Messages

1606

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / New Handheld Skin.

« on: May 24, 2005, 09:53:42 am »

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to change the options menu in hal?  Perhaps i would be meddling with the great Medeksza's creation too much though?!  

I'm thinking about the idea DrBenway had about a winamp type skin.  On that subject a small framed skin alongside winamp is a nice looking setup.  

There's a lot of talk about integrating music/photos too, so a matching set of skins/windows would be cool running along side the main Hal console.

Heck why not go all the way and make 'HalExplorer' to replace windows explorer!!

1607

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / New Handheld Skin.

« on: May 23, 2005, 10:24:10 am »

let us pray that there are no difficult skin changes because my eyes are still recovering from tooclosetomonitoritis.

[Download Attachment:]

1608

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / New Handheld Skin.

« on: May 23, 2005, 04:02:03 am »

For the those days when you just can't get back to the Starship because you are being troubled by aliens, what better way to keep in touch than the rugged all-atmosphere PocketHal.  Particularly handy when you need to translate Clingon.

Download Attachment: STHandHeld.zip
173.77 KB



Insert Image:

[Download Attachment:]

1609

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / New StarTrek skin..

« on: May 23, 2005, 03:49:55 am »

As promised here's the StarTrek panel, which includes a handy transparent window so you can still use items on the desktop; you may be captain of a starship but you'll still need a trusty recycle bin.

Insert Image:

Download Attachment: 200552333929_StarTrek.zip

1610

Ultra Hal 7.0 / ABOUT ZABAWARE MOOD .HAP'S

« on: May 22, 2005, 04:28:12 pm »

PS.  I realised that if you have got that Hap settings list in a database or spread sheet you could use it to create HAP files.
I mean something along the lines of tapping in the settings and simply pressing a button that generates the script.
Thats part of the idea for the program I am to write.
The reason I want to send data to the Haptek engine is so I can see the effects of changing the settings AS i change them.

1611

Ultra Hal 7.0 / ABOUT ZABAWARE MOOD .HAP'S

« on: May 22, 2005, 04:23:48 pm »

i have a lot of time on my hands at the moment so i have the luxury of tapping away at Hal's brains for as long as I like!

Hmm, I too wondered about the use of a HTML setup, I don't know Java, but having had a look at the demo site, it seems fairly straightforward.  I think a winamp type interface would be great, it would be nice to change the way the menu comes up for example, and have a few controls that could directly manipulate Hal from one front panel.

Before I rediscovered Hal recently(I had seen something a long time ago about the project) I had been trying to write a similar program.  I hadn't got to the state of Hal, I'd only got as far as word and sentance manipulation with a reduced languge set called OGDENS BASIC ENGLISH.  It's the English language reduced to a few hundred words and I thought a good building block for an AI.  My idea was for the AI to work around words and their meanings, rather than relationships between sentences.  That way I thought it could eventually construct intelligent sentences.  So I do have some aquired knowledge which helps!  On that subject i notice that the inbuilt dictionary has an immense amount of usefullness that could be expolited - I see that the writer of the XTF brain was working with it's Meronyms and word links - this I think is well worth exploring as it means Hal can take a base subject and explore it's other aspects.  Like for example, rather than simply saying 'I understand you have a new car', Hal could ask you about it's interior, lights, colour, engine etc.  If you wanted!
But thats the way to go I think, because it makes Hal more enquiring which is what intellegence is all about.  We shall see!!


Yes - I see what you mean about the Default PSN.  With my method though you can set up an emotion.brn to link to whichever HAP files you like.  You would have to set up your own emotion.brn for each different character with their own unique set of emotion files.  That way Hal would stop using the deault.psn ( I removed mine ) and use the ones you have programmed.  As far as I can see each HTR comes with it's own animations embedded, and also in some cases with a DEFinition file with further enhancements. The trick is to get hal to use these because Hal 'as is' only uses a few default ones.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much guidance about so I may have to fork out for the Haptek tools at some point, when I've finished poking around that poor demo girl of theirs!

[][][]

1612

Ultra Hal 7.0 / ABOUT ZABAWARE MOOD .HAP'S

« on: May 22, 2005, 10:33:34 am »

I forgot to say...

By using my method the range of emotions/animations is limited only by whatever HAPs I put into the emotion.brn.  So hal's visuals
are no no longer just the few things listed in the default.psn.
I'll have Hal doing a dance routine by the end of the month!!

[8D][8D][8D][8D]

1613

Ultra Hal 7.0 / ABOUT ZABAWARE MOOD .HAP'S

« on: May 22, 2005, 10:21:57 am »

You star!

This is the area I have been looking at lately.  Regarding the default PSN - I think perhaps they were just put in on the fly as maybe there wasn't a 'surprised' animation handy.  I can't seem to find one.  Some areas seemed a bit mismatched to me, which is why i went about re-writing the emotion handling in my brain.  I didn't think it was working properly, as fullbod.htr was just rotating through the hapfiles in the default.psn. and thats about it.

I ditched default.psn and changed things....

What I have done (and why) is as follows.

1) changed the trigger file 'emotions.brn' from a TopicSearch to a QABrain.  This allows more freedom and better control of tripping the emotions.  Hal will scan the sentence as a whole for relevent trip words and the relevance value can be adjusted easily.

2)Instead of coding the relevant Hap files within the brain program by the 'If...Then...' method i have put their details into the emotion.brn.  Like so:

'Emotion.brn' is like this:

Search String.................Hals Response

SAD MOODY UNHAPPY etc.........Sad.hap
HAPPY GLAD JOY................Happy.hap
WAIT STOP HOLD ON.............anim_hands_on_hips.hap
WALK..........................walk.hap

and so on.

Basically I get the Hal VBasic script to search the Emotion.brn and if it finds something relevant then it plays the accompanying HAP file.  All I have done is cut out the middle man, as before it got the word 'HAPPY' or 'NEUTRAL' took it to the program and did what it wanted with it, but within the limits programmed at the time.  There's a lot more to what I've done with that but I don't want to go on and on!

The end result is that this takes up less room in the program and means i don't have to keep rewriting the Vbasic when i add an emotion.  I just think of some trigger words,and put them along with the file name in the emotion.brn file.

I'm trying to decipher all those values like you have in the table to create some more animations, I've got an incredible frown that covers half of fullbods face, making her look like the Mekon.

If anyone knows how to send commands to the Haptek engine OUTSIDE of Hal then I'd like to know as I want to write a program to create hap files.  I've already written some code that lets me move a character around a scene but there's a limit to what can be done from within Hal.  What we need is to send the Haptek Hypertext directly to the Haptek engine.  This can be via ActiveX, API and DLL's, but I can't get any of that to work yet!!

1614

General Discussion / Difference between identical looking .htr's

« on: May 20, 2005, 01:19:44 pm »

re; animating haptars,

is the best way to do new animations trial and error?

I'd like to add some new movements.

1615

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Alienesque Skin for Hal

« on: May 19, 2005, 05:31:34 am »

Star trek skin - I think I can do something like that...I'll have a go.

I have a skin I did which is a lot like a tv, I'll finish it off and post.  Gotta keep those Mum's and Dads happy!!!

1616

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Alienesque Skin for Hal

« on: May 18, 2005, 11:53:57 pm »

sorry!!!
I spend far too much time messing around with graphics if it's
any consolation!  I do a lot of different graphics, banners, 3D things, web pages etc.

It took ages so I'm glad it got a positive response, sorry about the tears though!

I'm using Ulead Photo Impact 6.  It's a great program with loads of flexibility and options.  I really like Ulead software, it works so well and can do most of the things I try and throw at it.

Basically it's a photohandling program (as you will have guessed) but it does a nice line in objects and is fantastic with textures and fills (frills as well).

The main shape was just a combination of two 3d shapes plus some shadow effects.  It isn't as hard to do as it may look, the time is spent on deciding what looks nice!

The main reason I set about doing a skin was in thanks for the help that you guys and gals have put in the forums, the fact I spent a while on it proves what a helpful bunch you all are!

[Download Attachment:]

1617

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Alienesque Skin for Hal

« on: May 18, 2005, 02:09:53 pm »

Heres a new skin for Hal.  It only has Menu/Close and Minimize buttons, but I may change this (I tend to use the windows vol/mic controls).

Hope you like it!!! There's more on the way if people do, graphics is my thing.

Insert Image:


Download Attachment: 2005518135924_Sk.HALAlien.zip

1618

Ultra Hal 7.0 / animating Haptek fullbody

« on: May 18, 2005, 01:39:21 pm »

i think that there are two - one with jiggyly bits which appears to be
the newest?!

I've found though that the non jiggly htr responds to more HAP file animations.  The jiggy one doesn't respond to all the HAP files available, unless I need to find some newer ones.

1619

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Idea

« on: May 16, 2005, 07:40:52 pm »

Hi,

this seems to be like the problem i have been having with a couple of routines using <SCRIPT> or similar calls.

I was calling halcommands more than once in a pass of the GetResponse function, it seems only one call of the hal commands got through.
I had to rearrange it all so that only one call would ever be processed in a single run of the function.

Hope that makes sense, it seems the same problem to mine as I am calling <RUNPROG> and <HAPFILE> in a few places.

By the way, hello everyone, you probably realise I am new, but I like to jump in at the deep end!!  Got to say this is an interesting program, the help that has been posted is great too!

regards and thanks to all,

1620

Speech Technology / Haptek char. can lip-sync .ogg- file

« on: May 15, 2005, 11:36:26 am »

I'll give that a go, would be cool to see hal rapping or something!

By the way, does anyone know if there is a way to get lypsync working with other speech voices. Only a few are available in hal, but i recently got some babel voices and would like to get them working with lipsync.

I recommend these voices, as they are by far the best i have heard.
I suggest people try the online demo at

http://www.brightspeech.com/

also there is a huge (around 200 MB!) demo download on the site if you want to try it out with hal.