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What's new in Ultra Hal Assistant 6.2.28 since 6.2.24:
- Released September 18, 2009
- Windows 7 compatibility under both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
- Performance issues of Haptek characters in multi-core systems fixed
- Improvements to Hal's insult detection routines
- Spelling mistakes fixed in the Ultra Hal Assistant UI
What's new in Ultra Hal Assistant 6.2.24 since 6.1:
- Hal's brain and database now incorporates many concepts and phrases taught in the book "Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases" by Grenville Kleiser, Copyright 1917 now in public domain
- Hal's low quality response routines (what Hal says when he isn't sure how to respond) have been reworked to sound less random, offer more variety, and use phrases taught by Grenville Kleiser
- Hal can do unit conversions (How many feet is 2 miles? What is 30 degrees fahrenheit in celcius? How many cups in a liter?)
- Native support of IBM ViaVoice's SMAPI interface
- When speech recognition is enabled, microphone is automatically muted when Hal is speaking and unmuted when Hal finishes
- New speech recognition command mode allows you to bring up Hal with a voice command, close Hal, turn dictation on and off, and clear the line to retry saying something before Hal responds
- Optional loneliness plug-in is available in Hal's brain options. It allows Hal to initiate a conversation with the user if the user hasn't said anything for a while.
- Hal Brain Editor sorts tables alphabetically
- Hal's licensing system is less touchy to real or perceived hardware changes, especially in Vista.
- Various bug fixes including minute timer problems
What's new in Ultra Hal Assistant 6.1 since 6.0:
- New advanced learn from text/learn from clipboard wizard added to hal brain editor. Works especially well on wikipedia articles.
- Compatibiliy with Windows Vista as Hal 6.0 does not work normally in Vista, also better support for XP under limited user access
- Unlimited and automatic reactivations on the same hardware configuration in event of license corruption, should reduce many license support issues
- In addition to Hal's current skinable interface, an option was added to let Hal use a standard OS Window with whatever the standard Windows theme is.
- Added "Select All" and "Deselect All" button to plug-in selector
- Direct method to get support from inside Hal in event of license issue, streamlined on Zabaware's end also, will improve our turnaround time in getting back to customers with licensing issues
- Ability to mute and unmute mic from script <MICON> or <MICOFF> or <MICTOGGLE> halcommands
- HalCommand for playing MSAgent animations and moving Agent: <MSAGENT>ANIM-NAME</MSAGENT> and <AGENTXY>X,Y</AGENTXY>
- Automatic upgrade from Hal 6.0 to 6.1. All brain and data files are kept in tact during upgrade.
- Improved logic to Readsent function in HalBrain.DLL
- Added a window listener to receive HalCommand from any windows app capable of sending messages
- Compatibility with SAPI 5 with MSAgents under Vista only
- GetHyponyms function added to HalBrain.DLL WordNet object (used by learn from text, noun & verbs only)
- Hidden changes to Hal's graphics plug-in system that will allow for future alternative graphics engines to be used.
- Auto-idle and appointment minute timer is temporarily disabled while Hal's options pane is open to fix focus bug
- Fixed several logic errors and made minor improvements in script
- Fixed Hal crash if speech engine does not have pronunciation option dialog and made error message friendlier
- Unchecking "Hal uses speech synthesis" now disables Hal's speech no matter what character engine/speech engine combination is used
- Fixed bug in autolearning routine where sometimes blank responses were learned
- Fixed bug in autolearning routine where both singular and plural of a word were recorded in seperate tables instead of one
- Updated splash screens, welcome doc, and about screen to reflect version 6.1 and year 2007
- No character option as character plug-in. Allows custom jpeg to be displayed instead and also displays sapi 5 viseme info.
- Fixed bug where Hal would stop working correctly after loading/saving document in HalPad
- Fixed several script errors that caused Hal to generate blank responses or pop up script error messages
- If Ultra Hal Text-to-speech reader is installed, it communicates its settings to Hal Assistant to prevent overlap of read clipboard & read dialog features.
- SAPI 5 voices are now labeled as "SAPI 5" instead of "NO 2D Lip Sync"
- Shut down sequence of Ultra Hal improved to prevent occasional hanging mid-shutdown
- If a 2nd instance of Hal is started, the new instance asks the original instance to show itself and then shuts the duplicate instance down. If unable to communicate with original instance it suggests to user to use task manager to end process.
What's new in Ultra Hal Assistant 6.0 since 5.0:
Hal has undergone some major changes under the hood. The end result is Hal learns better, stays on topic better, has a virtually unlimited capacity to learn, and makes more connections between words. Hal's overall intelligence level is much higher. Hal's knowledge is increased also as Hal's conversational database is almost twice as large as in version 5.
The most significant changes occured to Hal's database system and plugin system. This makes it easier for people to create plugins and gives you, the user, more control over these plugins.
In more detail, the following changes have been made since 5.0:- The entire brain has been converted to run off of an SQL database based on the SQLite engine. This allows for brains to grow to a much larger size without speed compromises, allows for better multi-user support with AIMbot, and since it is database driven it no longer scatters hundreds of .brn files in the DefBrain folder.
- Hal now allows you to change your name in conversation and automatically determines your gender.
- All of Hal's internal AI algorithms have been improved to make a greater use of the WordNet database
- Hal's topic focus routine has been expanded to automatically learn and focus on topics based on WordNet, drastically improving Hal's intelligence and learning capabilities.
- A new on-the-fly plug-in system has been developed allowing the user to enable and disable small code snippets from Hal's options menu. Hal's major assistant functions including Hal's appointment reminding feaure, address/phone/email book, run program feature, weather checking, and internet search feature have been converted to fully run through a script environment using this new system.
- Hal's options menu has been redesigned to take advantage of this new plug-in scripting system as well as make way for a yet unimplemented plug-in browser.
- A plugin has been created allowing the user to set Hal's gender and age from the general options.
- Various bug fixes such as appointment feature not working correctly outside of USA
Major changes in the Ultra Hal Brain Editor since Hal 5.0: - The Ultra Hal Brain Editor has been completely redesigned from scratch to support the new SQLite database system
- The brain editor automatically shows you all contents of a Hal brain database in a treeview format, no longer requiring for the format to be defined in a UHP file.
- The brain editor allows for direct editing of all records contained in its tables, and allows for importation of old style .brn files
- The debugger automatically shows you Hal's entire thought process for each sentence.
- The script editor aids in programming by providing object memberlist information while programming and autocompletion of code, it also automatically hyperlinks all references to tables in the database, which makes editing the table data only 1 click away at any time.
- Displays member list help popups while programming.
Major changes in the Ultra Hal Aim Bot since Hal 5.0: - Supports the AOL TOC 2.0 protocol, is no longer kicked off of AOL
- Supports Hal 6.0 and prior version brains
- Supports delayed responses, simulating a human thinking and typing before sending a response.
- Supports Ultra Hal Assistant 6.0 on-the-fly plug-ins
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