Do you want to play........produces robotic answer

[lostbowyer]

In hal 4.5, if you asked hal if he wanted to play for example "football" you would get an attempt at a human like response, even a phrase like "do you want to play "doctor" use to produce the response "A real doctor should never "play doctor" with the nurses". In 5.0 beta any question such as " do you want to play baseball" produces the response of "The program baseball was not found in my database" this is a very "robotic" sounding phrase.
The responses to playing any type of game was much better in 4.5

[Morkeleb]

I think your problem is in the phrasing of the words using play right before the word might be causing hal to think you want him/her to start the program, ie; footbal, hence ther error not in database. Try rephrasing the sentence and seeing what happens. I believe play is one of the key words to cause hal to start a program or application.[:I]
Let me know if this helped out ok.

[lostbowyer]

Play wasn't a keyword to launch an application in 4.5, although it appears that it is in 5.0 I think the new use of the word lessens the AI effect.

[Don Ferguson]

Hello,

I think that the control you're looking for is in the "Enhanced_Main.brn" file.  Here is an excerpt from that file:

" START THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" RUN THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" OPEN THE PROGRAM","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" EXECUTE THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" I WANT TO WORK IN ","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" I WANT TO PLAY ","","","<RUNIT>","","",2,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" I WANT TO PLAY IN ","","","<RUNIT>","","",1,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" START THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",2,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" RUN THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",2,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" OPEN THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",2,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"
" EXECUTE THE PROGRAM ","","","<RUNIT>","","",2,#TRUE#,#FALSE#,"</RUNIT>"

In this section of code, Hal looks for perfect matches of the character-strings in the first set of quotation marks.  If he finds them, he captures the next words of the user and tries to use that information to open a file or program.

You can make this routine more restrictive or less restrictive by modifying the words that Hal must find.  For instance, you could change "I want to play" to "I want to play the file" and Hal would false trigger much less.  

(Oops!  Actually, with correct pronoun reversals, these lines should probably read "You want to play" or "You want to play the file"! When inside Hal's brain, "I" is supposed to be Hal, and "You" is supposed to be the user!)

Always, before modifying a Hal file, use Windows explorer to make a back-up copy in a different folder.  

Also, set Windows Explorer to show the full file extensions of all files, not hide them.  That way, if your word processor stubbornly changes the file extension of a file (Word often tries to change the extension to ".txt"), you can manually change it back to ".brn" using Windows Explorer and you can see what you're doing.

(TIP:  If you ONLY use "save," and NEVER use "save as" on MS Word with Hal's files, Word will leave the file extension alone.)

Lastly, don't change anything except the contents within the first set of quotation marks on any given line.  The lines of code in this file have a very particular pattern, and any missing commas or quotation marks will make the file so it doesn't work.

Having said all that, it should be possible to make Hal respond or not respond exactly as you wish!

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Don

[lostbowyer]

Thanks Don
Editing that file corrected the responses. Hal now responds more naturally to "do you want to play" questions.
Glenn