PC Gaming Website

Speedway

(apologies to the Mods if this is a bit off topic but I couldn't find anywhere better to post this)


hey everyone, just looking for some help.

I've been working for GameStop for about 5 years now part time. I'm in my final year of college and one module for me this year was to find a problem within a company and to design & implement a computer system to address that problem.

I have designed a website for GameStop which allows less technically minded customers to find out if their PC has the minimum requirements needed to run a PC game. It's called www.willmygamerun.com .

It works by automating the DirectX Diagnostics tool in windows, creating a text file with all of your PC info and sending this to my website.

I am going to be examined on this project in a week or two in college and I was just wondering if some people on boards would mind using the website and creating an account on it (it's free).

You don't need to give any personal info or anything but the more accounts that are on the site the better it will look for me when I am presenting the project in college.

So if anyone that reads this would please go to www.willmygamerun.com and register their PC on the site I would REALLY appreciate it. (for the moment if you could use Internet explorer because I have a compatability issue with FireFox using asp.net and c# that I am trying to iron out )

anyway sorry for the long post and if it's a bit off topic but if anyone had the free time to spend 5 mins creating an account I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again!

ThE_IVIAcIVIAIV

i think will create a website called www.willmywebsiterun.com just for you because its all messed up and i cant even see a register link... and all the text is overlapping more text etc

Speedway

did you use firefox?

Speedway wrote:

(for the moment if you could use Internet explorer because I have a compatability issue with FireFox using asp.net and c# that I am trying to iron out )

vasch_ro

it works fine in explorer

Speedway

vasch_ro wrote:

it works fine in explorer

thanks vasch_ro

Silverfish

This is really, really good.

I presume it was thought up due to the amount of people who try to return games that won't run on their pc's, even though they were asked at the time of purchase.

Could it have an FPS section?

Speedway

thanks very much Silverfish. Ya that's exactly why because a lot of parents etc at Xmas wouldn't know what their PC had when buying presents etc and this gives them an easy way to check and also if the website prints out their report which says the game should run but it doesn't then they can return the game with the report to their gamestop store.

at the mo all FPS's are in the Action section but I might look at dividing up the genres a little bit more.

thanks again

Mr. Presentable

Top idea speedway. Great job! Get it licenced to other game shops and watch the cash roll in. College? Pfah!

aidan_walsh

If you're keeping this on as a project, then might I suggest some professional webdesign, and a small rethink about the application's delivery? Do something with a proper GUI, rather than this command line thing that doesn't give any real information on whats going on.

Other than that, its a pretty cool idea.

Speedway

thanks Aidan. at the moment the scope of this is purely for a project. If i do move any further with it then I would add a lot more detail. At the moment the command line process was the best I could do because I would have to move more into Web Services and grabbing info from dll files on the user's pc and I wouldn't have enough experience for that at the moment.

thanks for the input though from everyone.

Creamy Goodness

the scan will not work with windows vista. when downloading that file to test it says that a "createfile.bat file cannot be found please ensure it's in the .zip file"
also very uncool in account settings that passwords are not masked.

so anyways it tries to guess my pc settings...


what it gives me back
=============================

PROCESSOR INFORMATION

---

Processor Speed : 2900MHz
Number of Processors : 1
Effective Processor Speed : 2900MHz

MEMORY INFORMATION

---

Memory(RAM) : 2046MB

GRAPHICS INFORMATION

---

Graphics Memory : 256MB

HARD DISK SPACE INFORMATION

---

Free Disk Space : 83.4GB
===================================

now for what i actually have

---

core2duo E6600 2.4ghz
2gigs ram
512mb x1900xtx
398gigs free

it may not make a difference now but the inaccuracy of losing 256mb of graphics card ram would potentially stop people buying games if the site said that it wouldn't run on their pc's.

po0k

Vista doesn't work.

Speedway

I haven't actually had the chance to test it in Windows Vista at all yet so thanks for the feedback.

Cremo the reason your specs are off is that its reading in the last persons scan because your one didn't run correctly. The file that runs is based on DirectX 9 and I haven't had the opportunity to run it in Vista at all yet purely because I don't own a copy and nobody in college with me owns a copy of Vista yet.

So thanks and i'll look into getting it running in Vista

christophicus

Thats a really good Idea and is well implemented . My only gripe aside form the ones already mentioned would be that with teh harddisk sapve. it only detects teh pation that windows is installed on.

Speedway

thanks very much christopicus appreciate the input

kjt

Nice idea, I don't have the time to register but from a website point
of view theirs no validation on your contact form and the logout
buttons always there even if your not logged in. Just little things, all
the best with the project.

thelordofcheese

Just a few little things

firstly, this works in Opera 9.02 fine, which is good. But i'd recommend a few changes, i'd have people register first, then do a test. I'm sure it'd be easier to tie results to A/C's that way.

Second, i would prefer to see if my PC will/won't play a game without having to press a button, maybe give a pass/fail on the game description, then give the option to see more, as opposed to having no idea untill you click the button

third, maybe a margin of error on results, for example, according to the results, i have 510Mb of ram, and the minimum for alot of games is 512MB, now i dunno why 2Mb of ram has been cast into the void by DXDiag, but it should give me a pass for the RAM.

Speaking of margin of errors, maybe less of a binary pass/fail, but more of a result on a scale of will work -> might work -> no chance.
After all, HDD space can be cleared out if needs be, it shouldn't be a deal killer.

Other than that, nice idea, fairly well done. Like others have said, if you want to be serious with it, then a few more tweaks and a GUI for the PC test would be in order, but i think you've got a solid notion there.

Now, look over there while i steal it.

koneko

I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, on another site. Does this ring any bells for anyone? I think it was even discussed here. This is all very familiar, I'll have this bloody deja vu feeling all morning now.

Speedway

I know the site isn't perfect by any means so thanks very much for all of the input. I'll try to address some of the issues over the next few weeks.

koneko

Found the site I think came up here before, http://www.srtest.com (sr=system requirements). There might have been another one. Can't find the thread from before on here.

PixelTrawler

http://gameadvisor.futuremark.com/gameadvisor/service/

Same idea, just done with loads of cash behind it!

Nice idea for a college project though - will look useful on the cv

It keeps stopping here on my machine though

"200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for dxdiag.txt."

Speedway

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

It keeps stopping here on my machine though

"200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for dxdiag.txt."

Thanks for the input. The reason this might be stopping is if you are behind a proxy that has FTP disabled. For example in your office or in a college network some students have FTP disabled and this site uses an automated FTP connection to send the info back from your PC

Cuddlesworth

Dual core E6600,

2.4ghz, 2 effective cores.

Comes up as 4.8ghz in the analysis?

I don't think you should count 2 cores as twice the speed, since even a game coded for dual core wont show 200% improvements.

Maybe a rule like, when effective cores =2, clock speed =1/2.

If you wanted you could put in performance ratings based on benchmarks for various processors, eg; a core2duo at 2.4ghz is better than a p4 at 3.4ghz, so it should be rated higher.

PixelTrawler

Speedway wrote:

Thanks for the input. The reason this might be stopping is if you are behind a proxy that has FTP disabled. For example in your office or in a college network some students have FTP disabled and this site uses an automated FTP connection to send the info back from your PC

Running it at home. Connecting with NTL BB. Running sygate firewall. I checked sygate but it doesnt appear to be blocking it...

NTL was hit and miss last night so ill give it another shot for you...

Edit: It worked tonight, i knocked off sygate for a moment - not sure if that was the issue. It got the specs right too, but i guess it should since its dxdiag providing the information...

I'm more impressed by the idea now. I appreciate its a college project and you probably don't have the time to make it look and behave more professional for now but you have the bones of a nice idea. Its probably worth developing further...

If the scan could be done without an .exe, instead say as an activex component from within the browser ( like the gameadvisor site ) the experience would be a lot nicer...

Speedway

thanks very much Joe, appreciate you taking the time to give it a go again. If I had another month or so I would def make it look better.

I did look into ActiveX but it is actually very complicated trying to get that working so the .exe file was the best way really without requiring a lot of user interaction

DemonOfTheFall

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/games/gameadvisor/default.mspx Here's another pretty high profile one, I'll give your one a go when I get home, sounds pretty good.

Rockshandy

hey speed,

having worked in gamestop for the last rew years...this is a great idea. i used to hand out cards with instructions on how to check which worked great, bu tthe new system doesn't allo me to print off labels so this is a greatidea man!

well done!

PixelTrawler

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/games/gameadvisor/default.mspx Here's another pretty high profile one, I'll give your one a go when I get home, sounds pretty good.

Its the same one - i think ms and futuremark have linked up on the idea

Speedway

cheers thanks Rockshandy, hopefully it will be picked up by customers and used now.

Ivan

Not quite sure why you ask "What type of game would you usually buy" but the inability to select more than one game probably leeds to askewed results.

Otherwise, fantastic, great job. Hope all goes well

Speedway

Ivan wrote:

Not quite sure why you ask "What type of game would you usually buy"

The reason I ask that and then ask the question about whether or not you want to be contacted by GameStop about new games is because if you select your genre of game and then say "yes" you want to receive emails from GameStop,

when a new game is released that matches your genre selection GameStop can use this site to send out an email about that game to you so you can pre book the game.

That's the plan anyway Thanks for having a look at it and for the compliments everyone!