immortalnights

Game Watch

As an avid gamer it's always interesting to know how much time one plays a game for. If the advertised 40 hours of game play is really how long it takes to get though, and if a sequel takes more or less time then it's predecessor.

Game Watch was designed to automatically calculate the time a process is run for therefore recording game sessions and providing statistical information on an individual users game times.

Usability Requirements

• Automatically record when a specific game is started and stopped
• Record the gaming session as a start and end time stop
• Provide a web based user interface to display game and session information
• Upload session statistics to a central website for comparison with other gamers.

Technology

• Cross platform C++
• QT and Boost libraries
• FastCGI
• HTML and CSS (for program user interface)
• HTTP requests, replies and sessions

Implementation

Watch Process

The watch processes runs on the host computer. Regularly querying the systems processes and searching for known processes from within it's configuration. When a process starts that is on the watch list the start time of the process is recorded. When the process ends a record is recorded detailing the session.

The watch process integrates directly into the Windows process API and contains a small memory foot print. Each session is logged to a binary file to ensure speed and efficiency.

FastCGI

The watch process includes FastCGI protocol to provide a web based user interface. This interface allows configuration of the watch process and displays the recorded sessions. The fast CGI implementation has been created as a separate library, allowing it to be used on alternative projects in the future.

For more details please see the fastcgi library page.