IDEA: Application collision detector/manager/helper

[GSz]

The problem:
My company bought several licensed copies of UnrealTournament and when there's some time we startup the game and play a quick LAN game.

The thing is that we run the game on a business PCs and Laptop (That's why we play a 1999 game).
Most of the applications that make sense during the workday are loaded automatically - and I like keeping it that way.
One example is Babylon Translator which is activated by the Mouse Middle click.

What I propose is an small software that sits in the SysTray and keeps track of which applications are already loaded and which are just being launched.

Once an application on the watchlist is launched, there is a profile of applications that should shutdown immediately.
Once the watchlist application terminates, those same application that were shutdown would start again.

So if I have on my watchlist:
UnrealTournament.exe

and the conflicting app list for it is, for example:
babylon.exe
outlook.exe
iexplorer.exe
firefox.exe

then when I fire-up UnrealTournament.exe - babylon, outlook, iexplorer and firefox would shut-down.
and those same apps will restart the moment UnrealTournament.exe would terminate. (a delayed approval box would make sense in case it's a failure on the part of the Game).

I found out an application that comes close, but is run manually - I want something automatic. And the application's profile is automatic, I wish for manual / config file control.

Hope this is of some interest to at least one of you guys.

Thanks.

[r0bertdenir0]

So this gamebooster does everytyn you want except activate automatically?
I see it's got a whole buncha features 2 slow down background processes & other fancy stuff that wud take 2 long 2 code here.
So if it meets all yr other needs, how about a autohotkey script that runs in the background waiting 4 yr game & when found just loads gamebooster automatically?

[GSz]

So this gamebooster does everytyn you want except activate automatically?

-r0bertdenir0 (June 08, 2009, 09:09 AM)

I started answering you and wrote the requirement again (if you'd really like to read it, it's in the quoted text below) but then it struck me, that what I was askeing for can be done a lot simpler.

So here is a revised requirement, and if I'll get a positive response I'll change or repost the new IDEA, since it is alot simpler.

here it goes:

1. Prepare application watch list, preferable by specific executable path.
2. Each application in the watch list, has two commands attached to it, one that is performed on startup, and another performed after shutdown.
3. Application sits idley until a process from the watch-list is activated.
4. Change the priority of the launched app to idle.
5. Run the command for startup of the launched app.
6. when startup command ends, assign the original priority to the launched app.
7. wait of the launched app to end.
8. when the process is cleared from the system, the shutdown command initiates.

does this make better sense?

The previous detailed idea (mostly garbage now :-) )

Not exactly - I don't really need all of gamebooster's functionality, what I do want is a way to create sets of application that when an application of a specific set is activated all application in the opposite set are shutdown, and when the application is complete, those apps will be started up again (using command line switches that were previously defined).


So the application will have a list of application definitions, most of these would be windows startup stuff, but can be modified manually:
babylon translator
resource monitors (cpu, harddrive, etc..)
quick launchers / autohotkey scripts
microsoft outlook
IM clients (Messenger, Google Talk, Digsby, etc..)

this list will have the process names and initialization parameters defined (can be taken from the registry of manual).

Another list - an applications watch list. These will be the high resource consumption stuff, like multimedia and games.

Whenever an application in the watch list activates, the applications on the 1st list will shutdown and free up resources and hotkeys etc.

as to Gamebooster - it's fine - but it doesn't let you define the list of stuff to shut down.

Hope I got it simpler now.

Thanks for your feedback
Gal