Argax Project:: Dissertation: A Rough Draft Node

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Mateas's Facade

Mateas's Facade is the most fully-realized interactive drama effort to date. The story's premise is that the player's old friends Grace and Trip have invited the player over for dinner. As the evening progresses, the couple begins to argue, dragging the player into the conflict, and revealing more and more of the problems in their relationship. The fate of their relationship is determined at the end of the game. As it models a short one-act play, playing through Facade takes about 15 minutes.

Action

The action components of Facade are beats. A beat is the shortest sequence of actions that changes a value in the story, where values are properties of an individual or a relationship--such a trust, love, or hopelessness. Beats in Facade include preconditions to determine whether a beat can play at this time, priority and weight that determine which of currently possible beats will actually occur, and results that change one or more story values. Beats also includes the procedural knowledge--such as character directions--necessary to carry out the beat's action.

Mateas distinguishes between the player's local and global agency. At an intra-beat level, the player can experience local agency. Their actions have clear, immediate reactions. This includes such things as picking up an object, or having a character respond to a comment. It is possible for the player's local actions to interrupt the current beat, forcing it to abort and causing the drama manager to try another beat.

But besides the immediate responses within the environment, the player's actions can also affect the progression of the story as a whole. A beat is the smallest granularity of global agency the player can have. The user's actions during a beat can determine its resulting value changes in the world, thereby influencing the direction of the story.

The Facade drama manager models the dramatic story arc with a "tension" variable that rises from 1 to 4 over the length the story, which is thirty beats long. The flavor of a beat's action in a topic will vary depending on the tension. The other variable used in beat selection is that of affinity--whether the player has been siding more with Grace or with Trip. A beat exists for every tension/affinity possiblity, guaranteeing coverage.

Characters

Characters in Facade are bundles of very low-level behaviors. Most of the observed behavior is specified by beats using ABL (A Behavior Language). Beats use reactive planning to bring the action of the beat about by coordinating the characters and allowing user interaction.

Setting

The event of Facade occur in a single apartment, including living room, kitchen, and hallway areas. A number of props, such a furniture, pictures, and knick-knacks, exist. Interacting with these props can prompt certain behaviors from the characters.

Presentation

Facade uses a simple 3D graphical interface. The player can move around using the keyboard, select objects with the mouse, or enter free textual input to talk to the other characters. Characters rely on pre-recorded voice clips, and exhibit quite complex facial expressions.

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Works Cited

ToDo

Get a Facade screen shot. Repeat architecture graphic?
Expand this, but only after I figure out what exactly my goal is for presenting this information.
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