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Dragons, bats and evil knights: A three-layer design approach to character-based creative play

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Abstract

Creative play requires a fertile but well-defined design space. This paper describes a design process for creating three-dimensional virtual reality play spaces that allow the development and exploration of social interactions and relationships. The process was developed as part of a commercial research effort to create an interactive virtual reality entertainment system that allows children to engage in creative and constructive play within an established action/adventure framework. The effort centres on designing Al characters for aconstructive narrative. We claim that a behaviour-based architecture is an ideal starting point for developing agents for such a process, but that its full realization requires additional architectural structures and methodological support for the design process. In this paper, we describe a character architecture called Spark of Life (SoL). We also propose a three-layer design process for producing fertile and aesthetic constructive narratives. Finally, we describe our experience in implementing these ideals in an industrial setting.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, 545 Technology Square, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA

    J. Bryson

  2. LEGO Digital, Billund, Denmark

    K. R. Thórisson

Authors
  1. J. Bryson
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  2. K. R. Thórisson
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Correspondence to J. Bryson.

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Bryson, J., Thórisson, K.R. Dragons, bats and evil knights: A three-layer design approach to character-based creative play. Virtual Reality 5, 57–71 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01424337

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