Zabaware Support Forums
Zabaware Forums => Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor => Topic started by: Epic on October 02, 2008, 01:26:30 pm
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I was just curious to know. Is Ultra Hal programed in VisualBasic. I did not know were to post this so....
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quote:
Originally posted by Epic
I was just curious to know. Is Ultra Hal programed in VisualBasic. I did not know were to post this so....
Yes, Hal was programmed mainly in VB6, with small parts of the brain in C++. And Hal's brain scripts are based on VBScript. Hal's plug-in system for characters and speech is based on ActiveX/COM.
Kind of unfortunate Microsoft killed the VB 6 line. VB.NET is an entirely new language and Hal would have to almost be rewritten from scratch to port it over. But rewriting Hal is something I must do because I can't rely on VB6 being supported much longer. I haven't decided what language yet though.
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Hi Rob.
I think VB.NET would be a good upgrade choice.
Jerry[8D]
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I had to convert my 'Hap Explorer' program to run in VB.NET as I lost my copy of VB6. It takes some getting used to and is a real pain at first, but I found it was worth the effort in the end.
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I'm actually also seriously considering a lesser known language RealBasic (www.realsoftware.com) It's more similar to VB6 than VB.NET so it would be less rework. It also cross compiles to Windows, Mac, and Linux.
In addition to Hal's main executables having to be rewritten, Hal's brain scripts are based on VBScript which also will no longer be supported by Microsoft. So I have to switch the scripting language too. RealBasic also has a scripting language called RBScript which is the most similar to VBScript that Hal's brain uses, so that would also be a plus.
But I could move it to any scriping language like LUA maybe (http://www.lua.org/) What would you guys prefer to see as Hal's scripting engine in the long run?
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RealBasic sounds like a good option. Choosing that would probably make scripting the most accessable and familiar to more people.
I had a look at Lua and it reminds me of PHP, which I like and am spending a lot of time on at the moment. I'm not sure how noobie friendly that would be, although I found learning PHP was fine.
Also I noted this about Lua :
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Lua is distributed in a small package and builds out-of-the-box in all platforms that have an ANSI/ISO C compiler. Lua runs on all flavors of Unix and Windows, and also on mobile devices (such as handheld computers and cell phones that use BREW, Symbian, Pocket PC, etc.) and embedded microprocessors (such as ARM and Rabbit) for applications like Lego MindStorms.
That might appeal to some users and echoes a few people's ideas on where Hal could be going.
I dunno, one side of me wants to be lazy and say go with what you know and the other says try a different direction and learn something new.
Hmm, what's the story on C++ ? Anything in that line ? Also Python comes to mind, which is pretty popular.
I'd like to hear what other people have to say.
P.S. Good luck with the Loebner Rob, pretty soon isn't it ?
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Between all of Hal's component is close to a million lines of code. Thinking of rewriting all of that scares me.
Hal is composed of: - HAL SQLite Engine (C++)- A modified version of SQLite with additional in-line SQL functions added that are needed by Hal.
- HAL WN Engine (C++)- A modified version of the WordNet command line tool rewritten into a standard Windows DLL.
- HalBrain.DLL (VB6) - Ties together the SQLite Engine, WordNet, The VBScript engine, and adds 100 additional functions used by brain scripts.
- HalBrain.UHP (VBScript) - The VBscript part of Hal everyone here knows.
- Hal Assistant (VB6) - Ties together the HalBrain.DLL, 3rd party speech APIs, 3rd party graphics APIs (and soon to be Zabaware/Ogre engine), provides skinable user interface.
- Hal Brain Editor (VB6) - Database editor capable of editing Hal's sqlite based database, VBScript source code editor, debug tool.
- Hal AIM Bot (VB6) - Interfaces HalBrain.DLL and Script to AIM Network.
- Hal Representative (VB6, Classic ASP) - Interfaces HalBrain.DLL and Script to HTTP service
- Zabaware/Ogre Character Engine (C++) - Not released yet. Currently written for Windows but can be fairly easily ported to Linux and Mac since Ogre libraries exist for those.
Each of the above components are seperate and each can be written in any language as long as some interprocess communication method exists to link between them. I'll have to decide what seems best for each part. Right now we're still working on the character engine, but once that is done I will focus on the actual AI brain of Hal again meaning the SQLite Engine, WordNet, HalBrain.DLL, and the HalBrain.UHP.
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>>Between all of Hal's component is close to a million lines of code. Thinking of rewriting all of that scares me.<<
It just scares you? heh, that is a lot of work and time how could you possibly do all that work/translation It took years to develop i am guessing so a FAR look ahead is probably in order. Rumor has it that their was a newer version of visual studio an visual J I can check with some of the vendors and MS ( I have them indexed and cataloged)[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D] If you so desire....
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Doesn't the ORGE library use C++.NET[?]
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I have had problems with converting script from vb6 to .net+
But i beleive the best way is to "STAY" on vb6...
I have it installeed on a virtual machine. easily worked on in Virtual PC.
Then new additions added in their own programming languge in re-linked in the hal dll.s
using Interop toolkit... seems to work...
the upgrade path is to slowly upgrade each form/class 1 at a time... to vb2005/vc2005 >>>>> then to 2009....
a long process!! <<< big learning curve <<<<< loads of expense.....