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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.)

May-19-2008 05:19

Nightmist, no idea on your problem, however there is a website at http://www.angus.demon.co.uk/sleuth/watson.htm# that has roughly the same functionality as the sleuth helper.

May-19-2008 10:48

Thanks for the reply V Buster , but I am already familiar with the Dr. Watson website:)

In fact , I had used it with my main character when I first started playing Sleuth , but now , after having sleuthed with the Helper , Dr. Watson seems to be very slow with all this copy-paste thing! Besides , a wrong move with Dr. Watson , and everything must be done again!

Anyway , thanks again and keep on sleuthing:)

May-19-2008 10:59

dear Nightmist....by he way i like your name...believe me sleuth is so easy that you need not the help of any program to make it.

May-19-2008 11:35

hey all
your program sounds amazing and really helpful, but as an avid mac user i cant make any use of it.

is there any way someone could get this up and running in a .dmg format?

Jun-15-2008 09:02

Hey pidgeot, your sleuth helper's brilliant. Will you release another update for the Sleuthetania? It doesn't recognise the new townies etc. thank you!

Jun-15-2008 09:44

I am on the Sleuthania and am lost without your Sleuth helper!! I agree with Alex, can you create one for when we are on the Sleuthania?

Jun-15-2008 09:46

Alex, if you page back to March 13th you'll see that Pidgeot has "retired" from working on the helper. Perhaps Huglover will take it over.

Jun-15-2008 16:34

oh, thanks

Jun-16-2008 10:59

I remember I downloaded the Sleuth helper some time ago, and was actually amazed that he called it automated? I guess that I did not figure out how to even use the program. May be I did not even have the last edition?

Later on I developed my own Sleuth helper, or Sleuth Case Assistant as I prefer to call it. - this making me independent of Pidgeot's program, which to me seemed to be so hard to use that it was beyond me.
I did expand my program with the ship people yesterday, but it's a very different program, and I don't anymore have a good feeling for sharing what I think is my "artwork", with others than good friends.

As far as I remember it said somewhere that the Automated Sleuth Helper was developed in Delphi, and even if I think I would be able to understand and expand the program source code (which I think was also availiable), I have no competence on how to compile and test it out.

If I were to involve in this task I would need help.
For a start someone would have to help me with where to find the latest version of the current helper (with source code). (No, I don't want to re-read the whole thread, if no-one else is willing to do that for me, there is no real need for me to do the job)
- and I will also need help from someone who knows how to run the Automated Sleuth Helper, so that I can learn how the program is supposed to work.
- and then dig up some information about how to translate the source code into runable code.

Jun-16-2008 11:54

Here's what Pidegot said... Mar-13-2008 14:41

That error code is E_NOTIMPL (Not implemented), which suggests that Wine doesn't support using IE as a control. Of course, they might change that, but I can't really do anything about it without rewriting the program in Java or something like that, and I really don't know enough about GUI programming in Java (or any other suitable cross-platform language/environment) to do that.

On a somewhat related note, I'm sorry to say that I have to discontinue development (and support) of the program. I've uploaded a final release, v1.17, adding a Restart case feature. You can use this instead of closing and reopening the entire helper when you experience a bug.

Download locations (please try the top one first):
http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe
http://henrikossipoff.dk/birdiesoft/SleuthHelper.exe

I will also most likely not be checking back here, at least not very often, so if you ask me something here, I might not see it (within a reasonable time, at least).
If you want to take over development, feel free to do so (the source code is, as always, included) - and if you have questions about the source, you are more than welcome to e-mail me (see the contact page of the help file).

Happy Sleuthing, guys.