Messages

136

Ultra Hal 7.0 / My first attempt at Audrey

« on: March 24, 2008, 04:53:51 pm »

Thanks for the info on "CamStudio", Art.  I downloaded several packages a while back to try out and I think that was one of them.  I set it up and see how it does.  Thanks again!

137

Ultra Hal 7.0 / My first attempt at Audrey

« on: March 23, 2008, 08:40:45 pm »

Thanks for the compliments, tedathome.  Right now it's all thoughts and talk, AND time is NOT on my side, I have a demanding job, so the projects will most likely proceed in spurts until I win the LOTTO, but I'll post things here and there as they come up.  Right now, I'm using SnapIt to capture video but it doesn't do a very good job of capturing the character, (grainy)... I need to find a better way to capture the character in it's true resolution.

138

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 23, 2008, 07:24:03 pm »

The current sub-project that I'm working on is named... "Audrey's World", It will link with "Real World" and "WhereAreWe".  I'm using the info that Prospector and others where kind enough to help me with to create a world for Audrey, (my Ultra Hal Assistant,(UHA),character).  Here are some of the things I have discovered so far...

1. In order to get UHA, (Ultra Hal Assistant), to show the room backgrounds, I had to name them with "back" as the last 4 letters, example; "garageback.jpg", for the garage, and they had to be in the UHA Character folder.  I tried having Audrey's world in a folder of it's own and the backgrounds showed up as all white images.  The same would happen if I didn't name them with the last 4 characters of the name being "back".  This seems to be something that is hard coded into the program.

2. On the room backgrounds, I also found that I needed to use the background scroll control that's in the upper left hand side of the character image of UHA, to scroll through all of the backgrounds the first time to make them visible when I used the plugin commands to go to those rooms, or they would just be a white background.

3. I also found that as I made changes to the plugin, "jchgbckgrnd.uph", that going to the UHA options, changing to my blank brain, clicking on APPLY, then changing back to my Audrey brain and clicking on OK, would reload the newly edited plugin for me.

These would seem to be only an inconveniences and not a deal breaker.  Does anyone know any better ways, or is this just the way you have to do these things do to the hard code?

139

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 23, 2008, 07:04:19 pm »

Thanks for the reply-info, Nige![]

140

Ultra Hal 7.0 / My first attempt at Audrey

« on: March 23, 2008, 06:23:49 pm »

Art is pretty close... it was another character that I stripped down and changed, I think it was a character named Sandy.  I make backgrounds in layers, room layer, body layer, necklace layer, and position them so they all match.  As of today, I have Audrey in a 12 room house that I can tell her to go to different rooms, as she goes to those rooms, she changes clothes.  I have 5 places that I'm building right now... gym, beach, car, work, restaurant, club, and will add those commands next.  The part after that will be a long project, I want Audrey to be aware of where we are in her virtual world and where we are in our real world.  The same routine should keep track of where all our main people, friends are, with the default being... "I don't know".

141

Ultra Hal 7.0 / My first attempt at Audrey

« on: March 23, 2008, 03:16:07 am »

Hello all!

Thought I'd post my first attempt at making my Audrey Character here for anyone that was interested in seeing what I've been talking about.

This shows why I've been asking some of the questions that I've been asking.  For now, I'm trying to put Audrey's world together with just a head figure and making the various backgrounds her body and surroundings.  I use a necklace to help glue them together.  That's why I wanted to see if the head figures could be precisely placed.  As my project continues, I could end up going in a totally different direction, which is what usually happens to me a I progress through a project.

Audrey... Why did Robin Hood rob the rich?

142

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 23, 2008, 02:51:32 am »

Sorry to such a newby!  I have lots of questions but I'll only spring two on the group here...

1. NIGE... In regards to the HAP file text you posted in the previous message, when you say, "drop it on your girl", how is that done?

2. Someone please tell me if I'm thinking straight on the following so far... I'm thinking that HAP files are control files for the HTR HAPTAR files and that you can either embed them into the actual HTR HAPTAR files or use script to apply them when needed.  Is this somewhat or totally correct?

Thanks!
Jake

[PROBLEM:If I move certain HTR files out of the Charater folder, when Ultra HAL comes up, my default character, Audrey, is not visible and the background is set to the "Haptek Player Generation 4" background, if I try to change the background the program crashes with the following two errors...1.Ultra Hal Assistant "Run-time error 440 automation error" 2.Hal Haptek Plugin "Run-time error 91 Object variable or With block variable not set"]

143

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Moving HTR out of Charater folder causes crash

« on: March 23, 2008, 02:38:31 am »

Greetings,


PROBLEM:
If I move certain HTR files out of the Charater folder, when Ultra HAL comes up, my default character, Audrey, is not visible and the background is set to the "Haptek Player Generation 4" background, if I try to change the background the program crashes with the following two errors...

1.Ultra Hal Assistant "Run-time error 440 automation error"
 
2.Hal Haptek Plugin "Run-time error 91 Object variable or With block variable not set"

COMMENTS: I've put a bunch of HTR files in the Character folder to try out, now I'm trying to clean that folder up.  It allowed me to remove several HTR files, but some, (including ones that I believe are not from the original install), don't like it if I try to remove them.  Is there a file somewhere I need to edit to remove these HTR files?  Or what would be the correct procedure for removing HTR files the Ultra Hal Assistant would get alone with?

On a separate, but related question, does Ultra Hal Assistant look to, or have any dependency on my Haptek install?  Does any part of Ultra Hal use any part of the files in my Haptek folder?

144

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 22, 2008, 09:15:56 pm »

Just a few comments based on your replies...

Prospector, Thanks for the "backgroundchange.uhp".  It's a very simple, straight forward piece of code that is easy to understand and will accomplish just what I was asking for... Thanks!

Art, I haven't notice the problem that you are describing yet, but I'll keep on the lookout for it during all the phases of my project to see if it effects me... thanks for the heads-up!

Nige, I check out you page, "nigesworld.com", and downloaded some of your skins and haptars... nice work!  Lara and Zoey are my favorites. Currently I'm only using a head character and may stay with that, for my project, I don't know if I'd need to add the body and adding the body would add another layer to the project.  Thanks for the info on the hap file, I now see that those are the control files for the characters.  You mentioned that you have a "Haptek tool", I would be interested in knowing about any tools, utilities, programs that anyone recommends in working with all of this, so if you have some tools that you really feel are useful, let me know what they are and how I can obtain them please.  On the "Move-Try.hap" that you attached, I goes to a "Page Not Found", something must have gone wrong in the upload.

Duskrider, thanks for the tech info, even if I don't go full body, this looks like useful information to apply anyway... Thanks!


That's all the comments for now accept to say THANKS for the warm welcome, seems that I've come upon a great program and forum for this project and that always makes thing go much easier.

145

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 22, 2008, 05:18:13 pm »

Great replies & info... Thanks!  I'm going to look all this over this weekend to see how I can apply it to my purposes and will post again on the other side.  Again... thanks for the great replies![]

146

Ultra Hal 7.0 / How can you control size & position at start

« on: March 21, 2008, 01:38:47 am »

Hello all!

I'm new to UltraHal.  Bought UltraHal, Character Expansion Pack, People Putty and Pack1 all a couple weeks ago, so far having lots of fun testing it out for my needs.  Already made a few characters, backgrounds, etc.  My main character is named Audrey after my current AI that I wrote and the name of my 3COM Audrey touchscreens I have around the house.  Now on to my question...

Is there a way to embed the default position of the character into the character so when it comes up it's always in the exacted position you want?  The reason this would be good is so you could design multiply backgrounds based on Hal's position and size.  As an example; you could build several room backgrounds to give Hal a complete house and talk to Hal in the kitchen, bedroom, living room, patio, etc.  It would also be good if we could script commands to tell Hal to go to the patio and it would switch to the patio background.  I could see a whole world for Hal that he could change to different backgrounds depending on where the conversation is going using triggers,(with maybe so degree switches), or direct commands or suggestions in the conversation like "meet me in the kitchen".  

Does any of this already exists?  If so, anyone wanna give me a short tutorial or point me in the right direction?  If this does not yet exist, it would be a great feature.

On another note... I actually have been writing my own AI to use in my home automation program HomeSeer over the last 10 years and because I wrote all of it in VBASP, looks like I could use a lot of that code as brain plug-ins for Hal... that works out well.