Daniel C. Howe
ABSTRACT
Open-ended narrative games present vast surfaces that require large amounts of compelling writing. Automated solutions have made little progress in this domain and talented human writers who code are few and far between. Thus the question of how to augment writers with digital tools—without requiring them to become programmers, or to need continual assistance from programmers—is a crucial one for the field. To address this question, we present Dialogic1 , a scripting language, execution environment, and set of online tools designed to support skilled human authors in creating engaging interactive writing for games, leveraging generative strategies atop a simple syntax familiar to writers. We describe the system's goals and motivations, architecture, and technical details, and evaluate its use in two production-quality titles.
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