History of ToonTalk Enhancements and Bug Fixes

History of ToonTalk Enhancements and Bug Fixes - 1999

Here is the list of bugs and enhancements in 1999. Similar lists for 1996, 1997, and 1998 are available as well.

If you already have ToonTalk and want the latest update then click here.

1/4/99

If a picture was given a speed while it was in a box then it appeared to move out of the box until you tried to pick the box up.
If a picture was dropped on the remote control for the looks of another picture, then the robots on the back of the dropped picture didn't run. And the appropriate sensors didn't notice that the picture was dropped.

1/5/99

If a robot on the back of a picture vacuums up his box, then he now is removed from the back of the picture. This is a good way of expressing the termination of one behavior on the back of a picture since using a bomb will destroy the picture.

1/10/99

If a robot was trained to flip a picture over, get out some remote controls, flip the picture back over, and add it to some other picture, then when he ran the picture was added so that its center is the where the lower left corner should be. This bug fixed itself when you pointed to the picture but now won't happen to start with.

1/23/99

If a robot was trained to take out the notebook of sensors and then drop it back in the main notebook, then sometimes when that robot was running in another house it caused a crash.
Under rare conditions ToonTalk crashed when a sensor was used in a house where the user wasn't.

1/27/99

On some systems dropping a box on a blank number pad caused errors. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
Sometimes you can hear Bammer's hammer make a sound even when he was in another house.
When you train a robot to place something on the roof, house, or wall decoration the placement and size was not a good default.
Robots can no longer be named 'fuc' in the American and UK version (once a new version of ustt??.dll and uktt??.dll are installed).
When you train a robot to drop a picture on a picture, the robot now drops the picture by default so that it is centered on the underlying picture.

1/28/99

Nearly 10 warnings or error messages reported by Marty used to say "A robot X", now he says "A robot named Y X".
Sensors in thought bubbles animated when the robot was placed on the back of a picture.
Sometimes when thought bubbles have collision detectors in them, the robots were not saved quite right. Sometimes all worked fine and sometimes strange things happened.
If a robot was trained to pick up the box he was given and set it down and then use it, he got confused when running on the back of a picture. Thanks to Ross Adamson for reporting this.
You can now erase a picture or a remote looks more than one time. (Still are other known bugs with remote looks still.)

1/29/99

Many changes to remote looks so that it and the picture it "controls" are kept in sync better. Especially if the remote is repeatedly erased and given a new appearance. Also changes in size of one is reflected in the other now.

1/2/99

When using Pumpy to make a picture a good size ('G'), the size no longer depends upon the history of the size changes to the picture but is a good size for that picture.

2/2/99

If you trained a robot to flip pages in a notebook he was holding and used shift-click (or right mouse button if enabled) then the robot didn't remember the page flips. Thanks to Ross Adamson for pointing this problem out.
Many more changes to remote looks so that it and the picture it "controls" are kept in sync better.
Robots shouldn't work on the front of pictures but by pressing 'f' twice very fast they sometimes do. If you save such a picture the robots go back to the backside where they belong. Thanks to Lennart Mogren for pointing this out.
If a city or notebook file has been corrupted (or saved by a buggy version of ToonTalk) then sometimes ToonTalk would crash when restarting or page flipping. Now the crash is often avoided but the object or city is probably not what it should be. Thanks to Miki Grahame for help here.

3/2/99

Still more changes to remote looks so that it and the picture it "controls" are kept in sync better.

5/2/99

Robots were confused when trained to drop a picture on an erased picture (to give it a new appearance).

15/2/99

Fixed a recently introduced a bug where Marty would give a spurious warning when flipping over number or text pads.

16/2/99

Fixed a recently introduced bug where the system would crash when shutting down. Caused by erasing pictures and giving them a new appearance.
ToonTalk would crash when saving a box with a picture inside with robots working on the back of the picture. Thanks to Kristian Johansson and Stefan Sennerö for sending an example of this.

17/2/99

A picture of a number in a box would get a zero width if in a box that was vacuumed and then spit out.
Saving a picture while robots were working on the back would sometimes fail.
A robot trained to pick up and drop the box he was given when running on the back of a picture would cause the box to disappear.
When a picture had a small or narrow picture on top when saved it might have become even smaller or narrower (so much so that it couldn't be seen).
Sometimes when a robot on the back of a picture used a vacuum the system crashed. Thanks to Miki Grahame for providing an example of this.
Pictures remember their size when dropped in a box so that when you take them out they animate to their previous size. This was broken if you saved a city or box with a picture in it.

18/2/99

If you saved a picture while flipped with robots and boxes on the back they became separated.
If you saved a picture while flipped then when you took it out again and flipped it, its original size was forgotten.
If you dropped a flipped picture (with robots and boxes that contain sensors) on the back of another picture the behavior is transferred correctly. When you then removed the flipped picture, it was not restored but continued to control the other picture.

19/2/99

If you dropped a flipped picture on a flipped picture and the picture you dropped had other pictures on top of it (on the front) then when you saved it, the sizes were wrong (often so wrong that the pictures appeared to have disappeared because they were so short).
Fixed a problem with flipping pictures with robots and boxes on the back and putting them on the flipside of other pictures. Thanks to Ross Adamson for sending an example of this bug.
If robot repeatedly types on a text pad the pad got slightly shorter. Thanks to Ross Adamson for sending an example of this bug.

22/2/99

If you trained a robot to add things to a remote control for the decoration of the roof, house, or room then the changes the robot made while being trained actually changed the ToonTalk world. Robots during training are just imagining things - this shouldn't change the world and no longer does.
Sometimes the decorations on the wall of the room became resized incorrectly. No longer.

23/2/99

If you had a nest on the back of a picture and copied the picture then the bird found the nest OK but if you then made a copy of the copy the bird did not deliver anything to the copy. Thanks to Miki Grahame for reporting this.
If you copied a box with a bird and more than 1 copy of her nest then it was not copied correctly.
If a bird and a picture with her nest were both in a box and something is given to the bird then she delivered it instantly (without flying).

24/2/99

If used the "colliding with" sensor and you collide with a picture of a number or text pad, ToonTalk would sometimes crash. Thanks to Kristian Johansson and Stefan Sennerö for sending an example of this.
Fixed a recently introduced problem with robots using the magic wand on the back of pictures.

25/2/99

Marty would often say a notebook was longer that it is really is since he would count some blank pages at the end.

1/3/99

Some actions and animations happened in zero time when the power was off (F8).

3/3/99

Fixed several round off errors including one that caused some remote controls of a picture that is part of another picture to not accept a change of the width to 0 but changed it back to 1 (or even 2 sometimes).
You can now pick up a robot and type a new name for him.
Improved the way the name of a robot is displayed.
You can pick up a bird and type text for her t-shirt.
You can pick up a nest and type a label for the nest. If you add the label to a nest with an egg in it then the bird will have the same label when she hatches.
You can now give any object to a bird to put on her t-shirt.
Disabled the keyboard shortcuts for dropping things ('D' or 'd') since interferes with giving labels.
Comments can be added to any object. F8 (power off) now stops Marty from flying around (he still will give help). You can now give him 2 things and he'll associate the first with the second. If the second item is a text pad, he'll use that text when describing the first item. Otherwise he'll describe the second item when describing the first. You can get a copy of a comment by giving Marty a commented object. This is particularly useful if the second object is a sound recording you wish to play.
Introduced a new internal file format (version 9). Old versions can still be loaded and will be saved in the new version. This means that anything saved in version 1.1 (or Beta 15) or later cannot be loaded into an earlier version of ToonTalk. The new file format features:
- Correct saving of nests that have been copied.
- Comments are saved.
- User provided names for robots are saved.
- Labels for nests (and birds too but that is via the older t-shirt scheme) are saved.
- Pictures are saved in a more concise manner.
- The number of extensions (birds that fly off to DLLs) was increased from 255 to 64K.
- The number of nests that can be saved at once increased from 255 to the limit of your machine's memory.
- The color and visibility (see all, see some, see none) of text pads is now saved.

3/4/99

Sometimes you would get a warning in your log file that there wasn't enough memory for the next sound and yet there was. This would often cause sounds not be heard thereafter.
Fixed a bug where a robot was trained to take box containing a picture of non-picture and then that picture was erased then the robot would only accept pictures.
Fixed a recently introduced bug where sometimes a bird would fly off when going between 2 places on the back of a picture.
Fixed a performance bug when there are lots of things on the floor that are off screen.

3/5/99

User pictures (created by the "File to Picture" sensor) saved the full path name for the BMP file. This interfered with sharing things with other machines that may have installed ToonTalk on a different directory or drive.
Sometimes user pictures had a black line on the top or on the right.

3/8/99

You can now give your notebooks titles. These show up on the bottom of the notebook. This required yet another file format change to save the titles. Just start typing when holding the notebook.
The notebook of remote controls of a picture now shows the picture on the bottom of the notebook.
If a scale had a nest to its right then the scale would totter causing a robot to give up on matching when he should have (and now does) waited for something to appear on the nest. Thanks to Richard Noss and Celia Hoyles for providing an example of this problem.
A robot will now accept a box with a tottering scale if he has a tottering scale at the same place in the box in his thought bubble.
Scales now compare pictures as well as text and number. User pictures are compared by the alphabetic order of the file names. User pictures are "heavier" than built in pictures. Built in pictures are compared by an internal index comparison.
You can now drop a picture on a nest to cover it up. (Previously you needed to give it to the nest's bird to accomplish this.)

3/9/99

Fixed a bug in using scales to compare user pictures.
If you picked up a wand and kept typing numbers strange numbers appeared once the wand counter exceeded 2**31 (about 2 billion). Now the wand counter disappears (since it is "infinite").
You can now rubout a wand counter to get rid of it. Thanks to Miki Grahame for reporting this.
Sometimes when a truck built a house but wasn't being watched (e.g. you just walked into another house), the house was built at a crazy location - sometimes off the ToonTalk island. This could lead to other problems later.

3/10/99

Fixed a problem with the geometry of pictures that are parts of other pictures when saved.
Fixed a problem with the location of pictures that are parts of other pictures when the picture is flipped and saved.
Fixed a problem where pictures on pictures were confused where they were (so for example sounds were not heard).
Did a much better fix of the problem with user pictures that sometimes black lines appeared at the top or the sides.
User pictures can now be scaled more the 256 times and reduced to less than 1/256 of the original size.

3/12/99

When a nest was on the back of a picture and that picture was put in a notebook then every time a copy of the picture was obtained from the notebook then copies of the nest were made in such a way that a bird thought all the copies were her nest (and she copied herself and what she was given and flew to all the nests). This no longer happens if the original of the copy is part of a notebook.
An empty nest now only matches empty nests.
If no members of a team of robots matched a box given to them, but some sensors were involved then it used to be that the final robot would wait for a change. Now it is the first robot in the team to try to match against a sensor.
Matching against an empty nest also follows the new rule above. I.e. it is treated the same as matching against a sensor since in both cases the values can change independent of the team of robots working on that box.
If a robot tried to match a value against a nest, it waited until something arrived on the nest. Now an earlier member of the team of robots will wait if he is the first to fail to match due to sensors or nest matching.
Marty would sometimes say there were some number of objects on the flipside of a picture when there was really one less than the number he gave.

3/16/99

Fixed a bug where a box on the back of a picture was lost when a robot picked it up and dropped it.

3/24/99

Fixed 2 bugs that caused boxes to sometimes disappear from the back of pictures.
Sometimes ToonTalk crashed if a bird is returning to a picture with a nest on the back that has been dropped onto a notebook.

3/25/99

Fixed several bugs where boxes or robots that were on the back of a picture that was on the back of another picture moved to the back of the containing picture.
Fixed a problem where you would see a bird flying when both the bird and nest were on the back of the same picture (but at different levels).
Fixed a bug saving a city while birds were flying around.
Fixed a bug where ToonTalk crashed if Marty needed more than 20,000 characters to describe something.
Fixed a problem when Marty tried to describe a flipped picture.

3/26/99

If a robot on the back of a picture set down a nest with an egg in it then the bird ended up on the floor instead of on the back of the picture where the robot can use it.
Robots on the back of pictures now do much less work. Since they accomplish as much and aren't being watched no one knows.

3/27/99

Fixed a problem where things that change when dropped (e.g. a nest with an egg) didn't work properly on the back of a picture.
Fixed a problem where sometimes robot's lost the name a user game then and reverted to their generated name.

3/28/99

Fixed a problem when saving a city with a notebook open to the remote looks of something.
Improved the geometry of the remote looks of a flipped picture.

3/39/99

Fixed a bug where if a puzzle included a notebook, then it crashed if the notebook is dropped. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this one.
If the floor was saved via F6 and a copy of Tooly was on the floor, then Tooly did not appear when the puzzle was run.
Sometimes the order of pictures was not displayed correctly. One symptom was that sometimes in puzzles you could see ### on top rather than below some picture.
If the goal of a picture isn't rectangular you could see ### underneath. No longer. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.

3/30/99

If a player does a sequence of user puzzles (not the built-in ones) then the log file wasn't replayable. To replay a log that ran on user puzzles currently can only be done by adding "-puzzle <file name> -I <log file name>" to the ToonTalk icon or running it from a shell. Thanks to Lennart for sending an example of this.
If a picture contained a picture than contained a picture then ToonTalk crashed when you tried to flip it over. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.
If you give a bird a picture that isn't rectangular (or a scale) then the nest underneath disappeared. Now you can see the entire stack. The issue of whether Marty should still talk about pictures being rectangular when their visibility is set to "See some" is still an open question. Thanks to Miki for reporting this.
Marty got mixed up talking about a box containing a notebook (other than one that started off being the blank notebook). When such a box was placed in a robot's thought bubble, then ToonTalk crashed when Marty described the robot. Thanks to Miki for reporting this.
The "picture #" sensor behaved strangely for user pictures (created by "File to Picture"). Thanks to Miki for reporting this.
If a robot was trained to pick something from a stack and then returns it to the stack, then he didn't run well on the back of a picture.
If you take things off a nest and set them down after a few of them that work fine, you used to find that you couldn't pick back up the things you set down. Thanks to Miki for reporting this.

3/31/99

You can now add -houses <n> to the command line to control how many houses are on a block. The number can be between 1 and at least 255.
If you drop a sensor that has a clear numeric value on a number then it is added as if it were that number. Addresses work this way now. Also sensors whose value is "yes" or "no" have the value 1 and 0 respectively.
Fixed a bug where a robot in another house drops something on an erased box. Thanks to P.A. Dreyfuss for reporting this.

4/1/99

If you save a city (or a floor in making a puzzle) with pictures that are active (i.e. robots are running on the back) then they now run when restored.
If you drop a picture with robots on the back with the power off then the picture runs when the power is restored.
You can now use control-c to copy what is in your hand to the Windows clipboard and control-v to paste what is on the clipboard onto the floor. Robots can be trained to do this as well.
When you save a city it now saves the "number of houses to a block" parameter as well.
Fixed various bugs that can cause user created puzzles to crash (these were due to the fact that some code expected Tooly the Toolbox to be around and he often isn't in puzzles). Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.
Fixed some geometry problems with large numbers of houses to a block.

4/2/99

Extended the format of puzzle files to include user defined robots that can accept or reject answers. See www.toontalk.com/English/make_pzl.htm for details.

4/5/99

Fixed a bug with comments on remote controls.
Added a new element to toontalk.ini. Within the "Switches" area you can now have "GeneralTextToSpeechEngine=1".

4/7/99

Fixed a bug where nests didn't display their labels. (Introduced on 3/31/99.) Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
Added two new sensors to the notebook of sensors for a picture -- Parts and Containers.
If you vacuumed up the remote control for the looks of a picture that was on the floor then that picture became very narrow.
Sometimes if you grabbed a working robot, you got a spurious warning from Marty about the robot being confused.