Improvements to Games.txt list

Hey all, I'm new here, and am folding with Clarkson Gamers Initiative, the PC gaming club at Clarkson University. Before we came across the Tracker, folding was a fairly annoying thing to run - pretty involved to set up two or three clients on a gaming rig, and then lots of us would forget to shut it off before gaming, and games would lag. Then we would tend to forget to turn it back on when done with games.

The Tracker fixes all of this, but we have found that there are some interesting omissions in the Games.txt list (blackopsmp.exe, ut3.exe, iw4sp.exe are examples), which I understand comes from NVIDIA. I had an idea for dealing with this, but first I'll use the requested form:

Feature Name: Improvements to Games.txt list

What does this feature do: Adds game executables to the Games.txt list that were not present in NVIDIA's list before the Games.txt file is downloaded by the Tracker

Why would this feature be useful to be include in the tracker: Would help with situations in which the Gaming Pause feature does not function because the .exe file of a game is not present in the Games.txt

To address this problem I am going to propose that we could create a "community" list of games (as a topic on this forum or something) that could be merged with NVIDIA's list before it gets passed out to the Tracker. This is assuming the Games.txt that the Tracker downloads is hosted on the project site, and not gotten directly from NVIDIA.

There is no need for the Tracker devs to do the research finding the .exes for various games - the club and community can do that. We just need someone to merge our additions to the current hosted file.

There are some other things that would be handy in the future - a way to have the Games.txt be updated automatically at a certain interval, and perhaps even a second "games" list that doesn't get hosed when the main list is updated, where people could put their own .exes into - but first and foremost the more comprehensive Games.txt will perfect the Tracker and make folding nearly transparent.

Thanks for the consideration.

- Sam, kc2lrc

kc2lrc wrote:Hey all, I'm new here, and am folding with Clarkson Gamers Initiative, the PC gaming club at Clarkson University. Before we came across the Tracker, folding was a fairly annoying thing to run - pretty involved to set up two or three clients on a gaming rig, and then lots of us would forget to shut it off before gaming, and games would lag. Then we would tend to forget to turn it back on when done with games.

The Tracker fixes all of this, but we have found that there are some interesting omissions in the Games.txt list (blackopsmp.exe, ut3.exe, iw4sp.exe are examples), which I understand comes from NVIDIA. I had an idea for dealing with this, but first I'll use the requested form:

Feature Name: Improvements to Games.txt list

What does this feature do: Adds game executables to the Games.txt list that were not present in NVIDIA's list before the Games.txt file is downloaded by the Tracker

Why would this feature be useful to be include in the tracker: Would help with situations in which the Gaming Pause feature does not function because the .exe file of a game is not present in the Games.txt

To address this problem I am going to propose that we could create a "community" list of games (as a topic on this forum or something) that could be merged with NVIDIA's list before it gets passed out to the Tracker. This is assuming the Games.txt that the Tracker downloads is hosted on the project site, and not gotten directly from NVIDIA.

There is no need for the Tracker devs to do the research finding the .exes for various games - the club and community can do that. We just need someone to merge our additions to the current hosted file.

There are some other things that would be handy in the future - a way to have the Games.txt be updated automatically at a certain interval, and perhaps even a second "games" list that doesn't get hosed when the main list is updated, where people could put their own .exes into - but first and foremost the more comprehensive Games.txt will perfect the Tracker and make folding nearly transparent.

Thanks for the consideration.

- Sam, kc2lrc

This is an excellent idea and I will fully support a community effort with the game list. For now though, I will add those games to the list included with the Tracker.

I dump the list from the Nvidia driver profiles with a tool I made. Updating the list is easy enough since I can put out updates for the list at any time. I don't think automatic updates are needed for the list, since the latest version of it gets included when I update the Tracker itself. I also plan to modify the list so that there is a separate "user defined" list that won't be wiped out if the user updates the main list.

The user lists will be set up as such:
Games-add.txt - games to add to the main list (won't be modified when the main list is updated)
Games-remove.txt - games that won't pause the clients, even if they are on the main list

Simple request to add BattleField 3 to the downloaded list.

bowlinra wrote:Simple request to add BattleField 3 to the downloaded list.

Done.

However, given the nature of BF3 (need to exit to switch servers) this might produce unintended behavior. Example: a user leaves a server, and joins another after 4-5 seconds. If this causes problems I will consider implementing a fix. (likely just adding a delay after game exit before restarting clients.)