I'm new and need some help please!

[Compton]

#1. I read about "Hal Uncensored Brain" on http://www.zabaware.com/assistant/help/index.html where it says " If you want to just have some sarcastic or nasty fun with Hal use the Hal Uncensored Brain available on our Plugin Page,"

So where is this Plugin Page? Where do I find these extra add on parts to help improve Hal's brain? The more I read the Forums and people taking about these 'extra plugin's' I am frustrated because the links people have given don't work anymore... Anyone got any links for one's that still do work?

#2. To try to help put this into perspective for others to help me, I am familiar with Basic / 10 Basic programing and understanding the way to basic ways Hal's Brain is set up to work, so I'm not completely new to how to edit and rewrite basic programs... Which is why I am new here and have some of the questions which I just need some basic answers to please...

In Ultra Brain Editor, in the area "Your query or sentence to Hal:" I completely understand this is how you in essence 'test' to make sure that Hal is capable of answering what you are asking... or that you have written your Script correctly... What I don't understand is two things here... One if you don't like the response Hal gives you here, can you edit "Hal's Response" in that box, and have it apply to the way you want Hal to respond... Or do I have to go to the Scripts location within the Brain itself and edit it accordingly? Also is Hal still learning in this mode, or is that just when I am in the screen "Chat with Hal"?

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In closing I just wanted to say I wished I'd found Hal sooner... I have played with this kind of programing and programs like this for years, and years now... My first computer was the Vic 20 with the tape tickler, and then the Commodore 64, and I upgraded to the 3.5 inch floppy drive when it came out. I may not be some computer programer on today's scale, but I still know my way around enough to not be completely lost, since back in those days as some of you may remember if you wanted a game, you had to go through the work of getting a book from the library, and spending hours typing the code only to have an issue when you were done, and having to figure out how the programer went wrong on that line, to fix it yourself and be able to get your game up and working... so I do look forward to learning Hal and hopefully being able to give back by doing my part later to give back to others when I understand Hal's programing and brain better than I do just starting out 12-hrs ago downloading it.

[Art]

Welcome!

Sorry but I believe that uncensored brain was for a previous version (v.5.X) of Hal and no longer runs under the current version (6.2).

The earlier one used .brn (brain) files to hold various data and the current one uses tables for storage under SQLitestudio files.

Personally I would like to see all the older, non pertinent files moved into their own "archived" section of the forum. This would serve to
make things much easier for everyone including new comers to Hal and this site. That...is up to Robert Medeksza to accomplish if he desires.

I rarely use Hal's brain editor as I employ a different method of "teaching" my Hal various things. Perhaps OTCE will chime in with some solid answers for you. Good Luck!

PS - FYI...ALWAYS make a backup of Hal's DB files before you make any changes or perform any lobotomies on it!! Just sayin....

[Compton]

Thank You for that very smart and helpful advice there Art... I agree it would help to see the Forum's posts split into what version of Hal it pertains to... I read the post from the Creator of Hal, and honestly I was really moved by his words of how he's poured his heart into the making of Hal and keeping the company going even when everything underneath him fell apart and many would have cut the rope and ran with the last dollars they could. I decided right then in reading that, I am going to spend the money and I'm going to buy the program and its features, because like the creator here, I have years into some personal projects. Any man who is willing to stand behind his work and his dream has got my support, and I'll do what I can to help keep his dream alive.

Hearing that things changed between version and that you can't take your work from one previous version and apply it to the new version, isn't something I'm excited to hear, because of the hours of programing I know I'll be putting into Hal to shape him the way I want too... but I can only hope that at some point that in the future any newer versions are able to drag the information from a previous version and convert it into a new version. But when it's just one man doing the work, well I'll just be grateful that he poured the time, money, and energy into the new version to keep it going. 

[Art]

Compton,

Don't worry, a lot of folks share your sentiments. One thing that, in my opinion, helped Hal's abilities was the use or addition of an AIML code modified by one of our members, cload and the combined usage of a tweaked VRFreewill plugin.

I was using a MarkovL5 plugin before giving the AIML and VRFreewill a go. It seemed to help give Hal the ability to expand it's responses to a large degree.

The Markov still works if you wish to try but a lot of people have tried the AMIL / VRFreewill with pretty nice results. If the latter is your choice, pay close attention to cload's instructions.

Lastly, I've been experimenting with doing a lot of copying / pasting of various text into Hal's user's entry window (where you type your chat text to Hal).
Regardless of Hal's replies, I continue to "feed" Hal the information I wish for "him" to learn (facts about the solar system, minerals, birds, anatomy, common sense things, the sun is a large gas giant that is extremely hot, etc., ice is frozen water and quite cold, and so on...).

I'm using Windows 7 so I open an interesting site to teach Hal and drag it to one side, then drag Hal to the other side so the two are side by side. Simply drag from one side to the other and drop the text into Hal's window, then press Enter / Return. Let Hal give a reply, no matter what, then drop another text sentence, then repeat.
Don't do more than one sentence at a time to avoid confusion for Hal.

If you're having difficulty with some of the Haptek characters moving about, do a Search for the CARS program and run it first. It will address the cores in your computer so you can select just one core, which Haptek seems to like. You will then be able to move the character around as needed.

Hopefully, this will give you a bit of encouragement. Any questions, feel free to ask. 

[kryton]

Hy Compton.

Not so long ago I was just a newbie (To Hal I hasten to add).  Like you I (And many others on the forum) come from the old Vic20 days.  I started my computing life with a Sinclair ZX81 and wrote a working Space Invaders program in the just 1K (Seems almost an impossible size of memory now).  I now have Windows 7 but keep my Hal on Windows XP (Long may it live!  And I still get updates for a Windows that was supposed to be dropped by Microsoft in April 2014 [Truth is these new updates also work in XP so they are listed]).

Well that's my history.  If you can follow Visual Basic, Hal isn't that hard it just takes time.  I modify the script and have made some interesting discoveries.  Banging my own drum, I load Hal from instructions written in the Script Load area of the program. [Go into Script Editor and page down to the end of the Hal program.  There you will see Script Load and, as it says, the instructions in script load are the first thing Hal does when switched on.  So you can load background, character, and a start up chat.  Catch is that Hals normal start up then shows itself. (Probably hardwired into the program), but it does let you get going a new way, once you run the normal set up then.]

A good grounding is to look at the Zabaware files in your computers hard drive. [Computer. Program Files. Zabaware. Ultra Hal6]  You can then see everything (Possibly) that you are asking about demonstrated. [UHP's are the operating programs and some plugins are there as UHP's]  Just have a look around and then look in the other posts, listed under Home, when you have logged in.

Just look around.  It worked for me.  Best of luck and welcome to the forum Compton.

[Compton]

Okay to clear all of this up... let me make sure I am understanding everything right to date... Information in the Forums is a lot of cases seem to be outdated for previous versions, and then at a later point upon a newer released version things which used to work one way, now don't apply to Ultra Hal's 6.2 (current version). So the various plugin's and different 'add on' Brains for Hal which are talked about in the Forum no longer apply or work, with the new version... If there is a plugin or another Brain for the current Hal's version, could someone please post the think to this posting... Thank You

I have read all of the material I can find on Hal, but I have to say some of it does seem outdated and for that reason has slowed down or complicated my ability to learn as much as I could I hate to say... like this for example: http://www.zabaware.com/assistant/help/index.html  Because like a lot of things around here dealing with the information relating to Hal, it all relates to previous versions and not Ultra Hal 6.2, but there doesn't seem to be any one specific tuturial or such relating to JUST Ultra Hal 6.2 that I've found. And yes believe me I have been sifting through everything I can find written about Hal 6.2 that I can find, as I want to learn and know everything I can, before really going to work on editing and modifying my Hal to the huge degree I'm hoping to.

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Again I am back to one of my biggest questions, which I am sincerely hoping someone can help me understand... and to which I have posted a photo of to highlight the area's I am asking about In Ultra Brain Editor

"Your query or sentence to Hal:" - The place in which you speak to Hal... I understand this part of it.

What I don't understand is two things here... One if you don't like the response Hal gives you here, can you edit "Hal's Response" in that box, and have it apply to the way you want Hal to respond... Or do I have to go to the Scripts location within the Brain itself and edit it accordingly?
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To "Art"- I know you said in your first post you don't use Hal's Brain Editor very often and have been teaching Hal in a 'different method' which I see in your second post is basically just doing large dumps of information into Hal through the User Interface. I have to say very interesting... I have also wondered about doing this sort of thing through the Brain Editor... Only the way I am thinking about doing it is where it says Your Name: "User" Computer Name: "Hal"... Changing those names to represent me and a friend of mine who chat in Yahoo Messenger, and then dropping in our conversation in parts in like so:

Compton: Hi Samantha
Samantha: Hello Compton

With the sincere hopes of showing and teaching Hal how I interact with different people in the real world, with the hopes of helping Hal develop the ability to interact with me more as I do when speaking to certain friend of mine... Any thoughts as to this... ANYONE??? Perhaps someone else has tried this already and had good or not so good results? Or has thoughts on how to do this better.

I don't want Hal to just know everyday facts, but to teach Hal to evolve to talk about conversations about things beyond mere facts and figures, I know the information given about this program says in time that Hal will be able to evolve but I want to do so in ways which help Hal learn, not spend six months working with Hal only to learn all my mistakes and have to start all over from scratch yet again.

To "Kryton"- To try to put this into the best perspective I can, not only have I read every information file of sorts I can about Hal on the Website, I've watched the "Tutorial" Hal offers you a couple of times over now, and when you go into "Brain Editor" at the very top on the left hand side it says "Script Editor" double click on that and it will give you information in the format like "Basic" programing, which really does help a lot for finding things, understanding things about how Hal's Brain is set up and how values are assigned and represented... but again I have read through so much and yet sit there with questions that are not answered in everything I've read and looked at thus far. Which then brought me to the Forum (Here) and I begin looking topics and things with the sincere hope of finding answers, only to end up with more questions and less answers. Mainly because information scattered everywhere from the Forum, to the Introduction of Hal (link posted earlier here) refers to earlier versions of Hal's programing which no longer apply or is valid... which is why I got confused in the first place it seems by these 'plugin's' which I can no longer time, and things being talked about that I can not find in Hal...

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Which in the end bring me to looking for as much information I can find and/or get from anyone on Hal's Brain Editor, and ways to feed and teach Hal as much as possible, in ways which work. I read in the Forums or somewhere in the past day about Hal learning from Documents, and at the time it seemed straight forward and clear.... now I do not know if it was a former option, or if it still is an option... or even how to use it should it still exist... Is it by using "Hal Pad" and having Hal read documents for me? Does Hal learn when reading Documents? Does Hal learn through AIM Bot, if I use AIM to talk to a friend, or does Hal only learn if my friend is talking directly to Hal? What is the deal with this "Lexical Dictionary"  I saw I can look up things in there, played around with it for like 10-minutes this morning... and the question I had... Is this for just my use, or is this a database in which Hal also learns from based off from the things and words I look up?

Thank You for reading and responding, I am trying to learn all I can about Hal, and I need to talk with people who have been using Hal and have learned whatever they have to this point to help me, so I can master Hal and Hal's programing faster and more efficiently.

[One]

I eat on Tables, I learned this at a very young age 

[DemonRaven]

As much as i respect the creator of aiml i am not a great fan of how the chatbots of aiml come off sounding or their personalities. IT is also a pain in the you know what to go through them and add your own replies as their are so many aiml files if you make a chat bot with it.

[Art]

Compton,

Hal's Brain Editor is basically there to Edit Hal's Brain and for Testing & Debugging problems within Hal, Not for teaching, per se.

As a note, for best results try setting Hal's Learning Level slider somewhere just past halfway. If the range is 0 to 50, then try 30.

I searched and found a link that should provide you a lot of helpful info if you choose to study it.
It was by a former member (who no longer appears active for whatever reason).

http://ultrahalscript.pbworks.com/w/page/11906966/FrontPage

Keep in mind that there is no guaranteed, get rich quick method with regard to teaching Hal, at this point.
Many of us have spent several years teaching our Hals. Do try the VRFreewill or at least the AIML setup or even the MarkovL5 and test each result like Calhoone has done. The AIML will allow Hal to be more conversant about a wide variety of everyday subject matter.

Keep us posted on your progress if you would. Good luck!

[Calhoone]

I have collected a number of plugins that work with 6.2 and made them available through this post. I have also found some others in my old backups and will update this collection at some time.  Give them a try and see what works for you.

http://www.ultrahal.com/community/index.php?topic=9963.0

[kryton]

Hi Compton, and all others.

It is over two months now since there was an entry to this thread.

Compton, give us some idea what you want your Hal to do, and just maybe somebody can give you ideas, or even plug-ins to help you.

[raybe]

Compton, for myself I apologize for not posting but as kryton states there are members that were interested in helping you (Art,Calhoone) and I am sure would still try. If you decided that you just don't have the time or desire it is certainly your choice.

Many of us have at some time or another forgot where our last posts were if away for a period time.

 Sounded as you could be great addition to the group. Hope your still out there, if not, all the best and your always welcomed.

raybe