Game Running Status + Session Metrics (Anti-Cheat-Safe)

[ntatschner]

Problem

StarStats currently can't reliably detect when Star Citizen is running, and has no concept of session length, kill/death counts, or mission completions. Any approach that touches game memory or hooks risks anti-cheat flagging — the bar is "signals derivable from public process metadata or public log lines, no exception".

Approach

Process-list + Game.log-tail detection only. No memory reads, no hooks, no DLL injection.

Surfaces:

• session timer (game start → last log activity)
• kills / deaths parsed from Game.log
• missions completed parsed from Game.log

Anti-cheat posture: every detection signal must be derivable from public process metadata or public log lines. No exception.

Acceptance criteria

• Detection uses tasklist / process enumeration only — no memory access of any kind
• Log parsing reads Game.log from disk after RSI writes it; no in-game hook
• Session start fires on first parseable log activity after process appears; session end on process exit OR N minutes of log silence
• K/D/missions counted by line-pattern match against documented Game.log event shapes
• Every detection signal is auditably derivable from public surfaces (documented in spec)
• Anti-cheat review: feature-flagged off by default until EAC posture is independently confirmed

Risks / Open questions

• RSI may change Game.log line formats between patches — needs version-aware parser + graceful fallback
• Session-end heuristic via log silence has false negatives (game crashed, log buffered)
• Even read-only access to Game.log while the game is running may interact poorly with file locking on some Windows builds
• Public-signals-only posture must be enforced by code review, not just policy — worth a clippy lint or static check

Original draft notes

Process-list + Game.log-tail detection only — no memory reads, no hooks, no DLL injection. Surfaces:

• session timer (game start → last log activity)
• kills / deaths parsed from Game.log
• missions completed parsed from Game.log

Anti-cheat posture: every detection signal must be derivable from public process metadata or public log lines. No exception.

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Tracking

• Roadmap slug: game-running-detection-session-metrics-anti-cheat-safe
• Public roadmap: https://starstats.app/roadmap/game-running-detection-session-metrics-anti-cheat-safe
• Project board: https://github.com/orgs/TheCodeSaiyan/projects/1
• eta_band: tbd (set on the Project board when scoping firms up)
• Channel targeting: likely live + beta + alpha — foundational instrumentation; surfaces (Patch / Channel Tagging on Log Entries #121 patch tagging, Optional Killed-By Correlation — Inferred K/D (Stats Only) #116 K/D) depend on session metrics. Add channel/<name> labels when targeting firms up.