I’m totally new to this - have just printed off the manual and tutorial and have started working my way through from the start.  I’ve downloaded the file and opened chatscript.exe
It opens on what I would call a dos window.

I’ve then managed to enter a user name and asked the questions as per the manual (page 4).

I then opened the RAWDATA/simpletopic.top file in WordPad and changed the name to Rachel.

I can’t save any changes to this file as it is protected.  So I then typed in “:build 1” in the dos window and got the following message back:

unable to create patternfile in the TOPIC subdirectory?  Make sure this directory exists and is writable.

Harry:
suzanne: >

So what am I doing wrong?  Any help would be most gratefully received.

Hi, Suzanne, and welcome to chatbots.org

First off, what operating system are you using on your computer? And are you running ChatScript on an account that has Administrator privileges? On some versions of Windows, it also matters where the file is run from, especially if your user account for Windows doesn’t have Admin level access.

the basics are that you need to have your chatscript directories (and the files you want to edit) not write protected. How you got in to that state is unknown.

Hi im just getting started with chatbots, just downloaded the chatscript zip file and it’s not working like the tutorial says it should. I enter username and it immediately jumps to answers about its childhood. It lists off 4 or 5 “phrases” in sequence of every input it gives me. then it goes to no response. the questions i should ask stop working. Heres part of the log.
input:13 Mon Apr 02 19:17:58 2012 No response generated -  What is your name? caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: What is your name?
No response generated -  What is your name?  in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:14 Mon Apr 02 19:18:04 2012 No response generated -  what is your name? caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: what is your name?
No response generated -  what is your name?  in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:15 Mon Apr 02 19:51:39 2012 No response generated -  what is your name caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: what is your name
No response generated -  what is your name   in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:16 Mon Apr 02 19:51:45 2012 No response generated -  whats your namr caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: whats your namr
No response generated -  whats your namr   in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:17 Mon Apr 02 19:51:49 2012 No response generated -  whats your name? caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: whats your name?
No response generated -  whats your name?  in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:18 Mon Apr 02 19:51:54 2012 No response generated -  Whats your name? caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: Whats your name?
No response generated -  Whats your name?  in USERS/fact_ralph.txt at 0:
input:19 Mon Apr 02 19:51:59 2012 No response generated -  What is your name? caller:ralph callee:harry in sentence: What is your name?
No response generated -  What is your name?

If you could help me out that would be great.

Not sure what went wrong in my saving the original zip…. but here’s how to recover….

1.  Empty the contents of your USERS folder (leaving the folder)
2. Run Chatscript.exe
3.  type :build 0 —- at the end when it tells you of warnings,  press any letter and then press ENTER
4.  type :build 1
5. Go ahead and ask “what is your name”

Ive just done that, but it is not responding to the question i ask it. I ask it first and it replies its name is harry, but only because it is the first line from its stuff to read off. I say something else, then ask the question again, but it continues down its list.

Without explicit scripting, you cannot ask ANYTHING twice and get the answer a second time. The system “erases” what it uses, unless you are a different user.

so the base “hello word” program is supposed to work as I’m describing it?
Sorry for the trouble

the base system will do this:

The system will respond with a Welcome to
ChatScript message.
4. Now enter: What is your name? – you get My name is Harry if you type this
correctly. You can also ask How was your childhood? and what are you afraid of
and what is your history

It will not do multiple answers to the same question

not multiple answers to the same question, but shouldnt i be able to ask the same question and get the same answer? (or do you mean it will only give each response one time) Other than that it is working a LOT better after I rebuilt the program as you said and I’m making my way through the tutorials.

It is a default feature that you CANNOT get it to repeat itself. So no. 
After it makes a response, it erases that rule (in general)

I’m afraid not, RJ. Once the bot uses “My name is Harry”, that response is “erased” from memory, and the script searches for another suitable response. If it finds one, that response is used, and then it’s “erased” from the list of usable responses, and so on until there are no more responses to use. Once there are no suitable responses to a particular input, then you’ll get a “default” response (usually “I don’t know what to say”).

The only way to correct this (this is not a bug, BTW… Just an incomplete bot) is to write a more extensive set of bot files, to actually create a usable chatbot. Everyone that wants to create a bot using ChatScript has to go through this process though, so don’t feel bad. We all had to go through it. I’ve got a project on the back-burner to create a “generic” bot, with no personality, but that can answer (and ask) simple questions, but it’s still in the very early stages, due to limitations on my free time. I doubt it will get to a stage where it can be released for at least a year, and even that may be a bit optimistic.

From the looks of it, though, your bot is working the way it was intended. If you want to continually ask your bot the same question, type in :build 1 and <ENTER> (the key, not the word) and then follow tutorial steps again.