play in the overall scheme of things. Sometimes we want to save all the bells and whistles for the main story or the substory. If her behavior did something to do that then it would be a good thing to include. Sometimes it is just better to create one dimensional characters, especially if they add nothing to the progression of the story. I use to live in South Perioia, next to an old Italian lady we called Mrs. Dentino. Her old craftsman style house was surrounded by a six foot tall wall of hedges. That hedge had faced many freezing Perioria winters, and the undignified attention of every stray dog or cat in that city, but if a single child were to inadvertantly touch that hedge, or god forbid pluck a leaf or a branch from it, Mrs. Dentino would fly out of the door like a wrath with a broom and beat the hands and head of the offending child. One summer day Mrs Dentino return from the corner store with a bag of groceries precariously resting in the bend of her boney liver stained arms. She had an old metal tin mail box in front of her hedges that could only be seen in the fall since the hedge all but gobbled it up. That day as she was retrieving her mail from the box she almost spilled her grocieries and in the movement to catch the bag before she spilled it a letter slipped out of her hand and underneath her feet. She went inside her house without even noticing the letter. Looking for any opportunity to ingraciate myself with the old lady whose broom had so frequently parted my unruley hair, I picked up the letter and went to the door and knocked. She accepted the letter with a smile, and then quickly closed the door. I don't know, if it was the heat or the Peroria humidity or maybe just the magic of that moment,,, being rewarded with a smile instead of the business end of broom that is,,, but I forgot what I was doing and my hands on their own volition grabbed the hedge when I passed and plucked one perfect green leaf. I had no sooner plucked the leaf when Mrs. Dentino was on me straw from the broom flying, and the letter still in her hand. The moral of this story is, like it or not, some people are extremely one dimensional and can't appreciate that circumstances change based on the actions of the people they come in contact with.
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
First of all Good thread! Without digging up all the email and carefully cutting/pasting I recall Dennis I belive...asking the questions (to paraphrase) "Have you ever seen a non-linear story that was successfull" and he goes on to say he certainly does but is just taking it on faith. Also in a previous post Miriam pointed out that VRML would be useful for placing objects in various places which add a spatial aspect to the story. Characters in one or another place are doing things or objects are clues for other actions. Someone (Miriam I think) pointed out that many adventure games are effectivly adventure stories. How true! But also notice the other critical fact...they are games. Successfull non-linear stories that require substantial user interaction ARE games. I think to get back to Dennis' observation I can't think of any good non-linear story that was simply a story not a game. So the struggle is what type of dramatic device or trick or new way of thinking makes sense for a non-linear story...that is NOT a gamenot that there is anything wrong with that (he says with his best Seinfeld voice). If I write a story I want the reader, audience/viewer to get a message. I want them to come away from viewing/reading the story having a clear knowledge of my (the author's) intent. What is the right mix of story telling and freedom for the reader to explore? Can a nonlinear story that is NOT a game be compelling? Sandy
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
Hi Sandy, At 10:41 PM 5/26/98 -0400, Sandy Ressler wrote: First of all Good thread! Yes -- everyone has had some great contributions to make. I think to get back to Dennis' observation I can't think of any good non-linear story that was simply a story not a game. I think there's an _extremely_ fine line between nonlinear stories and games. After all, how do you define a game? And why is the labeling of a particular world/story a "game" such a black mark? I don't see it as that... when I think about the Zork trilogy, I think back on a superbly written story -- not necessarily a game per se. Same for Myst. If the story is strong enough, the point will be made, regardless of what kind of "label" is attached to the genre. Can a nonlinear story that is NOT a game be compelling? Seems to me a story that doesn't possess some game-like qualities would be a dreadfully boring story. -John
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
Good points Sandy, I believe if you really look closely you will see that most really good stories have the characteristics of a good game. When I was a kid I was totally into Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I read them like a puzzle, trying to figure out who did what and when. Later I went on to Agatha Cristy,,, trying to solve the mystery before I reached the conclusion. I have played Return to Zork and Myst. They have all the ingredients of a good Mystery, with a fantasy theme to them. I think if you simply make a non linear story, you will have a really cool game without having to worry about a score. Moving on in the plot could also be done by connecting with the right characters, picking up an object, or solving a puzzle. Someone at the begining of this thread asked "Can VRML and Linear Story tellling co-exist" . I assert that "Games and non-linear story telling not only co-exist, but that they are joined at the hip". A good game,,, even Doom or Quake has at its core a story, and that story has different outcomes. Of course Quake and Doom are extremely violent and simplistic, but they have a popular theme repeated often in Sci Fi movies since talkeys; "There are bad and evil monsters, and we have to kick their ass!". /// Ua mau ke ea `o ka vrml `i ka pono / ///// http://www.kahunanui.com / // /// // http://www.kahunanui.com/review.html //// /// // [EMAIL PROTECTED] // /// // /////// /// -Original Message- From: John D. DeCuir [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Sandy Ressler [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, May 26, 1998 8:08 PM Subject: Re: More on nonlinear storytelling Hi Sandy, At 10:41 PM 5/26/98 -0400, Sandy Ressler wrote: First of all Good thread! Yes -- everyone has had some great contributions to make. I think to get back to Dennis' observation I can't think of any good non-linear story that was simply a story not a game. I think there's an _extremely_ fine line between nonlinear stories and games. After all, how do you define a game? And why is the labeling of a particular world/story a "game" such a black mark? I don't see it as that... when I think about the Zork trilogy, I think back on a superbly written story -- not necessarily a game per se. Same for Myst. If the story is strong enough, the point will be made, regardless of what kind of "label" is attached to the genre. Can a nonlinear story that is NOT a game be compelling? Seems to me a story that doesn't possess some game-like qualities would be a dreadfully boring story. -John
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
I've seen non-linear stories which were good - not great perhaps, but they were written for young kids. Rose Estes' books from the Choose Your Own Adventure series of novels (should they be called novels? or perhaps branching short stories?). As for trying to make them come to a satisfying close, that was one of the compelling things about them. You would read the stories, taking the decisions you felt you should as they branched, and usually when you came to the end of the story it was an unsatisfying end, but you always knew that there was a satisfying "happily ever after" ending in there somewhere, so tended to reread the story, taking different choices until finally the story came out the way you wanted. I read one of the stories to my girlfriend at the time and was most dismayed when the choices she took came out for the best, on her first time through! Cheers, - Miriam --- WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexxmmeeaann??
