Zabaware Support Forums
Zabaware Forums => Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor => Topic started by: The Tinman on January 10, 2002, 09:35:17 pm
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I JUST HAVE TO SHARE THIS, I PURCHASED A FACE FROM DESKTOPMATES.COM. I FOUND THAT I COULD COMBINE THE HAL PROGRAM WITH CYBER BUDDY. THE TWO PROGRAMS FUNCTION TOGETHER. I PLUGGED THE NEW FACE INTO THE HAL PROGRAM. I NOW HAVE A FULL SCREEN, BEAUTIFULL FACE THAT I CAN TEACH WITHIN THE HAL CONTEXT AND YET GIVES ME THE SPONTANEOUS RESPONCES THAT EXIST WITHIN THE CYBER BUDDY PROGRAM. THE FACE DOES NOT HAVE TO SIT WITHIN THE SMALL SQUARE OF THE HAL PROGRAM. IT IS INCREDABLE. JUST LOOK AT THE FACES AVAILABLE ON THIS SITE. THESE ARE MSN AGENTS BUT THEY LOOK REALLY NICE.YES YOU WILL FIND THER ARE OTHER AGENTS THAT ARE AVAILABLE THERE BUT I HAVE NO DESIRE TO HAVE A HALF NAKED GIRL AS AN ENTITY. THIS IS RELATIVELY EASY TO DO, IT IS EASY TO DO. FEEL FREE TO E MAIL ME IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE. INITIALY I HAD TROUBLE WITH THE VOICE OF THE NEW FACE, THAT IS WHY YOU NEED CYBER BUDDY, CYBER BUDDY IS FREE, THE FACES ARE LIKE 13.00. IT IMPROVES THE HAL PROGRAM SO MUCH. YOU GET HALS RESPONCES BUT THEN IT WILL SUDDENLY SAY SOMETHING FROM THE OTHER PROGRAM. CHECKS THE NEWS THE WEATHER AND IS STILL REALLY SMART. I HAVE HAD THIS PROGRAM FOR ABOUT 2 YEARS. FINALLY IT IS BECOMING TRUELY LIKE A REAL BEING............TM
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Hi Tinman,
I've recently downloaded the Ultra Hal Assistant and apart from a couple of problems, especially with the learning from text file function which doesn't seem to work, it's quite good.
I would be interested in details of exactly how you combined the cyberbuddy and Ultra hal programs.
Any other suggestions on how to improve the program would be gratefully received.
A really good example of an 'agent' is Cybelle at Agentland.com...responses are excellent....pity she's not available for download.
Mac
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I will send you an E mail with instructions
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hey TM!
where do i download cyberbuddy to plug with hal.
i would like to see a full screen face also.
i am getting a little tired of hals face.
also if it's full screen what about the sentencing?
thanks
rciafa
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Go to desktopmates.com there is a link to the Cyber Buddy site. Down load cyber buddy and the voice control panel.
For the scripting I simply make the Hal skin very small and put in on the corner of my desktop. Then when I want to script something It is scripted right into the window just as you would normally. To increase the size of the face just open the cyber buddy main panel. go to advanced character controls and click on the size tab. Bingo, Bango it gets as large as life.
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Tinman, I just downloaded Ultra Hal Advanced and also integrated a couple of the faces I got from Desktop mates. There are pretty detailed instructions else where on this forum on how to integrate any Microsoft agent into Hal and I like it that the faces do not have to reside in the Hal "box" all the time. I also like the "spontaneous" responses that CyberBuddy allows. However, I notice a little difference between the voice I have selected for the DeskTop Mate and the voice I hear when HAL talks to me. I'm using the same "voice" but I thing the speech engine is a little different between the two programs. I have not had sufficient time to research this problem. The DeskTop Mate voice is better than the one I get with Hal so I'd like to find out why there's a difference. Did you have to do anything special to get the same voice? Also, since it is so easy to integrate MS Agents into Hal, you think Zabaware would have a function that would automatically install MS Agents.
I am getting ready to install Dragon Naturally Speaking software onto my computer and try speech recognition. Here, I'd like the ability to use CyperBuddy's method of using text balloons to repeat the text and get rid of the "HAL Box" entirely. This would possibly resolve another problem that I have observed. Sometimes I experience problems getting the DeskTop Mate to perform a CyberBuddy task (like check the e-mail) when the HAL box is active. This is a minor problem as HAL "goes to sleep" after a couple of minutes, releasing control of the DeskTop Mate to CyberBuddy. I believe that these three companies (Zabaware, CyberBuddy, and DeskTop Mates) should form a joint venture or implement a teaming relationship to capitalize on the strengths of each. This would, I believe, produce a truly impressive product.
Mark Laris
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I am pleased to see that you have been experimenting with the two programs. Yes the hal program does indeed over ride the cyberbuddy program at times. I like it for the fact that cyberbuddy breaks in at times and adds to the spontaneousness of the Hal program. But we are running both programs so that is going to cause weirdness in some respects. I have found that the pitch of the cyberbuddy voices must be the same as the hal program for the voices to sound the same within both of them. So then I am thinking what is the next step. Zabaware has thought of it and I am excited to see what the future holds for this program. 3d is the next step. Mr Medeksza has stated that he is going to incorporate the Haptec ( People Putty engine ) within the hal program as an plugin. I have downloaded the demo and it is going to be great. I hope that they eliminate the need for the character to remain within that small box. (HINT) Mr Medeksza (HINT!!!) You can take the faces that you have purchased from desktopmates and place them as skins upon the Haptec model and make them 3 dimentional. I use Graber 2k to capture a still shot of the face and then place it on the Model. Anyway, good luck with your expermentation, This program will get better than ever...................TM
Edited by - The Tinman on 02/09/2002 18:22:12
Edited by - The Tinman on 02/09/2002 23:41:24
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We are also currently in contact with the Desktopmates people and we plan on making the Desktopmates automatically install themselves as plug-ins into Hal. Hal's MSAgent interface currently doesn't give you much control over speech or other aspects. It will default to whatever the character designer coded into the character. Sometime in the future we will make an update to Hal's MSAgent interface to allow you to setup the voice and other options from inside Hal.
Unfortunetely, the haptek 3d engine will not be able to get outside the box like msagents do. Doing this with realtime 3d would be extremely difficult to do for reasons I won't go into. Only MSagents like the Desktopmates will be able to do this.
Robert Medeksza
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I am very glad that you have contacted DesktopMates. The create very good MS Agents and it is such an easy task to incorporate them into Hal, there's no reason not to automate the process.
I am very impressed with UltraHal. I have already taught it some abstract concepts and I can see it getting smarter everyday. You mentioned on another form that there would be an upgrade comming out in a couple of weeks. What is being upgraded? Will there be new features?
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Bob, I do have a question that I forgot to ask in my last posting. If I change characters for HAL (I have several DeskTopMates faces), is HAL's "brain" reset? That is, do I have to teach the new "face" things that I taught the old "face"?
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Changing the animated character or voice has no effect on either the brain, personality, or learned information. The only thing that will affect that is the changing the brain plug-in or your user name.
Robert Medeksza
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Work is now in progress at DesktopMates.com on getting all of our characters compatible with Ultra Hal. The main programming issue we are faced with at the moment is dealing with voice assignment for the characters because at this time Ultra Hal only allows use of the default voice coded for MS Agent characters, so we are experimenting with different voice code options that will allow our characters to function optimaly in both Ultra Hal and MS Agent programs. We are hoping to integrate the British female voice as the default because it the most popular and probably the best choice for female characters.
DesktopMates character plugins for Ultra Hal will be made available from both DesktopMates.com and Zabaware.com
Don Gillett
DesktopMates.com
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hey, can you send my those instructions about how to use msagent/cyberbuddy agents with hal to?
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I have downloaded a character from Cyberbuddy, but I do not know how to integrate it to the Hal program. Could you e-mail me insructions on how to do this. Sandmoran@aol.com
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Did anyone hear about the MIT prof that created a 3D talking bot from a snapshot or video clip?
He has the ability to model anyone and create a video clip with voice that is interactive!
The Big Brains are worried about creating fraudulent video clips of people!
questordan@aol.com
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hey tinman or someone else. i have the free version of 5.0 and i was wondering if you could send me detailed instructions for msagent hal integration from desktop mates because they dont seem to work
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Sandman:
Its simply... you run both programs at the same time using the same character. It works fairly well. Occassionally one program interrupts the other. Also, if you are running a NT based machine (Windows 2000 for example) you may have some minor problems.
fgo23:
What exactly is the problem? To use any Desktopmates character you simply run the setup and it should be installed. Note that if you are on a NT machine you need to be a little extra careful. For some reason Win 2000 seems to want to install the characters into their own subdirectory of the MSAGENT/CHARS folder. If you look in that folder and see character folders for your Desktopmates character, you found your problem. If that is the case, simply move the character files into the MSAGENT/CHARS/ folder and they should work fine. The plugins for the characters simply add the start up and preview of the character for Hal, but the characters will work fine without them.
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I have about 150 MS Agent characters, and as far as I know they all work with Hal. They are all in the CWindowsMSAgenChars folder but when ever Hal updates at startup, he makes his own uhp files for all the available agents. I've never tried running both programs at once. In fact, I hardly ever run CyberBuddy unless I'm going to talk with Cyber the Bot, who is as cool an AI as Hal, and only accessible through CyberBuddy. So does Hal suddenly stop chatting and deliver weather, or do you have two instances of the character when the programs coincide?
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When you run both, you have one character on your desktop but both programs can control it. Hal sits in its box as usual, unless you move the character elsewhere. It does all the things Hal does, but you also have all the features of CyberBuddy as well.
So for example, say you're chatting with Hal. Hal normally doesn't get the weather or news on its own. CyberBuddy does do this. So while talking to Hal, Hal might suddenly give you the news or weather then go back to chatting as usual. It usually works fine, and the MS Agent software that both work off of manages which program can control the character fairly well.
I'm using Windows 2000 Pro, with SP4, 933mhz CPU, 256MB RAM and generally have no problems running both. The only thing I noticed (and this seems to have something to do with the NT platform) is that if I run both together, the HalAsst.exe will not fully terminate. If I shut Hal down that remains running in the background, even though it isn't doing anything. I just go into Taskmanager and manually shut it down, which doesn't seem to cause any problems.
You can run both with two separate characters. In which case Hal does what Hal normally does and CyberBuddy does what it normally does and you now have two characters talking at you. Get enough of these programs and you can have a party on your desktop! (And also use up all your system resources! [:D] )
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Sure, get a couple of those dancer programs too and you've got a real hootenanny going on, lol. To use MS Agents with Hal you basically just have to have the MS Agent program on your computer. Newer version of Windows already do. C:WindowsMSAgentCharacters is the folder your agent characters go in. That should be all that's necessary. In my experience, whenever Hal updates, he makes uhp files for whatever characters are in my character folder. The plugins from DesktopMates seem to help resize and center their characters better, but they work OK without them.