Chat with your micro

I frequently find myself talking to my micro and rarely does it answer back. When it does, it's likely to be those unhelpful "Failed at line so and so ..." or "Missing". Occasionally, it's so cheerful it calls me silly!

Talkback, from Acornsoft, is what I've been waiting for. At last I've the chance to have an intellectual conversation with the computer.

At least I can pretend to be intellectual.

The program allows you to hold conversations between characters that you've developed yourself.

The personalities ofthe people created are determined by a series of Keywords, Responses and Starters for each character. The conversations are generated from a collection of Keywords and Responses.

If a Keyword is mentioned then the Response is made. Good dialogues are created by developing several Responses to a single Keyword and through making one character's Respon ses contain Keywords of the other character.

You can watch, printout or even join in the conversations on the screen.

Characters can be saved at any stage and reloaded for further development later.

This package is both a home entertainment program and an educational tool.

Conversations can be created by experimentation and the use of novel language. They can develop from careful attention to the structure of language to achieve controlled results. Either way the results are very impressive.

The program is available on disc and tape, for both the Electron and BBC computers. With it is a comprehensive manual that describes the techniques for developing conversations.

With practice those techniques can be applied to both real and imagined situations.

Possibilities include dialogue drawn from life - interviews, complaints, proposals and such like.

The manual suggests many more imaginative dialogues including a car and a horse, stomach and mouth, or a close encounter with an alien.

The whole program is menu driven - pressing Escape always returns you to the Choice Page.

Within the options are creating, altering, saving and loading characters.

Two characters are included with the program - they're Astro and Bomb inspired by the concluding part ofthe film Dark Star. By running their conversations and joining in with them the techniques and potential of the program can be more easily seen.

I can thoroughly recommend this program. I've ordered a copy for my own classroom as I'm certain of its educational value. I'm equally certain that it can be an entertaining program for the home.

John Woollard