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[fgo23]

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

[Padriag]

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.

[KnyteTrypper]

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?

[Padriag]

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! [] )

[KnyteTrypper]

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.