skip to main content
10.1145/1082473.1082477acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesaamasConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Thespian: using multi-agent fitting to craft interactive drama

Published: 25 July 2005 Publication History

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in designing multi-agent based interactive dramas. A key research challenge faced in the design of these systems is to support open-ended user interaction while ensuring dramatic user experiences and consistent character personalities. Autonomous agents with reactive and planning abilities are well suited for realizing characters that both adapt to user interactions and are consistent with their own goals. However, agents are often created manually and with extensive programming effort, that excludes authoring by non-technical authors. Thespian is a framework for realizing interactive drama that seeks to reduce programming effort. To start, an author provides linear scripts of the drama. An automated fitting algorithm then configures agents to behave according to the scripts via automated tuning of goal parameters. This capability allows authors to design in a familiar way by writing scripts. Thespian also supports reuse of characters and story elements. Given these advantages, new scenarios can be developed with less programming effort. We discuss the use of Thespian in fitting characters in the Tactical Language Training System and in a Grimms' fairy tale. We also present preliminary experiments on migrating characters between these stories.

References

[1]
J. Cassell, J. Sullivan, S. Prevost, and E. Churchill, editors. Embodied Conversational Agents. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000.]]
[2]
M. Cavazza, F. Charles, and J. S. Mead. Agents' interaction in virtual storytelling. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2190:156--170, 2001.]]
[3]
A. Chulef, S. J. Read, and D. A. Walsh. A hierarchical taxonomy of human goals. Motivation and Emotion, 25:191--232, 2001.]]
[4]
T. Galyean. Narrative Guidance of Interactivity. PhD thesis, Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, 1995.]]
[5]
P. Gebhard, M. Kipp, M. Klesen, and T. Rist. Authoring scenes for adaptive, interactive performances. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, pp. 725--732, 2003.]]
[6]
J. Gratch and S. Marsella. A domain-independent framework for modeling emotion. Journal of Cognitive Systems Research, 5:269--306, 2004.]]
[7]
P. Gmytrasiewicz and E. Durfee. A rigorous, operational formalization of recursive modeling. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Multi Agent Systems, pp. 125--132, 1995.]]
[8]
W. L. Johnson, C. Beal, A. Fowles-Winkler, S. Narayanan, D. Papachristou, S. Marsella, and H. Vilhjálmsson. Tactical Language Training System: An interim report. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Sys., pp. 336--345, 2004.]]
[9]
M. T. Kelso, P. Weyhrauch, and J. Bates. Dramatic presence. Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 2(1), 1993.]]
[10]
S. Marsella, W. L. Johnson, and C. Labore. Interactive pedagogical drama. In Proceeding of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 301--308, 2000.]]
[11]
S. Marsella, D. V. Pynadath, and S. J. Read. PsychSim: Agent-based modeling of social interactions and influence. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, pp. 243--248, 2004.]]
[12]
M. Mateas and A. Stern. Integrating plot, character and natural language processing in the interactive drama Façade. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Technology for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, 2003.]]
[13]
D. V. Pynadath and S. C. Marsella. Fitting and compilation of multiagent models through piecewise linear functions. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, pp. 1197--1204, 2004.]]
[14]
W. S. Reilly and J. Bates. Building emotional agents. Carnegie Mellon University, 1992. Technical Report CMU-CS-92-143.]]
[15]
M. O. Riedl, C. J. Saretto, and R. M. Young. Managing interaction between users and agents in a multi-agent storytelling environment. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, pp. 741--748, 2003.]]
[16]
D. Rousseau and B. Hayes-Roth. Improvisational synthetic actors with flexible personalities. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, 1997. Technical Report KSL-97-10.]]
[17]
R. D. Smallwood and E. J. Sondik. The optimal control of partially observable Markov processes over a finite horizon. Operations Research, 21:1071--1088, 1973.]]
[18]
W. Swartout, R. Hill, J. Gratch, W. L. Johnson, C. Kyriakakis, C. LaBore, R. Lindheim, S. Marsella, D. Miraglia, B. Moore, J. Morie, J. Rickel, M. Thiébaux, L. Tuch, R. Whitney, and J. Douglas. Toward the holodeck: Integrating graphics, sound, character and story. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 409--416, 2001.]]
[19]
D. Traum, J. Rickel, J. Gratch., and S. Marsella. Negotiation over tasks in hybrid human-agent teams for simulation-based training. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems, 2003.]]
[20]
P. Weyhrauch. Guiding Interactive Drama. PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, 1993. Technical Report CMU-CS-97-109.]]

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Generating Role-Playing Game Quests With GPT Language ModelsIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2022.322848016:1(127-139)Online publication date: Mar-2024
  • (2024)Managing the Personality of NPCs with Your Interactions: A Game Design System Based on Large Language ModelsHCI in Games10.1007/978-3-031-60692-2_17(247-259)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Spontaneous Theory of Mind for Artificial IntelligenceHuman-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-60405-8_5(60-75)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Thespian: using multi-agent fitting to craft interactive drama

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
    July 2005
    1407 pages
    ISBN:1595930930
    DOI:10.1145/1082473
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 25 July 2005

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. authoring tools
    2. pedagogical agents

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Conference

    AAMAS05
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)10
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 02 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Generating Role-Playing Game Quests With GPT Language ModelsIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2022.322848016:1(127-139)Online publication date: Mar-2024
    • (2024)Managing the Personality of NPCs with Your Interactions: A Game Design System Based on Large Language ModelsHCI in Games10.1007/978-3-031-60692-2_17(247-259)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Spontaneous Theory of Mind for Artificial IntelligenceHuman-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-60405-8_5(60-75)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
    • (2023)The promise and peril of interactive embodied agents for studying non-verbal communication: a machine learning perspectivePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2021.0475378:1875Online publication date: 6-Mar-2023
    • (2022)Interactive Narrative and Story-tellingThe Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents10.1145/3563659.3563674(463-492)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2022
    • (2021)Little Computer PeopleProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34746725:CHI PLAY(1-30)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2021
    • (2021)Tension Space Analysis for Emergent NarrativeIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2020.298907213:2(146-159)Online publication date: Jun-2021
    • (2020)Investigating Roleplaying and Identity Transformation in a Virtual Reality Narrative ExperienceProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376762(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
    • (2020)A Review of Agency Architectures in Interactive Drama Systems2020 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG47356.2020.9231655(305-311)Online publication date: Aug-2020
    • (2019)Protagonist vs Antagonist PROVANTProceedings of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems10.5555/3306127.3331805(1069-1077)Online publication date: 8-May-2019
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media