ConnectVR: A Trigger-Action Interface for Creating Agent-based Interactive VR Stories

TL;DR

ConnectVR is presented, a trigger-action interface to enable non-technical creators design agent-based narrative experiences and indicates compatibility with non-technical narrative creator’s workflows, showcasing its potential to enhance the overall creative process in the realm of VR narrative design.

Abstract

The demand for interactive narratives is growing with increasing popularity of VR and video gaming. This presents an opportunity to create interactive storytelling experiences that allow players to engage with a narrative from a first person perspective, both, immersively in VR and in 3D on a computer. However, for artists and storytellers without programming experience, authoring such experiences is a particularly complex task as it involves coding a series of story events (character animation, movements, time control, dialogues, etc.) to be connected and triggered by a variety of player behaviors. In this work, we present ConnectVR, a trigger-action interface to enable non-technical creators design agent-based narrative experiences. Our no-code authoring method specifically focuses on the design of narratives driven by a series of cause-effect relationships triggered by the player's actions. We asked 15 participants to use ConnectVR in a preliminary workshop study as well as two artists to extensively use our system to create VR narrative projects in a three-week in-depth study. Our findings shed light on the creative opportunities facilitated by ConnectVR's trigger-action approach, particularly its capability to establish chained behavioral effects between virtual characters and objects. The results of both studies underscore the positive feedback from participants regarding our system's capacity to not only support creativity but also to simplify the creation of interactive narrative experiences. Results indicate compatibility with non-technical narrative creator's workflows, showcasing its potential to enhance the overall creative process in the realm of VR narrative design.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Overview of the creator workflow using our ConnectVR authoring interface in the Unity Game Engine. After setting up a static 3D scene, a relational graph composed of actions and relationships allows creators to design and assign actions to the virtual agents in the 3D scene.
• Figure 2: An example of how actions are represented and linked in the ConnectVR visual interface. Left: (a) a player action is represented as a blue colored node, in which the creator can select a behavior mapping to a player input event (e.g., player's 'Look' gesture). Right: (b) an agent action node, represented in green, include both input (left edge of the node) and output ports (right edge of the node) that take causal links. The example node here has (i) an execution block where the creators define animations or state changes to be played and rendered on the virtual agent. The linkage between the nodes ensures that the agent action on the right triggers whenever the player looks at the agent from within a 5 meter range.
• Figure 3: An example of how spatially constrained cause-effect relationships may affect the narratives. Left: a scenario where the player accidentally burned down the entire wood area. Middle: a spatial map showing the location of different agents and the impact radius of each action. A sequence of “burn” becomes possible when the trees are arranged closely after the initial “start a fire” by the campfire. Right: a trigger-action sequence leading to a fire in the wood. The player initiates a “touch” action on a campfire to “start a fire” on the campfire. Once “start a fire” is activated, any nearby tree object capable of “burn” action within the campfire’s 1 ft impact radius will trigger the “burn” action. Subsequently, this “burn” action may trigger other trees' “burn” action within this tree’s 2ft impact radius as defined for “burn” action.
• Figure 4: Examples of possible relational play by the creator. (a) one player action may lead to multiple other agent actions. (b) multiple different actions may lead to the same result agent action. (c) an action chain can be made of any length to formulate chained reactions. (d) an agent action can be the cause of its causal action to formulate a feedback loop. (e) an action can be the causal action of itself to formulate a spreading effect.
• Figure 5: Results from the workshop study survey.