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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-27-2010 18:19

As has been said above the original creator of this help site is no longer active in the community and is therefore no longer maintaining the helper. If you search back a few pages there is another link by Adam Carter which still works fine. I suggest trying that link instead.

Jan-29-2010 18:39

Automated Sleuth Helper - Automatic Sleuth Helper
Download Links

This is the full install, version 1.18:
http://download.birdiesoft.dk/SleuthHelper.exe

Here's one you just drop on your desktop, no installation needed:
http://sleuthvhhelper.co.cc/SleuthHelper.exe

Both links and files worked the last time I checked (within the last month or so). The only problem I've noted is that one, maybe both, has problems identifying Sleuthetania contacts.

Jan-29-2010 20:27

For what it's worth, I've just attempted to download the installer and execute it myself. It works and installs exactly like it should, so it looks like some of you are experiencing issues with the connection to the server, causing the file to come out incorrectly on your end. Unfortunately, that's not really something I can do anything about - all I can suggest is clearing your cache and trying again. If it's still not working, you can e-mail me and I can send you a copy via that route. There's a contact form on http://birdiesoft.dk/mailform.php - use that or refer to the help file for my e-mail address (if you have an older version lying around).

As far as Sleuthetania contacts are concerned, I wasn't the one who made that change - I couldn't, since I had retired before it was added. Huglover made the change and I compiled it for her and released it as v1.18. To the best of my knowledge, the changes she made are correct, at least based on the information I have.

If you know of a concrete problem with the contacts, feel free to e-mail me with as many details as you can. If it's something I can do something about, then I don't mind doing so - as long as you're fine with testing if it works.

Jan-20-2013 13:49

I've been using the helper for a while now and I even read and followed what you said in the FAQ about how to have the program automatically log you in. But it's not working. I opened Notepad and typed in the following:

[login]
user=my username
pass=my password

But I still have to cut and paste it into the program. What went wrong?

May-11-2013 16:13

does this work on windows 7? does it work with firefox or chrome? thanks I got a newer computer and I wondered.

May-11-2013 21:08

This third party app is probably subject to a fair amount of 'trial and error' as operating systems change and update now. I don't think there's been a recent update. All i can say is 'Use with caution'!! :)

May-13-2013 19:06

I can vouch for it. Been using it since early in my career, with only an occasional (not critical) error message. I just click okay and move on. There are a couple of quirks with page parsing, but if you just jump to the <case> tab, it catches up.

May-14-2013 02:49

And yes, it works on Windows 7. I use it at home and office and I think it's based on Internet Explorer so it should work fine on all windows versions.

It sometimes gives some errors, but nothing that can't be fixed by simply going through all the contacts again.

Jul-1-2013 08:28

@Dixon: If you have any special characters in your password, make sure you save the file as UTF-8 (there's a dropdown in the bottom of the Save As dialog in Notepad), since it might not be read correctly if you don't. Also make sure there aren't any extra spaces on the line (on either side of the = character, or at the end of a line). Other than that, I don't really have a good explanation why it wouldn't work.

@DevilishWings: You are correct - it uses IE as the rendering engine, and since Microsoft tends to do quite a lot to preserve backwards compatibility, it should be quite resilient to OS upgrades. (Of course, that's not a guarantee, so you still need to pay attention.)

Jul-1-2013 08:45

Welcome back Pidgeot :-)