Announcement: Sentinel+ character extractor available!

[laufeyjarson]

First of all, many, many thanks to Mind Forever Burning for his hard work on the Mac port.

Big news: We have a Mac version that is ready for testing. Once we've verified that it's working correctly, we'll update the page on cohtitan.com to reflect its availability.

http://cit.cohtitan.com/downloads/SentinelPlus.tgz

It should be as simple as dragging the app out of that archive into the folder that you want to save your characters into, then double-clicking the app while City of Heroes is running and you have the info window up. The OS should prompt for your credentials as it requires administrator access to run.

If you have the ability to test on both Mac and Windows, we would really appreciate it if you can try exporting the same character on both and verify that the files are the same. Failing that, if you want to test and don't mind putting your XML file somewhere accessible so we can take a look at it and make sure everything checks out, that would be helpful.

I have both platforms and will give it a try when I get home from work this evening.

[wmilliken]

First, many thanks to the people who did such an amazing job getting the PC and Mac utilities out!

The Mac version does have a minor bug: the folder Sentinel+ lives in must *not* have spaces in the name. When I swapped out spaces for dashes, it looked like it worked okay, though I haven't read through all the XML.

---Walter

[castorcorvus]

I'm glad we've got this. Come november 27th, If COH truly is going down, I'll make darn sure the NCsoft is not taking my characters with it.

[laufeyjarson]

I have both platforms and will give it a try when I get home from work this evening.

I am seeing differences between the two captures.  I'm not sure they're problems, however.  Somewhere I read that it would skip blank costumes in a newer one, and that may be what the differences are.  In general, they appear small.

I PM'd Codewalker with the details.  Happy to send it to anyone else who cares.

[GuyPerfect]

Come november 27th, If COH truly is going down, I'll make darn sure the NCsoft is not taking my characters with it.

You may want to keep a collection of exports handy in case they decide November 30 is too late, or if you have an inexplicable internet outage around then.

[Codewalker]

I am seeing differences between the two captures.  I'm not sure they're problems, however.  Somewhere I read that it would skip blank costumes in a newer one, and that may be what the differences are.  In general, they appear small.

I PM'd Codewalker with the details.  Happy to send it to anyone else who cares.

Can you redownload from
http://cit.cohtitan.com/downloads/SentinelPlus.tgz

And see if it still happens in the latest build?

Edit: The spaces in folder name issue should be fixed in this version also, or so I'm told. :)

[cxemu789]

Thanks you very much for this. I never thought we would have a Mac version so fast :-)

I will try to make room on the Windows partition for CoH, but I'm not sure it will fit (The partition is only 40GB and Windows 7 takes most of that).

Update:
Ok, I have exported all of my characters using the Mac tool. Never used this before, but this should work (I hope): http://minus.com/lbwW9WfvceOByD

If I can get it working on Windows I'll update this with a matching set of exports.

[kgiesing]

Thanks you very much for this. I never thought we would have a Mac version so fast :-)

Guy made it very easy for me :)

[Osborn]

I registered to the forum mostly just to say, thank you for your efforts in all this, and thank you for this resource. It was incredibly easy to use, it took folds of time longer to sign into and out of each of my guys than it did to actually use the software, which was pretty much instant.

One of my first thoughts when I heard the game was going down was about taking screenshots and finding some way to preserve my characters data, even if I could never play it again.

[laufeyjarson]

Can you redownload from
http://cit.cohtitan.com/downloads/SentinelPlus.tgz

And see if it still happens in the latest build?

Edit: The spaces in folder name issue should be fixed in this version also, or so I'm told. :)

diff says there's a difference, but I don't see what it is.  Line endings or something silly?  I haven't broken out the hex editor yet...

Will send the results to you again.

Two suggestions, neither of which are really that important, but would be nice:
1: Put a version resource in so Get Info shows the version number, etc.
2: I've lost data because it overwrites files.  Either generate a new name ( file-1, file-2, etc) or warn and pop Save As instead?  Or just abort, but that's annoying too.

The second may be a feature; you may want updates to be easy, and that may be right. 

[GuyPerfect]

I just checked the validation keys produced by the Mac port and they validate successfully. (-:

[laufeyjarson]

Codewalker has just pointed out that I had an old Windows version, too.

Once I updated them both, they produced exactly the same output and store exactly the same things about my characters.

Excellent work!  I'm sure you've made our Apple friends very happy.

[kgiesing]

1: Put a version resource in so Get Info shows the version number, etc.

Thanks for catching that, it was an oversight on my part.

2: I've lost data because it overwrites files.  Either generate a new name ( file-1, file-2, etc) or warn and pop Save As instead?  Or just abort, but that's annoying too.

I'll leave this one to Guy, but my personal recommendation would be a timestamped file name.

[laufeyjarson]

The goal of the design might have been to allow updating quickly; just replace the old stuff with the new.  I can understand that goal, and it might be right for this tool.  The slightly odd thing I was doing where I wanted both outputs was trickier because of that feature.

Timestamped would work for me, too, but I'm a pack rat.  :)

My archive folder is on the network, and has both SentinelPlus.exe and SentinelPlus.app in it now.  I can capture data from whcihever platform I happen to be on.  Way cool!

[Blargeth]

Hi folks.. I just wanted to stop by and thank you guys for this awesome tool, and doubly thank you for making it available to us Mac users! I was able to extract the data for around 20 of my characters so far.. Only 50+ to go.. (what altitis? ;))

Thanks again!

Cheers,
-- Blargeth
Global: @blarg
Twitter: @blargmedia

[chaparralshrub]

*bump*

Just in case September 30 is the real date of the final judgement, so that you can get your characters NOW if you haven't already!

[Patribot]

I used this to achieve all of my wife's and my 30+ characters tonight just incase there is any truth to the September 30th rumors that started swirling around today.

[Cinnder]

Just want to add my thanks here.  You guys are amazing.  If anyone can save CoH, it's you.

[QuantumHero]

One quick but important question?  If one happens to have heroes with outdated costumes are they going to translate properly or do we need to remake before extracting...and thank you for this wonderful tool

[GuyPerfect]

All costumes will export properly.