MSAgent: An Introduction

 

MSAgent has been around for a few years now, but I never really paid any attention to the technology. But a few weeks ago I came a cross the Microsoft Agent site and started checking it out. So I loaded VB and started playing round with the characters, not only was it easy to manipulate the characters but I was actually having fun. So I decided to write a tutorial on how to use MSAgent, I hope you enjoy it.

 

What is MSAgent

Microsoft® Agent is a set of programmable software services that supports the presentation of interactive animated characters within the Microsoft Windows® interface. Microsoft Agent enables software developers and Web authors to incorporate a new form of user interaction, known as conversational interfaces, that leverages natural aspects of human social communication. In addition to mouse and keyboard input, Microsoft Agent includes optional support for speech recognition so applications can respond to voice commands. Characters can respond using synthesized speech, recorded audio, or text in a cartoon word balloon.

What you need

You can use MSAgent in several programming environments, VB, VC++ , Java and HTML. We will be exploring all four in this tutorial. But in order to use MSAgent you must have several items on your computer, if you do not have these items don't worry you can download then off Microsoft's site for free.

• Microsoft Agent Core Components
• Microsoft Agent Characters Files
• Text-to-Speech Engine
• Speech Recognition Engines

You can download these files here. They total approximately 9MB.

 

Lets get started

So lets get started with our first program, we will be using the Merlin character. So start up VB and add the Agent control to your form and add the code below.

Private Sub Form_Load()
Dim MSAgent As IAgentCtlCharacterEx
Dim Character As String

Character= "Merlin"
Agent1.Characters.Load Character, Character & ".acs"
Set MSAgent = Agent1.Characters(Character)
MSAgent.MoveTo 300, 150
MSAgent.Show
MSAgent.Speak "How are you today"
MSAgent.SoundEffectsOn = True
MSAgent.Hide
End Sub

What does all that code mean?

1. Dim MSAgent As IAgentCtlCharacterEx - This is the Agent Object that we need to create.
2. Dim Character As String - This is the string that will hold the name of our characters. This way we don't have to Dim each character.
3. Character= "Merlin" - This is the character we will be using, Microsoft comes with 4 character, Merlin, Robby, Genie and Peedy. You can get other characters around the web or you can create your own. More on that later.
4. Agent1.Characters.Load Character, Character & ".acs" - This line of code loads the character we specified in the "Character" string. using the Character & ".acs" will tell VB to look for Merlin in the default directory which is . Windows\Msagnet\Chars.
5. Set MSAgent = Agent1.Characters(Character) - assign an object reference to a variable.
6. MSAgent.MoveTo 300, 150 - This will move Marlin 300 pixels over and 150 pixels down when Merlin loads.
7. MSAgent.Show -  This code show the Merlin character.
8. MSAgent.Speak "How are you today" - This is what Merlin will say when it loads.
9. MSAgent.SoundEffectsOn = True - This turns the sound effects on and off
10. MSAgent.Hide - Merlin will disappear

 

Animations

All Agents come with standard animations, such as "load" or "hide".  For the Merlin character, the following animations exist:

Acknowledge Alert AlertReturn Announce AnnounceReturn Blink Confused ConfusedReturn Congratulate CongratulateReturn Congratulate_2 Decline DeclineReturn DoMagic1 DoMagic2 DoMagicReturn DontRecognize DontRecognizeReturn Explain ExplainReturn GestureDown GestureDownReturn GestureLeft GestureLeftReturn GestureRight GestureRightReturn

GestureUp GestureUpReturn GetAttention GetAttentionReturn GlanceDown GlanceLeft GlanceRight GlanceUp Greet GreetReturn Hear_1 Hear_2 Hear_3 Hear_4 Hide Idle1_1 Idle1_2 Idle1_3 Idle1_4 Idle2_1 Idle2_2 Idle3_1 Idle3_1Return Idle3_2 LookDown

LookDownBlink LookDownReturn LookLeft LookLeftBlink LookLeftReturn LookRight LookRightBlink LookRightReturn LookUp LookUpBlink LookUpReturn MoveDown MoveDownReturn MoveLeft MoveLeftReturn MoveRight MoveRightReturn MoveUp MoveUpReturn Pleased PleasedReturn Processing* ProcessingReturn Read ReadContinued ReadReturn

Reading* ReadingReturn RestPose Sad SadReturn Searching* SearchingReturn Show StartListening StartListeningReturn StopListening StopListeningReturn Suggest SuggestReturn Surprised SurprisedReturn Think ThinkReturn Uncertain UncertainReturn Wave WaveReturn Write WriteContinued WriteReturn Writing* WritingReturn

 

You can get the animations for the other 3 characters at the links below. Over the next 4 weeks we will be using animations and commands to manipulate MSAgent.

Animations for Genie Character
Animations for Robby Character
Animations for Peedy Character

 

Commands

Play

Using the play command the character will mimic what's in the quotes, below are some of the commands you can use with Play.

Play (Actions)

• MSAgent.Play "Write" -  The character writes and then stops
• MSAgent.Play "Writing" - The character will continue writing until the stop command.
• MSAgent.Play "Read" - The character reads a book and then stops.
• MSAgent.Play "Reading" The character will continue reading until the stop command.
• MSAgent.Play "Process" - Depending on the character, Merlin stirs the Kettle.
• MSAgent.Play "Processing" - The character will continue processing until the stop command.
• MSAgent.Play "Search" - The character looks like its searching for something
• MSAgent.Play "Searching" - The character will continue searching until the stop command.
• MSAgent.Play "Idle1_1" The character just stands there idle.

Play (Facial expressions)

These command will display facial expressions on the characters face.

• MSAgent.Play "Acknowledge" - The character bows to acknowledge you.
• MSAgent.Play "Blink" - The character blinks its eyes
• MSAgent.Play "Confusd" - The character looks confused
• MSAgent.Play "Sad" - The character looks sad
• MSAgent.Play "Suprised" - The character looks suprised

This is just a few of the Play commands and what they can do, downloading the animations will give you the full list for each character.

Speak

You use the speak command when you want your character to speak. It will say anything with in the quotes. Of course you have to have download and installed the Text-toSpeach program.

MSAgent.Speak "Hello everyone"

Think

This command will use the bubble to show the text.

MSAgent.Think "I wonder what they said"

Movement

This command will move your character to the position specified in the MoveTo command.

MSAgent.MoveTo 300,150

 

Speech Output Tags

The speech output tags has the following  tags. These tags are are primarily designed for adjusting text-to-speech. Only the Mrk and Map tags can be used with sound file-based spoken output.

Chr - Sets the character of the voice - String that excepts the following,  "Normal", "Monotone" and "Whisper".

Ctx - Sets the context of the output text. - String that excepts the following, "Address", "Email", "Unknown".

Emp -Emphasizes the next word spoken. This tag must immediately precede the word. The syntax is \Emp\ ("\Emp\Hello there")

Lst - Repeats last spoken statement for the character. The syntax is \Lst\ ("Hello \Lst\there")

Map - Maps spoken text to text displayed in the word balloon. The syntax is \Map="spokentext"="balloontext"\

Mrk - Defines a bookmark in the spoken text. The syntax is \Mrk=number\

Pau - Pauses speech for the specified number of milliseconds. The syntax is \Pau=number\  between 10 to 2550 milliseconds.

Rst - Resets all tags to the default settings The syntax is \Rst\

Spd - Sets the baseline average talking speed of the speech output The syntax is \Spd=number\ . The number is between 50 - 250.

Vol - Sets the baseline speaking volume of the speech output. The syntax is \Vol = Number\. The number is between 0 -65535.

Examples:

MSAgent.Speak "\Chr=""Whisper""\Good evening everyone"'Since the Speak command also accepts strings you have to use double quotes for the Whisper command.

MSAgen.Speak "\Ctx=""Address""Test@Test.com-The character will speak the name of the email address instead of spelling com and leaving out the dot.