Interactive Drama Prototype 'Facade' Released

rafg writes "In most story-based games where you get to talk to characters, interaction is limited to selecting conversation options from a menu. Facade calls itself a one-act interactive drama, and is an attempt to create realistic 3D AI characters acting in a real-time interactive story, where you can talk to them via a natural language text interface. The player is cast as a visiting longtime friend of Grace and Trip, a couple in their early thirties, and ends up in a verbal crossfire resulting from their failing marriage. More info in the press release, an older conveniently mirrored NYT article and an Idle Thumbs review. It's available in the form of a rather chunky 800MB torrent."

Comments

Too soon

[Arthur B.]

Will work enough to sound appealing and make people try to use it, won't work enough to be practical and thus will be very frustrating. Most of speech AI look good on the... facade, but one stumbles extremly quickly on their shortcomings.

Hi-tech bummer simulator

[kahei]

Another attempt to make a 'grown up' computer game by removing the things that make games worth playing (simplified, fun universe that's not like what we do every day and offers clear goal to reach and things to explore) and adding in the things that make life worth escaping from (evenings like the one described in this game, and people called 'Trip').

Now, there are some good technical bits in this game -- it's nice not to be taking turns or picking from a menu. Much more conversation-ey. But as an idea for a game, 'handle an awkward evening in a sparsely furnished apartment' pretty much sucks.

Re:Hi-tech bummer simulator

[Lemmy Caution]

Sorry, but escapist fantasy itself gets boring. They don't actually call it a game, they call it an interactive drama, and just like, after a while, you get tired of Star Wars and go see an Ibsen play (at least if you develop aesthetically), it is possible to appreciate actual drama, or other situations that aren't "fun."

In fact, the emphasis on "fun" over other types of aesthetic experience is sort of a pathological disorder, in my opinion. The ancient Greeks had a lot more going on that just the comedies, and there's a reason for it.

I mean, maybe it's not your thing. But I really, really wouldn't want to live in a culture where "fun things that offer clear goals" were the end-all of artistic output. It's in ambiguity, tragedy, sadness, and even anxiety that we can use cultural works to grow as people. And the idea that games can join other media, like drama and literature and film, to do that, is great. It seems you want to keep games on the level of "kid's media", even if it's for grown-up kids.

NOOOOOO!

[Vo0k]

Nothing new. There are hundreds of such games. Everywhere it looks the same.
Player: Hello.
AI: Hi. What brings you here, traveller?
Player: I'm just sightseeing.
AI: Could you rephrase that?
Player: I'm passing by.
AI: Sorry, I don't understand.
Player: Nothing.
AI: uhhh. Sorry?
Player: Please, forget it.
AI: I can't do it.
Player: Where is the weapons shop? [it's across the street]
AI: I don't know where it is.
Player: Who are you?
AI: I'm Thargos, your friendly wizard, thank you.
Player: I'm looking for a quest.
AI: Sorry, I don't know where is quest.
Player: Give me a job.
AI: I'm giving you nothing, you must earn everything by yourself.
Player Goodbye.
AI: Goodbye. By the way, wouldn't you happen to have some spare time to deliver this package to my friend across the city?

Re:NOOOOOO!

[nomadic]

Ultima V, for the C-64, in 1988 had an "AI" with free-flowing conversation that went slightly better than this even :) You could actually talk with random NPCs fairly naturally. Though you could get away with stuff like "food?" or "inn?" if you really wanted to.

I miss that sort of thing; a few other games had it, too. But as computer games became mainstream they got dumbed down to appeal to the nintendo-playing mouth breathers who started buying PC games. Ultima 5 had it done well. Ultima 6 had the same system, only they highlighted keywords so you didn't have to guess (fortunately you could turn it off). Ultima 7 went the next step and had preformulated responses you made, and every RPG since then has had the same.

Re:Who?

[Vo0k]

Well, more like finally "Stand against the wall opposite to the doorknob. Cautiously grab the door knob. Turn it and slowly open the door, still staying by the wall. Peek through the gap between the door and the wall inside." instead of entering a room first, and looking what's inside (and stabbing your leg) later. (Remember Silent Hill? I hated it.)
Somehow I doubt the new game would understand that.

I can get this for free, not that I'd want to

[ScentCone]

I mean, I can't personally fly an F-16 or kill aliens, so that's fun to do in 3D on my computer, with or without natural language interfaces (though the more the merrier).

But get tangled up in the verbal sniping between two people in a failing marriage? That's what visiting the in-laws is for. And not only is it in 3D, the personal safety options are turned off, and the frying pans feel completely real.

Emergent behaviour and AI

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing is not so much revolutionary as evolutionary, we will see more and more of this.
I design levels for game called Operation Flashpoint. It's a sophisticated shooter. Back in the days of Unreal and Halflife I used to code bots too, but they pretty much found their way around the map by pathnodes, and had limited, fixed views of things, like how much they 'hate' their enemies. The level of sophistication with flashpoint bots takes it to a whole new world. I add my own AI routines giving bots the ability to spot and exploit opportunities, or be afraid, make them courageous or cowardly depending on what they see and hear, etc... Each of the bots in operation flashpoint can be written as a single self navigating object, in user definable script. This is the interesting thing... Once you give AIs in excess of 8 or 10
parameters, have a few different ones, make those parameters loosely codependent and hook them into 10 or so environmental rules, throw in a handful of random events, now you have a chaotic
scenario that NEVER plays the same way twice.
You lost all deterministic control. How do you debug a non-deterministic program? Of course its not really non deterministic, it just might as well be. My missions are always where the player plays a small, non-pivotal role (well actually the task is try and find a pivotal opportunity to change the course of the 'war') that rarely influences the great, highly unpredictable battle ensuing.

As someone who undertands concurrent programming I still find it amazing what happens inside my little reality model with only a few tens of bots
walking about, coding the scripts for a complex level is possibly one of the most challenging programming excercises you can imagine (which is why its fun) trying to influence events in a reality whose parameter space is vast. You have to reason probabalistically, and no excercise will do more for your ability to craft exception handlers, or exercise your 'but what if...?' brain parts.

Re:Who?

[TrippTDF]

This is going to appeal to you in five years. Remember, this is a first step into a larger world where we can get away from the limitations of clicking on a phrase to respond with a la KOTOR.

I've not seen this demo (though I will check it out when I get home) but this seems like it could lead to really cool stuff. The implications for Alternate Reality Games is pretty cool. Now it's just typing text and reading the response, but start to incorporate a voice recigition and you've got something. You could call a phone number and have a conversation with a computer. I'm pretty damn exicted about the prospect of this technology.

Re:Where's the "New" part?

[cakesy]

You know, there is only so much you can get from the Slashdot description. Sometimes, you just have to go ahead and read the article.

"Programming hassle"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no genius, obviously, so I guess I'd like to know what kind of "programming hassle" makes them require installation to the C: drive. (From the help section of their web site.)

I mean, don't you just need to set a registry key (or something) with the base installation directory? What are they doing that needs hardcoded full directory paths? I'd like to try the game, but apparently I'm not going to because I don't use C: for applications, just the OS. (And it doesn't have 1GB free anyway.)

Re:Where's the "New" part?

[ate50eggs]

What else is like this? there are games where you pick a response from a list of 3-5 options and there are games that detect keywords. Keyword detection may seem like natural language as long as you stick to the scripts but it's not the same thing. you could say "I'm going to shove this silver key down your throat" and the character would just say "the silver key is to the east"

Also, drama doesn't just mean talking about messy divorces instead of swords (btw, when the old guy gives you that rusty-ass sword in the beginning of Zelda, is that a Dramatic moment). It means dynamic relationships between characters. in most current game scripts the characters have very static relationships with maybe one twist somewhere along the way ("I'm Revan?!? wow that changes things almost imperceptibly!)

I sort of doubt that the natural language detection will be good enough for this new game to work, but isn't it time we had some games that take risks?

Re:Wrong name

[MidnightBrewer]

Amazingly enough, Oxford's American Dictionary disagrees with you. "Facade" with a "c" is a perfectly legitimate spelling. It always pays to back up your pedantry with research.

Re:800MB torrent!

[Psykosys]

You're not one to download torrents of complete TV series, I take it (not that I'd be involved in anything like that).

Until you try it, your opinion is worthless!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, post more replies!

I just love to read the uninformed opinions of people who haven't bothered to try the 'game'!

Do any of you work for IGN perhaps?

Maybe somebody who has actually used the software should chime in with their thoughts, eh?

No, I'm not new here, but people spouting uninformed, useless opinions about something they haven't even bothered to try is terribly aggravating. An opinion without experience is baseless. The software isn't a drug, and it won't kill you, so try it out before forming your opinion!

Jeez...and here I thought /. was a place to see reasoned debate.

Re:Until you try it, your opinion is worthless!

[ThePlague]

Jeez...and here I thought /. was a place to see reasoned debate.

You are new here.