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Jan-30-2007 12:13

Hello, fellow Sleuths!

Over the last two months, I've been working on a brand new Sleuth helper. You might not think that sounds all that special - after all, great helpers are already available - but what makes this one different is that it's automated!

What it does is monitor your progress in the game, and extract relevant information from the pages. The information is stored and analyzed, in order to help you determine who did it, and who didn't.

It's heavily inspired by Evita's JavaScript-based Sleuth Helper, so a special "thank you" goes out there.

The application is made with Delphi 2005, and should run on any machine with Windows NT/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista and Internet Explorer 4 or later. Additionally, source code is included (ZLib license) in case someone wants to port it to another platform and/or language (such as Java).

The program can be downloaded from http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe (330 KB), and a screenshot of the program can be seen at http://download.birdiesoft.dk/sleuth_helper.png.

Please take a look at the help file before using the program (it's very short), so you are familiar with how the program works.

(Disclaimer: The application depends heavily on the current structure of the game pages, and changes to this may break the program. Although the application is designed in such a way that it should fail entirely if something goes wrong, this cannot be guaranteed. Use of this program is entirely at your own risk, and any cases lost because of errors in the program should not be blamed on the program or the author.)

Jan-30-2007 13:56

Good point. That is purely because I don't have that particular skill, and thus can't know how the output looks :)

As I recall, however, the skill informs you about people's alibis, and that information should be picked up when you go to interview the suspects in question (or check their file).

If it's alright with you, I'd like to contact you in order to get some information on the skill in question, so I can add support for the skill.

Jan-30-2007 14:00

When you research, it doesn't show up in the suspects page or when you go to question them. It's just something you have to rember. Like Who've you checked on evidence and if they didn't match.

Jan-30-2007 14:06

I guess you learn something new every day :)

I'll happily add support for the Research skill, but it'll be a while if I have to get the skill myself (since I don't have the skill points to get it just yet), so I'll be contacting you in order to get a little more information about it. (No need to clutter the message board with all of that.)

Jan-30-2007 19:46

Drat, not compaitble with either Firefox or Mac. :(

Jan-30-2007 19:57

Is it compatible for Firefox with Windows?

Jan-30-2007 20:29

It starts downloading, but stops. It says that the website is unavaiable. Is there somthing wrong with my computer?

Jan-31-2007 00:11

For those with problems downloading it, try a little later, it might be some problem with your connection to the server.

As for Mac (and Linux, for that matter), Delphi only compiles applications for Windows. If you're using an Intel Mac or x86-based version of Linux, you should be able to run it through WINE if you get Internet Explorer 6 installed as well and configure the helper to use the libraries natively.

It is not compatible with Firefox in any regard, as this browser does not expose any straight-forward way to include its rendering engine in a program. (It won't have a problem with Firefox being there, but it will only use IE.)

Additionally, I've just released a newer version that should support the research skill. Though I have not tested this myself (as I still do not have the skill), MamaTerra has helped me with a lot of information on the skill, and I have written the code based on that information. Again, it should work, but you might want to make a note of the game state before you use the skill, just in case it goes wrong. The download URL is the same as before, http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe.

Jan-31-2007 04:00

Nice work Pidgeot! This is just what I've been looking for. It will really decrease the time spent on each case since I do much copying forth and back in Notepad.

Jan-31-2007 04:12

All new Macs can run it through Bootcamp or Parallel if they want to run dual environments, as well. I'll tell you how that pans out next week when we get our new Macbooks at work.

Jan-31-2007 14:26

I've just downloaded from Firefox on Windows just fine.