I was working on the Decision System and implemented The Endless Forest‘s Action Strip to show pictures for representing the Opportunities in the list that was filtered by the Filter of Distance. Then I made the pictures clickable so the player could choose a Goal for the Actor. It’s surprising to experience how much fun just telling a character where to go is. And to sit there and wonder what it will “think” of to do next. Avatars izz teh cool! 8) Autonomous characters are overrated. 😉
Interactivity is fun!
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Posted on December 21, 2006 at 4:24 pm
they are certainly fun to watch
Posted on December 22, 2006 at 12:19 am
Interesting. I’m keeping a close eye on this project as I like the idea of an intelligent (well not really intelligent, would RESPONSIVE be a better word?) programme that can quickly be adapted to suit many different purposes.
Damnit I want to be 18 so I can to college and learn how to perform this magic.
Posted on December 22, 2006 at 12:25 am
Yes, “responsive” is a better word. And the hope is that they would be “believable”, as opposed to “realistic”.
Don’t wait. I didn’t learn any of this myself in school at all!! It’s all through self-study with the help of the internet. And frankly, I suck at programming. The trick is too know your limitations and be creative within them. 🙂
(and get some help from others -these characters were originally modelled and animated by Laura Smith, e.g.)
An interesting thing about the “adaptibility” of the Drama Process system as it is shaping up, is that it almost comes with a game built-in. Makes me dream of a scenario where all we do is come up with a situation and characters and then breathe life into things with Drama Princess. Instant game! 🙂
Posted on December 28, 2006 at 8:55 pm
How do they interact with each other? I think thats the key thing thats missing in this demo video.
Posted on December 29, 2006 at 9:36 am
They hardly do, in this video. It’s the player (me 🙂 ) who interacts with one of the characters, uses it as an avatar. I was surprised by how much fun that was. That’s all.
This is especially meaningful considering how little “verbs” there were. Basically just controlling the character to go to a certain spot is a satisfying experience. This reminds me of an earlier realisation that these “Crawfordian verbs” are overrated. The action is not the ony thing that matters. The context, the situation is very important too. And often much cheaper to implement. Sitting on a hill watching the sunset with a friend is very different from sitting on a chair in the waiting room of a dentist…
Posted on January 16, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Wildbluesun, they don’t teach you any cool stuff like this in college. At least not where I am! You’ll have to find it yourself. I could suggest some things to look at if you want.
It’s nice to see Drama Princess being worked on again. 🙂