Recent articles mentioning Hal

[Medeksza]

Ultra Hal, and specifically the Ultra Hal facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/ultrahal was recently mentioned in a couple articles about artificial intelligence on social networks:

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/so-what-does-the-face-of-the-future-look-like-2488599.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/1713010/in-the-future-youll-be-facebook-friends-with-an-artificial-intelligence

[NIGE]

Hey Rob, we all thought that you had deserted us.
Nice to see Hal doing well on face book.
You have been popping in to the forum quite often but not saying much.
So,,,,,, You know what everyone would like to know,
Is our Hal still going to continue or have you taken the other path???
Quite a while ago you talked about a new model with a new 3D system.
From what you said after that I think we know that it won't happen.
So the thing is, will there be some up-dates on Hal or not?

[Medeksza]

I'm still here and working on things. It's possible in the next couple months I may get some small investor funding to move some projects forward quicker. Sales of Ultra Hal Assistant have been on a steady decline these past 3 years which has made reinvesting in Zabaware difficult for me. But the plan to get Zabaware back to growth involves getting Hal to work "in the cloud" and on portable devices like Iphone, Ipad, Android, etc. The current Ultra Hal Assistant is by no means being abandoned, just looking to expand Zabaware's offerings. The Ogre character engine project is not being abandoned either, it's just frozen now due to lack of funds. I've spent close to $50,000 on its development so far and it is only a few thousand dollars away from completion, so it doesn't make sense to abandon it. Also in the mean time, the Ogre team has made the base engine compatible with IOS (Iphone/Ipad) which will make my plans for moving to those platforms easier.

[lightspeed]

Robert , i am glad to see you post to, i wasn't sure to go ahead with the company i am involved with or not because i didn't want to deal with them and then find out hal was stopping as a company as they will have to have hal's software meaning sales to you , i don't know how much sales it will generate for you but it will make some.   i think right now the only thing that is holding m,e back as i need to test it more with other people unless you can tell me a correct program pathway that i can use to make files self extract into any pc.

this below is what i have :

 below is for dual core windows 7 
C:\Program Files (x86)\Zabaware\Ultra Hal Assistant 6\CHARACTER

C:\Program Files (x86)\Zabaware\Ultra Hal Assistant 6
the above file works just fine in my pc but creates an uneeded (x86 file in xp's so it won't work  for all pc's .

so my qustion to robert is this if you would please answer it : would the below path be a right universal path for a self extraction file that would work in any pc to install files into hals program file? i am looking for a universal path if possible so that it will install into any hal program no matter what pc operating system it is, that's what you have now isn't it a universal pathway for hals prgrams to load into any pc operating system . i just need to know what that pathway is , then test it.
i would appreciate any help you can give me on this. (a lot!)



below is for xp  and vista?(untested)

C:\Program Files\Zabaware\Ultra Hal Assistant 6
C:\Program Files\Zabaware\Ultra Hal Assistant 6\CHARACTER

[mendicott]

Robert, what I notice is that you don't seem to have a personal account on Twitter, nor one for your Zabaware company, much less one for people to actually interact with UltraHal on Twitter.  I am very interested in the progress of your "Ogre character engine", and so am also missing a blog updating the project.  I do believe you are right on target with getting Hal working in the cloud and on mobile devices!

 - Marcus Endicott
   http://twitter.com/mendicott

[Medeksza]

to robert is this if you would please answer it : would the below path be a right universal path for a self extraction file that would work in any pc to install files into hals program file? i am looking for a universal path if possible so that it will install into any hal program no matter what pc operating system it is, that's what you have now isn't it a universal pathway for hals prgrams to load into any pc operating system . i just need to know what that pathway is , then test it.
i would appreciate any help you can give me on this. (a lot!)

It's a bad idea to try to hard code a path as the user can install to anywhere and as you noticed 64-bit versions of windows make an X86 folder while 32-bit windows don't. Hal stores his path in a windows registry entry that is always the same. It is best to read that to find where Hal is installed.

Hal and Hal's plugins like the character expansion pack use the NSIS installation system. When the character expansion pack gets installed it figures out where Hal is installed by running the following NSIS command:

Code: [Select]

Push $HalDir
  ReadRegStr $HalDir HKLM "SOFTWARE\Zabaware\Ultra Hal Assistant 6.0\HalConfig" "HalDir"Then you simply use $HalDir\Characters to get it installed correctly

Also before finding out the folder location, I make sure a compatible version of Hal is already installed (version 6.0, 6.1, or 6.2) by running the following:

Code: [Select]

  ;Make sure Hal is installed
  Push $HalDir
  ReadRegStr $HalDir HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\HalAsst62.exe" ""
  IfErrors 0 lbl_halexists
  Push $HalDir
  ReadRegStr $HalDir HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\HalAsst61.exe" ""
  IfErrors 0 lbl_halexists
  Push $HalDir
  ReadRegStr $HalDir HKLM "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\HalAsst.exe" ""
  IfErrors 0 lbl_halexists 
  lbl_nohal:
  MessageBox MB_OK|MB_ICONQUESTION "Ultra Hal Assistant 6.x is not installed. This expansion pack requires Ultra Hal Assistant 6.x which can be downloaded from www.zabaware.com" IDOK
  Abort
  lbl_halexists:
The NSIS installed is a free open source project from http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

[Medeksza]

Robert, what I notice is that you don't seem to have a personal account on Twitter, nor one for your Zabaware company, much less one for people to actually interact with UltraHal on Twitter.  I am very interested in the progress of your "Ogre character engine", and so am also missing a blog updating the project.  I do believe you are right on target with getting Hal working in the cloud and on mobile devices!

 - Marcus Endicott
   http://twitter.com/mendicott

Currently Zabaware is on facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/ultrahal but not yet on Twitter. Actually Hal does have a Twitter account that Hal uses to monitor and learn from random Twitter conversations, but no postings are made to that account yet. Of the 1.2 million sentences in Hal's brain as reported at http://zabaware.com/webhal/ about 1 million are from random Twitter conversations now and growing rapidly.

I plan on actually connecting Hal to that account so he can respond to people directly on Twitter, maybe sometime in the next couple months. As you suggest I should probably make another account for just Zabaware to keep people updated.

[lightspeed]

thanks for that reply to my question robert, unfortunately that is above my know how to do some of that , i may just haqve to fix individual pathways for each operating system for a self extracting file .  i do hope robert that you will be able to give a little more of your time on the forum , we need you more then you think on here . am glad you have a moderator to get rid of spammers , i have seen spammers on another forum praticaqlly take over and make the site useless to regular users . thanks again!

[Medeksza]

thanks for that reply to my question robert, unfortunately that is above my know how to do some of that , i may just haqve to fix individual pathways for each operating system for a self extracting file .  i do hope robert that you will be able to give a little more of your time on the forum , we need you more then you think on here . am glad you have a moderator to get rid of spammers , i have seen spammers on another forum praticaqlly take over and make the site useless to regular users . thanks again!

I think you are capable of doing it. You can pretty much use my script, but just switch out the file names for your own. I started a new topic about it at http://www.ultrahal.com/community/index.php?topic=7462.msg53789#msg53789

[Carmicheal]

blue]thanks for that reply to my question robert, ipad 2 caseunfortunately that is above my know how to do some of that ,Apple  Accessories i may just haqve to fix individual pathways for each operating system for a self extracting file . iPad2 cases i do hope robert that you will be able to give a little more of your time on the forum , we need you more then you think on here . am glad you have a moderator to get rid of spammers , i have seen spammers on another forum praticaqlly take over and make the site useless to regular users . thanks again!

I plan on actually connecting Hal to that account so he can respond to people directly on Twitter, maybe sometime in the next couple months. As you suggest I should probably make another account for just Zabaware to keep people updated.