January 15, 2005 Meetin
From Www.india-gii.org
The group met at NAB at 3 pm as usual.
First of all, Mr. Mehta displayed the use of Microsoft Text to Speech Engine in a VB project. The group looked at the code of the program created by Mr. Mehta.
The code of the program has been put up in the files section of the group’s mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mapofnab/files/ file is named simpletts.zip
Later during the meeting, the group members displayed the use of the Microsoft TTS in their Tik Tak Toe program. The group members had inserted the Microsoft Direct Text to Speech component in their project. The component had been named TTS for the sake of simplicity. The following code had been used in the program for making the TTS speak the desired text. TTS.speak “phrase to be spoken” & text1.text ‘Text1.text is an example of a variable to be spoken
The group then focused on the task of building intelligence into their Tik Tak Toe game. As Mr. Mehta had suggested in the previous meeting the “tree view control” of VB could be an effective way of creating a database which could store possible winning combinations and losing combinations. The computer then before making a move would consult this database and decide on the best possible move at that stage of the game. The group members were asked to explore the possibility of making the game in such a way that it would be possible for the computer to play against itself in all possible ways and store all moves. The computer would also mark as to which was a good move and which moves lead to loss of game. The computer then in future while playing the game with the user will decide on its moves after consulting this database. The idea here is not to forcibly build any intelligence in the game but rather to provide a mechanism whereby the computer learns by itself. The experience of building such a mechanism into a program would help the group members acquire a very useful programming skill.
With the above objectives in mind, Mr. Arun Mehta displayed the tree control demo program written by him. The program allows the user to create a tree of desired items and is also capable of searching existing items in the tree. Mr. Mehta explained the code of the program. The game was speech enabled as well.
The code of the program has been put up in the files section of the group’s mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mapofnab/files/ file is named TreeDemo.zip
Mrs. Sreeja then fulfilled her promise of teaching the group the procedure of linking a database to a VB program. She showed how a table created in MS Access could be linked to different text boxes in a VB form. The text boxes could be used for scrolling through the data stored in those fields as well as adding new data into the fields. She had used the DATA1 control available in the Control Tool Box.
The members have decided to finalize the German Matchsticks game along with its Programmers and User documentation before the next meeting and to explore the possibility of putting it up on a website for download. The group will also work on building intelligence in the Tik Tak Toe game as they continue to study Tree View Control and Database linking. The group members are urged to put up their comments, queries and notes of activity in the group on the WIKI pages and the group mailing list so that the activities could be documented properly for the benefit of future members. The group is also requested to put up the source code of their programs on the WIKI pages.
