A way to test Drama Princess mentally is to imagine whether it could display the behaviour of other autonomous characters. Could Drama Princess drive Yorda? Or Black & White’s creature? And if not, what’s missing from the system?
A mental verification test
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Posted on June 8, 2006 at 12:16 am
I think this exercise may be counterproductive to your aims. Or maybe not. Are you trying to create an general purpose engine that handles all characters in a particular way, or a particular dynamic for a particular context or character?
Posted on June 8, 2006 at 1:15 am
I wouldn’t call it general purpose as it only needs to suit our own style of interactive drama (no plot, no words,…). But the system should definitely be usable for different types of characters in different projects.
Posted on June 8, 2006 at 5:26 am
Hmm, yes, Yorda does satisfy those constraints, as does the avatar from Black and White. I’m not so lucky, my system will only satisfy the constraints of the game its designed for.
Posted on June 8, 2006 at 8:48 am
Constraints is one thing. System design is another (working on that now, in fact; will publish something later). We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll build a text-only version of the system first. To test.
Experts have recommended that we design a system for a specific game, rather than a reusable one. Because it allows for faking things in the right places. So reason is on your side. 😉
Posted on June 8, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Thanks, the way I see it its not just reason but survival that predicates a game-specific drama model. Re-usable engines often take a long time to develop in and of themselves, without an content. Facade took two years and Storytron about the same. I’d rather take a quater to get an alpha of an engine, instead of make such a risky time investment. You’re right to approach it from a strong proto-typing standpoint.
Posted on June 8, 2006 at 7:36 pm
This is one of the reasons why we want Drama Princess to be as simple as possible. We have four months, not two years.
But our context is a lot more narrow than Façade and definitely than Storytron: we don’t need story structure and we don’t need text. And our programming environment (Quest3D) is easier to use.