Quest-centric Authoring of Stories, Quests, and Dialogues for Computer Game Modifications

Robin Horst, Micha Lanvers, Ralf Dörner

2022

Abstract

A computer game modification (mod) is an extension or variation of an already published computer game, usually developed by hobbyists. Creating computer games requires expertise from different disciplines. For role-playing games (RPGs), one of them is the development of coherent stories, for example, through quests and dialogues between characters. Different expert authoring tools exist supporting story writing specialists in their profession. However, based on the results of our related work analysis and expert interviews with two lead storywriters of successful mods (Enderal and Legends of Ahssûn), we identified a gap of research regarding story writing tools suitable for the modding community. In this paper, we introduce quest-centric concepts for supporting modders in designing and managing quests for RPG mods and illustrate how to use graph-based visualization techniques for modeling interactive dialogues and dependencies between quest components of a story. Based on statistically significant results of an expert user study utilizing a reference implementation of our concepts, we conclude that the quest-centric concepts supported our participants and that the proposed graph visualizations and automatic optimization suggestions were particularly helpful to them.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Horst R., Lanvers M. and Dörner R. (2022). Quest-centric Authoring of Stories, Quests, and Dialogues for Computer Game Modifications. In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2022) - Volume 2: HUCAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-555-5, SciTePress, pages 217-224. DOI: 10.5220/0010895800003124

in Bibtex Style

@conference{hucapp22,
author={Robin Horst and Micha Lanvers and Ralf Dörner},
title={Quest-centric Authoring of Stories, Quests, and Dialogues for Computer Game Modifications},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2022) - Volume 2: HUCAPP},
year={2022},
pages={217-224},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010895800003124},
isbn={978-989-758-555-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2022) - Volume 2: HUCAPP
TI - Quest-centric Authoring of Stories, Quests, and Dialogues for Computer Game Modifications
SN - 978-989-758-555-5
AU - Horst R.
AU - Lanvers M.
AU - Dörner R.
PY - 2022
SP - 217
EP - 224
DO - 10.5220/0010895800003124
PB - SciTePress