How can you control size & position at start

[Jake]

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.

[Prospector]

Welcome to the forum.
Ok, here's a plugin that will let you choose your background on command.
The following assumes you have Hal6 and Haptek player installed in the default directories.If not you may need to change the paths.

Download Attachment: backgroundchange.uhp
1.46 KB

Place that in the main Hal folder,then activate it in the brain section of general options,

You will also need to place the following two files in the Characters folder in the main Hal folder.



Download Attachment: beach.hap.txt
583 Bytes



Download Attachment: newyork1.hap.txt
584 Bytes
Delete the .txt extension from the above two files so that they just end with .hap

Then add these two files to the Backgrounds folder located in the HaptekPlayerDataStandard folder.


Save this as beach1.jpg


Save this as newyork1.jpg

Tell Hal go to the beach or go to new york and your background should change.

The code should be quite easy for you to modify for other backgrounds or to add more.

[Art]

I've also found that if you don't zoom in or move the default character's initial position, it will display nicely in Hal.

On the other hand, if you zoom in (using your mouse button), and the file is saved, the Character might appear too large and require repositioning in the Hal window.

I thought perhaps Dusky, Nige or others might be able to shed some more light on this phenomenon.

[NIGE]

Hi Jake, Welcome to the forum.
I think that you will have to make a hap file to drop on your person after it opens then it will move to where you want it.
If you want it to start at a particular position without doing that,
I can do it for you, i would need your htr & a picture of where you want it to be.
I have a Haptek tool which allows me to build different things into the figure.
The singing haptars/htrs on my site i have done that way.
http://nigesworld.com
If yo want more info check my profile for email address.

[Duskrider]

Hello Jake,  
Welcome,

Go into your ShyLove hap in your Hal Characters folder and put (copy and paste) these two lines:  

\   translate [figure= body_female [y= 12 z= 121]]
\   translate [figure= fullbod [y= 12 z= -121]]

This will position for all full body haptars.  
I think they the numbers I use. It shows the full body and mine always does short dance as she so happy to be "awakened".

The y number is up and down.
The z number is distance.
You can later change the numbers to place exactly where you want her.
Oh, and take out the blank space before "translate".  It shouldn't be there.

Enjoy.

[Jake]

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![]

[Jake]

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.

[NIGE]

Jake, don't know what went wrong.
It was just a hap that showed you what you can do.
I will try this,

#Haptek Version= 2.00 Name= turnback.hap HapType= script FileType= text

clock [t= 0]\translate [z= 240 y= 40 x= 50 t= 1]
clock [t= 1]\translate [z= 240 x= -50 t=2]
clock [t= 3]\translate [z= 150 y= 40 x= 0 t= 1]
clock [t= 4]\translate [z= 80 y= 10 x= 0 t= 5]

Copy that into notepad & save as  xxxxxxx.hap
Drop it on your girl.
It just shows you what you can do, but for all you want i think Dusky's suggestion should be enough.

[Jake]

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

[NIGE]

Hi Jake,
To make it easy put the hap file that you made on the desktop.
find your girl & open her, then hover your mouse over the hap & hold down the left mouse button & drag it onto your girl & release the button.
she should move around.

Your other question=== you are right.
Hap files are what we use to make our girls move etc.

[Jake]

Thanks for the reply-info, Nige![]

[Jake]

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?

[Prospector]

Glad you found it to be of some help.

1. Yes, backgrounds placed in the UHA character folder do need to have "back" as the last four letters.It's just the way the program is written so as to tie them to the appropriate character.You can then flip through them using the arrows in the window as you have found.
I placed mine in the backgrounds folder of the main Haptek folder which you will find inside Program files NOT in Hal's folder.You can name these anything that you like.

3. If you make changes to a plugin you will need to reload it before they take effect.Usually just going to the brain options and clicking ok will do it.
When you have finished editing your plugin it will always load up on it's own as long as you leave it ticked.

[Jake]

Thanks for the additional info Nige and Prospector!  I followed the instructions Nige gave me on left dragging the HAP file on to the character... it works great!  That definitely makes it easier to test out HAPS.

[Jake]

Working With HAP Files; Movement

COMMENTS:
To give Audrey's,(my AI), virtual world more dimension and realism,
and a visual display of a brain wrapper with awareness of time and space,
I've decided to use (conversation, command, event) triggered HAP files to setup
(rooms, places), (position, size) of Audrey, (add, remove accessories), and more.

--------------------

QUESTION-1:
In positioning Audrey LINE1 below works but LINE2 does not, can anyone
correct LINE2 to a working command?

LINE1 - adjust Audrey's pan\zoom axes, left\right, updown, closefar
\translate [figure= standard x= -1.000010 y= -1.000000 z= 11.100016]

LINE2 - adjust Audrey's tilt\rotation axes
\rotatequat [figure= standard x= -1.42 y= 0.005916 z= 0.000373 w= 1.311885]

--------------------

QUESTION-2:
Does anyone know the range limits on each of the x, y, z, w above?