DDI Downloader alternatives?
 

Ok, So I've tried this downloader three times in the last three days, the first was just after I had bought HeroLab, and was about 4 hours before my connection dropped off at midnight. Needless to say, it didn't finish.

So I tried it again the next day, starting it first thing in the morning, around 8:00, and let it run on my computer, nothing else running on the connection all day, and it ran all the way through to midnight again. And did not finish.

I got up earlier yesterday and ran it again, starting it around 5:00 and letting it run all day, uninterrupted. It did not finish.

Is there an Alternative to the downloader? Because as it is, I can't use this for 4e, because I have no data to run on it. I don't have the capacity to run it for as long as it needs apparently. If there's a Bulk file I could download faster, or maybe a torrent file that wouldn't care about my connection dropping?

It is quite frustrating.

Edit: For Progress, the furthest I've been able to get in the process is downloading the powers segment, and it got about 17? lines of ....... before time runs out.

How is your time running out? I've left it running for as long as 18-36 hours and not had a problem with time running out for me.

My internet goes down for about an hour at midnight.

Yeah, I can't get past rituals. I always get a string of !'s
It's a real shame that WOTC can't play nice with LW and collaborate on the data downloader for HL. It ought to be in their interest since they are at least guarenteed $10 from each person to subscribe for a month to gain access to the data.

There has to be a solution by which both companies and us, the players, can all be satisfied.

I love HL under 3.5, it's awesome. I was so excited to buy the licence for 4e, and now I'm pretty bummed that it's all going to be a waste of time. $20 to LW and $10 to WOTC, and nothing for it. $30 is totally worth the cost of the data... if I had the data, which I don't.

This is the kind of poor support that leads to piracy, and I hate that. All of us are prepared to pay both companies, but we're getting nothing for it, or at least some of us aren't. It sounds like some of you folks got lucky :)

Sorry, rant over. I just want my data so I can continue to enjoy HL!

I wonder if the ddidownloader could be altered to fetch specific sections, so that it doesn't have to run the whole thing all the time.

I have some other ideas for making it more fault tolerant too.

I'd love to see the api or feed spec for their web service.

Hey Lone Wolf guys, email me if you want some help rewriting the downloader? :) And no, I'm not being mean, just saying you probably have more important things to be working on, right? I'd be more than willing to take a crack at it. I can work with PHP, Java or C++.

Just FYI the source code to the downloader is here

C:\ProgramData\Hero Lab\data\4e\downloader

Oh it's all C++. Very cool. I'm going to have a snoop about in there. Thanks!

Has there been a Dec update to the DDI does anyone know and if so is it all workign in HL? I have some time and would love to run an update if there is new stuff since my NOV HL/DDI download.

I'm having similar problems as Zero Traveler. I've tried downloading the DDI data multiple times using both wireless connection and cable connection.

After the download completes I get the message that there was one error downloading and that there is a server error. The downloader then suggests that you can retry downloading the missing data a couple of hours later since the server error often fixes itself... but when I do so I get the same server error message again.

Without the DDI data (I have a subscription) Hero Labs isn't of much use to me :(

Has anyone else had similar experiences with the downloader and been able to fix them?

If there's one or two of those and the retry doesn't work, just select Skip instead of retry (after trying retry when it's almost done). HL will generate data files with what it has... So far my 20 or so 4e characters haven't been affected. Personally, I think it's bad data in the compendium that's referencing something that either no longer or never exist(s/ed)