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Interactive Drama Prototype 'Facade' Released 152

Posted by timothy from the calculon-approves dept.
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."
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Interactive Drama Prototype 'Facade' Released More

Interactive Drama Prototype 'Facade' Released

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  • Um... (Score:2, Funny)

    by The Warlock ( 701535 )
    Haven't "type-in-the-orders" games been around since Advent and Zork?
    • Yup. And they died a death for some of the reasons in the idle thums review. When this idea is coupled to decent speech recognition give me a call.
    • An innovative text parser allows the system to avoid the "I don't understand" response all too common in text-adventure interactive fiction.

      Exactly...now if only someone would use this system to re-release Zork, life would be good.

    • Created a text adventure when I was a kid. What was different about it was that it had AI characters that would walk around the house, occassionally picking up stuff that you needed, so you sometimes had to talk to people to find it if they had what you wanted. Didn't think that much of it at the time, but I haven't seen anything like it since. Back to the topic, I am one of those people who are much appreciative of attempts to improve AI, particularly in this area, as it is one area that I am still amazed
      • You saying that reminds me of a program I wrote in my youth too, an Eliza style program that all you could do was talk to. It actually turned out quite a decent conversation - as far as i could see it appears to be more effective (as far as faking a naturalistic-seeming conversation is concerned) to use a brute force approach to these sort of things, where you just think of as many keywords as possible, and have numerous canned responses chosen randomly, rather than some sort of AI-theory driven language an
    • Haven't "type-in-the-orders" games been around since Advent and Zork?

      I think they are aiming for something a little better than:

      > GO NORTH
      > OPEN DOOR

      YOU DIED!

      Sierra had a lot of text based games, but the new system sounds more like they want to build a language parser to handle almost any scenario. It's possible, and there are some AI programs that can have conversations, but I don't know how well it will work in a game.

      It kind of reminds me of EQ. No matter how hard you tried to
      • I loved those Sierra On-Line games... ahh.. the many days and nights I wasted on King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Hero's Quest, and Space Quest.

        What joy :-)

        I think the most widely used command across all these was "look around." :-)

  • This is a game??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by j0e_average ( 611151 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:16AM (#12992994)
    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??? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:25AM (#12993515)
      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.
      • "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."

        That's kind of an absurd statement. There have been multiplayer sports and puzzle games, adventure games, racing games, etc. for years and years. Just because the violent games get all the media attention doesn't mean that's what most video games are. There have been video games with non-violent conflict and competition for as long as there have been video games.
        Pong, for god's

      • This is the first time I've seen that conflict be able to move away from the violent

        Then, frankly, your exposure to video games is quite limited. Many games exist that do not revolve around violent conflict. Some don't include it at all (Tetris, Lumines, etc).

        ... and that's a big step for video games.

        I have to disagree. Completely. 100%. Totally. You are wrong sir.

        This is not a 'step forward' for video games. It is a 'step forward' for interactive storytelling, which is not a video game. People

        • I'll start from the end.

          "Which do you think will sell better: ..."

          I don't really care. Brittney Spears outsold Miles Davis. McDonald's outsells the French Laundry. That means nothing, except that you can get rich by appealing to mass demographics.

          The answer: I want this. I have the kind of attention to system and procedure of a gamer. I want to see something - a problem, a situation - presented to me as a model, as variable, as giving me a way to act rather than just watch. But I also want all the things
        • Many games exist that do not revolve around violent conflict. Some don't include it at all (Tetris, Lumines, etc).

          Of course Tetris has violence in it. What do you think happens when the blocks disappear? It's a terrible genocide, I tell you!

          Rob
      • 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.

        Pong was violent?
      • Do yourself a favor, follow these links, play these short (one or two hours) games.

        Galatea [mindspring.com]

        Photopia [adamcadre.ac]

  • Too soon (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Arthur B. ( 806360 )
    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.
  • So it's 3-D characters, interacting in real-time with what your 3-D character does and says, right?
    But haven't we already been playing games like this for a while?
    Maybe it's better at drama, by which I take it that the characters say dramatic things to each other, but is that really such a great improvement in game play? "Here's your sword" is just as dramatic to me as "Somewhere in the house, there is a killer" -- depends on why I'm playing the game to start with.
    So it may be evolutionary for sure, next
    • 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.
    • 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 tha
    • "So it may be evolutionary for sure, next generation MYST perhaps, but it doesn't sound revolutionary."

      Oh, yawn. Another "evolutionary vs. revolutionary" soapbox wankfest.

      What does it matter if the game is good? Or at least heading in that direction?

      When I was a kid and sat down in front of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, I didn't sit around pontificating about whether it was "evolutionary" or "revolutionary" - I just thought, "Dang. This really sucks compared to the arcade version." Because that's wh

  • That's an interesting concept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:17AM (#12993008)
    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! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trigun ( 685027 ) <<xc.hta.eripmelive> <ta> <live>> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:20AM (#12993032)
    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!
    • The reviewer tried that. He says "I guess they arent swingers" :-).
    • > > 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!

      GRACE, HOW LONG HAVE YOU WANTED TO KILL -9 TRIP?

      "Ever since he asked me how it made me feel about our failing marriage. And that he could see why I might ask him that. That's when I

    • I'm waiting for v2.0, where Grace and Trip are replaced by Brandy and Raven.
    • You'd have to hit it with lightening first to make it hurt people...

  • Wrong name (Score:2, Informative)

    by Rui Lopes ( 599077 )
    It isn't "Facade", it's "Façade".

    • Re:Wrong name (Score:1, Funny)

      by Trigun ( 685027 )
      And how would you spell pedantic asshole?
      • S-P-E-DOUBLE L-I-N-G N-A-Z-I.
        Don't worry, the game will be a worse one on you.

    • I hate to point this out, but...

      Just because "facade" is a legitimate spelling of that word (according to many dictionaries, the only correct spelling, in fact), it doesn't make it the correct spelling of this game. The parent may be nitpicky (or pedantic even), but if you follow the link in the article, you will see that technically, he is correct.

      It's a little bit like someone pointing out that the name of a popular doughnut chain here is "Dunkin' Donuts," not "Dunking Doughnuts." You can point out

  • Hi-tech bummer simulator (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:23AM (#12993052) Homepage

    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.

    • It may be boring, but imagine the same engine in like Star Trek, for example. Or as an anime-simulation engine. It would be a lot of fun.

      What I don't understand though (without having played the game, of course) is how the outcome is predefined and free at the same time...because AI is not real AI if the outcome is predefined, and I really doubt they have true AI as to end up with any random outcome.
    • This is innovation in gaming. With a few notable exceptions, the single-player mode of character-based games has been getting the shaft ever since Quake I. Since Quake I's multiplayer became such a phenomenon, game companies have been tacking on multiplayer to half-finished games with shitty single-player experiences and shoveling them out the door.

      I think it's great that they're trying to develop single-player AI again and that something NEW is happening in the gaming world. I play games to get away fr
    • 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

  • Here we go again.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by CCelebornn ( 829849 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:24AM (#12993054)
    > 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! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:25AM (#12993063) Journal
    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! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Musteval ( 817324 )
      nono, see, this is new. Here, there aren't wizards. There's *D*R*A*M*A*!
    • 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.

      -Jesse

      • Re:NOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nomadic ( 141991 ) <`nomadicworld' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @10:09AM (#12993924) Homepage
        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.
        • It does seem as if we have trouble, as a programming community, leveraging previous advances in natural language AI.

          I've played some text adventures on the C64 that were smarter than most of the recent entries in the interactive fiction contests.

          With things like WordNet out now, I'd have hoped things would have progressed more than they have.

    • Meanwhile, at the AI Clinic, bugs are tested. (Score:5, Funny)

      by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:43AM (#12993672)

      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.

  • Oh Boy, SimVirginia Wolfe! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson.gmail@com> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:34AM (#12993095) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • I can get this for free, not that I'd want to (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:38AM (#12993122)
    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 (Score:5, Informative)

    by PIPBoy3000 ( 619296 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:44AM (#12993163)
    Well, no one here appears to have downloaded and installed Facade. Thanks to Evil Avatar [evilavatar.com], 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.
    • This is a very audio game. If you're deaf, I'm not sure it's even possible to play.

      I'm glad to see Gerry Todd's(of SCTV fame) "Audiogames" is now a reality in 2005.

    • Re:First impressions (Score:5, Informative)

      by PIPBoy3000 ( 619296 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:21AM (#12993483)
      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.
      • 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]

    • Another FYI: It doesn't seem to work on Windows 98. The installer claims to want Windows ME or better.

      Is it possible to run the installer under WINE?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @08:49AM (#12993204)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Emergent behaviour and AI (Score:1, Insightful)

    by 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
    • 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 visi
      • it sounds like a superfancy Eliza

        Hey, don't knock it. There are a number of elected politicians and talk show hosts that appear to be superfancy Elizas, and they are raking in the bucks.

  • I don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autophile ( 640621 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:03AM (#12993318)
    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? (Score:3, Funny)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @09:06AM (#12993350)
    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")
  • Given the average human being on the planet, and their rather crippled forms of social and verbal interaction, why would I want to interact with something that acts like a realistic person?
    • Given the average human being on the planet, and their rather crippled forms of social and verbal interaction, why would I want to interact with something that acts like a realistic person?
      1. To sharpen your geek skills in getting a REAL date?
      2. To try to understand women better?
      3. To fulfill your fantasy of Yuna kissing Tidus more early in the game?

      Remember! This is a *PROTOTYPE*. I bet than in 20 or 30 years, AI is going to be much more advanced than now. By that time, games will be able to:

      • Synchroni
      • To sharpen your geek skills in getting a REAL date?

        Why? I have plenty of girlfriends and lovers.

        To try to understand women better?

        Don't seem to have many problems doing that. I'm rarely around males, and the women think I'm as good as a lesbian.

        To fulfill your fantasy of Yuna kissing Tidus more early in the game?

        Eh?

  • Game Name (Score:2, Informative)

    by Spez ( 566714 )
    The name of the game is "Façade", which is a french word that means "frontage" or "facing"
    • Wait a tit... a French word?

      Well, we'll just have to rename the game Freedom.

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

      Yes, just like the artist formerly known as Prince's name is that goddamn symbol.

      The word canyon was originally spelled cañon, naive was spelled naïve, and the thing with your employment history started out as a résumé. When we adopt a word into English, English orthography becomes acceptable. The game authors are welcome to try to be all stylishly faux-continental, but the rest of us are eq
    • The name of the game is "Façade", which is a french word that means "frontage" or "facing"

      In this case, the other meaning of facade is more apropos:

      A showy misrepresentation intended to conceal something unpleasant.

      Facade came into common English usage in the 17th century.

  • "Programming hassle"? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 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 [interactivestory.net] 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.)
  • The whole thing feels like it was created in flash...
    Takes ages to start (on a A64 with 1GB RAM), looks like a flash video, gives no option where to install (i didnt even find a entry in \program files, no idea where it went), and now as i try to kick out the crap, its spends over 5 minutes "configuring the uninstaller"...
    No matter how smart the idea may be, the conversation into a computer program sucks.

  • Er, hasn't this been done before (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shawn Parr ( 712602 ) <parr@@@shawnparr...com> on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @10:17AM (#12993989) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Starship Titanic had one of the funniest text engines ever, and Douglas Adams was on the development team. The only thing I can of think against it today is that so many people have atrocious spelling due to their heavy reliance on spelling checkers etc.
    • Anyone else remember Starship Titanic by Digital Village, Douglas Adam's game company?

      Yep. I was working at TDV through most of ST's development.

      I'm a web techie, so I didn't work on the AI aspects. The text parser was originally the Velocitext engine from Virtus Corp., but we ended up changing it so much (I say "we" - the vast majority of the work was done by one coder, Jason Williams, IIRC) that it got renamed - Douglas himself chose the name "Spookitalk" because its ability to show some understanding

      • If the natural language interface to Facade is not only a way of interrogating the characters but also a way of changing the state of the game and advancing the plot, then that's a fairly significant step further than Starship Titanic, which pretty much limited the parser to interrogating the characters for answers.

        I hate to disagree with you here, especially since you worked with TDV, but Starship Titanic did rely on using the parser to change and advance the game.

        Specifically one had to convince t

  • the "Lifetime" Channel. Just cast the voices of some spunky-but-sweet actress and sensitive-but-tough actor from bad '80s TV shows and watch bored housefraus from across the country line up to play this dreck.

    Good drama on relies on more than dialogue, it relies on a total acting performance from the actors, and the state of 3D graphics is simply not advanced enough. Add into that a viewing experience not dissimiliar to a TV show, and think how boring it would be to be using the same camera angle the whole
  • DM: There is an elf in front of you."
    P2: "Whoa!"
    Player 3: "That's me, right?"
    DM: "He's wearing a brown tunic, and he has grey hair, and blue eyes..."
    P3: "No I don't, I have grey eyes!"
    DM: "Let me see that sheet..."
    P3: "W... well, the sheet says I have blue eyes, but I decided I want grey eyes!"
    DM: "Whatever... ok, look, you guys can talk to each other now."
    P2: (pause)"Hello."
    P3: (pause)"Hello."
    P2: "I am Galstaff, sorcerer of light!"
    P3: "Then how come you had to cast magic missile?"
    (laughter)

  • Anyone else remember the PC/PS game Sentient? [the-underdogs.org] It seems very similar to what this game is trying to achieve, and it did it in 1997 (and it will run on a PlayStation!) It's dialog engine was a little wierd, but I found it very enjoyable.

  • must be a biiiig file (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    800 MB torrent? That's funny, I've never seen a torrent file bigger than a few kilobytes.

    (sarcasm)
  • it turns out they're routing the characters through smarterchild.

  • Until you try it, your opinion is worthless! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06, 2005 @01:21PM (#12995546)
    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.

  • Façade maintain a group blog about interactive drama, poetry, art, and other such things. Its called Grand Text Auto [grandtextauto.org]. They usually post on several new subjects each day, and anyone can post comments there.
  • ...you can just get this [mindspring.com].

    Rob
    • I'd have to say that I found Galatea much more interesting than Facade - in spite of the lack of 3D visuals, this one felt much more interactive, and the storyline felt a lot more diverse.

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