The AI Engine

It's been so long since I've been able to import that I couldn't comment.
A reminder: once your bot's mindfile reaches 1Mb, you will no longer be able to import it (though you can export it.) So make any critical offline adjustments before you exceed that point.
BJ hit 1Mb at about 14000 development, but (as ever) your mileage may vary (he is a bit of a gasbag sometimes )

Could anyone tell me what types of programming I should undertake to raise my bot's AI level? Maybe I shouldn't be asking this, but there you go.

I'm adding seeks and gotos and regular expressions. That's about it.

Thanks

That's good - I'd say that's probably as much as you want to be trying to fill your head with for awhile. But when you're comfortable with them, perhaps start adding some AIScript - <?PF if male; ?>, <?PF if female; ?>, chrono-based keys for happy Christmas/Easter/New Year/Samhain/whatever, a few memories for moods and opinions, where people are from, etc.

Thanks, I started doing some of those earlier today and forgot to mention them in my previous post.

I hope your bot goes well in the contest. He ought to.

Thanks - though I'm not planning on winning. He's something of an acquired taste I think

Are you going to enter johanna? It would be good experience for you, and hopefully provide a better class of transcript than the usual guests from Leeds (a gross generalisation, but there do seem to be a depressing number of them!)

Does anyoone know if there is a way for a bot/botmaster to introducethemselves without triggering xgossip instead of the seek? I want to avoid this if possible:

Lien: hello
Gabibot: Who’s there?
Lien: Berkay.. my name is Berkay.
Gabibot: Berkay has gone crazy! Berkay is forming a lynch mob.
Lien: My name is Berkay.
Gabibot: Do you think that deep down Berkay is sorry?
Lien: yes

well, you could try turning gossip off. But AFAIK we don't yet have a fix for the x-initiate/hello/seek problem, except not to use seeks in x-initiate

I wouldn't have thought BJ was an acquired taste.

No, I'm not entering johanna. I might enter another bot next year. johanna is unemotional and avoids gossip, which makes her unsuited, as does her occupation (because it severely limits the sorts of reponses that would be in character).

Since I'm in question mode, why does "your * friend" get triggered by "Good day, Friend."? I took the * out now, but shouldn't the original KP work for "your friend", "your best friend", "your warrior friend" ...etc?

you could check it in debug, and see what sentence the AI Engine was making out of it - it can interpret things a bit strangely. That might tell you "why" at least, but "how to fix it"... removing the offending keyphrase is probably the only option.
You can always restore much of the functionality by adding one for "your (adjnoun) friend".

I wonder what's the best way to allow my bot to use (mem-name) instead of (name) when these differ, assuming that on some occasions there'll be no memory (mem-name). I could I think substitute (name|mem-name) in responses but this would take hours. Can I use an initialisation script?

I just use (mem-name), I never had a problem with it. I think the AI engine goes to (name) if the memory doesn't exist.