CyberBuddy
Command Reference
This
document is intended for advanced users.
CyberBuddy
can read standard text and Web documents. But CyberBuddy can do much more when
a document is written or converted to a format that is designed specifically
for CyberBuddy. This is done by adding "tags" or text commands to
tell CyberBuddy to do various things.
CyberBuddy Formatted Documents
When
the document is saved with an extension of .cbb, Windows will recognize it as a
CyberBuddy document and will "hand" the document to CyberBuddy to be
read.
A
CyberBuddy text document can be viewed or edited in something as simple as
Windows Notepad. The format of the document is simply a text document with some
"command tags" that direct the Activities of the Agent character. The
CyberBuddy Story Builder simplifies the task of adding the command tags and provides
a way to test the document as it is created.
The
CyberBuddy Story Builder will generate most of the following commands for you.
Using the Story Builder, you can create documents to be read by CyberBuddy
without having to worry about the syntax of the commands.
Microsoft Agent Imbedded commands
The following tags are imbedded speech commands that
are recognized by the Microsoft agent server. They are common agent commands
that will work with most agent programs.
The emphasize tag
You
can emphasize a word by putting \emp\ before the word. For example: This is an
\emp\important word.
The Pause tag
A
pause can provide emphasis. To add a pause use the tag \pau=xxx\, where xxx is
the time to pause in milliseconds (1/1000 of a second). For example: Knock!
Knock! \pau=1000\ Whose there? This would put a 1 second pause after Knock!
Knock! Remember, the time is in milliseconds so 500 = 1/2 second, 1000 = 1
second and so forth.
The whisper tag
You
can make the character whisper by putting \chr="whisper"\ before the
text to be whispered. All text after this, to the end of the line, will be
whispered. For example: \chr="whisper"\ This line will be whispered.
The Monotone tag
This
causes the character to speak in a monotone. Place the tag \chr="monotone"\
before text to be spoken. All text after that command, on that line, will be
spoken in monotone.
Word Mapping
Sometimes,
a word must be misspelled in order for it to be pronounced correctly. The
Microsoft agent server contains a tag that allows a word to be spelled
differently for pronouncing the word and for showing the word in the word
balloon. This is called the "map" tag. The format is as follows:
\map="spoken"="written"\
- This tag statement allows words to be seen in the message balloon differently
than they will be spoken. For example:
The \map="whinnd"="wind"\ is
blowing.
Gives the correct pronunciation for the word
"wind".
CyberBuddy Specific Tags
The remaining tags are specific to CyberBuddy. Unless
otherwise noted, these commands must appear at the start of a text line, and
may be the only item on that line.
The "Gesture" tag
Making the character animate with certain
gestures will enhance your message. If you put '&&' at the start of a
line immediately followed by an Agent standard gesture, the character will
perform the gesture. For example: &&Explain will cause the character to
assume the "explain" pose. The Gesture command must be alone on a
line. Some other common gestures are: &&Gestureleft (&&Gestureright,
&&Gestureup, &&Gesturedown) &&Pleased &&Sad
&&Greet &&read &&write &&confused
&&getattention &&decline &&lookright
(&&lookleft, &&lookup, &&lookdown);
A List of Some Agent
Gestures[link=GestureList] is
included at the end of this section.
There
are a few gesture commands that are not a standard Agent gestures. These
gestures will only work with CyberBuddy:
The "fly" gesture. &&fly will
cause the character to move to a random position on the screen.
The "wait" gesture. &&wait
inserted in the text will cause the agent to wait until the text has been read
to that point before continuing. Normally, when text and gestures are sent to
the character's Agent Server, they are queued by the Agent server and delivered
sequentially. This frees the program up to continue with it's other tasks.
There are times when it is desirable to have the program wait until the Agent
server finishes speaking the queued text. This command accomplishes that. Use
it sparingly as the program will keep from doing other things when these tags
are imbedded in the document being read.
The "Move to" and
"Appear" tags. These tags will cause the character
to move to, or appear at a position on the screen. The format of the tag is
&&moveto or &&appear followed by a position. The standard
positions are: topright, topleft, bottomright, bottomleft, center. Example:
&&movetobottomright will move the character to the bottom right corner
of the screen.
In
addition, the character can be moved, or appear at a position relative to it's
current position. This is accomplished with a "delta" command taking
the place of the position statement. The format for this command is
&&movetodelta10&&15 where the 10 is the number of pixels to
move in the X axis (horizontal) and the 15 is the number of pixels to move in
the Y axis (vertical). Note that these numbers can be negative numbers as well
such as: &&appeardelta-10&&-15.
The name tag
If
you put in ## a line of text, the ## will be replaced by the name of the
CyberBuddy user. For example: Hello ##, how are you today? The ## tag may appear anywhere in text.
The Raise Pitch tag
If
you put a "^+" at the start of a line, that line will be read with a
higher pitch. This is especially effective when there is quoted text from a
child or woman. For example: ^+"How was work today Honey?"
said
the wife.
"Just great" said the husband.
Wait time tag
The
wait time tag can be used to cause the character to wait a specific amount of
time before continuing. The format for this tag is %% followed by the desired
wait time in milliseconds. For example:
%%8000 would wait 8 seconds.
Sound effects tag
To
play a sound effect in the CyberBuddy text place a &&SFX command
followed by the filename of the sound effect. The file is assumed to be a wav
or mid in the same folder as CyberBuddy. Example: &&SFXmysound.wav
Background Sound tag
This
tag is similar to the Sound Effects tag as shown above. The difference is that
it specifies a midi file instead of a wave sound file. Due to the way sound
cards operate, midi files (.mid) can be played at the same time as the agent is
speaking while wave sound files (.wav) may not be played at the same time as
speaking. This makes midi files perfect for background music. Since the midi
file will be normally used as background music, the tag for this type of file
also includes a volume command. This sets the volume of the midi music file as
a percentage of total volume. A volume change may be issued again later to
change the volume of the music as it is playing. The format of the background
music tag is: &&SFXmymusic.mid=volume=50 where mymusic.mid is the midi
music file and 50 means volume of the midi music at 50%.
If
you want the music to start at a specific point, or change volume at a certain
point, you need to have a "wait" animation command (&&wait)
on the line before the midi command. This will tell the Agent to wait until the
speech has caught up to that point before changing the background music. To
stop background music at a point, change the volume level to 0.
Try
the "Take a Tour" on the "About" tab of CyberBuddy for an
example of sound effects and background music.
Background Volume tag
This
tag can be used to change the volume of a background midi music file that is
playing. The format for the tag is: &&SFX=volume=50 where 50 means
volume of the midi music at 50%. Note that this volume tag will only change the
volume of the background music. A value of 100 will be full volume. A value of
0 will stop the current music.
See
the note above. A "Wait" animation command (&&wait) should
appear on the line above this volume change command.
The comment / special command tag
A $$
at the start of a line indicates a comment or special command. The text on this
line will not be spoken by the character. You can use it to add comments to
yourself in the text. Some special commands using the comment identifier are:
Character Change command
This
is a complex command that is best generated by the CyberBuddy Story Builder. It
is documented here for information purposes. The character change command is
$$CC followed by the character information. A typical command looks like:
$$CCMerlin&&ca141fd0-ac7f-11d1-97A3-006008273000&&80&&152&&10
The
command contains; the name of the character, the text to speech Voice ID, voice
pitch(1-400), voice speed(50-230), character size (1-20 10 is normal size).
When
CyberBuddy sees this command, it checks to see if the character is available on
the user's computer. If so, the character is loaded. If not, this command is
ignored. It next checks to see if the indicated voice ID is available. If so,
it is loaded. If not, the default voice for the character is used.
Preload statement
Tells
CyberBuddy to load sound effects etc. from a web site before reading the
document.
If
you are creating a web document that has sound effects, CyberBuddy has to know
where to find the sound files. This is handled by the preload statement. This
statement must be the first line in a CyberBuddy document. The statement
contains the preload statement followed by the URL of the web site containing
the sound files. Example:
$$preload
http://thecyberbuddy.com/stories/.
When
this statement is seen by CyberBuddy, as the first line in the document,
CyberBuddy will scan the document looking for any required sound files. It will
then check to see if it already has the desired sound file. If not, it will
download these files to the CyberBuddy folder. This is done so that when the
document is read, there will be no interruption when a sound effect is
encountered.
The following tags are specialized tags primarily used
by CyberBuddy for instruction or a tour of the program. As such, it is rare
that you will need to use them. To see an example of how these tags are used,
look at the file tour.ahf or tour.cbb in the CyberBuddy folder. This is a text
file that can be opened with Notepad.
Show Tab tag
The
^^ tag is used to display a particular Tab page of the CyberBuddy program. The
^^ is followed by the name of the Tab. Valid tab names are: about, general,
time(news tab), reminder, read, send, icq(buddies tab), email, stocks, www.
Show at control tag
This
command is a @@ followed by text, followed by && followed by a
component name in CyberBuddy. This causes CyberBuddy to point to a specific
control in the CyberBuddy program and speak the text. An intimate knowledge of
the various controls within CyberBuddy is necessary and this command is only
used in the "tour of the program". To see how this tag is used, look
at the tour.ahf file in the CyberBuddy folder. A variation of this tag is shown
next. It can be used to load web pages while CyberBuddy is speaking.
Load web page command.
If
the user is online, this command can be used to load a specific web page in the
user's browser as CyberBuddy speaks. The format for this command is @@ followed
by any text to be spoken, followed by &&www, followed by the full URL
of the desired web page. For example:
@@
Here is the CyberBuddy homepage &&wwwhttp://thecyberbuddy.com
[#=GestureList]List of Some Agent Character Gestures
The following gesture commands, preceeded
on a line by &&, will cause the Agent Character to perform the gesture.
For example: &&explain
Acknowledge
Alert
Announce
AppearBottomLeft
AppearBottomRight
AppearCenter
AppearTopLeft
AppearTopRight
Blink
Confused
Congratulate
Decline
DoMagic1
DoMagic2
DontRecognize
Explain
Fly
GestureDown
GestureLeft
GestureRight
GestureUp
GetAttention
Greet
Hide
HideFast
LookDown
LookLeft
LookRight
LookUp
Monotone
MoveDown
MoveToBottomLeft
MoveToBottomRight
MoveToCenter
MoveToTopLeft
MoveToTopRight
MoveUp
Pleased
Process
Read
RestPose
Sad
Search
Show
StartListening
Suggest
Surprised
Think
Uncertain
Wait
Wave
Write