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Automated Sleuth Helper complete!
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Pidgeot
Pidgeot

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.)

Replies

flautim
flautim

Aug-11-2007 16:05

Good idea Kirstie - it's so helpful that we ought to keep it on the front page - actually, can it be sticky posted?

bellaron
bellaron

Aug-11-2007 20:17

Okay, i downloaded this yesterday on my friends computer. Got home and went to do it on mine just now and it says that it no longer exists. What's up? :( I'm sad as it's a brilliant program!

Dave Von Wave
Dave Von Wave
Well-Connected

Aug-17-2007 05:51

I noticed something interesting that should be easy to change.
When you go to the fortune teller and you only one (potential) person left the numbers in the bottom right corner only change if he says there are no more people. It would be nice if would change to 9 of 10 instead of 9 of 9-10 when that happens.
It is definetly a low on the list item. But it would be nice to change.

Also would be nice to see individual "no match" fields go green instead of going by the whole row. Would make it more visually effective to see which evidence to concentrate on.

All in all though, I absolutely LOVE this software.

Pidgeot
Pidgeot

Aug-17-2007 16:49

flautim: Though it WOULD be nice, I don't think it'll be stickied - it IS, after all, not an official program, and stickying the thread might give that impression (which could bring negative side effects with it).

Bellaron: You need to be a bit more specific if you still need help, but I'm guessing there were server issues.

Dave: It's a bit more complicated to color individual fields due to the component I'm using, but I'll look into it. It *should* be possible, but since I haven't looked closer into it yet, I obviously can't give any guarantees just yet.

As for the thing about the number, I can probably squeeze that into v1.14. If I don't, I'll put it in the one after that.

Now that I've mentioned v1.14, I'd like to repeat that it's (still) due any day now. I'm currently arranging extra mirrors, which is taking longer than I'd hoped for.

I'm currently hoping to release in about a week from now, but no guarantees.

Lady Zeugirdor
Lady Zeugirdor
Pinball Amateur

Aug-17-2007 17:48

Thanks for your hard work, Pidgeot. I love this program...software...ah whatever you call it. It's great : )

Dan Morihiko
Dan Morihiko

Aug-18-2007 10:22

This is awesome! Thanks a lot Pidgeot.

Cornelius Sledge
Cornelius Sledge

Aug-18-2007 18:51

Can't recommend this program too warmly! :)

One thing I noticed, the 'knows' column starts on No, and changes to Yes if a townie tells you that suspect X knows something. Could it start on 'Maybe' so it can change to either No or Yes if you get the relevant info? As far as I understand it (and all my own cases have corrobated this so far) if you are told that suspect xxx knows nothing, then he will never have any WE, so the distinction would make sense.

Pidgeot
Pidgeot

Aug-19-2007 11:28

It's already on my to-do list. If time permits it, I'll try to get this in for v1.14.

Sally Rose
Sally Rose
Old Shoe

Aug-21-2007 15:41

I can't get the prizes to pop up. I read the thread and I've checked and adjusted my IE to allow pop ups from this site and set it lower to medium. Still don't get the pop ups which isn't much fun.
I also get error messages when I pick a lock and there wasn't any info there, in other words the suspect doesn't have an alibi. I have to restart.

Any suggestions what to do about these issues?

this is a great tool. It really makes it easier to keep track of things. Sometimes it jumps ahead of me and eliminates suspects and I have to figure out what it saw that I didn't. Just amazing.
THANKS!

Pidgeot
Pidgeot

Aug-22-2007 10:22

Lockpicking should be fixed for v1.14, which I'm going to release later today.

As for prizes, do you have any third-party pop-up blockers installed? I really haven't seen any issues with the one in IE (when set to Medium), so I can't think of anything else that would cause it.

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