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Huglovers Townie Sweeper
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ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jul-25-2008 20:22

Hi all,

Huglover has put alot of time and effort into designing a toold which will allow us to ask the townies a specific question all at once instead of having to visit them individually. I have tested the tool and it works really well. It is now available for download from DPI's website:

http://dawgpoundinvestigationstoo.googlepages.com/helpertools

There is also a link for installation instructions. As far as I know it only works with Windows XP and Internet Ecplorer 6 but I have had some mild success with IE 7.

The disclaimer is that the program is to be used at your own risk, you have to change some security settings so do so at your own discretion. Any questions on getting it to work can be directed to Huglover or myself (preferably Huglover as it's her baby).

I would like to be the first to thank Huglover for a job well done.

Replies

miss snopes
miss snopes
Demon of the Due Date

Jul-25-2008 22:08

I told Huglover on pm last night that I can't wait to give it a go once I'm home from vacation to a computer with XP. Sounds like a good one. :)

Jun256
Jun256
Sleuth About Town

Jul-25-2008 23:27

Next time... 1 click program to find guilty one :))

Huglover
Huglover
Old Shoe

Jul-26-2008 02:08

Well, there will never be a 1 click program to find the guilty one. ;-)
Both will that kind of program be very difficult to create, and it will take away very much of the fun of solving a case.
I consider that program may be used when it's able to do repetitious actions that you "always do", i.e. when it's very predictable what you are going to do. When it comes to cases, I have found that every time I do a case, I tend to start to ask all my suspects if they know any motive so that I may find all the suspects in a case. I stop with this at a certain amount and then ask the fortune teller. Sometimes I ask alibi first, and then motive, but it's always one of those two strategies. That kind of thing is something a program can be used for. But, the decicions about who you want to ask about whom, and which evidence you want to check first have to be due to your own logic mind. That's something that makes a good or bad sleuth... ;-) - and is not equally useful to have a program do. Only thing you might do there, are to collect all the information on the same page, and access those kind of questions with one click each.
There is no single strategy to find the guilty one, and that is the more fun part of finding a killer ;-)

Sophie4
Sophie4
Gopher to the Sleuth Gods

Jul-26-2008 07:00

"which will allow us to ask the townies a specific question all at once instead of having to visit them individually."

What does that mean, exactly?

ctown28
ctown28
Huntsman

Jul-26-2008 07:16

that means that you go to one page and whatever question you want. Then the program "visits" each of the townies and gives you what the answer to your question is. It saves you alot of pointing and clicking

Huglover
Huglover
Old Shoe

Jul-26-2008 08:13

Hoping not to reveal too many secrets....
In Shangri La, there is a question I often ask to about all the townies (i.e. scholars), in order to be able to do a certain task.
By having the program "sweep" through the townies for me, I don't have to do all the clicks it takes me to visit each of them, asking the question, noting down their answer, leaving to come to the map, and then restart with the next townie.
I write the question once, and get all the answers... ;-)
This is possible to do, because it's VERY predictable what I am going to do... - so repeating such predictable actions may be automated by a program. That's what I have done.

nicnic
nicnic
Battered Shoe

Jul-26-2008 11:55

Isn't the pointing and clicking actually what you do to play the game? I mean.... why not build a program where you replicate the logic you use in your head when solving a case so you can just auto-solve your cases? It wouldn't be impossible to do something like that.

Sorry... but I am not a fan of this. I haven't looked at it and probably won't. But Huglover, I do recall a post you made recently that you haven't published this to the wider community because you were concerned about your program putting stress on the server and impacting the performance of Sleuth. And then you posted that you don't care because you are not playing anymore (i.e. taking your ball and going home) so you could care less if the server crashed. I certainly hope that I misunderstood that and that is not what is going on here.

Either way, for those of us who actually enjoy the process of solving a case, I think this would take a bit of fun out of it.

Huglover
Huglover
Old Shoe

Jul-26-2008 13:15

Hm...
Please let me try to explain here...

I have created a program that assist me with the case solving. That's true.
The program made availiable here, does NOT include the case-solving assistant. It includes part of it, but just an addon that I made later on, to help me with just asking the different people in town.

I don't think this program will be a similar threat to the Sleuth Server, because I feel quite convinced that asking a townie a specific question, will create little or no database activity, and very little database updates. This is quite different from what happens when we solve our cases. Also, I feel quite confident that if Ben finds that the TownieSweeper creates too much trouble, we will quite quickly do some slight changes, that will just make the TownieSweeper stop working ;-)

When it comes to case solving, I too enjoys much of the process of solving it, but not really all of it... Some of you uses the "Automated Sleuth Helper" provided by Pidgeot. That program too is a kind of assistant, doing part of the job with solving a case for you, but not everything. My assistant works in a similar way, but are built another way. Some places my assistant works differently, and some places it's just the same. It IS possible to make a program that does all of the case solving, but both will that program be very time-consuming to develop, and it will make case-solving not fun at all. If you are looking for such a program, don't look at me, because I am never going to develop such a program. When it comes to knowing who the killer are, I think that Pidgeot's program gives you more "help" than my program. My program don't tell who the killer are, or that you will now know who the killer are. That is something you need to figure out yourself.

So as to sum up: my TownieSweeper is a different program than my "Sleuth Case Assistant". You can't solve any case with the TownieSweeper, it's only useful when you are not working on a case ;-)

nicnic
nicnic
Battered Shoe

Jul-26-2008 18:49

I want to apologize to Huglover for my apparent over-reaction. She explained to me that what she has released was not the piece that she thought would overload the server.

I was extremely pissed off earlier today about some things going down in the other game and I think I took some of it out on her. Sorry Huglover :-)

Huglover
Huglover
Old Shoe

Jul-26-2008 19:29

I am not that good at writing english, so I am happy that someone told me that what was written could be misunderstood. Thank you nicnic for helping me see what I had made unclear. :-)

I do share my case-assistant (I don't normally call it a solver, because it's only assisting me in the process), with people who ask, if they agree to not spread further on... - but I do prefer to do it a little more slowly, so that I may get a feeling if the server is slowing down. If the program will help to get activity, it's a good thing, but if it will get so much activity that there is a problem with the server, it's not such a good thing anymore... ;-)

Trying out the TownieSweeper will show you that you still need to figure out yourself what you want to ask those townies about.... ;-)

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