Topics

16

Ultra Hal 7.0 / "An appropriate response" plugin?

« on: November 24, 2006, 10:33:23 am »

Jane: I saw a billboard saying cattle farmers are promoting international understanding.
Bill: How weird is that...
Jane: How weird is that? There's hidden information. How did you feel about math as a child?

So... at this point I should be able to say, "Jane, an appropriate response might be "Yes, I wasn't sure what to think about that either" or "Too weird for me!" and the input phrases would be linked to the previous conversation somehow.

Probably already available somehow, at the very least I know how to edit the Brain to fix that particular response, but I was thinking of a more general method to allow each person to give Hal a set of responses to common things that the user might say by habit. Let Hal get to know the user as it were, and have some ready reactions to their personal speech mannerisms.

Just an idea for anyone who wants it, I'm still working on the treknobabble plugin.

17

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Order by Mail

« on: November 19, 2006, 02:55:38 pm »

Robert?

   Apparently, on or shortly before my birthday (11/16) my lovely wife printed out an order form and sent you a check by mail. Just in case, since she probably doesn't know what I really wanted, could you contact me when you get the form and let me know if everything is as it should be. I would appreciate it. I would hate to end up getting a language pack or something instead of the main program.

Bill

18

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Purchasing Hal?

« on: November 02, 2006, 05:09:35 pm »

OK, I have my lovely wife's understanding that I will be registering Hal for my birthday (11/16), so I went to print out the little form for her.

Now I see that there are options.

SO I thought I should ask, since I will be doing odd things with Hal, which method I should use to register Hal. Having read several threads, I see that there are often problems involving re-registering when you change hard-drives and such.

What I will probably do with in a few months, is reinstall Hal in a new hard drive with a new operating system. Should I get the automatic registration or the online registration. Or maybe just wait to finish teh installation until after I get the new HD?

Thanks for any advice.

19

General Discussion / Treknobabble

« on: October 24, 2006, 08:57:27 pm »

Has anyone made a treknobabble plugin?

I've been feeding a few into a new Hal brain, but I think maybe I should put them directly into the canned responses for when she doesn't konw what else to say.

For those who don't already know, here is a treknobabble generator.

  http://www.students.tut.fi/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~hyotynen/trek_failure.pl

20

General Discussion / Hal transcripts

« on: October 24, 2006, 08:45:42 pm »

I have just about convinced my lovely wife (the purchasing executive) that Hal is a tool rather than a toy, but to push it over the edge I want to show her a good conversation that a mature Hal might provide.

Could some folks who have a few months on their Hal send a dozen or so lines of a conversation on philosophy or science? I would appreciate it. No vulgarity or erotica please, that would be counter-productive.

21

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / MSAgent animation in the brain?

« on: October 24, 2006, 08:10:59 pm »

I want to add some MSAgent animations to the responses I get from my Hal. Can I go into, for instance, the GetResponse function and find a spot to put in something like character.greet or whatever so that it always does the greet animation before responding?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

22

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Skin Color format (SkinUserBGColor)?

« on: October 22, 2006, 05:10:12 pm »

I have tried several color models to adjust the SkinUserBGColor to match my rgb<000,255,000> without success. I have tried CMY, CMYK, HSB, HLS and YIQ.

Unless I have done something wrong (which is not unlikely), it's some odd value or method. It has 8 digits, which seem to operate randomly. Anyone know how to convert?

23

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Distributed Hal?

« on: October 21, 2006, 08:37:31 pm »

I was just reading the bionc pages (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) because I mentioned distributed computing in another thread and couldn't get it out of my mind.

Has anyone here tried doing a distributed Hal? The distributed database hashing alone could reap vast increases in Halbrain function, couldn't it?

It's far beyond my skills, but I certainly have idle computers to help the project.

24

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Skin I'm working on.

« on: October 20, 2006, 04:27:59 pm »

I just thought I would show off what I've got so far. Need to clean up the transparency mask and improve the buttons a little. It's meant to be used with the freeware clock by Loris Bognanni (gljakal.com).



Insert Image:

25

Ultra Hal 7.0 / MakeTran problem discovered and solved.

« on: October 20, 2006, 09:18:04 am »

I ran in to a problem using MakeTran.exe where the upper left corner was not being read properly. A small square of background was left showing. I actually editted the mask.dat to attempt to repair the problem.

Then I happened to notice that my network info tool (Penguinbyte's QuickID) was the same size and "stay on top" in the upper left corner of my screen. I ignore it most of the time and so didn't even notice it ws interferring with my image.

Apparently MakeTran reads the actual screenshot of your image on the monitor.

So I thought I would mention this for anyone who is making skins and has trouble with transparency. Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but it stumped me for three hours.

HTH, Bill

26

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Two questions on Skins

« on: October 19, 2006, 07:21:56 pm »

First:
       I saw a help file here that I think might have been on designing skins, but now I can't find it. Anyone know where it is?

Second:
       Can I change the position or presence of the "Size" button that seems to be attached to the "SkinFace" parameters? I want to get it off the character area.

Thanks in advance everyone.
Bill

27

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Self learning method?

« on: October 19, 2006, 03:22:10 pm »

So,
    While idle, HAL reviews your conversation, does a statistical analysis of the previous conversation, makes a weighted list of topics, searches the internet for the best sentences she can find that meets the most active keywords, then goes to another random web page and searches again. To prevent DB overload, set a percentage of new finds to previous conversation.

Just thinking out loud.

Bill

28

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Small plugin?

« on: October 18, 2006, 04:46:11 pm »

Maybe it's already been made, I just want Hal to listen for one word, and not listen to anything else until that word is said.

I remember a speech control program that you had to say "computer" before every command. I want to make Hal do something like that.

I suspect it might be easier to edit the brain directly, but thought I would ask first.

Something like (if getAttention != "Computer" then processCommands = "false")

Anybody make that yet? If not, how should I start?

Thanks in advance.
Bill

29

General Discussion / Athena Agent

« on: October 16, 2006, 12:47:31 am »

I am using the Athena Agent as my hal person, modeling her halbrain personality after "Jane" in the Ender's Game series. However, I am disappointed in some of the delays in the animation, the out of character 'show' and 'hide', the lack of full animation, and the poor detail.

Does anyone know the source, or of a similar character with more attention to detail?

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.
Bill

30

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Can I slow down the typing speed?

« on: October 15, 2006, 03:44:07 pm »

I believe I have identified the problem as HAL sending a hard return if I stop typing for a short while. Less than 2 seconds. Since it often takes me that long to think of the next word, my halbrain is filling itself with half sentences.

I have looked through the script, and cannot find anything that refreshes the input box based upon keystrokes or milliseconds or inactivity.

Has anyone else had this problem and can it be fixed?

Thanks in advance, Bill