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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.)

Oct-21-2007 14:57

The fix is that someone can still become guilty after being declared innocent. Not that they won't be declared innocent.

Oct-22-2007 16:14

Ah, I see. So is there anything I can do to avoid this behavior, other than not investigating PE until I've run out of WE options or earning some darn skill points?

Oct-23-2007 16:05

Check all PE except for two.

Those two will remain yellow.
That will of course fix nothing. But at least it won't all go green.

Your real problem is that you're not finding all the evidence. No matter how the helper is fixed, that's a problem.

Oct-23-2007 18:13

I'm looking forward to a version that can be run on Ubuntu. This is not to criticise Pidgeots work, on the contrary: it seems to be a great program. But since Sleuth runs nicely in other environments than windows, why can't the helpers? Anyone up for the task?

Oct-24-2007 01:31

There's always the "dr watson" sleuth helper. You have to enter stuff yourself, but it works anywhere that sleuth itself works.

On the other hand if you can run firefox on Ubuntu, try AKA's sleuth helper. Don't know how far he's gotten at this point though.

As for Pigeots helper, it could easily be converted by someone who knew what he or she was doing. (Though I'm given to understand that Ubuntu can run anything windows related so I'm unsure why pigeots helper wouldn't run there. It is an internet explorer-addy ony thingy so one might need that.)

Oct-25-2007 15:44

Thanks, Dave. I'm using Dr. Watson today, but I'm a little tired of cutn'paste. I read Pidgeots instructions to use IE for Linux, but I don't want to use IE for security reasons. So I guess I'm stuck to glueing my suspect for now. I still want to urge anyone who feel technically fit to take up this glove.

Oct-27-2007 14:15

For Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, you *might* be able to use Wine (http://www.winehq.org/), possibly in conjunction with ies4linux (http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page). The same goes for Intel-based Macs, but you need to install X as well, and I'm told Wine is a bit flaky in general on Macs.

Not having tested it, I can't guarantee that it'll work well, if at all - but it should at least work in theory, and might be good enough until a "native" version is made at some point.

Oct-27-2007 16:17

Okay guys, good news/bad news time:

Bad news: I haven't been able to track down the bug some of you are experiencing.

Good news: v1.15 is ready, and contains a simple logging feature that will allow you to save a log when you encounter problems. Simply click File > Write log to file... and send me the file in an e-mail, along with your description of the bug and optionally a screenshot.

Errors due to missed data can be prevented better now, as the titlebar shows a "working" text while it's waiting for the webbrowser component to finish.

Additionally, I've added the possibility to rearrange suspects and (manually) mark them as clammed. If conditions allow for it, you can also mark a case as having no more suspects (but you can't undo that choice without closing and re-opening the client, since that might result in an incorrect state)

For a full version history, please read the help file.

Unfortunately, I've had to remove two mirrors since v1.14. The official mirror list is now as follows:

http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe
http://henrikossipoff.dk/birdiesoft/SleuthHelper.exe

Please try them in the order listed above, starting from the top.

Nov-6-2007 10:57

Version 1.16 is now available - this version fixes Adjustments parsing, adds a sanity check on the amount of non-guilty suspects, and fixes a bug in switching suspects.

URLs are the same as before:

http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe
http://henrikossipoff.dk/birdiesoft/SleuthHelper.exe

If neither works for you, send me a PM with your e-mail address, and I'll send the helper to you.

Nov-20-2007 11:51

It works for me..cool.