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

Um...

[The Warlock]

Haven't "type-in-the-orders" games been around since Advent and Zork?

Re:Um...

[grub]

This post is licenced under the GPL.

Per the GPL: please supply me with the source code to your post.

This is a game???

[j0e_average]

Cripes!!! If I want to hear a bunch of drama and nagging, I'll go listen to my own family!!!

Re:This is a game???

[TrippTDF]

At the center of any story is conflict. That's what leads to drama. Video Games at this point primarily focus on the conflict between two characters in a violent sense... you can take Gordon Freeman Vs. the Combine, or even Mario Vs. King Koopa. The root is always the same- if you don't kill them, they will kill you.

This is the first time I've seen that conflict be able to move away from the violent, and that's a big step for video games. This has the chance to change the nature of gaming away from the shoot-em-up mentality into something larger.

You know how ever blockbuster action movie has a game to go along with it? We could potentially have games that are tied to something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or American Beauty.

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.

That's an interesting concept

[ReformedExCon]

It is clever in that it uses a "real" AI which does its best to draw the player into the game world. However, it seems like it would suffer from the same type of problems that any AI suffers from, that is it can't understand everything the user types.

It also suffers from cutscene-mania. The game itself is a series of cutscenes that progresses even without user interaction. Though cutscenes have their place in games, building a game around them is a surefire way to limit replayability.

I would love to try the game, personally.

Sounds like fun!

[Trigun]

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.

If the AI is advanced enough, maybe I can seduce Grace, talk her into killing Trip, and then turn her in for the virtual reward!

Wrong name

[Rui Lopes]

It isn't "Facade", it's "Façade".

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.

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.

Here we go again..

[CCelebornn]

> Slap silly woman
I DO NOT KNOW THE WORD "SLAP"

> Tell silly woman you can keep the dog but that playstation is mine
I CANNOT DO THAT

> Kill woman
YOU ATTACK WOMAN, BUT THE EFFORT IS WASTED. HER DEFENSIVE IS TOO STRONG
WOMAN ATTACKS YOU
WITH ONE WELL PLACED BLOW WOMAN CLEAVES YOUR SKULL
YOU ARE DEAD
YOU HAVE MASTERED 0.0% OF THIS ADVENTURE

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!

[Musteval]

nono, see, this is new. Here, there aren't wizards. There's *D*R*A*M*A*!

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.

Oh Boy, SimVirginia Wolfe!

[Nova Express]

GeorgeBot: Don't toy with me, MarthaBot. I don't remember.
MarthaBot: You laughed your ass off the last time.
1337 H@x0r: God, you old people are really boring! Can't you, like, kill some zombies or something?

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.

First impressions

[PIPBoy3000]

Well, no one here appears to have downloaded and installed Facade. Thanks to Evil Avatar, I picked this one up over night and just installed it.

First off, make sure you have a 1.6 Ghz machine. It's not just a recommendation - the install won't work if you don't meet that requirement. And the install is very long as you might expect.

This is a very audio game. If you're deaf, I'm not sure it's even possible to play. The first really odd thing is that the characters call me verbally by my real name. It's "Adam", which isn't too uncommon, but strange nonetheless. I suspect they have a hundred or so common names they've recorded.

The controls are weird - a combination of keyboard arrows, typing, and the mouse. There's also some limited manipulation of objects (e.g. picking up the phone and throwing it around). You can also hug and comfort the two people with a click of the mouse.

The main interface, however, is the keyboard. You'll do a lot of typing, trying to guess what the magic keys and phrases are.

I haven't finished it. Heck, I feel I've barely scratched the surface. Even though it's in a single room, the illusion of open interaction with two humans is pretty good. Well, enough Slashdotting. Time to play a bit more.

Re:First impressions

[PIPBoy3000]

Okay. I've finished my first play-through. It took about twenty minutes. Some of it is fairly clunky. Some of it is extremely compelling.

I restarted after my first posting and noticed some differences right away. The first time the phone rang. The second time it didn't. I ended up kissing Grace when we met and she seemed more positive afterwards (I have that effect on women).

Emotionally the game is great. You get a ringside view of the emotional train wreck of these two people's marriage. You can guide their conversation, take sides, and watch them reveal painful secrets.

Being a fast typist helps as you regularly need to type out long strings of text. Moving around is awkward with the mouse and arrows, but fortunately you don't need to move around much. Your decisions are remembered and the actors will comment on the previous things you've done. The 800 MB download makes perfect sense now as there must be hours of sound files to cover every contingency.

This seems like the sort of game that would strongly appeal to women. It's very free-form and is exclusively about social interactions. The only catch is that I'd imagine it's extremely labor intensive to create something like this. The writing, voice acting, and tracking all the branch points seems a daunting task.

Still, I can see how people herald this as the future of gaming. It would be amazing if you could hit this level of character interaction in ordinary games.

Re:First impressions

[uberdave]

I ended up kissing Grace when we met and she seemed more positive afterwards (I have that effect on women).

I have that effect on fanasy women as well. [grin]

LJ

[lisaparratt]

Didn't Danga get there first with LiveJournal?

Wait...

You're telling me they're real people?!?! :S

I don't get it...

[autophile]

So they put all this time and effort into AI-powered interactive fiction. And then they go and make it a story about fighting about a failed marriage. Do you think the developers had some issues here?

--Rob

Plot?

[slapout]

and ends up in a verbal crossfire resulting from their failing marriage

Oh yeah. THAT sounds like fun!
(Maybe they'll rename this game "The Jerry Springer Experience")

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:Emergent behaviour and AI

[DingerX]

Well, OFP, IIRC, uses a combination of stateful AI and (within that) some sort of neural net system to run their bots.
It looks like Facade is using a complicated expert system: there is a story to tell, and your behaviour will "trip" certain triggers.

Both systems have their limitations: NN-based stuff is dependent on the inputs given. OFP Bots, for example, "learned" back in the days of development. And their information on visible is a combination of what the person is doing (crawling makes them less visible than running), and where they are (concealment is preferable to cover). On the other hand, "being shot at" is not an input (it does however initiate a state change -- from "AWARE" to "COMBAT"). The result is that the AI does some things that work pretty well against other bots with the same inputs: they run across an open field, then crawl on their belly in the middle: "Disappearing" to the eyes of the enemy bots, but presenting a tasty target for humans. Anyway, coding OFP missions is like herding cats a lot of the time: the AI has its own mind of doing things, and it's not always tactically sound.

On the other hand, the Expert System approach ends up being canned: you do actions to change states, and your range of action is limited to what the developers thought up. Hence Facade: it looks sophisticated as hell, and I'll download it and check it out, but it sounds like a superfancy Eliza.

Oh and for a good assault, lay in some artillery, send two squads to the target on "SEARCH AND DESTROY" and have a reserve squad set on "GUARD" (so they close with the enemy when the others make contact).

Game Name

[Spez]

The name of the game is "Façade", which is a french word that means "frontage" or "facing"

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.

Meanwhile, at the AI Clinic, bugs are tested.

[dangitman]

Player: I came here for a good argument.

AI: No you didn't, you came here for an argument.

Player: Well, an argument's not the same as contradiction.

AI: It can be.

Player: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition.

AI: No it isn't.

Player: Yes it is. It isn't just contradiction.

AI: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.

Player: But it isn't just saying "No it isn't".

AI: Yes it is.

Player: No it isn't, an argument is an intellectual process... contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.

AI: No it isn't.

"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?

Er, hasn't this been done before

[Shawn Parr]

And not just the Infocom text adventures either.

Anyone else remember Starship Titanic by Digital Village, Douglas Adam's game company?

3d rendered characters (which looked much better IMHO that the pictures for this game) that used a system called Spookitalk so that you could type in what to say to the characters and they could pretty intelligently attempt to reply.

I haven't played this game yet, but I did play ST and enjoyed it. Hopefully this takes that concept of AI and expands it farther as if you have played ST for a while you eventually can figure out what kind of responses you will get from the different characters.

My point being that this concept is not nearly new at all, even with the audio element which is what people seem to be claiming is different.

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.

The developers of ...

[Laser Lou]

Façade maintain a group blog about interactive drama, poetry, art, and other such things. Its called Grand Text Auto. They usually post on several new subjects each day, and anyone can post comments there.