Preston

- Preston is provided as-is, without warranty or guarantee of any kind. If you download or use Preston, you have implicitly
agreed to the rules and limitations set forth here.
- The user will not hold ImaBot or ImaBot members liable for any damages, either consequential or incidental, resulting
from the use of Preston.
- Preston will be used in public areas within acceptable guidelines.
- Preston will only be used in accordance to all rules and only in public Activeworlds, Inc. worlds, or in private worlds if authorized by the owner.
- We may, at our option, choose to disallow access to one or more users.
- You will not attempt to reverse engineer or decompile Preston.

• Change objects in the world based on events
• Greet people when they enter the world
• Change a midi file on an object automatically
• Define actions using a built in user definable dictionary
• Change backgrounds on a schedule
• Eject people for saying user definable words
• Click detection
• Lots more :)

• Preston has been updated to build 132 of the AW SDK.

• Preston has been updated to the 5.0 AW SDK.

• A bug has been fixed when users entered a universe host but not port.

• A long-standing bug was fixed where Preston may fail to successfully change all objects while attempting to change a large number of objects.

• The User Log and Error log pages have been enhanced. Additionally, they should now work properly with long logs.

• A bug has been fixed where the user log function may cause Preston to crash in or show incorrect log characters in the User Log page in some instances.

• Preston has been updated to the latest SDK version.

• The About page has been updated.

• A long-standing bug was fixed where Preston’s "VRT" events did not work when the "World Settings Schedule" was not active.

• A long-standing bug was fixed where Preston’s user defined variables could be saved incorrectly if both permanent and temporary variables were used.

• A long-standing bug was fixed where "change object" or "delete object" could cease to operate on some objects after being disconnected from the world if global mode was disabled.

• A new feature has been added to allow Preston to query the entire world (when in global mode). The map shows the contents of the entire world, and it can track and change all named objects in the world. No longer are multiple instances of Preston required to "cover" an entire world.

• A long-standing bug has been fixed where Preston's interface wasn't as responsive as it should be. Additionally, Preston would use more CPU time than needed.

• A bug was fixed where Preston may get stuck when querying large areas.

• Preston now only lists the named objects in the GUI when the query is complete.

• A bug was fixed where Preston could set an incorrect value for south sky color.

• Several optimizations have been made to the query tab.

• A bug was fixed where the text in the User Log or Error Log could be displayed incorrectly if the cursor was moved.

• Preston has been updated to use SDK build 65.

• Internal testing build.

• Preston has been updated to use SDK build 63, which should fix some problems as well as allow functionality in other universes.

• Preston has been updated to use SDK build 63, which should fix some problems as well as allow functionality in other universes.

• A bug was fixed where, in some cases, Preston would visit the Ground Zero of a world before it's intended destination.

• Due to a change in the SDK, Preston would not reappear in the world after a network disconnection and reconnection in some cases. This has been resolved.

• Bugs were fixed where the “Set Lighting” and “Set Water” checkboxes would not operate properly in some cases.

• A problem was resolved where some of the new world attributes would not load and save correctly.

• The error message texts were updated for 4.1.

• Over 50 new world attributes were added to bring Preston up to date with all of the newest attributes. These world attributes are now tabbed for easier readability.

• Preston has been updated to work with the 4.1 SDK.

• A bug was fixed where Preston would override an object's owner with its own citizen number if it had Eminent Domain.

• A bug was fixed where objects with no name matched the default setting for the midi speaker.

• A bug was fixed where an unexpected error message would be displayed if a world name was not entered.

• The help text for the Misc\Random Action was improved.

• Preston is now developed and maintained by Ima Genius. We still keep in touch with Faber. :)

• There is a new action called "announce". It causes Preston to display a message in the chat window just as the Immigration Officer does. A message with no "name: " attached to it, and you can set the color and if the message should be displayed in bold and/or italic. You can direct the message at a single user or "broadcast" it to everyone in the world.  Preston must have caretaker to use this.

• Preston now supports global mode for avatar activity. Every chat line, avatar arrival, move or departure is recognized and the appropriate event in the dictionary list is triggered, regardless of the distance from the avatar to the bot.

• Preston should now handle objects with rolls and tilts properly.

• Preston has been updated to use the larger query area available in new worlds. When the world server supports it, Preston now displays up to 5x5 sectors in its AW property cache and uses that area for its object monitoring.

• The world settings schedule now can update skyboxes. The skybox feature works just it's ground object counterpart feature does.

• The new variable handling caused Preston to break on a simple %s in the randomizer, citizen lookup and probably in other parts of the bot. Preston would get stuck or crash when encountering them. This has been fixed.

• The misc/log action can now store customized log entries.

• The use of combined data names, such as %a.cash was working only in the data naming field, not when using that name in any other field for data retrieval. This has been fixed by using the period as a data separator on lookup. %a.cash causes 2 lookups, it turns %a into the value, say, faber, and then looks up %faber.cash . Therefore, only the period can be used to construct such nested data names.

• Preston can now remember and compute data.  It has a new action to set variables to any value, and those variables can now be used in any other action. A datalist page was added to Preston that lists all currently set values. The new action also allows simple arithmetic, for example you can set a variable named Score to the new value of %Score + 1, resulting in an increment. Supported operations are + (Addition), - (Subtraction), * (Multiplication) and / (Division). '(' and ')' can be used as well. Division by 0 is theoretically undefined, but in Preston it results in 0. Undefined variables or other text appearing in an expression will be interpreted as numeric 0. The data can be marked as being "permanent", in which case it is saved to disk, reloaded on program start, and it survives a <restart bot>.

• The addition of the context menu accidentally rendered the old way of adding sequences inactive, as the add button behaved like the "copy" menu item only. This has been fixed.

• The "edit dictionary entry" dialog for new items now defaults to "misc/reply" instead of "misc/none".

• Preston now features an online help system. The help button is enabled.  Clicking it turns the mouse pointer into the help mouse pointer. If you click on any control on with the help mouse pointer, its help window pops up. Pressing F1 on any control has the same effect. Not all help texts have been written yet, but the basic Preston UI should be covered. The online help uses an embedded html browser window, it therefore requires Internet Explorer 4.0 or above to be installed.

• If you deleted an object that Preston was trying to move using the <move object> command, Preston would not stop displaying error messages which prevented user interaction with the bot.  It would consequently need to be shut down with task manager.  This has been fixed.  Build errors or "object not found" errors now immediately stop any object movements.

• The "exit" option on the Preston tray icon did not work.  This has been fixed.

• Preston now uses the static version of aw.dll. Therefore the AW code is built-in now and no aw.dll is needed.

• Preston now has an entirely new ini file loading/saving code. There should be no limit on the number of dictionary/badnames/etc. entries any more (previously the size of the ini file was restricted to something less than 64k). To be on the safe side, please backup your old preston.ini file before upgrading your Preston.

• If you entered an invalid password (or something that would cause a login error) and hit start bot, the "Start Bot" button remained grayed out and Preston had to be restarted in order to start the bot. This has been fixed.

• Issuing a "stop bot" would not cause waiting sequences to stop as well. This usually causes "reason: no instance" error messages when the waiting sequence woke up and tried to make the bot do or say something. This is fixed.

• The %p/%P reply was not initialized correctly causing %P to reply avatar names (instead of bots) when no bots are around. This has been fixed.

• The location of selected objects on the property page is now displayed on the bottom of that page.

• The dictionary list now has a context menu, which can be accessed by right clicking a dictionary entry.  This allows items to be inserted as a copy or sequence.

• The method Preston uses to wait for events has been changed. This speeds up property loading and response times, and hopefully eliminates some problems due to network lag Preston had suffered from.

• Preston now has an option on the login page to "minimize to tray". If checked, Preston removes its window from the taskbar and shows an icon in the status notification area (i.e. Tray) instead.

• Preston now features a new action: <move object>. It allows Preston to move/rotate a given object through a series of given positions smoothly, using the new move/rotate commands provided by aw since 3.1. This way Preston does the path computations for you, it extents the limitations of move/rotate (i.e. allows stacking), and the object movements are seen by everybody. You can now have people be chased by a block (An example of that is now under "Presets") or have doors revolve out and back in. The list of positions/orientations is composed of absolute coordinates or references to objects, i.e. you can simply construct the path by placing some invisible marker objects.

• Note #1: Before updating your Preston, make sure to backup your preston.ini and preston.mls file. You should regularly backup these 2 files anyway.
• Preston reverted to the configured avatar on every <teleport>. This has been fixed.
• The <wait> action did not remember the whisper/report to owner flags correctly for the remaining sequence. This has been fixed.
• Several actions erroneously used placeholders like %s in their replies, such as the <status> action or the citizen resolving actions. This has been fixed.

• Note #1: The BETA phase of Preston will not end for a while since it is using the beta version of the Active Worlds SDK.
• Note #2: Before updating your Preston, make sure to backup your preston.ini and preston.mls file. You should regularly backup these 2 files anyway.
• This build has all the actions categorized and sorted now on the Dictionary Entry Add/Edit Dialog. Note that this is a visual change only, all old preston scripts load and function without a change.
• Preston now has a new event: Object select. It triggers whenever someone nearby right clicks an object.
• Object Click events with no target name now trigger on all objects. In previous builds it was required for the object to have a name, although any name did match, the name tag was mandatory. This is no longer the case. To have the old behavior, you have to use a pattern like ?* or similar.
• There is a new action "wait". The new action causes Preston to let a sequence wait the given number of seconds. Preston puts the current entry on a wait list, and revives it after the given number of seconds, continuing with any sequence attached to it. Therefore the action makes only sense as part of a sequence. Note that only the sequence is waiting, all other Preston activities continue to work during the waiting time. There is no limit on the number of sequences waiting concurrently.
• Pattern matching is now a matching option for phrase dictionary entries. The pattern matching algorithm understands the usual wild cards * and ?, and letter sets in curly brackets, and negation. f?b*r would match "faber" but as well "febour" for example. "t{a-c}st" matches tast, tbst, and tcst. "t{!e}st" is like "t?st" except that it does not match "test".
• All events except for "phrase" used to have a simple equality match on their arguments (avatar or object names, etc). this has been changed to "pattern matching".. .an avatar click on "f*" would match anyone whose name starts with an f.
• The target name for "change object" and "delete object" now uses the pattern matching as well.
• The announcement page now carries a "face speaker" check mark which controls if Preston faces the avatar it hears the chat text from. Its on per default to match the old behavior, but can now be turned off.
• There is a new action, "change world settings", which enables Preston to change the current world settings (lights, fog, etc) on command. It takes an world settings entry name as an argument. For that reason all world settings entries can now be named, and the editing of the world settings list is now possible even if the automated scheduling of those entries is turned off.
• "whisper reply" on the dictionary edit window was only working for "reply" action. This has been changed, it now should apply to all other responses too.
• The <teleport> action now understands the @ notation as targets to. using @faber or @someobject would get your bot to the given avatar/object.
• The <avatar> action now takes the avatar number as a configurable parameter in the dictionary entry.
• Preston now has a <gesture> action.
• The "Named Objects found" display now should be able to display the numbers on the right column accurately even if the number is very high.
• The <log> action was not properly saving the logged entries to preston.log. The output on the user tab was ok, but the log file is corrupted.

• Preston is now compiled with aw.dll build 16 to support the new AW3.0 features. Make sure to use the supplied aw.dll when you install Preston, and do not share this aw.dll with any of your previous or other bots.  You can do this by placing Preston in a separate folder.
• As with any initial beta, the AW3.0 beta at the time of this release does still have some bugs. It was observed that avatar positioning is not accurate.
• A new action, <move avatar>, enables Preston to remotely move an avatar around. The avatar can be moved to other known locations such as other avatars or objects, or to an absolute AW location which includes different worlds.  Note that this requires eject rights, world server build 23, and the person being moved to have AW client build 336 or later.
• change_object and add_object now accept other object names as position using the @ notation too. @faber could now refer to Faber being near or to an object having "create name faber" on it. If both apply, the avatar position takes precedence.
• The read-only entries for owner and version can no longer be overridden.
• The world schedule now can change the new world parameters as well, which includes fog, ambient light color, directional light color, and light direction.

• The sorting on the dictionary page did not display sequences in order sometimes. This has been fixed.
• The dictionary edit dialog cleared out the phrase dialog when you changed the action. This has been fixed. This bug fix also applies to the preset button not filling in the phrase.
• Preston had a problem when trying to delete more than one dictionary entry, especially if main entries and their sequences were selected and deleted at once. This has been fixed.
• A bug in the midi list handling caused a midi entry to disappear when the user hit the "move up" button. This has been fixed.

• Activating the midi mode using the check mark on the midi page and hitting apply would not activate the midi mode unless the model or description was changed.  This has been fixed.
• The midi tab does not complain in German anymore when the time interval edit field was empty.
• Preston now has an "add object" and "delete object" action. A seed command is now easy.
• Preston now accepts for all object commands (add/change/delete) an avatar position instead of an AW position, decorated with the @ sign. For example use @faber if you want your preston to put a box around me in case I show up. @%r or @%a will also work of course to enable it for more general purposes.
• The teleport action now has a "destination" field. It allows you to have the bot go to a preset location using a short phrase, such as "go to gz". If the field is empty, the bot assumes "%r", thereby leaving old teleport entries intact.
• There is a new event for dictionary entries labeled "sequence". It allows you to attach more than one action to a dictionary entry. To add a second action, highlight the corresponding exiting entry in the dictionary list and then click "add". On the dictionary add dialog, select "sequence" as the event, and your new entry will be added to the highlighted one. The order of the actions can be changed using the up and down arrow buttons on the dictionary page. "Sequence" is only available if an entry was selected in on the dictionary page when clicking "add".
• There are 2 new events, "VRT" and "timer". "VRT" allows you to have Preston process an dictionary entry on a given VRT time (such as 8:00), while "timer" executes a dictionary entry at given time intervals (such as every 30 seconds).

• The secure area function sometimes mixed up "safe" people and "risky" people and ejected the wrong people. This has been fixed.
• The <next midi> event works only when under "public" protection. The GUI has been changed to reflect that. When loading incorrect old data please open your "next midi" event entries click OK.
• The ini saving code has been cleaned up not to safe all the default values, since the loading code provides the default values automatically which results in a much shorter ini file.

• Preston incorrectly reported all build results as errors, including success.  This has been fixed.

• Preston now has a complex object recognition and changing functionality. If active, it builds a property cache by retrieving the objects in the area around the bot on startup, keeps it in sync with the world using "live update" and identifies the object by the "name" command in the action line (as with the aw browser). These identified objects now can be used in events for click detection, and in actions to manipulate them. The bot has an object map and object list for assistance. To save CPU resources that map is only updated when the bot window is active. Note that the midi feature now depends on the property cache being active.  To name an object, put  create name testobject  in the action field of the object being named (replace testobject with the desired object name).
• Preston now has a "Secure Area" function which eject anyone inside a given radius around the bot. You can have a warning radius to prevent accidental ejection.
• Preston now can start the bot on program start, allowing unattended Preston hosting.
• The minimum eject time-out is now 1 second (not 1 minute anymore).
• There is a new placeholder: %p/%P which expands to the list of people(/bots) currently around. This renders the "list avatars" action obsolete, since any simple "reply" action can do the same. Using the "approach" / "departure" events and the "change object" action, preston is able to manage a sign containing the names of people nearby.  %p is for people, and %P is for bots.
• The bad names list now remembers tourists names properly.
• The dictionary tab now has a "ignore bots" check mark, causing preston to ignore all phrases or click events by bots.

• Preston ran into an error message if the output from a rights inquiry was too long. The output is now split properly to prevent the error.
• Preston is now resizable. The complete main dialog, the dictionary edit dialog and the midi timing dialog now can be resized and maximized.

• The rights list readout code did not work on space separated rights lists.  This is now fixed.
• A bug was fixed which allowed the internal owner and version replies to be temporarily overrided.
• Some German error messages on the ejection page have been removed.
• The rights actions had problems with the "busy" field and the "unused" field as the dialog code switched them around erroneously.  This is now fixed.

• Any command result can now be reported to the owner instead of the public or the speaker.
• The address lookup now operates in complete asynchronous mode to have multiple inquiries at one time work.
• Two new events added:  arrival and departure.  Preston can now respond to any avatar entry or exit with any command (such as address lookup or event logging).
• Preston can now eject by citizen number. Simply put the citizen number with the # prefix in the bad names list. (e.g.  #288239 would ban me from your bot's visibility range).
• Preston can now report any incoming whisper to the bot owners by checking the corresponding check box on the announcements page.
• The midi list is now stored in an external file called preston.mls, since the system provided ini read and write functions do not handle more than about 400 midi entries in the ini file. This Preston version will still read the old entries in the ini file, but on exit or apply it will remove them from the ini file and create the preston.mls file.
• Using the "stop bot" button and then the "start bot" button (or the shortcut via "restart bot") messed up some of the internal state (the bot carried some leftovers from the previous session), causing weird ejection attempts and other side effects. Using this feature now does a clean restart.
• Preston now has new actions to read out the current rights of the world for speakers, build, eject, etc. The rights list is parsed, translated into real citizen names and displayed.

• Preston can now have more than one owner.  Separate the names with "," in the bot owner field.  For example:    Faber,Ima Genius
• A bug was fixed which would cause Preston to crash when Preston's internal user list had only one entry, and that user would leave and come back.  This bug has been around for quite some time now, and reported by many people.
• A bug was fixed with the follow mode.  "me" is now properly recognized as the follow target again.

• The <define> action was fixed, the resulting phrase is working again.
• A bug was fixed in the saving code, Preston should now save all data in all circumstances again.

• A bug has been fixed where Preston would crash when no avatar click dictionary entry was present and someone clicked on an avatar.
• A german message was removed from the announcement page.

• A <citaddress> action was added  to determine the i.p. addresses of people and resolve them (including the DNS name).
• Preston now uses all midi speakers that match the given description it can find in its object detection range of 120m radius.
• When changing midi's, Preston now can announce the song (just the filename or the full URL).
• Midi playing now can be deactivated without having to clear the edit fields, same goes for the "match all" case on the description fields (active check marks were added for both).
• The <whisper> action has been replaced with a <whisper reply> switch which can be applied to any action. When loading old configurations, <whisper> is replaced with <reply> and <whisper reply> turned on.
• Another german message was removed.
• The seen, follow, goto, and remote-eject actions now detects if the name is missing and Preston reports accordingly.
• In the midi page, an "all" check box was added to make Preston disregard the descriptions of the speaker(s) when searching for speakers.
• Preston now uses SDK Build 15.

• Preston now uses the new SDK Build 14.
• Preston is now able to detect when someone near him clicks on other avatars, and he can use that for dictionary entries.
• Preston is now able to detect when someone near him clicks on the midi speaker, and he can use that for dictionary entries.
• Goto and follow action now have a customizable target field to enable follow or join on click.
• A next_midi action was added to support switching to the next midi when someone clicks on the speaker.
• Note: These new features require world build 21 or greater and AW browser version 2.2.

• An "eject all tourists" option was added to the ejection page.
• A "no announcement for name ejections" option was added to the ejection page.

• A bug was fixed which caused Preston to crash when using long midi URLs.
• The bug in the random action handler was fixed.
• Some small UI glitches were fixed.

• The auto-eject feature now comes bundled with a warning feature. Preston warns the victim of the rules violation a configurable number of times before ejecting, and the bot owner, if nearby, is notified that a warning was issued.
• Another "abbrechen" button (in the midi timing dialog) was translated into "cancel".
• The dictionary edit dialog was changed: every phrase can now have up to 5 parameters, each in its own edit field. There is no need for the odd "//" syntax anymore, plus a "Preset" button was added which contains an example for each action (to reduce technical support :) ).
• A "whisper" action was added.
• The "substring" matching has been reversed.  Preston looks now for a substring match in the chat line, not in the phrase.

• A small bug was fixed which caused the citizen number in the owner reply to be wrong (the citname was correct).
• The midi list editing was badly broken: editing, applying and editing again caused a crash.  This has been fixed.
• Preston can now automatically determine the length in seconds of a midi file by downloading it and analyzing it. The <advanced> button on the Midi page now opens the timing dialog to allow you to handle it.
• The midi page now has a status line which gives the current status of the midi system: last song played and seconds remaining for it.
• An about page was added which contains web links to the Preston web pages.
• <list avatars> now lists present people only.

• A <remote eject> action was added that tells Preston to eject someone.
• A <list avatars> action was added to tell Preston to list all people currently around.
• Preston now can whisper welcome and leave announcements to his owner instead.
• A bug was fixed that allowed temporary false "version" and "owner" entries.
• Preston can change the ground object of a world as well from his world settings schedule table.
• The world schedule can now be deactivated without having to delete all entries.
• "Apply" now saves all data to the .ini file immediately.
• Custom colors for world background can now be defined, and are saved to the ini file.
• A bug was fixed in Preston's "all words" phrase matching.
• A bug was fixed in Preston's user list managing, which caused wrong <seen> and <follow> behaviors.

• The <follow> action was broken in build 9 (it turned into a plain <goto> accidently), and is now fixed.

• A bug was fixed in the time output. The number after the colon now are minutes (and not accidently seconds anymore).
• Added a <home> action. It causes preston to return to the home location as specified to the login page.
• The <goto> action now ends follow mode.
• A small bug was fixed on the edit phrase dialog. It now forces the <beginning> matching for those action that require it.
• Added an <avatar> action. It enables avatar changing phrases.
• Fixed daylight savings compensation for VRT.
• Midi object changing now in asynchronous mode. The building operation does not block preston anymore.
• %r now works correctly for the playmidi operation. Midi URL submissions can now be taken by Preston directly.
• Clicking "apply" now reverts preston to his login position and avatar if the location and / or avatar was edited on the login page.
• In the data entry of a <random> action phrase, %s can now be used more than once for multiple random string selection., e.g. "The 3 dice show %s, %s and %s//1,2,3,4,5,6"
• The dialog data validation on the midi page displayed a german error message. That has been removed.
• The location string used a wrong notation for the altitude. It was off by a factor of 10. An altitude of 4 m was expected as "4a", but regular AW notation should have been "0.4a". This is now fixed.

• A small bug was fixed to allow negative altitudes.
• A <random> action was added which enables things like dice throwsing or oracle like answers (yes/no/maybe).
• Added %t/%T as placeholder for the current VRT. %t is 12 and %T is 24 hour output.
• Added the often requested moving code to Preston. Preston now has a <goto>, <follow> and <stop_follow> action to be assigned to phrases.
• Translated the missing "Abbrechen" button into proper "Cancel" :)

• The welcome announcement can now be whispered by Preston.
• Preston now keeps an internal userlist, and a "seen" action has be added to use it.
• The phrase matching algorithm has been extended. Now you have "beginning", "complete", "all words", "anywords" and "substring" matching to choose from.
• A new "log" action was added to have certain phrase catches saved to a log file.
• New "citnumber" and "citname" actions were added to have preston resolve citizen names or numbers.
• %r now works with the playmidi action.
• A bug was fixed to allow location coordinates with decimal point to be used without the leading 0.
• Preston now can change the World settings (color, backdrop and greeting) according to a time schedule.
• Preston now turns to the person it sees arrive, depart or talk.
• Some small bugs were fixed which avoided saving of some settings (respond to whisper, etc).
• Preston now allows <owner only> protection on commands.

• A bug was fixed which caused a version server resource leak.
• An "exact match only" check was added to provide more control over phrase matching.
• A bug was fixed with "rescan on build error".  Preston will properly rescan when the midi object is moved.
• Every Midifile now can have an individual time setting.
• Added "%r" as Placeholder, to be used for more appropiate responses. %r is replaced by the parameters which were given to the phrase that matched. Easiest example: Phrase "%b say" (partial matching) and data = "%r" gives the common say command.
• The "define" action now has customizeable request/reply strings.
• A "forget" action was added.  It is the opposite of the "define" action.
• Eject phrases now can have individual eject messages.
• "Whisper responses" now also works for <define>, <forget> and <status>.

• Fixed bug which caused Preston never to see the midi object while looking for it endlessly

• Editing dictionary entries now behave as intended.
• Added "Rescan on build errors" to midi page.
• The help button has been disabled for now.
• Empty announcement messages now disable announcing for that event.
• Ejection time is now adjustable.

• Startbot/Stopbot now works as intended.
• Deleting of Dictionary Entries now works as intended.
• "Protect PS" now works as intended.
• "Start Bot" now issues "apply" for the login page before starting the bot.

• First public release

• Internal build, not released