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A branching tree of possible user actions is the simple strategy that offers the truest interactive drama. Each choice offered to the user will lead to a different conclusion.
The drawback to this technique is the authorial load. Even if every choice made in a story is between only two options, and no choices are ever revisited, a story of 10 choices long would take 210 (or 1024) nodes.
One way to reduce the authorial load is to have some branches merge togther, or foldback (Crawford 2005) on each other, further down the tree. This could be done to the point where the story has a single ending node, but different possible paths to that conclusion. If every choice folds back, we end up with a linear story with only the illusion of choice--a pure foldback system.
Meadows (2003) refers to such structures as "modulated".
Loopback is a variation on foldback where the path leads up, rather than down, the tree. This returns the user to a previously visited choice. This creates a loop in the story, forcing the player to make different choices if they want to reach a different conclusion the second time through. This technique makes the player aware the story's node-reusing structure even on the first play.
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Argax Project : Dissertation :
A Rough Draft Node http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ztomasze/argax |
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Last Edited: 13 Dec 2006 ©2006 by Z. Tomaszewski. |