iMyth

Author: Chris

  • New Direction for Raconteur?

    While this thought is not new, I’ve had trouble justifying it in the past because of cost considerations. However, a new thought hit me today and it might be a potential solution for getting this show on the road.

    I have not written about this to this blog but this concept has been on my mind for a long time. I’d like to create an immersive AR/VR experience. Currently, there is no way for we as humans to jack into the matrix and have it feed us CG content to override our five senses. However, until that interface exists, there are still millions of problems to solve generating that content and presenting it such a way that it is interesting, motivating and compelling. This goes right along what I am looking to do in the Raconteur engine. The environments, characters and stories present enough research potential for hundreds grad students and researchers for quite many years.

    The test bed for this system is a virtual amusement park/adventure land. I’ll call this virtual story world. Visitors to this world will be equipped with a headset complete with VR goggles and earphones. Eventually an emitter can be provided to generate CG smells. In addition to the headset, the visitors will be wearing a trackable body suit. The suit will be used to track the precise movements of the visitor. The visitor’s motions will be fed into central program which will driver an avatar for the visitor. A CG environment and the avatar will be directed back into the VR Goggles. The story world will be constructed of a re-configurable collection of walls, doors, steps and props. The visitor will not perceive the the real story world. Instead, he will see and hear the interpretation of the story world as re-created by the Raconteur engine. Other characters in the world will either be other players or agents generated by the engine.

    The story world will be constructed inside old shopping malls, supermarkets or other abandoned large spaces. The visitors will experience an alternative reality story generated by the Raconteur engine. The story world will provide the physical resistance as perceived by the engine. Touch will be provided by the story world; sight and sound by the engine. I have not figured  out a way to deal with physical contact with other characters however yet.

  • Another Simple Test But With Houdini

    I re-created the simple roll_A_ball test but instead of using Unity pick up objects. I used objects generated from a Houdini OTL. It was a simple OTL. However, I encountered a lot of strange problems integrating the assets. I’m glad I’m spending my free time learning how these assets integrate. I think I would go ballistic if a had a delivery deadline and I had to re-create my project. One of the bumps was “user-Error”. The other one I can’t still figure out. It has to do with integration  The Houdini engine with a pre-created project. I was not able to get the project to accept the OTL. I needed to recreate the project but with the Houdini engine already installed. I don’t think I’ll have any problems form here on in.

  • Immediate Plans for the Future

    I have to admit I’m a bit concerned I don’t yet have a grand vision for where all this is headed.  However, I do have a small handful of small projects which may help provide some vision. This particular blog doesn’t really fall within the Grammar Based Universes or Interactive Storytelling categories but is really a combination of both.

    The projects I pursue have two purposes:

    1. To push the field of Interactive Storytelling into the next big wave. (Don’t know what the next big wave is yet? Hold on it is coming!)
    2. Create Business opportunities such that I may be able to focus 100% in this direction and provide abundance for my family.

    Keeping those themes in mind, here are the next projects to focus on:

    • Create First Unity Project 11/25/13
    • Integrate Houdini with Unity using Houdini Engine
    • Create a moving character in Houdini and get it into Unity
    • Create an articulated character in Houdini and get it into Unity
    • Develop FLOPS engine (It’s gotta be portable, fast and easy to use!)
    • Finish up my HDA builder
    • Test some of Chris Crawford’s ideas
    • Create a Plot Driven Story Universe
    • Port Houdini Engine to other packages such as Cry, Unreal, Frostbite and Touch.
    • Create a story Language based on Chris Vogler’s Writer’s Journey
    • Create larger, all media encompasing story language.

    That’s a lot to do … and get it all done by the end of the week? – SURE!

  • Raconteur

    Of all the names I have come up with Raconteur seems to be a fore runner. It means someone who is good at telling stories or interesting anecdotes. I have to admit  I’m not a big fan of the french language. But Raconteur is a cool sounding word and the name implies Storytelling beyond written or language.
    So when you see the name Raconteur, you’ll know that you’re dealing with either the company in Austin, they got the name first, or us. The website will be following soon.

  • First Unity Project

    I created my first Unity project.

    First Unity Project

    I’m actually impressed how easy it was . Of course the scene I created was very simple. However, Unity should supply a suitable test bed for many of the concepts I am developing. Look for more good things coming from this website.

  • ChuckleHedz Observations!

    http://mycryengine.com/

    been messing around with this, just to get the feel of incorporating level design
    with the story telling process (or trying to learn level design).
    The last couple of games I’ve played had a open world design, but they still
    guided you along the story.
    FarCry 3 was really good action adventure trying to save your friends
    big huge world, and if you didn’t feel like it you could drive around the island
    all day. (you could play stealth, or balls out call of duty killing machine)
    dishonored – is cool because the moral code says the more people you kill the
    more rats there will be and the plague will spread…so you have to decide
    when and where in order to complete the missions.

    but me I want to go horror with a dark outcome (like farcry) you still may have one the game
    but its still a pretty dark ending.

  • Concerns About Plot-driven devices

    I too have my concerns about a plot-driven device. If you follow just one plot then you’re not really in an interactive story anymore, you’re on rails … such as Uncharted. How could you possibly visualize all the possible plots? It’s like looking at an infinite 4 dimensional hypercube. You could constrain the fourth dimension … isolating your domain to a three dimensional cube within one relative time epoch. Even then you are left with an infinite number of paths traversing the cube; each path representing a unique plot. How could you possibly focus only on the interesting or entertaining plot lines without once again putting yourself on rails?

  • Crawford’s “on Interactive Storytelling”, part I

    I have bee reading, although very slowly, Chris Crawford’s “On Interactive Storytelling. I’m only about half way through the book but I find it very fascinating.

    In particular his “Data-Driven” strategies. He sites references of Aarne-Thompson, Vladimir Propp and Georges Polti. I can’r help but wonder where Joseph Campbell’s system would fit or more particular, Chris Vogler’s interpretation of the Writer’s Journey. When writing screenplays, I would often get ideas by placing Chines Zodiac archetypes in a Vogler situation and let them play against each other. Although the interaction were in my head I could not feel as if I was following a rule based system.

    I’m only part way through the Language-based Strategies, I also find this extremely relative. Before reading this book I had been studying up on compiler design so I might be able to create such a Languages-based system.

    I’ll have more notes as I finish the book.

  • Grammar Based Universes

    By the phrase, “Grammar Based Universes(GBU)”, I’m actually referring to Grammar Based Story World Universes. I thank the Universe for allowing me to arrive at this insight. However, the universes I am describing are not the Universe we exist in, (that  job is for bigger and better men than me) but rule based definitions of a potential reality. Every Story World had its own set of rules which govern every aspect of that story. The physics, nature and even the characters’ idiosyncratic behaviors obey religiously by the rules set forth by the author; sometimes in a document called the story bible. Every story that has ever been created has had its own set of rules which govern its reality.

    As suggested by my friend Andre, why not call these “Rule Based Universes”? For one thing the sound of “rule based universes” invoke images of totalitarian societies that I would rather not venture. Secondly, I don’t really see them so much as rule based but “grammar based”. When the world is governed by grammars the meaning is more creative and collaborative rather then authoritarian. “creative” is the key because we are creating new reality out of the formless “stuff’ which permutates through the universe. Grammars are the tools by which we as human beings use to describe our reality. Even the rules that can be used to define our world’s physics still have to obey the same grammatical structure. The big trick now is to not only create the grammars upon which universes will be created but also to create the interpreters necessary to bring the grammatical instances to reality.

  • Relationship of Existence and CGI Storyworlds

    This may be just a crazy ranting brought on by delirium and Physical exhaustion. However, since it was on my mind and I was getting milk and cookies I thought I may as well jot down my ideas.

    I really need to look this up so I don’t know for sure. I have been told there are some whom believe the universe exists because there is thought causing it to exist. In other words, consciousness is what drives existence. I suppose this is what drives new age-self help gurus such a “the Secret” and The Teachings of Abraham. We create our own existence through our thoughts. We create our reality by thinking it.

    Let’s just assume this is true. Then maybe, when dealing with CG Story Worlds, those portions of the world should not exist until there is a consciousness driving it. In other word, the CGI worlds are created only when there are participants exploring that world. What exist when there is no consciousness? I don’t know. Maybe just language and graphical defaults. Needless to say this could be yet another, although random, argument for proceduralism helping to drive Interactive Story Worlds.