On Stage

After leaving the backstage the story is ready to start. One child starts the story and invites the others to play. Every child interested in the story can join it while there are characters available to choose. Each one chooses one character and the story starts. If there are some characters that weren't chosen then the system controls their behaviour.

As the story starts each child will see a 3D representation of the story scenes, characters and items. (see Fig. 1)

Fig. 1 - On stage. Controlling one character

The story evolves through the interactions and actions that the characters perform. The environment establishes three different types of actions for each character: communication actions (talk), locomotion actions (walk), and item related actions (get item; drop item; activate item; and use item).

Actions are highly dependent of the items (e.g. more complex actions are achieved by the use of items, take for example the action "hit character" it can be achieved by using a stick on the character we intend to harm). In order to achieve a more active behaviour, the characters have to find items that would help them to achieve their goals. Each character has a bag where he can store the items that he gathers from the world.

The Hot-seating

During the performance a child controlling a character may be asked to justify her/his character actions. When this happens the character is stopped and the child is presented with the Hot-seating tool. This tool allows the child to inspect the character mind. The Hot-seating may raise questions to the child that he should answer in order to justify the current behaviour.

In the Hot-seating the child can also change the emotional state of his character. The emotional state will influence the system controlled characters behaviour.

Fig. 2 - The Hot-seating. Inspecting the character mind.

The child can at any time, by her/his own will, invoke the Hot-seating tool in order to change the emotional state of the character s/he controls or to add any comments that s/he finds pertinent. All the comments written in the Hot-seating tool are viewed as the characters thoughts.

The Hot-seating can be activated on a character that the child doesn't control. If so the tool displays information about the character (role, current emotional state and the last thoughts) but doesn't allow any change in that information.