The Constable, which finds what got in your game's way

What the Constable does#

The constable kept the peace in the parish, and found out who had broken it. The Constable finds which programs were busy while you played.

It holds the Pinder's office on a gamer's PC, with the Shepherd behind it, which finds apps busy when you aren't using the PC. On an everyday PC, the Shepherd holds it.

The Constable comes with the Household license. It uses no AI.

How it knows you're playing#

A game is a full-screen window in front, full screen or borderless, that draws in 3D, and isn't a browser, a video player or the desktop. A play session lasts while the game runs, and ends when it closes, another game takes the front, or it hasn't been in front for 15 minutes. A session under two minutes isn't kept. Its name is the game's own.

The Constable looks every 10 seconds while a game is on, and every 30 otherwise. A look costs a few thousandths of a second.

What it records#

For each play session:

• What else ran: every other program's share of the processor, of the graphics card, and of the reading and writing, grouped by program (every Steam process together), on average and at its busiest. It's mentioned when it's enough to matter.
• When the game had to share: the stretches when the processor was nearly full, other programs used a quarter of it, another program used the graphics card heavily, or others moved a lot of data, each named by what did most.
• The game's own work, apart.

Never counted against the game: its anti-cheat, Windows' own desktop drawing, and the Constable itself.

What to do#

For programs it knows, the Constable gives plain advice: turning off Steam's Allow downloads during gameplay, setting Windows Update's active hours, closing a browser's tabs.

Pause OneDrive while I play is the one fix it makes itself, when you turn it on: when a game starts, it asks OneDrive to stop, and starts it again when the game ends.

Don't mention it leaves a program out from then on. Take it off Programs it doesn't mention, in Settings, to undo.

Its page#

The Constable's page is at http://constable.localhost:21616/, and Open on its card in Castellan goes there. It shows your last play sessions, what else ran in each, and when the game had to share.

Its settings#

What it can't do#

• It doesn't measure frame times. That needs an administrator. It says when the PC was short or another program was busy, not when a frame was late.
• A game in a window that doesn't cover its screen isn't seen as a game.
• Reading and writing counts files, the network and devices together.