Argax Project: Eudaemon

Architecture: Eudaemon

Activity: 2006 - 2007

Stage of Development: Design completed.

Overview: The Eudaemon system is built on the functions of Vladimir Propp. The basic idea is to build a story piece-by-piece in the order described by Propp. Each story piece is called a scene. All the possible scenes that fill the next function wait in anticipation, each ready to fire on a particular player action or when the player enters a certain location. This behavior makes a scene a little like a daemon (as defined in computer science). Yet all these little scene "daemons" are managed by a central drama manager. This gave rise to the name, as a eudaemon is a benevolent or guiding divine spirit, leading one to a good fortune.

The detailed design sketch of Eudaemon--which was to power the game Wharf--proved to be too restrictive. It looked to be a successful interactive drama, but didn't provide quite the freedom and degree of user agency I was looking for.

Features:

Controlled top-down by a drama manager, loosely coupled to the story world
A story world comprised of locations, characters, and props--each with their own default behaviors, but all subservient to the drama manager (when necessary).
Story built of pre-authored scenes, selected based on the next function and scene prerequisites. While scenes are not internally interactive, selection of the next scene is based on the story world state, which is affected by the player.
Dynamic casting of NPCs into character roles.

Articles/Details:

"The Limitations of a Propp-based Approach to Interactive Drama" (Tomaszewski & Binsted 2007)

Games:

Wharf