A Reusable Scripting Engine for Automating Cinematics and Cut-Scenes in Video Games

Abstract

Storytelling can play a critical role in the success of modern video games. Unfortunately, it can often be quite difficult for storytellers to directly craft content for games, typically requiring them to work with programmers to implement story elements. This needlessly complicates the development process, straining scarce resources while potentially hampering creativity and story quality at the same time. As a result, supports and tools are necessary to enable storytellers to generate story content for games directly, with minimal programming or programmer assistance required, if any. This paper introduces a Reusable Scripting Engine to automate the generation of cinematics and cut-scenes in video games. This approach allows storytellers to provide their stories in a well-defined, structured format, which is then interpreted by our engine, along with supplemental graphic and audio content, to produce an animated presentation of the story in an automated fashion. This paper presents the design of our Reusable Scripting Engine, and discusses a prototype implementation of this design, as well as initial experiences with using this prototype system to date.