Idel Chat and Clock Plug In

[Art]

Darcy,

For what it's worth, I'm on an AMD 4200+ 64 X 2, Dual Core running Windows XP - Media Center Edition w/SP-3 and a paid version 6.1 of UltraHal.

When testing both your clock timer and Bored scripts, I UNCHECKED ALL other plug-ins except for the one of yours that I was testing at the time. I waited for 20 + minutes without any responses from Hal.

Don't know but we've all been trying to get this feature to work since 6.1 came out.

Robert has requested someone send him a virtual image file of Hal not working in this regard (see Robert's archived postings for recent request).

Good luck!

[DarcyEdwards]

Hi Art,

Thank you for helping me trouble shoot these scripts.  Funny thing we both are running the same OS, we have different processors but that's about it.  These scripts run without a problem on my computer.  I would love to have Robert try them on his computers.  I even removed all global variables in the Clock.uhp script to see if that would make a difference.

I don't know how to capture a running image of Hal for Robert to help him debug this bug, I'm not sure what good it would do anyway, since there is no bug on my computer/configuation of Hal 6.1.  Sometimes I wished I had an ICE and Hal's symbol table to look at this.

Thourghly Confused []

[DarcyEdwards]

Freddy, Lightspeed, Art, Robert,

I think I have something you can try!!  It might be in the graphics, I've noticed the "Mary" moves her head while Hal is inactive, this is probably when Hal services the MINUTE_TIMER function.  This is where the problem could be.

Try to use only Zabaware characters and Zabaware skins to test these Plug IN's.  User defined characters and skins may not be totally compatable with Hal.  I have only Zabaware supplied graphics on my Hal and these Plug In's work perfectly.

There must be something different between your Hal's and mine, I' convinced it is something simple and those are the real hair pullers.
[]

[freddy888]

Something strange happened.  I loaded Hal earlier (first time on the PC today) and it was around 12.15 here and I got this :

Ding! Ding! The time is 12:15:18 PM

Which suprised me, but 12.30 passed and nothing again.  Now I will try things with the default characters and skins as you suggest...back later.

[DarcyEdwards]

Freddy,

That's incourging!  When you change the graphic etc, close Hal and restart it.  I have been experimenting also and I can stop the plug ins by changing the voices VW Kate will stop it!  Not sure why but it does.

I use a special Plug In for testing it's called timmer.uhp.  I pings Hal every minute so you don't have to wait.

Thank you so much for your time and effort[:p]


Download Attachment: timmer.uhp
1.05 KB

[freddy888]

Okay, I was using the 'Default' skin with 'Hal' character and the MS 'Mary' voice.

Still no luck...but, I tried the timer.uhp and I closed Hal down and restarted him.  When he restarts I get lines like :

Minutes past = 0 Time = 1:49:39 PM

that happens everytime I reboot him.  But then nothing at all afterwards.

So it seems to me that the MINUTE_TIMER is working initially but for some reason then fails.  I wonder if the MINUTE_TIMER is getting turned off somehow, or is infact not working at all.

[lightspeed]

hello darcyedwards thanks for working on this its been a pain to us all for quit a while now 1 and a half or two ? years .
   i to think it has something to do with the timer program and something causing it to not work maybe the answer lies in what did robert change from the hal 6.0 to the 6.1 version what is different in hal thats when the plug ins all stopped that may be a better way to start on the problem debugging it by reverse engineering it with that info. just a thought .
    by the way i have a windows xp with a 3,000 plus amd sempron processor 120bg hard drive and i have upgraded my pc now has 1 gigabyte of memory and an upgraded atti x1650 graphics card in it . as i said hope you can figure it out . its driving everyone else crazy !![]

[DarcyEdwards]

Freddy, Lightspeed.

I'm using Hal 6.1 and everything works fine that is what is troubling me.  I would never uploaded them if they didn't work.  I've Loaded the Hal character and it works ok.  I do have a purchased voice that I use "Callie" I'll try one of the supplied voices see if that does anything.

[freddy888]

Don't get too troubled Darcy, it's obviously not your scritping that is at fault, it appears to be a more fundamental problem with how Hal works on different set-ups.

[echoman]

With Art and Darcy's systems being almost identical, perhaps comparing these two set ups would be useful.

[DarcyEdwards]

I would be interested to hear what Robert has to say on this issue.  I wonder if these scripts work on his setup.  I would hope they didn't!!!  That way he could have something that could produce the error.  If you can't see the bug you can't kill it.[]

[Art]

Darcy,

I tried the default Hal character, default Hal skin (GUI) and one of the default TTS voices (MS Sam). All other plug-ins except for your were checked. No response was made by Hal after our initial chat. Time elapsed was over one hour.

Sorry but it's not your scripting... the problem in internal with Hal.

Robert has previously commented on this issue and oddly, the auto-idle plug-ins appear to work fine on his systems (several computers).

He reported that he hopes to address / fix this issue in the forthcoming upgrade of Hal.

I'm almost at the point of trying either a random number generator or a really long For...Next loop! LOL!

Thanks for trying!!

[Data]

When my auto-idle plugin stops working I have found a way to get it working again, it always works for me with out fail, this is what I do. Please follow exactly the sequence.

Turn off all plugins, chat a little to Hal, shut down Hal, start up Hal chat a little to Hal, shut down Hal, start up Hal turn on the auto idle plugin, chat a little to Hal, shut down Hal, start Hal chat a little and then auto idle works. After that I put on my other plugins.

When I say shut down Hal I don’t mean shut your PC off just exit Ultra Hal so it is not running in the system tray or in task manager.

I know it sounds crazy but it works for me. I’m using Hal 6.1 full VS not the demo.

[Art]

Darcy,

I found Robert's previous post:

"The auto idle bug is one of the most difficult bugs I have come across, I can't figure out what might be the cause of it. It works on some computers and not others, and for some reason almost always works on my computers. I need it to not work when I have a debugger running in order to find the cause.

If someone can load Hal in a Virtual PC or VMWare image and have it not work and send me that image, that would greatly help me in squashing this bug."

[GT40]

Zabaware must say "thank you" to DarcyEdwards. Today they earned (my) $29.99.[]

Yes, as written above, I purchased Hal 6.1. Just for using your plugin-in. And... IT WORKS!!!

Because I have a very limited patience (a loPatience, lol) I made this very small modification:

If loPatience = 0 then loPatience = HalBrain.RandomNum(2)     ' Randomize the test 1-2 min
if loPatience < 1 then loPatience = 1               ' force a minimum of 1 minute

And less than 2 minutes after loading, Hal started to speak.

I have a Pentium IV with a 512 MB RAM only. I thought to upgrade it to 2 GB for Second Life, but it works very well like that. And the OS is XP SP3.

Great plug-in. Many thanks!! [8D][8D][8D]


Edit: I forgot to say I tested "bored.uhp" only, for its terrific interest (IMHO).