A Demonstration of ScriptEase II

This demonstration describes ScriptEase II, a tool that allows game story authors to generate scripts that control objects in video games by manipulating high level story patterns and game objects. ScriptEase II can generate scripting code for any game engine for which a translator is written. Currently there are translators for Neverwinter Nights and real Pinball games. Story Creation With ScriptEase II ScriptEase (Cutumisu et al. 2007) allows authors to generate scripting code for the Neverwinter Nights (NWN) video game. However, designing a scripting tool on a pergame-engine basis is costly. ScriptEase II can generate code for any game engine, using interchangeable “translators”. Two game engines at opposite ends of the genre spectrum were chosen, to verify the code generation system – NWN (Aurora game engine) and a modified network version of USC’s pinball API (Wong et al. 2010). Authors use a drag and drop interface to assemble event driven scenarios using cause-effect patterns that can be abstracted across games and genres. For example, pinball is more similar to a game like NWN one might initially expect, since pinball games often involve quest elements by asking players to hit various targets on the board. In story-based games, a creature reacts when something happens to it. Suppose an author wants to describe how a Bodak will react when it is hit by a spell: first gasp, and then, if the Bodak possesses a particular item (Briarspike), speak a second line and attack, otherwise speak a warning. Figure 1 illustrates how an author can generate scripts for this scenario using ScriptEase II. The author drags a cause, When [subject] becomes the target of (Spell) cast by (Spell Caster), from the library pane to the story pane (see inset). Copyright © 2011, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. The author changes the category in the library pane from causes to effects (not shown) and drags an effect, Speak Text [ ] at volume [ ], from the library pane to the story pane. The author types AHHHH in the “brown” text slot and selects a speech volume, Shout, from the “brown” volume slot. A circle indicates the kind of object that can be placed in the slot – C for creature, P for placeable, S for spell and T for text. The author drags the “blue” Bodak (creature) from the game object pane (lower left) to the [subject] slot so that the Bodak will respond to being hit. The author uses a question to specify the conditional effects, by dragging the effect, ? [ ], from the effect category of the library pane to the story pane (see inset). To fill in the question slot with a specific question, the author changes the category in the library pane to descriptions (not shown) and drags a description, HasItem describes if [creature] has [ ], to the story pane (see inset). The author then drags Bodak from the top line of the story pane to the [subject] slot and drags the Briarspike item object from the game object pane to the [ ] slot. The author then drags the HasItem description from the description line to the question line. The question has two parts, yes and no and the author drags different effects to each of the parts. During gameplay, the yes or the no effects are performed depending on whether the Bodak has the Briarspike. Figure 1 shows the complete story pattern. The “green” objects, Spell and Spell Caster are dynamic game objects that the clause presents to the author. The author can drag a “green” object from the cause to any effect. For example, the author wants the Bodak to attack the creature who cast the spell. This object is not known during story creation. It becomes known during game-play when a creature actually casts a spell at the Bodak. Each cause has a custom set of objects that become available to the author when that cause activates.