History of ToonTalk Enhancements and Bug Fixes

History of ToonTalk Enhancements and Bug Fixes - 1999

Here is the list of bugs and enhancements for 1999. Similar lists for 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 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.

4/8/99

Improved the error handling when a robot tries to use a hole in a box and the box he has doesn't have such a hole.
If a picture had many items on top and one of those items was on top of another then you were forced to select lower one when using Dusty, Pumpy, or Maggie.
Sometimes when you had a picture of some text, the text color was not saved correctly.
Now if you drop a remote control for the looks for something on a blank picture, then the blank picture gets the appearance of the remote control but becomes an ordinary picture and doesn't act like a remote control.
Remote looks now (like all the other remote controls) becomes attached to a picture if it is dropped on the backside of the picture. This enables flipped pictures using remote looks to be added to other flipped pictures.
Marty no longer says "which is partly visible which is partly visible".
Fixed a few places so that the some internal errors are avoided before they cause problems.

4/9/99

Fixed the display of stacks of pictures on a nest when more than 1 non-rectangular picture is on top. (Or the pictures really rectangular but their visibility is set to "SEE SOME" a better way of talking about this.)
Fixed a problem with the display of a label of a nest.
If you type "rubout" when holding a robot when an automatically generated name, you now erase the last letter of the name.
You can now rubout all the letters of a robot's name if you want a blank or empty name. Note you probably shouldn't do this to robots you plan to convert to Java and put on a web page.

4/12/99

Fixed a problem when a robot on the back of a picture tried to set off a bomb. Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
If a robot sets off a bomb on the back of a picture that has been added to the back of another picture then the containing picture is destroyed (along with its parts).
If you saved a city with an non-default number of houses to a block, then the width of the blocks was wrong when the city was reloaded.
Sometimes if you took a box off a robot on the back of a picture and then gave it back to the robot, he would start running while the picture was flipped.
If a robot on the back changed the value of a number, then the new value wasn't displayed until you removed the number from the back of the picture.
Drop feedback on the back of pictures was improved.
You can now add unflipped pictures to the back of pictures. They are treated as comments the same as text pads are here.
Sometimes the size of a picture was set to the size of the remote control for controlling it even if the remote control was on the flip side of a picture.
If objects were added or removed from the back of a picture when it wasn't flipped, then the geometry of the objects was wrong until an object was added or removed by hand.
Marty and ToonTalk clipboard pastings sometimes described a remote looks with the phrase "remote looksa ...".
F9 now works everywhere to hide yourself whether you are flying, walking, or sitting.
When you drop a team of robots they now group themselves so they look like they did when the team was put together. Previously they were sometimes far apart.
If a robot running on the back of a picture puts his box in a truck, then he disappears along with his box. A good way of removing behaviors from the back of pictures is to get rid of the robot's box like this or by using Dusty.
Improved the "acting" of robots.
You can now train a robot to load up a truck even if the power is off.
Fixed a bug with the explicit placement of houses (using addresses) when the block that the truck started at was full. Thanks to Ross for reporting this.

4/13/99

If you added a label to a notebook, then it was difficult to use that notebook until you restarted since rubout, space, and the like were often interpreted as changes to the label rather than page flipping.
Some pictures were kept at a fixed width and height even though they display an animation sequence that changes size. (Introduced in the last few weeks.)
If a robot dropped a picture on a picture the geometry was often very odd. In particular when the picture underneath has been erased. Thanks to Ross for providing an example of this.
Fixed problems with the size and location of pictures when controlled by robots on the back.
The remote control which shows if a picture is dropped is no longer triggered if the picture is inside of something else that is dropped. Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
Fixed a problem with reading the new optional robot condition part of puzzles.
If some text that appears in Marty's talk balloon contained a line feed or carriage return then a box was displayed at that point in the text.
A robot became confused if it was trained to drop a number on a blank text pad. Thanks to P.A. Dreyfuss for reporting this.

4/15/99

Fixed a problem with the size of images that replace another image (by erasing the remote control for the looks of a picture and dropping another picture on top). Thanks to Ross for providing a nice example of this.
There were many things that robots should be able to do in puzzle mode but weren't allowed to because they don't make sense for the player to do. Fixing these is particularly important for using the new robot condition in puzzles. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.
If you saved the floor of a room to the clipboard via F6 (useful for making puzzles) then sometimes the connection between birds and nests was lost. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.
Sensors whose value is language dependent, e.g. "yes" and "no" were saved properly in the clipboard but were converted to the current default language when the city was saved or such sensors were placed in a notebook.

4/16/99

Fixed a problem with a bird whose nest has been copied.
Fixed bugs the occur when constructing a box larger than the maximum size. (Default maximum size is 2,048 but can be changed in toontalk.ini by changing Switches MaximumNumberOfHoles.)
The box that the robot is working inside his thought bubble is now visually distinguished from the others. Thanks to Clark Quinn and Miki for suggesting this.
The sensor for the current keystroke used to go blank when there was no keystroke. It now goes black and will not match a blank text pad. Thanks to Miki for pointing this out.
The space devoted to displaying the label of a notebook was shrunk so that for notebooks with 3 digits for page numbers (e.g. the Pictures notebook) no longer overlap with the page numbers.
Sometimes copying a picture that has flipped pictures on its backside resulted in remotes that were connected to the wrong picture. Thanks to Ross for providing an example of this.
The collision sensors are no longer updated while the picture is flipped over.

4/19/99

Sometimes ToonTalk crashed when a bird was given something and her nest had been copied. Thanks to Miki for sending an example of this.
If a bird was given a remote control (e.g. the street remote) then that remote was not updated until you went into the house. Thanks to Miki for sending an example of this.
If a bird's nest has been destroyed and she was given something then fly away and was destroyed. Now she flies away, destroys what she was given, and returns.
Fixed a recently introduced bug in saving remote controls for the address in the notebook or a city.
Scales now compare streets and avenues based upon their numeric value - not the alphabetical order of their textual form. Thanks to Miki for suggesting this.

4/20/99

If robots changed the size or location of a picture while the programmer was standing up the size was much too large and location was wrong. Thanks to Lennart for sending an example of this.

4/21/99

The "Hit Who?" sensor used to display a copy of the picture that is being collided with. It is now a remote control for the looks of that picture.
You can now flip over the remote control for the looks of something (and the "Hit Who?" contents of the boxes in the "Parts" and "Containers"). The notebook that flies out is full of sensors and controls for the "original" of the remote looks. You can also add and remove things from the back of a picture by adding or removing them from the flip side of the remote control for the looks of that picture. This is very handy for robots.
Sometimes when a robots are running on the back of a picture and were removed they reappeared.
Sometimes when you removed things from the back of a picture the layout was poor until the picture for flipped over again or more things added.

4/22/99

When Marty encountered a dash or hyphen in a sentence, he would pronounce it as "minus".
Fixed recently introduced bugs in saving addresses and some other remote controls.
When a robot is given a box with sensors in them, the sensors do different things when they end up in the robot's thought bubble. E.g. they become blank. The sensors whose values are pictures now behave better when they end up in a thought bubble.
You can now treat the remote controls for the street and avenue like numbers. Scales now compare them like numbers not like text strings. Thanks to Richard for his suggestions here.
Creating a Java applet with a hit or miss collision sensor sometimes crashed ToonTalk.
Sometimes the remote control for the looks of something became a different size without apparent logic.
Fixed a problem recording and replaying logs where F9 (hide your hand - now hide yourself) was used. Thanks to Stefan and Kristian for reporting this.

4/23/99

When a robot took something out of a notebook it often was very narrow and tall. It now uses better sizes.
Fixed a recently introduced bug where ToonTalk crashed if a robot was looking for a hole that didn't exist.
Fixed a problem training a robot to drop a remote control on a blank number pad. Thanks to Ross for sending an example of this.
Fixed a bug where scales didn't compare pictures right if one of the pictures was a remote control (e.g. the "Hit Who?" sensor).
The "Hit Who?" sensor was not reset properly if it was on the back of a picture that was added to another picture.

4/24/99

Fixed a bug drawing erased pictures (not clear if there were any symptoms).

4/26/99

Robots who were trained to use Dusty on a picture in a box got confused.
Fixed a problem with robots who used Dusty on a remote control that shows a picture.
If a city was saved with decoration remote controls, the remote controls didn't show the current decoration right and couldn't be used properly.
A house or roof decoration remote control caused things near its right side to intermittently be invisible.
If a robot was trained to remove something from a picture then it removed the bottom most item of the right type first. Now it removes the topmost.

4/27/99

Things were vacuumed up when the bomb was used within puzzles.
House decoration sensors had the wrong geometry if you were never outside. Going out and coming back in fixed it. Fixed in general now.
Puzzles that enabled function keys didn't work right when the function keys were pressed.
Sometimes the name of a robot drifted off his chest. It happens much less now.
If you retrained a robot then it now gets a new name.
A robot became confused if he was originally trained to make a sound or a force effect and then was retrained.

4/28/99

Some old puzzles were broken because Tooly showed up.
Fixed problem introduced this month where some problems with puzzles where 2 items became one or a single item got extra blank lines.
The puzzle where Marty says how many days old you are, lacked a comma in the US version (if your age is greater than 999 days) and it was spoken as a series of digits.

4/29/99

Sometimes things on top of a nest disappeared and then reappeared.
Sometimes when a nest in a box was covered the nest and object covering it were too small.
If you saved a city with some kinds of remote controls on the floor, then when you started the city again the remote controls were much too large.
Sometimes the tool that a robot in a team was using would become invisible.
Added 2 new options to toontalk.ini. StringLibraryDll32 and StringLibraryDll16 under the [Executables] section can optionally specify the string library to use. This is particularly useful if you wish to have old versions of ToonTalk that expect XXTT32.dll or XXTT16.dll where XX is the country code (e.g. US, UK, or SE) and new versions that support this option.
-next_puzzle 0 on the command line didn't work.

4/30/99

After flipping over a remote control for the looks of a picture and adding things to it then sometimes extra things were added as well. Thanks to Miki for providing an example of this.

Fixed a recently introduced problem where Marty no longer explained about F9 the first time it was pressed.

5/1/99

Fixed a problem where sometimes pictures were saved with the size of a flipped picture (half the screen in both dimensions).
Beta 15 Released.

5/8/99

Sometimes pressing Esc while retraining a robot put ToonTalk in a loop (i.e. it froze).

5/9/99

A robot trained to drop sometimes on the parts or container sensors didn't always work.

Robots in a team on the back of a picture sometimes didn't stick together and didn't look like they still were a team.

Sometimes saving a robot in a notebook also saved a copy of the notebook the robot came from which increased the size of user files and clip board pastings.

5/10/99

Fixed a problem with dropping a picture on the erased remote looks of a picture.

5/12/99

If ToonTalk was started while someone other program had a lock on DirectSound (e.g. another game) then ToonTalk sometimes crashed.
If a remote control was saved without the picture it was controlling also being saved, then the size of the file or clipping was unnecessarily large because a copy of the picture was saved but not used.
Fixed a problem with collision sensors that occasionally crashed ToonTalk.

5/13/99

Sometimes remote controls were not initialized properly - collision sensors sometimes looked wrong before they were used.

5/14/99

Sometimes moving to a new spot on the floor (i.e. scrolling) used to cause collision sensors to be triggered.
If you saved a box with a label with more than 255 characters, then Marty would repeatedly warn that the label was being truncated to 255 characters when saved. Also the wording of Marty's warning was improved for clarity.
Made slight improvements to the text that prefixes encodings put on the clipboard.
Sometimes the remote controls for collisions showed a non-collision in a thought bubble even though it in all other ways behaved as if it showed a collision.
Fixed a bug where copying pictures with things on the back sometimes caused the picture to change size and the copy to also have this incorrect size.
Fixed a problem where sometimes the size of pictures saved inside a box or notebook was not remembered.
Sometimes picking up a running game and standing up and then sitting down again crashed ToonTalk.
F4 now calls for the main notebook that lives inside of Tooly. (Previously it called for the most recently used notebook.)
Just after leaving a robot's thought bubble, his name was displayed far to the side of the robot.
Sometimes a picture with robots on the back didn't behave correctly if power was off (i.e. F8 had been pressed).
Saving a box to the clipboard that contained a comment that was more than 72 characters long and didn't contain spaces sometimes caused ToonTalk to freeze.

5/15/99

You can now save a city to the clipboard. Currently the only interface to this is to sit on the ground outside and press control-c without holding anything in your hand. If a city is on the clipboard when ToonTalk is started you'll start off in the clipboard city.
Marty (and the clipboard) sometimes incorrectly described boxes with pictures inside.
Marty (and the clipboard) sometimes incorrectly described notebooks.
F6 no longer copies the items on the floor. Control-c with an empty hand while sitting on the floor does this now.
If you named a robot and then trained him, he lost his name. It is still the case that a robot is renamed if retrained. This is because it is common to copy a robot and retrain a copy to make a variant. The two copies should not have the same name after one has been retrained. (Perhaps a future enhancement is only rename if indeed the robot has been copied.)
If you double clicked on a city file and then later pressed "Save Everything" the city was saved fine but the message gave the entire full path name for the city file when reporting that it had been saved.

5/17/99

Cities are now always saved in the Users directory of ToonTalk, even if they were visited by double clicking a city file icon.
Beta 15 released.

5/18/99

If ToonTalk was started by double clicking on a CTY, DMO, PZL, or USR file or was given a file name on the command line and the file name had more than one "." in it, ToonTalk became confused.

5/21/99

User defined sounds (via the remote control "File to Sound") displayed as "play <sound name>". They display just as the sound name.

5/30/99

Sometimes when ToonTalk is interrupted it displays a dialog box that is buried beneath another window. Fixed in theory.

6/1/99

Changed the way labels were displayed to look nicer.
Changed the way variable width text pads were displayed to look nicer.

6/4/66

ToonTalk now supports Unicode so it can display all the alphabets of the world at once. If the "-language" is Japanese this is enabled or if -unicode_code_page <number> is on the command line. For example, -unicode_code_page 932 enables the Japanese code page so that you can cut and paste Japanese text.

6/6/99

Unless you sat down exactly where you left something on the lawn you couldn't move over to it.
If you placed something on top of another thing where its bottom is above the bottom of the thing underneath and then stood up and sat down the item underneath came on top.

6/7/99

If you sit on the lawn and leave a truck on the ground, you no longer say ouch and spin around when you set on it.
The geometry of objects was off slightly when sitting on the ground.
Now recovers rather than crashing if ToonTalk is unable to create Direct Draw surfaces (e.g. when memory is very low).

6/8/99

If a bird was flying to a nest of the back of the same picture but that picture was inside of a box then you would see the bird fly out and back. Thanks to Ross and Miki for providing an example of this.
Fixed several memory leaks that prevented ToonTalk from running for a long time.
Fixed several problems with saving a city with objects left on the lawn.
Fixed several problems with leaving things (other than pictures) on the ground and trying to find them again.
Things moving outside are now stopped when they reach the water surrounding the city.
Fixed a problem where a robot became confused about which hole of a box inside a box to drop something on. Problem was introduced about a month earlier. Thanks to Ross and Miki for providing an example of this.
Fixed a problem where robots would run on the back of a picture that was in a notebook. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

6/9/99

Sometimes a team of robots on the back of a flipped picture that was on the back of another flipped picture would disappear. Thanks to Ross and Miki for providing an example of this.
If a bird's nest was vacuumed, then she was given something, then the nest was spit out, and she was given something again she got confused.
Fixed a month old bug that broke sensors for notebook buttons.
Fixed a month old bug that broke the "hitting who", "parts", and "container" sensors.
You can no longer drop a number on a sensor that is read only (e.g. mouse or joystick sensors) to change it. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Sometimes a notebook displayed the contents of its pages too small.
Fixed a problem where the remote looks of a user picture (created via the "File to Picture" sensor) was zero sized (looked invisible). Thanks to Ross and Miki for providing an example of this.
If you call for a tool while holding it, it was dropped and then ran back into your hand. Now it goes back to its "favorite" spot. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.
If you called for your notebook and then flipped to another page and took something out the notebook flipped back to the page it had when it fly over. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.
The version number displayed when ToonTalk is started now depends upon the EXE file and the not the DLL loaded.
If you paste some text into ToonTalk it now appears as with a variable width font and no background pads.

6/11/99

Fixed a bug where robots became confused when they were trained to copy a box and drop the copy on a number.
The user's name now appears on the main notebook that lives in Tooly.
Fixed a memory leak when a robot used the notebook of remote controls of a picture.
Changed scheduler to be more fair so that robots on the back of a picture are not repeatedly run in some fixed order.
Fixed a problem where sometimes the colors of user pictures were displayed wrong.
If ClippingDir=<a directory name> is set in the Directories section of the toontalk.ini file then when ToonTalk puts something on the clipboard it also puts a copy in a file in ClippingDir with the users name (or if a city was put on the clipboard the users name followed by "_city").

6/12/99

Fixed a problem Marty had describing a sound pad.

6/14/99

Improved the way Marty talks about the remote looks of things.
Fixed a problem where sometimes the remote looks of things were saved improperly in a city or notebook which caused problems when trying to reload those things.
Fixed a bug saving user sounds in notebooks or in cities.

6/15/99

Fixed a recently introduced problem loading remote looks and related sensors.
Undid change #5 made on 6/9 that prevented operations on sensors like modulo arithmetic on random numbers.
Fixed a recently introduced bug that made trucks look very small when seen from the helicopter.

6/18

Fixed several problems with the way variable width text pads are displayed.
Fixed a recent display problem with the wall of the house in the puzzle game (since it now uses a variable width font).
Fixed a problem saving remote controls.
The algorithm for break text into lines now tests for non-ASCII characters (e.g. Japanese) and breaks the lines without concern for the location of punctuation or spaces.

6/21

Fixed a problem loading a city with saved decorations on the wall.

6/25

Many remote controls can be manually set by pressing ' ', '+', or '-'. They then become inactive (no longer track changes). These inactive remote controls were saved as if they were active.
Remote controls whose value is yes or no didn't work properly when ' ', '+', or '-' was typed while holding or pointing to them.
Various improvements to how variable width multi-line text and labels are displayed.

6/28

Sometimes the last option from 'Set Options' was which language to use and the language names came out as nonsense.

6/29

If multiple birds without nests are on the back of a picture that has been taken out of a notebook or the clipboard then the birds no longer fly to the exact same location and build their nests but the location is now somewhat random. Thanks to Miki for this suggestion.
Improved the display of labels on boxes.
Fixed a problem where sometimes robots that were working on the back of a picture didn't stop when the picture was flipped over. This sometimes lead to the loss of things in boxes when the picture was flipped back over.
If a comment has been added to something and it is a sound (including a text-to-speech sound) then the sound is heard when Marty describes the item.
Fixed some problems loading remote looks, parts, and container remote controls.
Fixed a problem with the text-to-speech (and MCI) remote controls that lead to unstable system.
Fixed a problem where the remote looks, parts, and container remote controls displayed with the wrong geometry.
Fixed a problem where the Colliding? sensor showed the wrong picture before it was used.
If a notebook or city contains a user imported picture that isn't available then the picture looks like its file name. As before Marty also gives a warning.
If a truck had a comment associated with it, Marty never mentioned it.

6/30

Fixed a problem with remote looks, parts, and container remote controls where their displayed was not updated when they were loaded.
Fixed a problem Marty had describing remote looks, parts, and container remote controls.
The container remote control sometimes showed containers that were not pictures (e.g. boxes).
Fixed several problems Marty had describing notebooks.
Fixed a problem where sometimes the relative position of a picture on another picture wasn't restored properly.
If you some remote controls all by themselves, they were saved as text strings like "yes" or "no". Didn't happen if they were in boxes.

7/1

Fixed a problem with robots trained to drop things on blank boxes. WARNING - the fix for this may cause older robots that drop things on blank boxes to work incorrectly.
Sometimes when training a robot and dropping something on something that ignores it (e.g. Dusty on a box), the robot would get confused.
Fixed many problems that interfered with generating Java code that were introduced in the last 2 months.

7/2

Fixed a bug introduced in the last month with puzzles whose solution is a single digit number (i.e.. puzzles 2 and 5).
Since the latest version does not run all the demos that well, the new beta release runs the old version when replaying built-in demos.
Beta 16 released.

7/7

Fixed a bug training a robot to put things in a box that is in a truck. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
If you completely rubbed out the name of a robot and then pressed backspace ToonTalk sometimes crashed. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
If you completely rubbed out the name of a robot and then pressed backspace ToonTalk now restores the name it generated for the robot.

7/8

If a robot off screen released a bird who was saved without a nest, then the bird created a nest but the robot couldn't find it. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
Fixed a problem with a robot matching a box containing a nest (introduced in March 99). Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
A robot in a thought bubble was sometimes saved in a way that required the notebook the robot came from to also be saved.

7/9

If a robot loaded incorrectly from a file or the clipboard it would sometimes crash when run.
If a robot has been erased by Dusty and is in the box in another robot's thought bubble, ToonTalk crashed when Marty tried to describe it or it was placed on the clipboard.
Marty describes erased robots better.
If you copied a robot with the magic wand set to O (original) and the robot had a robot in his thought bubble then the box in the thought bubble of the robot in the thought bubble was incorrectly restored.
Fixed a problem saving and restoring erased robots inside the thought bubble of other robots. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
Changed the way that ToonTalk finds the string table it needs so that a newer version of ToonTalk can use a different table than an older version when both are installed in the same directory.

7/12

Pictures on top of nests didn't save and reload correctly (broken for a couple of months). Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
Marty would no longer sometimes describes a rectangle as "partly visible".

7/13

If a robot took something off a nest and then immediately put it back, it would get confused. Thanks to Kevin O'Brien for reporting this.
F11 now creates a BMP file of the screen even if you are running a demo.

7/14

If the label on a box was sufficiently small that the font width became 1 pixel then ToonTalk said it was interrupted by another program and when resumed no text was displayed. This happened when flipping through the joystick sensor notebook. Small labels are no longer displayed. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
The loading of force feedback effects and some joystick remote controls was broken about a month ago. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

7/15

The maximum number of characters in the encoding of an object for the clipboard was increased from about 100,000 to over 2,500,000.
If a notebook was saved with just one item on page 1, then when loaded it looked blank (but if you flipped to page 3 and then page to page 1 you'd restore things). Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
If the clipboard encoding is too large the error message now looks much nicer.
Made more improvements to how multi-line variable font text is displayed. Including a problem if the final lines were just new lines without any text.
Sometimes when things are pasted into ToonTalk using control-v they weren't a good size.
Programmed around a Windows bug with text with a very small size (1 or 2 pixels). Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this. Also improved the displayed of very small text.
Fixed a bug in how the rectangular extent of some text was computed.

7/16

Occasionally if ToonTalk had been running for quite a while it stops playing some sounds a note appears in the log file about the cache being full. Fixing this may also have fixed a problem where sometimes ToonTalk slowed down after an hour or two of heavy use.
If a box was being saved before a bird who was flying around returned to that box, sometimes ToonTalk got confused. Now the box is saved correctly because the bird finished everything she was doing instantly so she is back in time to be saved along with the box. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Marty and the clipboard had troubles describing force feedback effects.
Sometimes a picture on the back of another picture when saved and restored received the visibility setting of the other picture. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Marty and the clipboard had troubles describing the remote looks of a user provided picture. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

7/17

If a picture was blown up (via remote controls or by robots on the back) and was being carried by a bird and on her nest then ToonTalk became unstable. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Sometimes when a blank non-numeric remote control was saved then it was restored incorrectly. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Collision sensors no longer report collisions with objects held by birds, in trucks, boxes, or the like. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

7/18

You can now drop a nest on a nest and Bammer will smash them together. This means that birds of these nests now think that both of the nests are theirs and will deliver copies of things to both nests.
Introduced a new entry to the "Switches" section of toontalk.ini. If CityFileMax is set to a number, say 5, then when you save a city up to 5 older versions are saved. If your user name ends in a number then the saved cities are the same name with larger numbers. If your name doesn't have a number then the cities are named by suffixing 1, 2, and so on up to CityFileMax to your name.
Marty now describes the '+' and '-' keys better.
Marty no longer sticks a letter or two at the end of some utterances. (A bug introduces a couple months ago.)
Improved the geometry of what is on the wall in the puzzle game - especially when running in low resolution.

7/19

If nests are bammed together the nest on top is destroyed. The previous version left 2 nests that were identical copies.
If you dropped a nest on a notebook and then gave the nest's bird a message within a few seconds, ToonTalk got confused.
Birds with copies of its nest inside of Dusty got a bit confused.
'.' now stops sounds, force effects, sensors, Dusty, Pumpy, and pictures. Pictures now can be turned on by pressing the space bar. Note that this means you must use '+' and not space to cycle through different images or colors.
Fixed a problem saving the remote looks of a user picture. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

7/20

The keyboard equivalents such as 'f' to flip, or 'h' to call for the helicopter are now customized for different language versions.
The default binding for the third joystick button is now '.'. (As before all joystick button bindings can be user specified.)
The GenerateLogs option in toontalk.ini now names the generated log files so that log1.dmo is the newest, log2.dmo the second newest, etc.

7/21

Demo files have been changed so that they now save the keyboard equivalents, the initial city, the initial user profile, and the clipboard interactions. They will soon also deal with user puzzle files. Note that these new demos will not work in older versions of ToonTalk.

7/23

Demo files now replay correctly if the recording started by running a particular puzzle number or a user puzzle by using -puzzle on the command line.

7/25

Sometimes notebooks created in one language version of ToonTalk were saved as if they were American English. This affected some of the sensors.
Fixed (again) a problem where sometimes the "Colliding?" sensors initially displayed Tooly the Toolbox rather than a hit or miss.
Released Beta 17.

7/30

Fixed several bugs related to creating something on a computer with a joystick and then bringing it into a computer without a joystick connected and then perhaps saving it again. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.

7/31

Fixed a bug using a "Hit Who?" sensor which has been erased.
Marty described force feedback effects as if they were sounds. Fixed now.
If you pasted a box with many holes into ToonTalk and the box was too wide for the room, it was displayed incorrectly.

8/1

The color of text that names sounds was sometimes black and sometimes brown. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.
If you dropped a text pad which contains only digits on a blank number pad, the number corresponding to the first half of the digits was generated. Was broken for a couple of months. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.

8/2

Sometimes if the remote control for the looks of a picture was taken by a bird to her nest, that the picture jumped to cover the nest as well. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.
Marty would sometimes describe a stack of things wrongly.
If a picture was removed from a picture while the notebook of its remote controls was visible, ToonTalk sometimes crashed.

8/3

Sometimes if a nest on the back of a picture was covered with the remote looks of the picture ToonTalk crashed. Thanks to Ross and Miki for reporting this.
Sometimes when vacuuming up the remote control for the looks of a picture, the picture became erased.
Marty sometimes mistakenly reported that a robot on the back of a picture tried to remove something from the floor and it wasn't there.

8/4

Marty sometimes mistakenly reported that a robot on the back of a picture couldn't find something that was no longer in the room and then the robot would stop working. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Sometimes the remote control for the looks of a flipped picture would display with the wrong size.
If some text is too small to display and its visibility is set to "show some", it no longer displays as a tiny rectangle.
Fixed a recently introduced problem running demos.

8/6

An erased picture in the thought bubble of a robot now matches a picture of a text or number pad. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Fixed a problem saving a picture with a (unflipped) picture on the back (even a picture of a text pad). Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
Fixed another recently introduced problem running demos.
The picture of a text pad became black when put on the clipboard and then pasted back.

8/10

Fixed a problem where sometimes when standing up and sitting down the order that things sit upon each other changed.

8/30

Sometimes Marty would give a spurious warning about something already being on the floor.

8/31

Fixed a bug (introduced in June) that caused ASCII characters entered via the keyboard that were greater than 127 to be displayed as empty boxes. This affected the Swedish and Portuguese versions.

9/1

Sometimes if you stood up while a robot was working, the robot would wait for you to sit again before continuing.
Sometimes if a robot picked something up, and then you stood up, and then the robot dropped the thing then the size of the dropped thing would be much too large. And if you sat down while the robot was holding something it would be too small.

9/2

Added -spoken_language option to the command line. The value of this option can be different from the value of -language (or the installed language). This way you can have Marty speak, say, in Swedish but see the text in his talk balloons in Portuguese. Or whatever.
Occasionally standing up and then sitting down changed the size of things dramatically.
The text-to-speech engine is now told to process tags. Tags are part of the Microsoft Speech API and are given between 2 \s. E.g. \Spd=360\ \Vce=Gender="Female"\ which says the voice should change to a speed of 360 and a female voice. Tags are ignored by some speech engines.
If you stood up or moved to a different part of the floor while something was dropping into a truck it sometimes ended up with the wrong size or position.

9/3

ToonTalk would sometimes crash if Marty was talking while you were inside of a thought bubble. (Bug is a couple of months old.)

9/5

Changed the way ToonTalk deals with spaces and punctuation in generating text for Marty to say. Needed for Japanese and Portuguese versions.

9/6

Fixed a bug introduced on 7/17 that caused ToonTalk to crash if you copied a covered nest. Thanks to Jackie Turner for reporting this.
If an object was changing size when you stood up and sat then it sometimes got the wrong size.

9/8

Fixed a bug where the display of multi-lined text pads when part of the pad was clipped on the left was wrong (shifted one character too little).

9/9

Marty would describe a blank remote control as a number even when it was a picture.
Marty had problems describing some kinds of remote controls.
Changed ToonTalk so that if you are training a robot and stop while the robot is holding Dusty then ToonTalk no longer makes that robot clean up all the things he leaves on the floor. This means you can now train robots to put things in a new houses.

9/10

Fixed a problem where ToonTalk sometimes crashes (only observed on Windows NT) as it was trying to put a dialog box asking if you want to see your log file. This only happens if the log file contains important warnings or errors.
If ToonTalk is trying to reconstruct a user picture and something is wrong with the BMP file, the problem no longer breaks the loading of other things.

9/12

ToonTalk can now read files specified by URLs. The sensors "File to Picture" and "File to Sound" now accept text pads like "http://www.toontalk.com/ghost.bmp". Other places where file names can be given to ToonTalk (e.g. new puzzle sequences or a user created city or demo) also accept URLs now.
If a sensor like "File to Picture" or "File to Sound" had a picture or sound on top (not yet vacuumed off by Dusty) and you saved the city, then the city would not load properly.
Marty would describe a picture created by "File to Picture" in a redundant fashion.
Fixed a bug in the display of Unicode text in talk balloons. Only used now by Japanese version.

9/13

If Windows reports an error to ToonTalk when reading a URL, ToonTalk now reports the error to the user and offers the choice of continuing off-line.
When ToonTalk has completed replaying a demo (a DMO file), it now sees if there is a following DMO file and if so loads it and continues. E.g. demo2.dmo will be run after demo1.dmo completes.
Beta 18 released.

9/14

Recent versions of ToonTalk were not able to run old demo files.

9/15

Fixed a few rare problems that occur when standing or sitting while robots are working.

9/17

Fixed a problem that occasionally caused ToonTalk to crash while exiting.
Tooly the Toolbox now responds to F6. F6 twice will cause him to come very quickly.
When the main notebook left Tooly it briefly displayed its label very large.
Finished extending ToonTalk to run in resolutions ranging from 800x600 to 1600x1200.

9/19

By default ToonTalk now uses smaller objects (actually the same number of pixels but less screen area) if you are running in a resolution greater than 640x480.
Fixed a problem calling for the notebook where sometimes it didn't settle down.
Fixed a bug saving cities (or floors) where a text pad or number pad was flipped over and on the floor.
If you resize or move around your tools while training a robot, those changes do not change the tools' "favorite" locations or sizes.

9/20

Improved the animation of the notebook flying to your hand (when called by F4).
If you call for Tooly or the notebook while holding something it is no longer automatically dropped.

9/21

Improved the way the speech and text are skipped if you press PageDown while Marty is speaking.
If you start the puzzle game from the beginning and don't get very far then ToonTalk offers to show you a web page explaining how to get hints from Marty.
ToonTalk can now use higher resolution background images if running with more than 640x480 screen size.

9/22

If a city is saved while Marty is around, then he'll be around when you restore the city.
If a city was saved while on the floor, then when restored you saw Tooly run in and settle down. He is now where he was when you saved.

9/23

The options reached by clicking on 'Set Options' when starting ToonTalk now gives you options for more kinds of screen sizes. And it no longer offers to run the 16-bit version of ToonTalk. (The 16-bit version is no longer being updated.)
The options now gives you a choice of what text-to-speech voice you want Marty to use. This only applies if more than 1 voice has been installed. (Microsoft has some free voices at http://microsoft.com/msagent.)

9/27

Marty described notebooks inside of other notebooks by referring to an internal file name.
Added a new option where Marty can speak and ToonTalk can display subtitles. If the -spoken_language command line option is used then the subtitles will be in a different language from the speech. Otherwise it will act like closed captioning.

9/28

Added the ability to display multiple line subtitles when necessary.

9/29

Fixed some problems the sometimes occurred when ToonTalk was quitting.
If you paused ToonTalk while Marty was speaking, he would start speaking the next sentence.
Fixed a problem loading demo files created by recent versions of ToonTalk.

9/30

Made various improvements to how ToonTalk handles Unicode characters like in Japanese.

10/1

Fixed a bug generating subtitles in a different language than Marty is speaking.
Released Beta 19.

10/4

Fixed a problem starting ToonTalk in Portuguese. Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.
Enabled saving of a city while you are training a robot.

10/5

Made improvements to how a city, floor, or picture is saved when parts are shared.
Fixed several problems with saving cities while training robots.

10/6

Fixed some problems that caused ToonTalk to crash while trying to report an error.

10/8

Fixed a problem loading a robot in a team who hasn't been trained.
Fixed a problem sometimes when reporting the name of a robot that had an error.

10/10

Sometimes when things on the floor are restored when visiting a saved city, the "z ordering" of who is on top of who was wrong.
Fixed a problem saving a robot during training while holding a tool.

10/11

Fixed a problem when taking a flipped picture A off of flipped picture B and then taking from A a box of remote controls, then the remote controls used to get connected to B rather than A. Thanks to Ross for reporting this problem.
Fixed a problem matching erased remote controls (that display pictures) when in a thought bubble. Thanks to Ross for providing an example of this.
Fixed another problem matching remote controls in thought bubbles.

10/12

Made various improvements to ToonTalk's internal cache that should improve performance and also avoids a crash sometimes the cache is full.
Fixed a problem where if you visited a city that was saved while inside then when you walked out the door was displayed incorrectly.
Fixed a problem where Marty teleported in to give a warning and then said nothing.
Fixed problems saving remote controls inside of thought bubbles.
Improved the geometry of teams of robots.
Erased robots now have erased names as well.
Occasionally a robot's name was invisible.
Improved the way that erased variable width text is displayed.
Fixed a bug where ToonTalk crashed if you a train a robot to erase something and then vacuum it up.
When you paste something into ToonTalk it now acts the same as if you dropped it on the floor.

10/14

You can now drag files into ToonTalk. BMPs becomes pictures. WAVs sounds. Text files that have ToonTalk clippings in them becomes ToonTalk objects, otherwise a text object.
Introduced control-F8 which releases the mouse. This is useful when running ToonTalk in a window and you want to use the mouse while ToonTalk is still running. Especially useful when using ToonTalk's new drag and drop facility. Control-F8 restores things.
You can now select Copy on a file within Window's Explorer and paste the file into ToonTalk (e.g. using Control-v).

10/15

Fixed a problem where ToonTalk occasionally reported an invalid DirectX rectangle when maximized.

10/16

Improved the coordination between Marty's speech and talk balloons.
ToonTalk misread puzzle files that didn't end with a carriage return.
Fixed various problems when running puzzles with a spoken language different from the main language.
Improved the appearance of multi-line subtitles.

10/17

Improved the way lines were broken in subtitles and talk balloons.
Sometimes Bammer appeared to smash his hammer in the wrong place - sometimes even off screen.

10/20

Fixed a problem where the non-textual label of a notebook was sometimes invisible.

10/23

Remote controls that display pictures now follow the system-wide convention that space turns them on and '.' turns them off. This means only '+' advances them to the next state while previously space did that as well.
Remote controls whose appearance is textual now display an animated marquee only if they are active.

10/24

When running in some screen resolutions there were sometimes rectangular regions on the edge of the screen that were displayed wrong.
If a robot is running and types space at a picture or remote control when that doesn't make sense (i.e. not turning back on an inactivated sensor or picture) then a dialog box offers to make the robot type '+' instead since it was probably trained before the meaning of space was changed.
Sometimes a remote control was loaded so that it didn't update its value when it should.
Improved the geometry of the "Hit or Miss" sensors when removed from a box.
Fixed a problem where a remote control when re-activated didn't update its appearance.

10/25

The notebook of a remote controls that flies out when you flip a picture over now includes a "Copy of Me" which is a fully-functional copy of the picture. One use of this is when you want to store or transport a picture you can get a complete copy of the picture and then destroy the original. This was a bad idea was removed on 2/8/00.

10/29

User defined sounds now just display the short version of the file name and not the long path.

10/31

When the mouse is released via Control-F8 the Window title changes to indicate what has happened.
Sometimes when running ToonTalk in a window and leaving and returning to the window the color palette went bad and the colors were wrong until you paused and resumed ToonTalk.
When you press Control-F8 to get the mouse back sometimes you lost the focus.
Fixed some problems saving empty text pads.
Mouse clicks are now ignored if the mouse has been released via Control-F8.
Fixed a problem where if the window is the size of the screen when Control-F8 is pressed you couldn't resize or minimize the window.

11/1

Made further improvements to how lines are broken in subtitles and talk balloons.
Fixed a problem with the birthday puzzle when 2 languages are being used.
Fixed a problem when a robot took something from a nest that occasionally caused a crash.

11/2

Fixed a problem where sometimes things float over your hand.
Fixed a problem where describing (either Marty or for the clipboard) an erased user picture caused problems.
Fixed a problem where sometimes something is on top of something else and you stand up and sit and they were reversed.
Fixed more problems with puzzles when running with 2 languages (spoken and textual).
A robot's name sometimes drifted off his chest. (Still happens but more rarely now.)
Fixed a problem where if a robot was given a name before being trained the name was lost.
Sometimes the button of a tool like the wand would be placed wrong until the wand was pointed to.

11/3

Improved the way Unicode text is broken into lines if it is a mixture of ASCII and Unicode characters.
Improved the synchronization of text display and speaking.
Fixed a problem where extra empty lines in a puzzle confused ToonTalk.
Parenthetical remarks are now considered a good place to break a line.

11/4

For the last 6 weeks when you changed an option and said it should apply to all users it only applied to new users.
Fixed a display glitch that occurred only at certain screen resolutions.
Demos that started on a particular puzzle (e.g. using -puzzle on command line) didn't remember which puzzle they started on.
Made further improvements to how lines are broken in subtitles and talk balloons.
F11 no longer saves a screen shot as frm<frame name>.bmp on the ToonTalk directory. But control-F11 does. Less likely to be typed unknowingly and freed up F11.
F11 now means drop what you are holding but ignore what is underneath. So it won't go into a hole, or notebook page, and Bammer won't come out.
Control-<mouse click> was interpreted the same as middle mouse click but not for middle mouse button sensor. Does now. Also Shift-<mouse click> now acts exactly like right mouse button click.
Fixed a problem where ToonTalk crashed during puzzles sometimes when it was trying to report a problem.
Fixed a problem that had broken puzzle 54 for several weeks.
Fixed a problem getting screen shots while running demos.

11/5

Sometimes a nest whose bird has been copied and then one of the copies destroyed (e.g. by dropping her on a notebook) started behaving strangely.
Fixed a problem saving a nest that has been dropped on another nest (and "bammed" together).
Fixed a problem that happened sometimes when the bird of a nest that has been bammed together with another nest is given something.
Fixed a problem when copies of a bird where given something to deliver to their nest at "exactly the same time". Thanks to Miki for reporting this one.
Fixed a problem with a bird that is destroyed while still working (e.g. on the back of a picture that was dropped on a notebook while the bird was delivering a message).
Made further improvements to how lines are broken in subtitles and talk balloons.
When a demo has completed it now runs the "next demo" if there is one whose file name is just the next numeric dmo. E.g. log2.dmo follows log1.dmo.
Fixed another problem that had broken puzzle 54 for several weeks.

11/6

Fixed a problem saving boxes whose label is 255 characters long. (254 characters is the limit.)
Fixed a problem where ToonTalk generated a warning that a robot was being saved that accessed holes of a box that were more than 255 when no such thing was happening.
When you save something containing user pictures on the clipboard, the log file (<user name>.txt) now lists all the files that need to be sent along with the ToonTalk textual encoding.
Fixed a palette problem that occasionally happened when you pressed Control-F8 to release the mouse.
If you drag things to ToonTalk (while the mouse is released) then the focus is given to the ToonTalk window when you release the dragged files.

11/7

The User section of toontalk.ini can now include entries for "VariableFont", "FixedFont", and "SpokenLanguage".

11/8

Marty no longer tells you that you can use space to change pictures or remote controls since that is no longer true.
Made more improvements to synchronizing text and speech.
If the "Parts" sensor of a picture was placed on the back of a picture then ToonTalk crashed. (An infinite regress.) Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
Sometimes the size of things while doing puzzles was strange.
Pictures are no longer activated simply by dropping them. The space bar must be used.

11/9

You can now use tools (e.g. Dusty and Pumpy) with your hand hidden. Though the wand works even though it also becomes invisible.
Fixed another problem that had broken puzzle 54 for several weeks.
Fixed a bug using mixed Unicode and ASCII text.

11/10

When a bird is in a thought bubble it is as if it was erased since it matches any bird. So the label of the bird isn't displayed in thought bubbles. Thanks to Miki for bringing up this issue.
The sensor in the Options notebook for how Marty speaks now includes the option "speaks and subtitles".
Changed the details of how a toss of a picture works. And it only works on the floor now - not when dropping the picture on another picture.
Sometimes the geometry of a picture dropped on a remote control for the looks of a picture was wrong. Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
Sometimes when you removed sensors from the flipside of a picture that was on the flipside of a picture, the sensor was tracking the wrong picture.
Sometimes the remote looks of a picture didn't show the pictures that are on top of the picture.
If you type control-v to paste something in it no longer also gets added to a text pad or label or name of what you were pointing to or holding.
Sometimes when training a robot to work on a box with many holes the box was partly off the edge of the screen.
If in a puzzle Marty is waiting for a bird to deliver something (currently only 54) and you bump into him, he no longer gives you a hint.
Demos where Marty speaks and uses subtitles sometimes didn't replay correctly.

11/11

Demos that used the sensor for "milliseconds since last frame" didn't usually replay correctly.
Improved the reliability of saving pictures.
For quite a while the feature that the log file (<user name>.txt) shows which puzzle you started and ended with wasn't operating.

11/12

If only one voice is available then 'Set Options' no longer displays the option screen.
If no voices are available for a language then 'Set Options' canceled incorrectly when the voice selection screen was to be shown.
If a bird was saved (without her nest) and the bird was in a box that was erased then when the box was dropped, ToonTalk got confused.
If a bird on the back of a picture creates a nest the location is now better.
Improved the way trained robots can manipulate parts and container sensors.
Improved the way the "Copy of Me" sensor is updated when the picture if flipped over twice, changed, and then flipped over again.
Fixed a problem copying a robot whose name has been erased.
Improved the wiggle feedback when pointing to the remote control for the looks of a picture.
Improved the display of multiple line subtitles.

11/14

Copying an active picture now produces an active copy.
Fixed a problem that has broken puzzle 63 for 6 months.
Unicode subtitles now look nicer.

11/15

Sometimes the size of things on a nest was changed incorrectly.
Improved the way teams of robots and loaded trucks looked when dropped in the hole of a box.
If you drop a notebook on an erased number pad, it will receive the number of pages of the notebook.
Sometimes the size of things on the back of a picture when flipped got stuck at very short but full width.
Improved the appearance of teams of robots, especially teams with several members.
The size of robots in a team no longer need to be the same.
The appearance of which robot in a team is on top of another was improved.

11/16

Fixed a problem running the last puzzle with 2 languages.
Made more improvements to the geometry of robot teams and robot names.
When sitting on the floor you can now once again see the walls when you bounce into them.

11/17

If Marty tries to describe a force feedback joystick remote control (or one is placed on the clipboard) and no force feedback joystick is connected ToonTalk would sometimes crash.
Fixed some bugs with remote controls whose appearance are pictures inside of thought bubbles.
Text pads that have been flipped and saved were sometimes restored with the wrong text color.
Text-to-speech sounds can now be erased and new text dropped on them. Or text can be dropped at the front or end to be added to what is said.
Sometimes when a robot on the back of a picture dropped a text pad on a text pad, Marty gave a warning about something not being somewhere when nothing was wrong.

11/18

Fixed a problem where gaps appeared in boxes when ToonTalk was running at some screen resolutions (e.g. 1152 wide). Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.
When holding something over the hole of a box with more than one hole then labels and the "My box" text didn't wiggle when the rest of that part of the box did.
You are now only asked once (per session) if you want to fix a robot that is using space on a picture or remote control in a meaningless manner.
Fixed a problem that sometimes caused a crash while quitting.
If you type space to a picture or remote control that doesn't make sense then Marty gives a little help.
Fixed a problem loading some sensors that were saved in older versions of ToonTalk.
When a picture is inactive ('.' typed to it) it no longer animates.

11/19

If a picture has a nest on the back and a remote control for the looks of the picture has been created then the birds of the nest got mixed up.
Occasionally a bird on the back of a picture got frozen in flight.
Occasionally a bird on the back of a picture flying to a nest elsewhere on the back got mixed up and flew outside.
Sometimes when a bomb went off on a picture that was on a picture it ended up on the floor (rather than being destroyed).
Occasionally a bomb going off on the back of a picture on the back of a picture blew up ToonTalk instead.
Fixed a problem that caused ToonTalk to crash sometimes trying to put up a trouble shooting dialog box.
Sometimes when a robot was trained to use Dusty, he remembered the location to be vacuumed incorrectly.
Flipping a picture now inactivates it and all the things on its flip side. Flipping it back over doesn't restore things (maybe it should) so you need to press space to start it up again.
Occasionally when a robot on the back of a picture flipped a picture over the notebook flew out from behind the back of the picture to end up on the floor.
Robots on the back of a remote control for the looks of a picture don't run. They are there only so you can add and remove them from the picture it controls.
When a picture is inactivated or activated all its parts (things on top and on the back) are as well.
Fixed a problem putting up a dialog box while ToonTalk is shutting down.

11/20

Fixed a serious performance bug when a bird whose nest has been copied many times is given something and both the bird and her nests are off screen.
Demos did not replay correctly sensors reading the keyboard.
Copies of user sounds and user pictures now take up much fewer resources and are faster.
Fixed a problem if a robot is trained to flip a picture over and to vacuum up the picture's notebook of remote controls.

11/21

Sometimes when something was on top of something else and the city was saved and restored they were reversed.

11/22

The message box asking you if you want to see your log file (which is displayed only if ToonTalk thinks something important is in the log and 'Set Options' has indicated that the user is sophisticated) now displays in different languages.
If Unicode text (e.g. Japanese) includes spaces (ASCII 32) then these are interpreted as permissible places to break lines of text. They are not displayed.
Fixed a problem when Marty is speaking where subtitles or talk balloons disappeared or some text was skipped.
Sometimes a sensor which displays a picture displayed the picture in the lower left corner until it was pointed to or held.
Fixed a problem running a demo with a different number of languages (spoken and textual) than it was recorded.
Semi-colon ';' is now considered when deciding where to break a line of text.
Improved the display of text in talk balloons that has no line break characters in it. E.g. a file path.

11/24

Occasionally the replay of a demo where speech was enabled didn't replay correctly.
A bird in a thought bubble no longer knows where its nest is. (Since while training you are in the robot's imagination.)
Fixed a recently introduced problem displaying small boxes.
Changed the internal format of demos so that they include more information and should replay even when run on a very different environment. They also keep a copy of the users notebook so the demo will run even if that has been changed since.
In some screen resolutions (e.g. 1152 wide) round off errors caused things to be noticeably displaced from where they should be. General improvement in calculating locations of displayed pictures. Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.
When you dropped a text pad on the "File to Sound" remote control the sound was played when Bammer smashed them together. No longer does this since it is inappropriate if a robot is trained to do this and there shouldn't be a difference between robot and programmer actions. You still of course can here the sound by typing space at it.
Sometimes when a text pad is flipped over twice its size was strange.
Improved the placement of a robot's thought bubble.
User sounds used to load the WAV file when created or re-created. The time and resources devoted to this happens only the first time the sound is played. This means you can save many user sounds and it won't be costly unless they are all played. It does mean that if the file is missing or incorrect you'll get the warning when played rather than when loaded. User pictures work this way too.
User sounds can now be erased and a new file name dropped on them to convert them to a new sound. Or a text pad can be added to either end.

11/25

If demo logs are saved because GenerateLogs is set in toontalk.ini they now in appear in a subdirectory of Users whose name is the same as the user's name (without spaces and the like). Coming soon these logs will be broken into segments so you can jump back and forth through time.

11/26

If you tried to vacuum a bird you were forced to vacuum her t-shirt label first. Now you can select either the entire bird or her label with Dusty. Thanks to Miki for pointing this out.
Sometimes very small boxes inside of things had too large a width and stuck out of whatever their container was.
Remote controls for the address that were inactivated (via '.') became temporarily active when a number was dropped on them.
If a text pad has robots on the back, then there was a problem with '.' and space which turn off and on the robots on the back that the characters couldn't be typed on the pad. Space and '.' now are do both turn on and off the text pad and add themselves to the pad. You can always type backspace to rub them out if you only want to turn them on and off.
When a picture is added to another picture it is activated in the process.
A robot trained to drop things on a notebook and then vacuum up his box, crashed ToonTalk when run. Thanks to Miki for reporting this.
Text pads where only the text is visible didn't display correctly when placed on a nest.

11/28

Fixed a problem introduced two weeks earlier that interfered with Marty's final thanks if you solve the last puzzle.
Fixed a memory leak sometimes when using the clipboard.

11/29

Installation now assigns the Start ToonTalk program to DMO, CTY, and PZL files.
Start ToonTalk now runs the DemoToonTalk32 version of ToonTalk (specified in toontalk.ini) when a DMO file is passed as an argument.
Installation now gives new default bindings for joystick buttons and the middle mouse button.
Beta 20 released.

11/30

Fixed a recently introduced problem that caused ToonTalk to look for the wrong file name for the next puzzle. So ToonTalk thought all puzzles were done after each puzzle. Thanks to P-A Dreyfuss for reporting this.

12/2

Fixed a problem where sometimes a picture would wiggle if your hand is hidden.

12/3

Pictures with pictures on top are loaded with the wrong geometry.

12/4

The notebook of remote controls for subpictures of a picture found in the picture's notebook of remote controls was broken about a month earlier.
Geometry of pictures on top of pictures pasted by control-v was sometimes wrong.

12/7

Fixed problems with Marty describing boxes and other things in languages whose grammar is very different than English (e.g. Japanese).
Fixed a recently introduced problem making DMO logs of playing the puzzle game.
Pictures saved when inactive (e.g. by '.') now are restored as inactive properly.

12/8

Fixed a problem where birds on the back of pictures when given something sometimes crashed ToonTalk.
Sensors made inactive sometimes loaded back as active.
Improved the performance and file usage when saving and restoring of scales.

12/11

Fixed a several month old bug in using birds that fly to ToonTalk extensions (e.g. the file system).
Fixed a recent problem where robots didn't animate well if taken from the back of a picture and given a box.
Fixed a somewhat recent problem that text pads shrank as they were used.

12/13

Fixed a problem if a picture with sensors on the back was saved while inactive that the sensors weren't always updated when the picture was activated.
Fixed the French version to work with the latest beta versions. Thanks to P-A Dreyfuss for reporting this.

12/14

If you don't have a force feedback joystick connected to your computer, ToonTalk no longer tries to load DLL files needed only for force effects. Thanks to Roger Burt for reporting this.
Beta 20A released.

12/15

ToonTalk now catches internal errors and puts up a dialog box asking the user whether to continue and offering a chance to save things.

12/16

Sometimes when you visited a city that was saved while outside you used to see the houses being built when ToonTalk starts.

12/17

If you double clicked on a DMO file, ToonTalk asked you for your name rather than using the name given while creating the demo.

12/18

If you turned off the power and then pressed F1 to send Marty away when he came back he was no longer floating on top of things and if he had been given something he was still holding it.

12/19

Undid the "feature" added on 11/26 that caused things to become inactive (including parts of the front or back of a picture) when a picture was flipped.
Fixed a problem introduced 11/19 that caused flipped pictures on the back of flipped pictures to sometimes not activate.
Flipped pictures on the back of pictures don't run while the containing picture is flipped.
Sometimes Marty warned about a robot not being part of something when nothing was wrong.

12/20

Fixed various problems with things on the back of a flipped remote control for the looks of a picture.
Fixed a problem that sometimes lead to a crash when taking a robot off the back of a picture.

12/21

Inactive sensors in the thought bubble of a robot placed on the back of a picture were sometimes mistakenly activated.

12/22

Sometimes number and text pads that have been flipped over and flipped back became the wrong size when you typed to change them.
Occasionally saving a remote control caused it to go black.
A parts sensor on the back of a picture caused many problems.
Sometimes a sensor that displayed a number (e.g. colliding with who) did not always act like a number.
If you drop a flipped picture on a blank number pad the pad gets the number of things on the back of the picture.
Parts sensor sometimes changed when the picture it was sensing was flipped over. Parts sensor shows only the things on the front of the picture.
The "Copy of Me" item in the notebook of remote controls of a picture now presents a copy of the picture as it currently is (typically flipped).
You can now fly right to the edge of the city. Previously the invisible barrier was over the city near the city's edge.
When you are invisible none of the mouse or keyboard events changes you (e.g. walking out the door or sitting down). This means you can play games decorating the wall of a house or on the roof of a house.
Fixed a problem introduced on 11/15 that caused some robots in a team to have very big or small sizes.
Fixed a problem where ToonTalk couldn't find a file (e.g. a user's BMP file) that this was trapped as an internal error (see 12/15 entry).

12/27

Fixed a problem when ToonTalk was installed from an Internet download where some of the resolution options were enabled in 'Set Options' but they caused errors when ToonTalk was run since the m25 file is only available on the CD-ROM.
The -v <screen width> command line was changed so that any number is accepted. The height is assumed to be 75% of the width. For example, there is no 'Set Option' for 1400x1050 but -v 1400 should run ToonTalk in that resolution (if the computer's video card and drivers support it).

Continue with 2000.