MrClippy

[ChristianH]

Hi,

it is technically just a proof of concept to introduce some sort of "AI" driven agent in one of our projects. Say hello to Mr. Clippy:
https://github.com/TetrisSQC/MrClippy/tree/main

I won't use it in the final project, but I currently use this for testing. Besides most of the users I liked this little fellow in office in the early 2000's. I still think this kind of technique help to take the fear of users forced to deal with something new.

Christian

[MarkMLl]

That link's a 404.

MarkMLl

[ChristianH]

Yes sorry, you are right it was set to private. I fixed that.

[MarkMLl]

Build and operation OK on Linux x86_64.

Nice animation... are you sure that's GPL-safe, or are you assuming that since MS play fast and loose with Github content that everything's OK?

Apart from that, what are your plans in the longer term?

MarkMLl

[PascalDragon]

Nice animation... are you sure that's GPL-safe, or are you assuming that since MS play fast and loose with Github content that everything's OK?

Probably based on this or this. I personally wouldn't distribute them in some final application either, but the format could be used for custom agents as well (I recently implemented such an agent system at work as well for the fun of it ).

[Remy Lebeau]

Good to see there is still some interest in MSAgents after all these years 

(from a fellow MSAgent enthusiast)

[MarkMLl]

Probably based on this or this. I personally wouldn't distribute them in some final application either, but the format could be used for custom agents as well (I recently implemented such an agent system at work as well for the fun of it ).

So much work has gone into that sort of thing using e.g. Blender over the last few years, that I presume making a replacement set of animations would be comparatively easy.

MarkMLl

[alaa123456789]

Hi,

it is technically just a proof of concept to introduce some sort of "AI" driven agent in one of our projects. Say hello to Mr. Clippy:
https://github.com/TetrisSQC/MrClippy/tree/main

I won't use it in the final project, but I currently use this for testing. Besides most of the users I liked this little fellow in office in the early 2000's. I still think this kind of technique help to take the fear of users forced to deal with something new.

Christian

very nice , thanks for your efforts , could you explain the principle , what is in the .RES file , how can we make another characters?
regards

[ChristianH]

The res file just has a png in it and a small text file which is based on a very simple format:

AnimationTitle=Frames comma separated

The Width and Height of the Agent is fixed at the moment.

It was really just a proof of concept to explain some values in an application and point the user to the specification used for the calculation. Something like: This value here (clippy appears and points to it) is the result based on the following spec mentioned under section x.
I still like the idea of virtual agents, even if this whole office agent system horribly failed in office. Imho Microsoft's implementation fooled and offended the most users, but not because it was there it was just the content offered as help. 

[MarkMLl]

I don't think I ever used MS Office while that feature (creature? :-) was present, but I think that the main objection to this sort of thing is that it distracts from or obscures the user's work. This can be particularly irritating to a fast and experienced user starting to use a new piece of software

I think in all cases it needs to be kept well clear of the focus, and should never- under any circumstances whatsoever- capture it unbidden.

At the same time, if the user decides to administer the coup de grace to some intrusive UI feature, there should be some intuitive way of re-enabling it... at least on a temporary basis.

MarkMLl

[alaa123456789]

The res file just has a png in it and a small text file which is based on a very simple format:

AnimationTitle=Frames comma separated

The Width and Height of the Agent is fixed at the moment.

It was really just a proof of concept to explain some values in an application and point the user to the specification used for the calculation. Something like: This value here (clippy appears and points to it) is the result based on the following spec mentioned under section x.
I still like the idea of virtual agents, even if this whole office agent system horribly failed in office. Imho Microsoft's implementation fooled and offended the most users, but not because it was there it was just the content offered as help.

it is good idea to have some animated interaction in the software it kill the boring , where did you get all these png ? and can you explain the text file , i am will to learn how to make another character
thanks

[Remy Lebeau]

where did you get all these png ?

It looks like pre-existing MSAgent v2 .acs character files have been decompiled, and had their individual animation BMP images extracted and concatenated together into a single PNG, and their animation WAV audio clips extracted and converted into JS embedded data:audio/mpeg and data:audio/ogg links.