Emergent Narrative through Reasoning Agents in Location-Based Multiplayer Games
Henry Raymond
Master's Thesis, December 2017
Supervisors: Dr. Fabio Zünd, Dr. Stéphane Magnenat, Prof. Dr. Bob Sumner, Prof. Dr. Renato Pajarola
Abstract
Two essential elements of a modern video game are its story and how the story is told. But the number of possible sequences of events that the game’s designers must create increases with the player’s ability to affect the story. Designers therefore tend to restrict the player’s freedom in unrealistic ways, thus making the player’s experience less enjoyable.
In this thesis, we present an approach that addresses this problem by treating each non-player character in a game as a reasoning agent. Using a planning approach adopted from the field of artificial intelligence, we let the agents determine their own actions and on this basis let emergent narrative create the story.
The implementation of this thesis comprises two parts: A library called NPC engine that controls agents in the game world and a mobile game intended as a technology demonstrator.