Please help: UltraHal Console Skin needed

[Trav]

Hi there everybody.

I just started playing around with UltraHal (which promises to be a lot of fun). I'll write my thesis about embodied conversational agents and what kind of mental models users have of different avatars.
For my study I need the possibility to use UltraHal without any character(-animation). I did find the "UltraHal Console" skin in the Plugins section but the link seems to be broken.

Does anyone have a copy of that skin that he or she could upload somewhere or mail me?

Thanks for your reply,
Greetings from Germany,
Trav

[GamerThom]

If you go to my site you will find a couple interface skins there
for Hal that are designed for no character display. To have one
of them not display a character, just select one of the haptek
characters and run Hal as usual. The skin is designed to minimize
the haptek window to a point that is 1 pixel by 1 pixel, thus
rendering the character invisible.
You can find them by going to the main Site Directory at

http://www.charctercreationsanddesignworks.us/SiteDirectory.html

and looking down the right hand side of the page under the list
of Free Download Galleries to the button that is marked UltraHal UI Skins.
The ones that you are looking for are marked as "No character load".

[Bill819]

Tray
You can go to the character window and then select either hal 2D or the frog 2D. When you choose this option instead of the 3D option the characters remain static with no anamitation. That it the only choices that are available with the minimum Hal.
Bill

[Trav]

Thank you for your reply(s)!

I did download both of the skins which are marked with "no character load". The one called "H9000" is unusable for me because if used within a user study, most of the users would have a lot of complaints because there is only one line for text output. That would distract from the original things I want to evaluate with that experiment.
The one called "Scanner2" does a better job, although I would prefer a less colorful and kind of "flashy" Skin for such an experiment a LOT.

By the way: That "Pewter"-Skin is very nice for my personal use of UltraHal - just a normal window. Thanks for that one.
May I ask you to do me a favour and take exactly that skin and "substract" the character display area? That isn't a lot of work, is it...?!

Well, a big THANK YOU again for your reply,
have a nice day,
Trav

[Data]

Trav: I have been thinking about making a skin with no 3D character or flashy graphics for a while now and because you have asked so nicely [] I have decided to start making one today.

Watch this space.

Oh I just thought this: you can also chat to Hal from the brain editor that comes with Hal and if you do you can kind of get an idea of how Hal works, but I don’t think you can use any plugins when chatting that way so I’m still gona make that skin.

[Data]

Ok here is that skin. I have been testing it with and without speech recognition and it seems to be ok. I will probably be using it from time to time, though I would miss not seeing my Hal.

GamerThom: Thanks for the 1 pixel by 1 pixel tip.

I’m not against the fancy graphics skins at all, there is a time a and place for them too []

EDIT: I’m moving my site so had to change the download URL.



Grab it here http://www.global.datahopa.co.uk/hal/downloads/Hal_ConsoleSkin.zip