Hierarchical Generation of Dynamic and Nondeterministic Quests

Quests are a fundamental storytelling mechanism used by computer role-playing games to engage players in the game’s narrative. Although role-playing games have evolved in many different ways in the last years, their basic narrative structure is still based on static plots manually created by game designers. In this paper, we present a method for the generation of dynamic quests based on hierarchical task decomposition and planning under nondeterminism. The proposed approach combines planning, execution, and monitoring to efficiently handle nondeterministic events and support quests with multiple endings that affect the game’s narrative and create interactive and dynamic story plots. These plots are directly or indirectly affected by player’s actions and decisions. Furthermore, this paper presents the concept of hierarchical quests. Author