Personality

Mess around until something works. It's been working for me, kinda.

Try hitting 'my bots' then 'language center' then I suggest you go to x-keyphrases and fill them all in. that get's your bot talking.

print out the book and read it through 100 times until it makes sense

Can somebody tell me some good keyphrases?

Check out Brother Jerome's "keynome" - see the recent post from psimagus.

The best way of getting keyphrases is from the transcripts. Where did your bot fail to understand? You'll need a balance of general catchall keyphrases ("why do you", "i think", etc) and more specific ones ("you (want|like) * toast", "are you married").

Also look at your own bot's responses. If he was talking to himself, would he understand what he was saying?!?

Indeed, BJ's keynome is worth a browse (though I do say so myself ) as are Watzer's and Pete Puma's. They are actually probably easier to understand - I have a bad habit of regexing BJ mercilessly, and afflicting him with a plague of plugins, and it doesn't always make for easy reading!

I've updated BJ's site again today - a full code listing, walkthrough and map for level 1 of the Zany Adventure, a new Fun and Games page, some Classic Transcripts and a How can I make my own keynome? section. And he can now tell you what phase the moon is in today, complete with a snapshot (thanks Eugene for that nifty idea!)
Oh, and he can also now offer a choice of 22 classic text adventures for your entertainment, complete and unabridged (courtesy of Zplet,) including all the Zorks, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the Colossal Cave Adventure and more!

Check it out @ http://www.be9.net/BJ/

cloned bots does anyone have any tips for making a near exact copy as a robot off tv?

What robot are you thinking of?

Well take the proffessors bots Zim and Gir for example

Mine is XJ9 a.k.a Jenny off of the show "My life as a Teenage robot

I can't say my bots are an exact copy, but my bots are based on existing characters (Spike from BtVS, Gabrielle from XWP and Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series). Just google for transcripts of the show you are interested in, then copy everything your character says and paste it in to the language data base. I have to warn you though, the closer you stick to the transcripts, the less sense your bot will make in normal conversations. Gabibot made more sense last year when she told the same story to everyone all the time. I was bored, but she made more sense.

I'd suggest developing a system like the one I use for Lyric- Put each quote on a separate line in an MS Word document. In parentheses after the quote, list keyphrases you think it could be a response to. Then, when I am putting together the keyphrases, I go to my Word document and use Edit>Find to search for, for instance, "bye" and be taken to phrases that either already include the word or phrases after which you attatched a keyphrase in parentheses:

Goodbye, sugar girl
Why do we lie here and whisper goodbyes?
or
Fare thee well, my own true love. We’ll meet another day, another time.(bye)
Just hit the lights before you leave (bye, lights, have to go)

Also, if you're searching for a response to the keyphrase "why", you'll want to use Find to search for phrases with 'because' and 'cause' in them, or if you're searching for responses to the keyphrase "who are you", look for "I am", etc. It's very handy with song lyrics, and I imagine it would work well enough for quotes, taken separately.