Following on from Nicks chat with me about the direction PaedoBot is taking, I’ve decided to have PaedoBot simulate a 12 year old girls presence on the internet, this involves making a web page for the ‘personality’, an auto email responder so the ‘personality’ can reply to emails and a msn chatbot

As I type this I’m sitting in bed on my laptop, I’ve just finished the first ‘draft’ of my animation for CGA so it’s time to crack on with something else. Today I’m going to be making an auto-responder in python for PaedoBot. I do have an auto responder on the CPanel on my website but it’s not very good, it only has 3 functions and I don’t know how to edit the code so I’ve decided to make one myself. I chose Python because as I was searching for various pre-made examples in PHP there were a few tutorials on connecting to email via POP3 and SMTP. I have got these up and running, so it shouldn’t be too hard to read from a message, then work out what it says, find the responses for the message and send it back to the same email address. I’m considering making an app which would allow for a GUI to make things a little less complicated for the user, but this may not happen.

If I can get the auto responder working I’m pretty sure it will encounter loads of issues for instance:

1. Junk email’s which cannot be replied to
2. Grammatical errors due to the way the user types their emails
3. not being able to handle attachments such as images or HTML based emails

I’m pretty sure that I could work a way round these issues though, possibly through the use of a set layout for the output email and blacklisting junk emails.

It had to happen sometime(strangely a few hours after I say I’ve found a new template :p)
So the new PaedoBot prototype is up and working.
A few notes for this prototype:

1. This is a new system so expect some bugs
2. There are special keywords you can enter (paedobot_help) that will allow you to control the application from within the input box
3. I haven’t added many phrases yet so be prepared for many a ‘I don’t understand’
4. I will be releasing prototype 2.5 at the end of this week, which will feature real video as well (hopefully) a new skin.

That’s all for this update, stay tuned for more

I stated in my last post that Prototype 2 would have to be coded in Actionscript 2. I have for the past week or so been trying (and failing) to work out how to upgrade my existing project to Actionscript 2 so I decided to have a look for another example (ask the first one I got off of my teacher without looking on the internet first.) I managed to track down something on a flash component site which is Actionscript 2. The only issue I have is that I’m going to have to learn how to add the video element to it all over again, and also the keyword file is laid out slightly different to the other template I was using. But at least it’s a start

Here’s a run down of stuff I hope to add to PaedoBot before I put up prototype 2:

1. Upgrade to Flash Player 8
2. Video Implementation
3. High Quality Graphics
4. A Few Changes to the way the system works (make it more human like.)

I also hope to get the site sorted out to give a darker edge along with some SEO to try and get people to view it

w00t! I finally got the video element of the app to work without screwing up the .xml loader. Now when you type in some input it will change the video to the ‘typing’ animation and then after it has played that it will go to the normal animation, while outputting it’s response.

You can check it out in the Prototypes Folder
I have found a few problems with the Eliza clone I am using, it was made using flash 6 so even though this allows me to target almost everyone with a flash plugin at the same time it means I cannot use either video that’s been imported straight into flash or any of the filters added in Flash 8. I think I’m going to have to look at a way of upgrading the file to atleast Flash Player 8 if not higher. Hopefully there are some tools out there which will let me do this.

I hope, I’ve just put up a project on Vimeo to try and get help filming the gawd-knows how many webcam videos I need to make PaedoBot’s random webcam generator to work perfectly.

The project guidelines are as follows, sit in front of your computer for 25 seconds, 20 seconds of this should be spent being ‘idle’ i.e. reading the screen, scratching, playing with your hair and the other 5 seconds should be spent typing a response. I can then loop the idle animation and then play the typing animation when needed.

I’m hoping I get a good response as the more videos the bigger the selection I can play with and the more realistic PaedoBot will seem.

I some form of desperate bid to get someone to notice my work I have decided to add PaedoBot’s development blog to Technorati. To do this I have to paste this code

Technorati Profile

Into this post so it can see it

And so it begins :P, Not exactly a day to mark in your diary (but if you want to it’s the 10th of November at 4:39 in the morning) but Paedobot has it’s own website and a blog *shocked expression* and maybe at some point tonight,this morning or whatever you want to call it, I might even give it it’s own special template.