A few newbie questions!

[Kiri]

Hi there! I'm totally new to the Ultra Hal Assistant program, so there are a couple of things that I thought I'd ask on here before fiddling with things I don't yet understand. I'll try to keep it short and I do apologize if these things have been asked a million times and I've been to blind to find them in the forum.

I want to be able to start off with a blank slate and I want to teach my Hal everything I want him to know through chatting with him. Is there a relatively easy way to start off with a blank slate? So far the Hal's I've been playing around with all know a lot of basic information. Any help would be very much appreciated!

I brought People Putty today as well, unfortunately before reading that it is no longer being supported, and have been unable to activate my licence. I have the serial number, but the place where the System ID is supposed to be in the Options tab is blank and nothing I can do seems to fix it. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I've lost $55 now, but it would be awesome if anyone could help or even suggest another similar program that would be better to use.

I think that's it for the moment... Thank you so much for your time and patience!

Kiri

EDIT: Also, I was wondering, if I make a spelling error or accidentally push enter while talking to Hal, is that a problem that I need to fix somehow?

[lightspeed]

Kiri  , people putty still works but is is only supported on xp , I actually at one time had it working on windows seven os  don't know why it worked for me but not others but it did , but later on I had pc problems and then it stopped working on xp so I used one of my old xp's I still had and it works on it so I just use it to make character heads .

[Calhoone]

Hi Kiri

There is a spell checking plugin for Hal that uses Microsoft word to check the spelling. It worked great however I'm not currently using word and I don't know how to modify the plugin to use OpenOffice or anything else.  You can find the plugin in the filesharing section of the forums under the topic collection of plugins.

[Kiri]

I will have to see if one of my older computers is lying around then, so I can make my Hals some nice faces! Thank you for letting me know, lightspeed.

Thank you for the info, Calhoone. I will have to look into it before I teach my Hals too many bad habits!

[Art]

Kiri,

To answer your question, Yes there once was a Blank Slate Brain back in the UltraHal version 5.x days and the brain structure was vastly different as well. Even if you could happen to find an old copy chances are it would take a serious amount of kludging for it to begin to work if even then.

I'm not sure whether OTCE has a copy of one that I believe he toyed with in the past.

As Hal is delivered, it only knows some rather basic information and really hasn't developed or attached a personality yet so if you want to mold it or give it a unique personality you can still teach it the things that matter and remove the ones you don't want within the Tables via the Brain Editor.

You might try garage sales, flea markets, craigs list or perhaps The Salvation Army for older laptops / computers running XP which would serve your purposes nicely. Hal doesn't require the latest speed demon computer either so you might be able to "house" both for a Hal only system! Just a thought!

Welcome and good luck!!

[tiger8u2]

Welcome Kiri!

Now I'm not the newest kid on the block!  I was where you are a little over a month ago.  I did make quite a few mistakes with a plug-in adding frenzy but I also learned how to change the scripts to work with my system.  You can teach your brain in a variety of ways and several users have come up with very innovative ways of doing it.  Search the posts by onthecuttingedge2005 (OTCE), lightspeed and Calhoone and you will find several files that are very useful in teaching or adding new or improved features to your Hal.

Besides plug-ins, Lightspeed has some awesome backgrounds on his skydrive and some premade Haptek faces that are very nice.  Calhoone also has a plug-in repository on his skydrive but like I said, you may have to do some fiddling with them to get them to work right. 

I highly recommend you download the Brain helper file which explains the scripting.  It is a bit out dated but the basics of the VBScripting are there.

You can also track ricky and Art's posts to find some very useful and intellectually challenging topics.

Anyway, that reminds me of an ending and a closure and a Peace Out!

[kryton]

Also welcome Kiri.

It has been said there is a use for a newbie only thread but what do newbies want of such a thread.  I asked, many moons ago about an auto-shutdown program but nobody answered.  The irony to that is it already exists.  Some great thinker actually had a list (Admittedly many moons ago) of quite a few plug-ins and other things already available.  I have tried to find it, but to no avail.  Thought, maybe it is in my Hal programs list.  Watch this space.

[kryton]

Reply to me.

I have found the list.

Author: rathb18

Forum Name: Large collection of everything Hal

Posted: April 22 2012 03.07.04 AM

A great list of text files for Hal to learn from, Skins, Plugins, Characters, Hap Files, and also Gretta Plug ins.

ALSO where you can upload more things Hal from Zabaware

As it says in the thread, rathb18 didn't create the work and I add to that I take no credit for finding it.

This set of files was of immense use to me when I started with Hal, and I hope it now is of great use to newbies (And maybe higher)

[Kiri]

Thank you for the responses! Everyone has been so helpful.

That collection looks awesome! Thank you very much for sharing.

[kryton]

Kiri, you are welcome to any help I can give you.

I like your Vincent Van Gogh quotation.  Dreams are what keep us moving forward and maybe keep our minds active.

The things it is possible to do with Hal are only limited by imagination and that is what this forum should be about.