hello again

introduction
when i re read my own post i find them very confuse, even if i think someone could (hardly) understand where i want to go
however i have just realize that i shouldn''t thing all the time in a foreign language because this reduce the concept area since we are not exactly fluent in this language, then i have REstart to think in french, then things became more clear

then sunandshadow i think i could now clearly point at the problem
the problem is CONTEXT
things get meaning in context
when we generate a story from the thematic structure we have trouble to provide a CONTEXTE in order to blend it with the "physics" element and then the algorythm turn to be not as flexible as we expect and work for very little kind of story or genre (i have browse some academics reshearch about it recently) we fail to provide a general story generator
when we build "topology" engine (i use topology to coin engine that is not "meaning" (thematic) orianted) we could have deep interaction but these engine fail when it come to have an emotional structure (however strong emotion can still arise from them), they have a too high simulation feel to provide the story feel,

the problem is that in reality emotion come together with the "physics" and it''s hard to separte them, when we consider them as separate object we find in problem like the chicken or the egg come first,

the idea is to not considerate the two separately but the LINK (relation) between them

the problem is to blend a thematic orianted story structure with topology simulation (universe simulation)

hope this is more clear than before

actually i''m reading this to find is it''s relevent
>>> twelve dimension of context (find within the link of the link you send before, i have read ALL topic/page they where liked to)

http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~solan/society_of_mind/essay2.htm

friendly neoshaman

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I''m sorry I haven''t been replying to this, but I''ve been sick yesterday and today and can''t think clearly enought to work on this problem.

Hmm, let me see if there''s anything useful I can say...

Randomness - I''m still certain you will need randomness. You say that there are subconscious patterns to the apparantly random choices writer''s make, and I agree; but the problem is, you can''t emulate a subconscious decisionmaking process because you don''t know how it works. The only way to analyze subconscious things is with a psychological study of lots of people. You could do that, but is it worth the effort? I suggest that you think of randomess as a placeholder - you can replace it with a decisionmaking tree in future versions of the DM if you figure out how.

Also, you might want to use randomness to account for the difference between multiple human writers, so that the DM has a larger range of stories to tell that a human writer.

Versions - With a problem as complex as this, it can be very helpful to design in versions. You should design a simple, rudimentary skeleton version of the DM first, then add subroutines and more data in future versions to make it work more realistically.

Telling stories backwards - I don''t know if you write fiction much, but I do, and I can tell you, professional writers DON''T start at the beginning and write to the end; professional writers think of the climax, the theme, and the primary character dynamic first, then start at the beginning by placing the elements necessary to achieve this desired climax. I think it would be simplest to design and have the most realistic results if your engine did things in this order too.

Mutually dependant decisions - when starting to plan a story, there are several choices that must be made all at once. This is a problem for real writers but even more so for your DM. And again we have the problem of trying to emulate an unconscious decisionmaking process. That is my big question for you: what order should the DM choose story elements (theme, character dynamic, characters, plot, atmosphere, and worldbuilding) in? We know the DM''s conclusion: a satisfying gaming experience for the player. We can guess approximately what the start data must be: story element options, context, and other rules. But what is the DM''s process? How and in what order does it create the story?


Hope this wasn''t too feverish.

hello
no problem, we do have real life after all
hope you will going well and get health quickly

quote:

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Randomness - I'm still certain you will need randomness. You say that there are subconscious patterns to the apparantly random choices writer's make, and I agree; but the problem is, you can't emulate a subconscious decisionmaking process because you don't know how it works. The only way to analyze subconscious things is with a psychological study of lots of people. You could do that, but is it worth the effort? I suggest that you think of randomess as a placeholder - you can replace it with a decisionmaking tree in future versions of the DM if you figure out how.

Also, you might want to use randomness to account for the difference between multiple human writers, so that the DM has a larger range of stories to tell that a human writer.

---

well i'm a fan of psychology, neurology and cognition, if i'm not an expert myself, i do inform myself and i often google for academics in these domain, they do all the hard job for me, and ofthen i have the distance than they could not have to see connection (i hope) among various topic, these time there is huge improvement which confirm my intuition about emotion in the process of the thought (i'm in a art school myself, i'm at the opposite trend), the entire thematic theory is build around these intuition which come from my own experiance as a creator but science inclined

quote:

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Versions - With a problem as complex as this, it can be very helpful to design in versions. You should design a simple, rudimentary skeleton version of the DM first, then add subroutines and more data in future versions to make it work more realistically.

---

i'm always trying to narrow focus, but i start from the general and get down little by little to tedious problem, here i have a little shift more towards relation than structure as example

quote:

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Telling stories backwards - I don't know if you write fiction much, but I do, and I can tell you, professional writers DON'T start at the beginning and write to the end; professional writers think of the climax, the theme, and the primary character dynamic first, then start at the beginning by placing the elements necessary to achieve this desired climax. I think it would be simplest to design and have the most realistic results if your engine did things in this order too.

---

well actually i don't beleive it, when i was young i was used to write story of my own where the story reveals itself on the run thatn even me i wouldn't know what would happen next, it's like the wavinator or most people beleive that a realistic simulation would construct a story, actually it's not wrong but it's not entire true, the reason is that in a story, character move themselves in an abstract story space which represent all the story possible among data, the difference is that, as some people say, story remove the mundane and retain the interesting fact, that mean that from any given possibility there is a few that are interesting in a story sense, those which follow the dramatic focus (the theme), it's true for every creation, whereas GTAIII don't have story action are consistant around the "crime life" theme, any action outside this area would be seen as irrelevent and would broke the immersion
the problem with gta is that the theme is encode SPATIALLY, rather than TEMPORALLY, this mean that there is no argument

now i have trouble writing story but i have no trouble designing universe for the same reason as gta, i think SPATIALLY, in no time i can output a huge background where several story can take place in but have hard time developping one, it's seems that you are a temporal thinker, the difference is that i focus on STATE and you on GOAL, rumiko takeushi (inuyasha) is good at never ending story because she is a spatial thinker, i use to be the like, but i have lose control of my ability, my universe is to broad and situation became diluate in the immensity

>gibberish(one of my universe (tamago, from many) as more than 2000 character whith name, story etc... and the setting took place in millenium scale with all sort of variation during time. The last setting i have had last week is set just after the energy crisis, which had put an end to the virtual pop era, which is a post cyberpunk society, and origin is root in our today ages, in this post virtual pop era, some of the virtuens (people which was living in half virtual world in rich society) had develop new philosophy and new ability, to handle the harshness of the life and brute change of style of living, built upon the leelaa hindu myth. their analysis ability had grew up by playing video game like world higly immersive, they are in minority among those which refuse the virtual pop living style, but beyond the majority descendant of poor country which had became mutant (not the ugly or super hero cliche), while the gap between rich and poor have deepening during time, to adapt them to harsh reality increasing up with pollution.... there is more about it, the set is called "dominant species" because the world has return in a kind of neo feudal age where each city as it's own organisation and battle of ideology is at his top) /gibberish

quote:

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Mutually dependant decisions - when starting to plan a story, there are several choices that must be made all at once. This is a problem for real writers but even more so for your DM. And again we have the problem of trying to emulate an unconscious decisionmaking process. That is my big question for you: what order should the DM choose story elements (theme, character dynamic, characters, plot, atmosphere, and worldbuilding) in? We know the DM's conclusion: a satisfying gaming experience for the player. We can guess approximately what the start data must be: story element options, context, and other rules. But what is the DM's process? How and in what order does it create the story?

---

i beleive the process is similar to a system seeking equilibrum (the mind as the system)
what you say is exactly what ia have state in my last previous post but as a fan of kurt godel's theorem of imcompletness, each time i have a paradox or contradiction as an obstacle, i accept it as the solution and perform a perspective shift!
i have once meet this class of problem and i have call it the triforce dilemna (from zelda)
it's a little foolish to call it like that however, but consider the following image
-----
-/\--
/__\-
-----
-/\--
/__\-
-----
-/\--
/__\-
-----

how many triangle do you see??? answer:3

--------
---/\---
--/__\--
-/\--/\-
/__\/__--------

and now??? well western like answer would be 3 while eastern flavour would be 5
it's because western stress OBJECT and eastern stress RELATION

i know that even western would see 5 as well but it's just an illustration

in our culture we are raise to CLASS in OBJECT, divide to conquer, we see things SPATIALLY as a cultural bias but focus on GOAL, we have an objective orianted taste, we are drive by conflict and activity
while estern focus more on STATE then relation (yin and yang) and see things TEMPORALY, they are drive by immersion and passivity

i have said before that state orianted persone see thing spatially and vice versa, well i have to expand the thougt more, it's the tension between motive and appraisal, it could be confusing, goal is temporal while state is spatial, if the motive is in one kind the appraisal is in another
an example is to the difference between the two story telling in oriantal art and in occidental art, this the reason behind the different aproach of the painting in each culture (ukyo-e versus mimesis )

so the problem lie in the RELATION between the two layer of structure, now the goal is to DEFINE WHAT IS (AND HOW) this RELATION is ?


sounds a good program???


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


[edited by - neoshaman on March 22, 2004 11:05:07 PM]

a little more about my theory of spatial vs temporal which is not complete ( i have to refine the term to avoid confusion)

spatial person are drive by state, they have no direction but a place

for ex i''m a spatial designer, i design FOR designing, i would be open mindness about design because design is more important that what you accomplish with, kind of the path is more enjoyable than the goal then they would avoid most problem or would focus on them but noy for resolving it but the joy of thinking about it, they also tend to wander and experiment according to their preference, they focus on decision and diversity

a temporal designer would seek a purpose, i would say a DREAM to be acheive, the path is not that important, they want efficiency, design is only a TOOL to acheive their GOAL, they rely on proved method and seek for that which has already work, if they encounter an obstacle they face it until one broke, they see things binary, that which help getting close to their goal (good) and the rest (evil), they are action driven which drive them towards ONE thing

of course as a spatial person i would say that reality is not that binary

as a conclusion
spatial person seek GOAL (temporal) to fulfill their need of state (drive by state)

while temporal (goal driven) person would seek a state (the goal)

mmmmm, i''m just realize that this is what make the difference between story and poesis

it''s seems that it could help classify relation between the dramatic structure (temporal) and the universe (spatial) :o!!

i think what i need after all as a spatial person is a catalyst

friendly me

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ah I see where the confusion is. I think of a story as something whose shape is 4-dimensional, defined by both state and temporality, BUT I would not describe state as ''spatial'' - that term was confusing me. If it is a physical space (setting) at all, physical is only one of the spatial dimensions, and the least important. Dimensions Y and Z would define ''conceptual'' or ''informational'' space - one would be the worldbuilding, and the other character I guess. At the beginning of the story all the dimensions would be compressed into one point - the main character in their immediate location - and as time passes (travel along the t axis) the ''space'' of the story widens like a cone as exposition about the worldbuilding is given and new characters are introduced. But to get a complete story you can''t let the space just keep getting bigger and bigger - as you say, the ''situation becomes dilute'', the dramatic tension isn''t strong enough to make a climax. There has to be some other t-dimensional force (teleology again) which keeps the story centered on the main character solving one problem.

This is also called "The Unities" (by Aristotle? I forget):
Plays should display unity of time (the story should take plae within 24 hours), unity of place (the story should take place in one city or castle and the surrounding countryside), unity of characters (characters should not appear once and then vanish, they should appear throughout the play, and there should be the least number of characters needed to tell the story), unity of emotion (it should not be a mix of genres like tragedy, comedy, action, mystery, romance, etc.) and unity of purpose (there should not be unrelated subplots).


So... is that what you meant by space?

hello

the concept of space as evolve through the topic sorry for the confusion, i have label state as spatially because it''s concern the relationship as a whole, while goal focus on binary link

we could considered each element as a fct towards the goal
for the state we consider an element from all other element
is this more clear??

the cone of building cannot increase through time idefinitly since there is a limited amount of story fct, all character must be introduce in the exposition for the story to begin, i beleive that everything that came in a story is an emotional argument in as emotional syntax, they would keep by themselves the cone narrow around the goal, because everything is define FROM the thematic conflict and subject

well i think i''m seeing more clearly, each object is in a argument space and must have spatial attribute (towards the subject space which define the state of the story, the situation to build the world, the tension raise by the subject) and have temporal fct (mean a role in the story like obstacle, help etc...)
state raise a status and remain static while role give the dinamic relation through time

do you agree??

well we assume to be in archetypal story structure

and from the unity principle you gave maybe story we are talking about is in reality play, which would be basic story unit and a story would have many play, this mean each play would contain an argument from the subject

now for the method we have two general dimension
the thematic structure provide fct and role to each object in regard of the goal (then towards the problem)
the subject space give meaning to every object and hold relationship that would raise tension
there is a relationship between the goal and the subject of course, the goal provide abstract and the subject oriant physically the matter in the universe, this mean some universe can''t hold some subject???

however we have a new things to define and to find the structure among >>> subject, what''s that??

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Yes, now we agree. And yes, some universes can''t hold some subjects, or be told with some atmospheres for that matter. A mystery wouldn''t work very well with cavemen who don''t use deductive reasoning, and it would be difficult to do horror in a regency setting. (The Regency is a period of English history usually used for historical romances because it has fancy dresses and manners, and lots of parties.)

Plays - yes, it might be useful to think of a scene in the game as being an act in a play. After all, we do have a ''stage'' and ''actors'' and ''ques'' that trigger the actors to say their lines. Play act structure is an interesting model to consider using for the archetypal plot because it''s extensible - You can have a 1-act play, a 3-act play, a 5-act play, a 9-act play, etc., and the structures of all of these are documentes and available on the internet for our use.

ok but now have a single idea how to define subject that he would be a pratical model for a binary dm???

actually i see things like that

the story structure is the structure of information, and encode a process of thought (exposition, developpelemnt, conclusion), it has correspondance with other way of representing thought which of course ahev the same underlying structure (math demonstration, philosphic thought, programmation)

the thematic structure encode the emotional mind data structure, it relate about unit of internal interest of the mind which create emotion

the subject encode the RELATION between the mind and the external word (universe), it''s the experiance than one have dealing with external rhings, it hold the meaning for one mind, the story structure provide the way to encode it and the thematic provide the decoding

the universe structure is the way the external world fct, it has no meaning, and is all the possible data, it''s the raw material upon what we life and felt theings and give them meaning

according to that what would be the best way to look at subject structure, we have already 3 of the 4 the binary dm is coming in life

and i don''t agree with you, some universe IS already encode to suit some impact, but i still think that any universe could be encode in such way that we would create this impact, this exactly how genre would be create

quote:

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A mystery wouldn''t work very well with cavemen who don''t use deductive reasoning,

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actually it''s false, it''s not because they don''t have lot of highly advance item that they are dumb, actually is the exact opposite, they would have to more clever and practical than us to face difficulty in a harsh world without all the modern control since their life is all time menace by the omnipotent nature, a mystery then could be very different, because it would not focus on the same matter

quote:

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and it would be difficult to do horror in a regency setting. (The Regency is a period of English history usually used for historical romances because it has fancy dresses and manners, and lots of parties.)

---

what about vampire??? or the horror could turn precisly between the contrast between the sophistication and the odd that would aprear, however i don''t our casual teen movie horror show but rather something more psychological and more visceral at the edge of thriller with some religion interest to support the mood

well if someone find the way to code it we would be able to create new setting on the mind that our own inbuilt prejudice prevent us to made (we don''t see the clever relation and only do corse association which lead to half bastard mutant)

friendly yours, yeah, me

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I don''t think cavemen were dumb, I just think they must have had a mystical way of thinking, which is opposite the rational way of thinking a detective would need to have. But alright - let''s say any story can be set in any universe, but some stories are more suited to some universes. Ok?

lol
i think it's my old habit to argue everything..... i apologize dear sunandshadows if i have offense you (after all you have the only person paying attention)

however for the last issue i'm getting into some direction
it's seems that we have a tension from the evaluation of a situation or activity (object) towards standard hold by the mind, then creating a subject, we run again on a loop where situation generate story and story generate situation, we would run a simulation first, let the system make some inferance from a npc in the simulation and then brainjack the npc mind into a binary dm to turn this like a story (dream??), wow this is getting mystical but they are the result of the equation rather than an fantasy


basically it's like creating an ai that would argue, i'm focusing about method of argument to see if there is any good in this

did all these rambling had give you some new thing for your own??

oh, i have to flesh out a map of thematic interest for the structure

hope i would come with a definition of subject which would dismiss the confusion too with official meaning,
if subject as i suspect is a particular arrangement (observation, sense) of a world that his appraise through basic bias of the mind (emotion) and turn by evaluation standard to meaning
then the story ai would come into argument using some thought strategie or action strategie (decision)

what do you think of the theory at this point
did you find it clear or did it seems to you this is getting nowhere?? i need a feedback to be a little more confident or to evaluate the level of completness of the thought, thanks

friendly me

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[edited by - neoshaman on March 23, 2004 11:54:46 PM]