FurBot Bot Creating Tutorial 1
By Ryhn
(Published with permission)

TUTORIAL 1
Basic Greeting Bot

Features
Bot will greet furres that say hello to it.
Bot will disconnect from furcadia when you call it ugly.

Objectives
Learn how to create a bot character and connect it to furcadia
Learn how to use the "bot actions" menu so that the bot responds to phrases and whispers

CREATING A BOT

The creation of any bot always starts with the framework. Your bot needs a body to walk around in after all. Otherwise it would probably scare the furlings ^-^

1) Click on the "Edit" button to open up the character editor. From here, you can modify your Bot's gender, name, description, color code, etc.

2) If you would like to make a bot out of a character you have already created, select the "Load from .INI..." button and select the .ini file you would like to use. Furbot will then automatically insert your character's name, password, description, and color code for you.

If you are making your bot from scratch, fill in all the details manually

3) After all the details are filled in to your satisfaction, click on the "Save"-button. If your bot is being created from scratch, let FurBot try and register your bot name.

If you have loaded your bot from a previously existing .ini file, then just say you would not like to register now, and you would not like to register later.

Note: The "Save to .INI..." button is only used for editing things like color code and species to a bot that you have already saved into FurBot. Editing only, not for character creation. You must press the "Save"-button at this point. Don't get ahead of yourself ^-^

After you have closed the character editor window, select "Save bot" from "File"-menu to save your bot. If all has gone well, FurBot has now created a .bot file in your FurBot directory (or wherever you saved it to) that you can work your genius on. Congratulations.

CREATING SIMPLE BOT ACTIONS

Bot actions are the groundwork for most bots you will ever create. They are procedures your bot will perform when responding to something on furc. The bot can respond to what a furre says, what a furre whispers, and what a furre emotes. Any time you want to give your bot a command while you're on furc, you will need to make a Bot action for it.

You can get to the action editor, but clicking on the "bot" drop down menu, and then selecting "bot actions"

Note: The "Execute" options you see below, are either Checked or Unchecked in order to easily enable, or disable your bot from performing any of it's procedures, in a specific category. If for instance, You still want your bot to talk to people, but you don't want it to do any more timed effects until you fix something.

Alright, now it's time to start making our bot into something worth connecting to Furcadia.

BOT DISCONNECTION

1) Click on the "add" button to create a new action
2) Give your action a name, for this bot, we'll use "Bot Disconnect"
3) I want this bot to only disconnect when I say "YOU'RE UGLY" not "you're ugly" or "YoU'rE UgLy" so I must check the "Case sensitive" box.
4) I want myself to be the only one to call my bot ugly, so I insert my name into the first "if" text box.
5) I don't want to have to whisper the command, so I'll select "Says" from the drop down menu
6) In the last box goes "YOU'RE UGLY"

At this point, I've got my bot reacting to something, every time my bot hears me say "YOU'RE UGLY" it will first check to see if all the and statements are true. Since we're not doing any of them right now, there's nothing stopping the bot from carrying out it's executions So let's give it something to do.

7) Click on the "Add" button below the little window named "Then". Select the "Disconnect Bot" execution from the drop down menu. Then, press the "Update" button.

You're Action should be filled out as follows at this point

Now click on the "Update"-button and the procedure should now appear in the menu to the left under the name you gave it.

BOT GREETING

Hopefully by now, you're beginning to get a feel for some of the basics. Now it's time to finish this bot up with a greeting action.

I'll set it to bow and say "greetings, my name is Mr. Happy Pants, what's yours?" when anyone says "Hello" to my bot

Most of the steps here are the same, except I won't check the case sensitive box, because I don't really care whether or not someone uses capital letters or not.

The first "If" text box will be left as the wildcard * because I want this command to work for everyone

Note: Wildcards are special symbols you can use to mean certain things. The two wildcards are ? and *

* means any combination, of any number of characters
? means any single character

Example: ???? means any 4 letter word - Goat and Bum1 both satisfy ????
Example: Sanc* means anything that begins with Sanct - Sanctimonious, Sanctuary, and Sancy the Sexy Cat all satisfy Sanc*
Example: *Bum? means anything that ends in Bum and one other character - Bum3, Bum7, and I_am_Bum4 all satisfy *Bum?

The first execution I will add, will be the "Do #1" found in the same drop down menu as before. The #1 represents a spot in the execution that you must fill in, a text box is provided directly underneath the spot where "Do #1" is displayed. The first (in the case the only) text box, corresponds to the first # in the execution, while the second text box, will correspond to the second #.

In this text box, I will insert "Bows"

Update, and add a new execution.

Find "Say #1" from the drop down menu, and insert the phrase "Greetings, my name is Mr. Happy Pants, what's yours?"

Update once more, and your procedure should look like this:

CONNECTING YOUR BOT

When you're ready to connect your bot, close your "Bot Actions" window, and click on the "Connect"-button. That's all there is to it.

When you Connect, a kind of remote control appears. It includes the 7,9,1,3, <, and > buttons to control the four directions of movement, and the two spin direction. L for lay down, A to go to Algeria, W to do an online Check, G to pick up an object, U to use an object, S to go to Vinca, and "Console" to make a kind of floating remote complete with a text box for you.

End of Tutorial One

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