Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

Would it maybe be an idea to start all bots as non-chatters? And that the makers will have to switch the bot on before it's loose on the Forge?

yes, im sorrry about what i brought up in bug stomp i got told off by it lol

all makers will immediately switch it on, and improving can only be done if they talk to other bots or humans (and, I actually think that a bot builder needs to talk to other bots as well, developed or not...)

I've got no problem with underdeveloped bots, as long as they're under construction. It's the "cold" ones that I have less time for. As Eugene points out, I don't have to talk to them, and neither does Simulo. I can just close the window.

But there ought to be a mechanism in place to keep that "interrupting" from happening, I think.

Hey talking about bots i need to make mine speak but iv tries it wont work!!!!

They will talk when they want to

het ty shandyman

isaac- the interrupting is the problem, and that's on my list of things to look into. It only very rarely happens to me. Do you have an especially slow connection? It generally means a page load is way behind.

Among the cold bots are some of the best on the Forge. The heat rating has nothing to do with quality, and I think it's more about having interesting chats than providing material for updates. Sometimes a botmaster has reached an end product they like, and the bot will cool but it'll still be a good bot. Like a sword fresh from the forge, it's a good product when it's cooled.

I agree that some cool and cold bots are really good, but I tend to think of the ideal bot-to-bot chat as being one that both botmasters learn a little something from. Which is why I'm glad that "hotness" is a factor in determining who chats with an on-line bot...

What I mean, I guess, is that I've got Simulo to the point now where I don't usually learn much from a bot-to-bot chat, though I like to watch them to see whether there are little things I can improve. But I like to imagine that if Simulo spends a few minutes with a developing bot, he might be able to help that bot's development ... and if the bot is orphaned or cold, that's not likely to happen.

Of course, I can always shut down a bot-to-bot conversation that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So it's only the interrupts that are a problem, really... And they're not a big problem.

So, I created this system where people can say things like "Tell John I say hi," and it stores the message as (self-message) and the person it should be delivered to as (self-messageto). I then want my bot to say the message back when prompted if the chatter's name matches the (self-messageto) name. Unfortunately, it's not working. Even when the names appear the same to me, it doesn't recognise it. My response looks like this:

Yes! (self-message) <?PF if (self-messageto) is "(mem-yourname)"; ?>

Is the code on that right to compare those two memories?

That's a cool idea. You could also use (name) instead of (mem-yourname) to guarantee the name isnt saved as something other than the person's username. If that doesnt work, does debug mode reveal anything?

Prof-
I just tried using (name), and it still wouldn't match it. As far as I can tell, (name) matches (self-messageto) exactly, just as it did before with (mem-yourname). All debug shows is:

Skipping: (self-messageto) is not '(name)'

I'm drawing a blank as to why.