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Abstract. In this paper, we describe the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) within an emotional planner to support Interactive Storytelling. Our emotional planner is based on a standard HSP planner, whose originality is drawn from altering the agents' beliefs and emotional states. Each character is driven by its own planner, while characters are able to operate on their reciprocal feelings thus affecting each other. Our baseline story is constituted by a classic XIX th century French novel from Gustave Flaubert in which characters feelings play a dominant role. This approach benefits from the fact that Flaubert has described a specific ontology for his characters feelings. The objective of NLP should be to uncover from natural language utterances the same kind of affective elements, which requires an integration between NLP and the planning component at the level of semantic content. This research is illustrated with examples from a first fully integrated prototype comprising NLP, emotional planning and real-time 3D animation.

Abstract. Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) is a well-known cognitive theory, especially in the field of Software Agents. Modelling characters using software agents has been proven to be a suitable approach for obtaining emergent and autonomous behaviours in Interactive Storytelling. In this paper it is claimed that an effective extension of previous models to the BDI framework is useful for designing intelligent characters. An example shows how internal thoughts and motivations of Madame Bovary's main characters can be more naturally formalised as a cognitive side of the story. A narrative reformulation of BDI theory is needed to avoid the implicit complexity of other proposals.

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Game programmers rely on artificial intelligence techniques to encode characters' behaviors initially specified by game designers. Although significant efforts have been made to assist their collaboration, the formalization of behaviors remains a time-consuming process during the early stages of game development. We propose an authoring tool allowing game designers to formalize, visualize, modify, and validate game level solutions in the form of automatically generated storyboards. This system uses planning techniques to produce a level solution consistent with gameplay constraints. The main planning agent corresponds to the player character, and the system uses the game actions as planning operators and level objectives as goals to plan the level solutions. Generated solutions are presented as 2-D storyboards similar to comic strips. We present in this paper the first version of a fully implemented prototype as well as examples of generated storyboards, adapted from the original design documents of the blockbuster game Hitman.

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The Entertainment potential of Virtual Reality is yet to be fully realised. In recent years, this potential has been described through the Holodeck™ metaphor, without however addressing the issue of content creation and gameplay. Recent progress in Interactive Narrative technology makes it possible to envision immersive systems. Yet, little is known about the usability of such systems or which paradigms should be adopted for gameplay and interaction. We report user experiments carried out with a fully immersive Interactive Narrative system based on a CAVE-like system, which explore two interactivity paradigms for user involvement (Actor and Ghost). Our results confirm the potential of immersive Interactive Narratives in terms of performance but also of user acceptance.