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TempusGameIt CPU Improvements

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One of the points that's been hanging around in the back of my mind for a while now has been the performance of the TempusGameIt client. It has reached the point in the app, where it was becoming important to make sure that we were performing as tightly as we could while also striving to stay accurate with time keeping. As part of this initiative, I'm happy to announce that there are several improvements to overall CPU consumption by the app that are being released today.  Previously, the client would wake every .5 seconds and perform an audit of what was running. Have any games started? Is the game you're playing still running? This process can be expensive because we have to audit all running processes on your machine and make extra API calls to determine information like full paths, emulation details, etc. In retrospect, this had grown a little too aggressive, and would easily chew up 2-3% of your CPU just by running. So I did some reflection and made some changes that I...
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Simple GrowthBook setup

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Hey, there are a few people using TempusGameIt !  Hurrah! But now that leads to the question of the logistics of how to deploy breaking changes to the API.  We use feature flags extensively at my work (where we refer to them as Knobs on the server-side).  I wanted to get the same functionality for my own project, but I definitely didn't want to write any code to do so. After a cursory amount of research I settled on GrowthBook .     The main factors in the selection were: Open source The main features--feature flags and experimentation--weren't locked behind a subscription tier  Self-hosting support The docs are okay on self-hosting, but I thought I'd write-up my super simple solution here.  Note this is for a ultra basic deployment.  I'm not using any of the file writing capabilities, email sending, or proxying. The infra: A small mongodb in Mongo Atlas A small ubuntu droplet in DigitalOcean A DNS A-type route in AWS's Route 53 The setup: Sp...
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Enhanced logging in TempusGameIt

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Version 1.9 is here  and with it comes a few changes to better help understand exactly what the heck is going on when you're running the app. New Look Options Screen The options screen has been updated to include both options and info.  Included now in the info is a more clear view of what version you're running, as well as the addition of the path to the log file on your machine. There's also a new option available--"Enable verbose logging".  By checking this option, you'll be able to see all of the finer grain logging that the system does.  This should be especially helpful when troubleshooting problems or seeing what folders are getting scanned and what executables are being checked for a match.  This option goes hand-in-hand with the log path, since that'll be the place that you will want to look when you want more information on what's happening. Hey look!  Lots of text! Ignored folders We've also hard-coded in a few folders in your Windows di...
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Add Game Enhancements to TempusGameIt

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Happy New Year! I'm excited to announce the general release of game creation updates supporting the new way we track and match games. Last year we switched from a more rigid system of executable definitions to a more flexible system: This simplified view better accounts for the different ways that games are run and built across platforms (and even in the same platform--I'm looking at you Path of Exile with a different executable for steam versus non-steam). It also helps automatically importing process definitions from certain third parties, as it more closely matches how they are defined there. The backend and client have been using the new definition for a while now, so there's no major change in the file location or process monitoring.  But the client had lagged behind when adding new titles.  It had a UI that reflected the old structure, and we used the API to transform this data into the new structure. No more!  The UI has gotten a bit of an update to allow for multi...
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Out for a bit

 Sorry for the lack of posts. We had some family bereavement than transitioned into an eye surgery, so I’ve been very AFK.  Got clearance to resume looking forward over the weekend, so hope to get back to gaming and coding a little bit. 
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TempusGameIt: Auto-import is in dev

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Did some hacking this week and finished building out auto-import of games into the TempusGameIt catalog.  ICYMI, the import works like this: Pull down the latest version of Discord's detectable's file, which contains game executables by platform (Windows, OSX, Linux), and the Steam ID Lookup games in TGI by the Steam ID to see if they have been imported. If we haven't imported them, hit the IGDB API to pull the game metadata by Steam ID.  This gets us the name, description, box art, platforms, and genres Store the IGDB metadata along with the executable information from Discord in the TGI catalog I set this process to run every 24 hours, and it imported close to 5000 titles.  Here's the run from last night, and it included a certain popular title, which made me excited to see the process in action. Starfield is here (even if I'm not in early access)! It's full of stars! This sudden explosion of games in the catalog has led to a much more interesting view on the ...
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TempusGameIt updates

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At the end of last year during the holidays, I took some time to work on some features over at my personal side project TempusGameIt.com. And those changes sat idle for quite a while deployed out to the development environment.  Over the past week, I buckled down and made sure things looked good, and pushed them live.   Here's what's new!  Game Source Updated Originally I sourced all of the game information from GiantBomb, but I had been eyeing IGDB as a better source of information.  So I made the switch over to linking games to IGDB.  The box art is much more consistent both in presence and dimensions, so we're less likely to have a link return a 404, or to have square or misshapen box art. Another big bonus is the fact that many titles include a link over to their Steam record if present.  This is a big win that I'll talk about in a sec. In light of these changes, I updated the game card to include these links too. Now with external links Discord De...
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