[Data]

From memory I’m pretty sure the multi core problem only affects Haptek in Vista and Win7.

For me it runs perfectly on my quad core in XP but requires one of the fixes for Win7.

[GT40]

I voted but was not very objective. I have had a terrific passion for Pandorabots with Haptek interfaces in the past (all that working perfectly on my prehistoric computer under Windows 98SE). But IMHO, plain text or with an avatar are two very different things.

A textbot is a very serious MIND GAME, a fulltime job, a neverending story for the botmaster, trying to approach the perfect HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". Never boring, always fun (so fun to program anything).

With an avatar, it becomes a TOY. If the bot gives a stupid answer, no drama, the good-looking aspect has priority. The girl is so cute (lol, girl, why a girl?). We can pardon every mistake coming from her approximative brain.

And mixing AIML and Haptek commands is so easy, so nice to embed face expressions and matching movements in the response.

Ok, it was a fun story. I guess only PC's with W98SE or XP, Internet Explorer and a single CPU are able to do that...

[Data]

Now I remember...

The Haptek problem doesn’t affect multi core CPU’s in XP, how do I know?

I was the one who discovered what the problem was with multi cores in Win7 and told Robot M about it in the first place.

http://www.ultrahal.com/community/index.php?topic=6637.msg46144#msg46144

I’ve since made a Haptek fix for the stand-alone player for multi cores in Vista and Win7 too. 

blow that trumpet blow

PS, definitely better with an Avatar 

[Art]

I voted but was not very objective. I have had a terrific passion for Pandorabots with Haptek interfaces in the past (all that working perfectly on my prehistoric computer under Windows 98SE). But IMHO, plain text or with an avatar are two very different things.

A textbot is a very serious MIND GAME, a fulltime job, a neverending story for the botmaster, trying to approach the perfect HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". Never boring, always fun (so fun to program anything).

With an avatar, it becomes a TOY. If the bot gives a stupid answer, no drama, the good-looking aspect has priority. The girl is so cute (lol, girl, why a girl?). We can pardon every mistake coming from her approximative brain.

And mixing AIML and Haptek commands is so easy, so nice to embed face expressions and matching movements in the response.

Ok, it was a fun story. I guess only PC's with W98SE or XP, Internet Explorer and a single CPU are able to do that...

Hmmm...somehow, girl from torsoland comes to mind...??

[GT40]

Maybe the same one I'm thinking of. 

[DaveMorton]

This post (and others, as well) has inspired me to work on a system that simulates emotions (I may have mentioned this already). If anyone is interested, there's a very primitive "proof of concept" page at http://www.geekcavecreations.com/emotions/ that you can play around with. A few of things, though:

1.) the input interface is a "quick and dirty" affair, so try not to use punctuation or capitalization for now.
2.) This is NOT a chat bot, and doesn't have ANY conversational output.
3.) There are only three "emotional states" at this point: Angry, Happy and Sad; so don't expect a wide variety of images.
4.) I've only got a tiny list of "emotion words" right now. There are six "charged words" (love, death, birthday, stupid, puppy and ugly) that have different "levels of intensity" with respect to the effect they have on the three emotions. There are also (for the impatient) four "debugging words" (angry, happy, sad, and neutral) that instantly max out the corresponding emotion, thus immediately changing the image.

I'm planning on expanding and refining the system to accommodate various additional emotional states, and I'll eventually be adding different "levels" of emotional states (e.g. annoyed -> mad -> angry -> enraged), but that's a little while away, yet.

I think I'll also make the system recognize certain emoticons, such as and  for happy,  and  for sad, and  and for angry, to act as "instant" emotions, to support the user, and strengthen the bond between them and the bot. Again, though, this is for the future.

[Freddy]

That's pretty neat 

I like the smooth animations, I was expecting simple image swaps at this stage.

How did you do the animations and it will be Morti eventually yes ?

Have fun 

[Art]

Yep...nice work on the fluid animations.

Would love to see something similar on Morti's face as well.

Nice work, Dave!!

[DaveMorton]

Thanks, folks. There's still a long way to go with the script, but I'm happy with the results, so far.

The smooth animations are accomplished using two "tricks". Everyone is familiar with animated GIF images, but nearly all of the ones you see are "looping" animations, such as the animated emoticons we have here. However, there are also "one-shot" animations, as well. That's what I'm using for that page, to transform the images. That's "trick" number one.

The second "trick" is a bit more subtle, though. When you do image swaps like these, your browser generally "reuses" previously loaded images from it's cache. The problem with that is that, for one-shot animations, it doesn't use the cached image "from the beginning". It only displays the last frame, effectively making a "static swap" of the images. To fix this, all image transitions have to call "new" images. I do this by tacking on a random number as a variable onto the URL of the image, like this:

emote.src = "images/neutralToHappy.gif?r=" + Math.random();

That way, the browser is fooled into thinking it's a new image, and loads it from the server, rather than it's own cache.

As for Morti getting treatment of this sort, that may take a while. His 3D model was constructed in such a way that making him into a posable character is nearly impossible with my skills. The program that I use to "extract" his model from the FFXI game DAT files doesn't have any options for creating the groups needed to add the "bones" necessary for posing him, and I'm not yet proficient enough with Carrara to find other remedies. Thus, it's going to be a while before I can get Morti's avatar to do the same thing.

[Art]

Dave,

Most gif animations are "overlayed 2-D" ones. Since the Morti we see as your avatar is actually a 2D representation why couldn't you simply draw in the line/shadows for his smile or copy and erase his ears to a somewhat higher or lower position depending on his happy or sad mood? These could all be combined into an animated gif image methinks without the necessity of creating a 3D "boned / rigged" character. That could always come later.

Just some thoughts, my friend. We're just happy to have the little guy to chat with!!