Developing Re-Usable Interactive Storytelling Technologies

Despite the growing interest in Interactive Storytelling (IS), there have been only a small number of implemented demonstrators and few have attempted at developing a re-usable IS technology. In this paper we describe such an IS engine, which is the result of several years of experimentation in the field. The system is based on a game engine for its visualisation component, while the narrative generation component implements a variant of HTN Planning. After an introduction to the principles underlying the system, we introduce the associated production process and discuss authoring problems as well as tools we have developed to facilitate the use of the technology.