Verbot 5 Released Today

[Matt]

We are very excited to announce the release of version 5 of the Verbot Application. This new version is upgraded to use .NET 2.0 and we have removed the registration requirement for the scripting editor; Verbot 5 is completely free and fully functional. We have also made improvements so that when Windows 7 is released, the verbot will work even without MS Agent installed.

If you would like to download this version before the downloads.com page is updated, you can download Verbot 5 directly here.

We are in the process of updating Verbots online to support the new Verbot 5 ckb format (it is not backwards compatible so any new .ckb files you create in the Verbot 5 editor will not work in Verbot 4), so hold off on publishing your new compiled files to Verbots Online until we have made the upgrade.

Thank you for your patience, we know an update like this has been long overdue and we hope this new free version will increase interest in the Verbot product.

-Matt, Aaron, and the rest of the Conversive Development Team

[Matt]

Downloads.com now has the Verbot 5 version available for download and since the initial release we have found and fixed a couple of bugs related to backwards compatibility in the Verbot 5 (loading old Verbot 4 ckb files would cause strange matching and sometimes not work at all).

This new release (version 5.0.0.1) is available as an autoupdate, simply run the Verbot 5 player while connected to the internet and it will download this latest version.

Thanks to Sylvain for helping us track down this bug by promptly reporting it!

[Matt]

The upgrade of the Verbots Online system is now complete today and should work for uploading both verbot 4 and verbot 5 ckb files.

You will not see many other visual differences in the Verbots Online system, but future updates will be much easier to roll out because we've upgraded the website to newer technology.

thanks for your patience while we completed this upgrade,
-Matt

[Matt]

Thanks for the bug reports and additional information from from thelackey3326, ender, and junfanjohn on a serious bug affecting editing inputs in the Verbot 5 editor which would cause a crash when a synonym file is included as a resource. The bug has been found and a new release of the Verbot 5 has just been published (version 5.0.0.2), you should be able to auto-update by running the Verbot 5 player.

thanks again for the help and patience of the community!
-Matt

[Matt]

Verbot 5 version 5.0.0.3 was just released which fixes a bug in the verbot skin editor, thanks to Mitch38 for finding and reporting this issue.

As usual, auto-update by running the Verbot 5 player.

-Matt

[Matt]

Verbot 5 version 5.0.0.4 was just released which adds a new feature to allow for powerful event-type global processing in the Verbot.

This feature has been requested quite a bit and it has now been fully implemented and released.

The following posts are where the feature was requested:
Detect "no output found"
"Output not found" rule
Script block to run before processing rules...

To use this new feature you must create a new Code Module File with the module name being: "VerbotStandard" (the file name doesn't matter).
Inside the VerbotStandard code module the following functions can be defined to control the behavior of the Verbot on a global level:

Code: Select all

Function Name: OnBeforeRuleFired
Parameters: State s
Return Type: string


Code: Select all

Function Name: OnAfterRuleFired
Parameters: State s, Reply r
Return Type: string


Code: Select all

Function Name: OnNoRuleFired
Parameters: State s, Reply r
Return Type: string


Code: Select all

Function Name: OnNoOutputFound
Parameters: Hashtable vars, Reply r
Return Type: string


All of these methods fire if they exist at the appropriate times. Note that all of the methods can return void alternatively if the reply text doesn't need to be modified.

Please see the Sample Verbot Standard code module download for a complete sample of the usage.

[Matt]

Verbot 5 Version 5.0.0.5 has just been released, it includes bug fixes when using the Conversive Characters.
Here are the two fixes
- Now when using Conversive Characters sending a new input will "Interrupt" the talking character instead of allowing it to finish it's current output, this is so it behaves more like when using MS Agents and the online Verbots version.
- Now the Conversive Characters properly keep an animation going that is enabled for speech even between sentences or when there is a silence (thanks to Leseur Sylvain for reporting this bug).

The new version is available for autoupdate by running the Verbot 5 player.

[Matt]

Verbots version 5.0.1.0 has just been released.

It includes a new feature that has been requested by forum users which is to mute the microphone while the avatar is speaking in order for the Verbot to work better when used with speech recognition. This new feature can be activated in the options window under the "Avatar" tab.

It also includes a fix for a bug report by Sylvain that caused _blank inputs to no longer be fired.

As always, the new version is available for autoupdate by running the Verbot 5 player.

[Matt]

Verbots version 5.0.1.1 has just been released.

This version fixes the new "Mute Microphone while speaking" feature so that it works in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

You can see more about this feature and some of the technical details in this post.

As always, the new version is available for autoupdate by running the Verbot 5 player.

[Matt]

Verbots version 5.0.1.2 has just been released.

Version 5.0.1.2 fixes a crash on windows 7 related to using the mouse scroll wheel in the editor and also changes the behavior of how the engine fires child rules between knowledge bases (read more about this change in this post).