Edirlei Soares de Lima

Breda University of Applied Sciences

Drawing is a primary human skill that has been used for thousands of years as a visual complement to written and oral storytelling. The advent of interactive narratives brings the possibility of interaction to the traditional stories. In this paper, we present a storytelling system able to dramatize interactive narratives in augmented reality over...

Quests are a fundamental storytelling mechanism used by computer role-playing games to engage players in the game's narrative. Although role-playing games have evolved in many different ways in the last years, their basic narrative structure is still based on static plots manually created by game designers. In this paper, we present a method for th...

The production of high-quality commercial games requires the work of a few hundred individuals, including designers, artists, and story writers, to produce game content, such as 3D models, textures, and narratives. Over the last decade, the production of game content has grown to the point of becoming a bottleneck in companies’ schedules and budget...

In almost all forms of storytelling, the background and the current state of mind of the audience members predispose them to experience a given story from a uniquely personal perspective. However, traditional story writers usually construct their narratives based on the average preferences of their audience, which does not guarantee satisfying narr...

The production of high-quality digital games usually requires a few hundred individuals, including designers, artists, and story writers. Currently, development teams are increasingly applying procedural content generation techniques to reduce their work overload. However, there is a lack of methods to handle the procedural generation of branching...

This paper proposes the use of narrative patterns as an effective guide to preserve thematic consistency in the composition of stories using Large Language Models (LLMs). Our approach drove inspiration from a well-accepted, thorough, and overarching classification of folklore types and the deservedly famous Monomyth characterization of heroic quest...

A method for generating narratives by analyzing single images or image sequences is presented, inspired by the time immemorial tradition of Narrative Art. The proposed method explores the multimodal capabilities of GPT-4o to interpret visual content and create engaging stories, which are illustrated by a Stable Diffusion XL model. The method is sup...

This article presents a novel and highly interactive process to generate natural language narratives based on our ongoing work on semiotic relations, providing four criteria for composing new narratives from existing stories. The wide applicability of this semiotic reconstruction process is suggested by a reputed literary scholar’s deconstructive c...

This paper shows how to construct genre patterns, whose purpose is to guide interactive story composition in a way that enforces thematic consistency. To start the discussion we argue, based on previous seminal works, for the existence of five fundamental genres, namely comedy, romance - in the sense of epic plots, flourishing since the twelfth cen...

O artigo apresenta o desenvolvimento e a análise de resultados do projeto Macunaíma, caso aplicado de IA utilizada para a criação de roteiros e de storyboards, que une narrativa, áudio e imagens geradas automaticamente. Tecnicamente, foram utilizados modelos de IA para geração de texto (ChatGPT) e imagem (Stable Diffusion), com uma interface web qu...

In order to be successful in today’s competitive environment, brands must have well-established identities. Therefore, during the branding process it is necessary to attribute personality traits and visual elements that best represent the desired identity of the brand. With the recent advances in communication, scholars have analyzed how different...

This paper explores how the concept of life has been used in video games through time. Life is an essential element in different types of action games and several nuances have been used to provide various types of emotions and effects during gameplay. However, the details and patterns have not been extendedly analyzed. Primarily, we survey works re...

In this paper we introduce a novel highly interactive process to generate natural language narratives on the basis of our ongoing work on semiotic relations. To the two basic components of interactive systems, namely, a software tool and a user interface, we add a third component-AI agents, understood as an upgraded rendition of software agents. Ou...

This paper presents a novel exploration of the interaction between generative AI models, visualization, and narrative generation processes, using OpenAI's GPT as a case study. Drawing on Umberto Eco's "Six Walks in the Fictional Woods'', we engender a speculative, transdisciplinary scientific narrative plentiful with references and links to relevan...

Assuming that the term 'metaverse' could be understood as a computer-based implementation of multiverse applications, we started to look in the present work for a logic that would be powerful enough to handle the situations arising both in the real and in the fictional underlying application domains. Realizing that first-order logic fails to accoun...

The use of narrative generation methods in games is a complex challenge that involves multiple problems of plot-based processes integrated with character-based methods. Examples of these problems are the high computational complexity of many story generation algorithms, the difficulties associated with the generation of interactive narratives that...

In this paper we propose a new plot composition method based on situation calculus and Petri net models, which are applied, in a complementary fashion, to a narrative open to user co-authorship. The method starts with the specification of situation calculus schemas, which allow a planning algorithm to check if the specification covers the desired c...

In this paper, we present a novel character-based model for interactive storytelling in games, which combines multi-agent planning with a drama management strategy based on production rules to guide the narrative generation process. The underlying proposed method is capable of generating and controlling the enactment of character-based narratives i...

The situation calculus logic model is convenient for modelling the actions that can occur in an information system application. The interplay of pre-conditions and post-conditions determines a semantically justified partial order of the defined actions and serves to enforce integrity constraints. This form of specification allows the use of plan-ge...

Fear is a basic human emotion that can be triggered by different situations, which vary from person to person. However, game developers usually design horror games based on a general knowledge about what most players fear, which does not guarantee a satisfying horror experience for everyone. When a horror game aims at intensifying the fear evoked i...

Technological innovation and democratization of artificial intelligence (AI) have been leveraging the potential success in every field we know today, while more is yet to come. This paper presents an analysis of AI achievements within the fashion industry, particularly in e-commerce fashion brand platforms, and how it is impacting the consumer pers...

Inspired by conceptual blending models and considering plot generation as a plan-generation problem, this paper proposes a robust method that reuses existing stories to generate new narrative variants. This method generates variants that combine episodes extracted and adapted from different stories that share the same narrative structure. By combin...

Storytelling is a powerful tool to convey values and enrich creativity, imagination, and critical thinking. However, digital native children are losing interest in traditional folktales as these stories now have to compete with more appealing and interactive forms of entertainment, such as videogames. New technologies allow stories to be told in di...

The new generation of games searches for in-depth narratives. Innovations in this new trend require a better understanding of interactive narratives based on the emergence of a novel discipline named Computational Narratology. This paper proposes that this new discipline results from the transdisciplinary convergence of concepts and implementation...

New ways of communication and the growth of mobile technologies allows a high degree of interaction between people, places, and even things, making it possible to work anywhere, anytime. This has led to the creation of new working models, where an increased number of independent workers fight the blurred line between working and personal life. The...

Horror games are designed to induce fear in players. Although fundamental fears, such as the unknown, are inherent to the human being, more specific fears, such as darkness and apparitions, are individual and can vary from person to person. When a game aims at intensifying the fear evoked in individual players, having useful information about the f...

Drawings have been used for thousands of years as a visual complement to oral and written storytelling. The evolution of technology and the advent of interactive narratives brings the possibility of exploring drawings and storytelling in new ways. This paper presents a new sketch-based interaction method for planning-based interactive storytelling...

Os anos mais recentes têm sido marcados por um aumento significativo no número de jogos eletrônicos tendo personagens femininas como protagonistas ou com grande participação nas narrativas. Entretanto, percebe-se também uma predominância de personagens com formas voluptuosas, atributos físicos em evidência, além de personalidades que destacam a sen...

Human-Robot Interaction challenges the field of research on Artificial Intelligence in many ways, especially regarding the complexity of the physical world. While physical interactions require Artificial Intelligence techniques to handle dynamic, nondeterministic, and partially unknown environments, the communication with humans requires socially a...

In almost all forms of storytelling, the background and the current state of mind of the audience members predispose them to experience a given story from a unique personal perspective. However, traditional story writers usually construct their narratives based on an average understanding of the preferences of their audience, which does not guarant...

Current video games use simple methods to deal with interactive narratives and the enormous variety of player types. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to interactive storytelling in games, in which the quests and the ongoing story are determined in view of individual personality traits and behavioral attitudes in a nondeterministic way. Ou...

Interactive storytelling systems usually adopt computer graphics to represent virtual story worlds, which facilitates the dynamic generation of visual content. However, the quality of the images and motion produced by these systems is still inferior compared to the high quality experience found in live-action films. Interactive rates in photorealis...

Narrative and storytelling have become central issues in the new generation of video games. In this paper, we propose a modelling strategy to combine a chosen repertoire of story variants of the same narrative pattern into a network structure. We follow a Computational Narratology orientation and aim at two complementary objectives: (1) the analysi...

Storytelling has been playing an important role in the culture of many societies. The advent of new technologies and the emergence of the first interactive narratives transformed the traditional stories into a new form of entertainment. In this context, Lima et al [9] proposed recently a new form of Interactive Storytelling called Paper and Pencil...

Video games add new dimensions to traditional storytelling by allowing players to change narratives through their own actions. In modern Role-Playing Games (RPGs), this is usually done by adopting branching storylines based on key choices presented to players at certain points of the game. However, such branching points are usually presented throug...

We propose to examine here a heroic narrative pattern, in which the protagonist begins as a simpleton, learns about the world and about himself along successive stages, falls down nevertheless in a crucial instant, but is then led to rise again and move towards a high position that nobody else was worthy to attain. A major feature of the pattern is...

An intriguing phenomenon in human storytelling – inexhaustible source of inspiration for digital storytelling – is our ability to still recognize a story that the narrator has felt free to change to a considerable extent. We have been witnessing a renewed interest of the movie industry in adaptations of folktales, mostly for adult audiences. Howeve...

Nos últimos anos os jogos eletrônicos têm se destacado como uma das principais formas de entretenimento digital. Entre os elementos de um jogo, destacam-se os mapas, os quais podem ser construídos de forma pré-definida, onde os desenvolvedores elaboram detalhadamente como será constituído o mapa, ou através de algoritmos baseados em métodos de gera...

A small number of variants of a widely disseminated folktale is surveyed , and then analyzed in an attempt to determine how such variants can emerge while staying within the conventions of the genre. The study follows the classification of types and motifs contained in the Index of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. The paper's main contribution is th...

We introduce in the present paper an operationally defined subclass within the genre of detective stories, specified on the basis of the logic programming model adopted in our Logtell project. Special attention is given to the treatment of communicative events. An SWI-Prolog plan-based tool was developed to compose consistent plots, conforming to t...

KW-GPS is a system to assist users intent on enjoying Web resources related to a domain-restricted collection of stories. In this system, each story is referenced in a virtual library in terms of the following data: (1) the URLs of resources associated with the story, which include but are not limited to plot-summaries, narrative texts, and videos;...

The generation of engaging visual representations for interactive storytelling represents a key challenge for the evolution and popularization of interactive narratives. Usually, interactive storytelling systems adopt computer graphics to represent the virtual story worlds, which facilitates the dynamic generation of visual content. Although animat...

We have designed – and implemented in a preliminary version – a tool, named LOG-SNIP, for capturing snippets while performing Google searches for Web resources pertaining to a domain of interest, based on keywords adequate to delimit the domain. The snippets are decomposed into separate fields: name, date, url, info. A kws field is added by extract...

We introduce in the present paper an operationally defined subclass within the genre of detective stories, specified on the basis of the logic programming model adopted in our Logtell project. Special attention is given to the treatment of communicative events. An SWI-Prolog plan-based tool was developed to compose consistent plots, conforming to t...

Horror games apply several techniques to provoke fear in players. Some games try to frighten players by including ghostly voices, screams, and whispers of unknown sources in the audio of the game. These effects make players experience a form of hallucination known as Auditory Hallucination, which is a psychological disorder that makes individuals e...

A system (named KW-GPS) to assist users intent on enjoying Web resources related to a domain-restricted collection of stories is described. Each story is referenced in a virtual library in terms of: (1) the URLs of resources associated with the story, which include but are not limited to plot-summaries, narrative texts and videos; and in terms of (...

Comics are a unique and classical form of storytelling. The advent of interactive narratives brings the possibility of interaction to the traditional comic books. In this paper we present a non-branching interactive comics system capable of generating dynamic interactive narratives in the format of comic books. The system allows users to interact w...

As narrativas apresentadas em jogos digitais têm como principal objetivo entreter e permitir que os jogadores possam vivenciar novas experiências em mundos virtuais diversos. A possibilidade de customização de personagens oferecida em alguns jogos permite que os jogadores participem mais ativamente destas narrativas. Este trabalho aborda a importân...

a) Interactive TV (b) Interactive Cinema Figure 1: The multiuser natural language interaction system for interactive storytelling. Abstract Interactive narratives designed for television and cinema demands new interaction mechanisms. In the TV context, thousands of viewers sharing the same narrative at different places must have the opportunity to...

Story plots must contain, besides physical action events, a minimal set of information-gathering events, whereby the various characters can form their beliefs on the facts of the mini-world in which the narrative takes place. In this paper, we present an approach to model such events within a plan-based storytelling context. Three kinds of such eve...

In recent years interactive narratives emerged as a new form of digital entertainment, allowing users to interact and change stories according to their own desires. In this paper, we explore the use of social networks as a way of interaction in interactive narratives. We present the interaction interface of an interactive storytelling system that a...

The development of interactive narratives with the quality of feature films is the central challenge of what we can name Video-Based Interactive Storytelling. A promising approach to this question is the use of prerecorded videos with real actors. Amongst several technical challenges, this approach firstly requires automatic video editing methods f...

The ability that users have to interact and change stories according to their own desires is what differentiates interactive narratives from conventional films. Moreover, this ability expands the boundaries of computer games towards new forms of digital entertainment. However, designing an interaction model for an interactive storytelling system in...

This paper presents a model of a Supporting Characters Director for interactive storytelling systems. The model can enhance the dramatization, improve the realism, and increase the duration of the stories being generated. The Director generates and manages three types of supporting characters. Some has the ability to interact with the main characte...

The way emotions are expressed in a film has great impact on the viewer's understanding of the narrative. Over the years, filmmakers developed several techniques to enhance the perception of these emotions, such as the photography and the audio editing of the scenes. This paper proposes two cinematography-inspired autonomous agents designed to bett...

Os jogos de computador e vídeo games têm passado por diversas evoluções nos últimos anos, principalmente no que diz respeito à qualidade gráfica e realismo de suas cenas. Porém a maneira como o jogador interage com estes não sofreu grandes mudanças. Apenas recentemente que novas formas de interação vêm sendo apresentadas ao publico em geral. Este a...

Sistemas de storytelling interativo são aplicações que buscam contar histórias e permitem que os usuários interajam com estas de modo a alterar os eventos futuros. No que se refere à representação visual das histórias, existem diversas questões relativas à maneira como as cenas devem ser mostradas ao público. Muitas questões que hoje são desafios n...

This paper proposes an intelligent cinematography director for camera control in plot-based storytelling systems. The role of the director is to select in real-time the camera shots that best fit for the scenes and present the content in an interesting and coherent manner. Director's knowledge is represented with a collection of support vector mach...

This paper proposes an intelligent cinematography director for plot-based storytelling systems. The role of the director is to select in real-time the camera shots that best fit for the scenes and present the content in an interesting and coherent manner. Director's knowledge is represented with a collection of support vector machines (SVM) trained...