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GPB: but I don't know what a kid could say that would make a whole site smite them.

It's usually not a question of saying one thing. It's doing it over and over and over in every forum day after day after day no matter how many times or how many people ask them to please stop. You'd have to live though it. The people here are really very nice and give many second and third chances. There's just a point when even the nicest of us can't take it any more.

Ohh thanks Bev. I could imagine it already. I'm kinda fortunate enough to arrive here when there isn't any spammers. I guess I would want to pull my hair out too if it was that bad.
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haha, you could abbreviate my sn to GPB, kinda tiring if you have to write it out every time. It's actually a real word though, It means to accidentally leave the surgical sponge in the patient. I just find it astonishing that they actually made a word for that.
Here's a list for laughs:
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/unuwords.htm

What was the 'Roxie' flap all about?

Just a bunch of pestiferous children from Australia spamming up the boards and bombarding people with insults via chat. It did get rather annoying at the time.

Irina:
Could you give me some tips for constructing a storyteller bot?

I think for the lines in xnone, it should be marked once because it would just seem odd if the story repeated itself. But then I also noticed that a xnone has only 40 responses, is that it or does it expand as you work on it more?

Do you solve this problem by using a goto phrase at the end of xnone? it would make sense that those responses are also marked once, and if you put a goto at the end of that keyphrase that I guess you could continue it on and on... I was wondering if the Forge would take too long to process that assuming if it went on for 5 gotos [a long and in depth story with plot development]

Any suggestions from anyone would be helpful.

Dear Gossypiboma:

What a wonderful word!
You can get more than 40 entries in xnone if you work offline. When you export your bot, you will see that there is a pattern in the indentations; just continue it. I don't know whether there is a maximum, but I have gone well beyond 40 with "Irina Khalidar".
The bot appears to remember how far it has gotten, and will take up from there next time. If it comes to the end it will repeat.
Between xnones, your bot may be caught by normal kephrases, and by the other x's, so there may be any amount of material between one xnone and the next. Also, you may append seeks and gotos to your xnones. I have never tried making a goto to an xnone.
(continued)

In principle, you have more flexibility and control by using ordinary keyphrases with lots of seeks, mem-variables, and gotos.

When I first started making bots, I had a keyphrase-by-keyphrase approach. I tried to figure out what a guest might say, and I examined transcripts to see what they did say, and then tried to make up an appropriate response in each case. But I have gradually moved towards a more control-freakish approach, taking charge of the conversation instead of passively responding to what the guest says. In IK I have many cases of linear strings of xnomatch and goto that are over twenty phrases long. You might think that guests would be frustrated by this, but if you do it right,they are not - they are more frustrated by randomness. For example, you can tell a story. I also have a few loops, where there is a keyphrase X which leads through a number of seeks to a "goto X". Of course, you leave an escape hatch somewhere. Suppose, for example, that your guest wants to tell a long story; you might send him to a loop like this:

story loop [0,0] + serial killer,zombie,enemy,war [0]
Oh, how scary!
+ xnomatch [0]
goto story loop
+ looked into each others' eyes [0]
Oh, how romantic!
+ xnomatch [0]
goto story loop
+ realized the meaning of life was [0]
Oh, how profound!
+ xnomatch [0]
goto story loop
+ the end,lived happily ever after [0]
Oh, what a lovely story, (mem-name)!

OK, that's oversimplified, but you get the idea!

"+ xnomatch" is the botmaker's friend, for with it you can keep control - except when you get bounced by xkeyphrases! Well, and by bugs!

Likewise, use lots of memory variables!

Well, some bots don't need all this, because they create a sequence of one-liners or two-liners, like a stand-up comedian, for example. But your interest in storyteller bots suggests that you are getting interested in structure.

At some point I realized that there was a basic structure that I wanted IK to have: she and the guests would go through successively stages of intimacy up to a climactic point, and then start again. Her response to a keyphrase would be different depending on what stage they were in. So I created a variable called "intimacylevel" that has 9 values. It cycles from 0 to 8, back to 0, and so on. I wish I had thought of this at the beginning, for I have spent weeks converting IK from its previous more random form into this form, where any keyphrase dealing with matters of intimacy has several - often 9 or more - responses with AIscript <?PF if (mem-intimacylevel is "x"; ?>, where x can be 0-9. So she will only take a response approriate to the current intimacy level.

At first, I tried to do this with storytelling - xnone would begin with chatting, and work its way up [blush]. But this gave me no control over normal keyphrases. Actually, I left that storyteller structure in, and it's quite useful, but without (mem-intimacylevel) it wouldn't be enough.

Is this the sort of thing you were looking for?


Walk in Beauty, Irina

Oh, I see that in my message 4194, the indentations got lost. But I think you can see what I meant.

You respond to the guest, then go back to the beginning. You can't tell in advance how long the story is going to be, so you just keep looping until you hear "the end". Then you DON'T go back!

Now I'm getting socket errors instead of bot chats. Is some virus eating up the Forge?

I'm so sorry Irina,
I just got home and had some dinner >_<
So today in school, an old friend of mine asked me to go see her swim meet [not tournament, it's like a preliminary round, unlike debate where they do everything in a day two days tops, it was our school vs another team and it took three hours] At first I already got the impression that it's gonna be kinda boring, but I kinda felt guilty because I turned down a handful of her other invitations. Also, aside from walking to and from classes and waiting for transportation, I haven't seen much sunlight this year. Especially this week because I cornered myself in my room trying to program a decent chat bot.

quick summary, I talked with people there, timed a few swimmers, talked with Anthony for about 2 hours, met his sister. walked back to school, already 6:15 [it was held at a public swimming about 2 blocks away from my high school] waited for my dad to pick me up, yes I don't have a car yet v_v got home around 7:10, had dinner and first thing was log onto the Forge.

Thanks for the replies Irina, it'll take me a few minutes to read them. I just wanted to post this first