GDC: Jenkins Software Releases Free Data Mining Tool for Game Developers

RakNet developer Jenkins Software released Echo Chamber, a free data mining tool and visualization utility enabling developers to "visualize game session metrics". The new tool allows developers to watch video playback with framerate and memory usage reports during a session, examine heat maps of player and opponent activities overlaid on level maps, and record combined multiplayer sessions. By using Jenkins's open-source network game engine RakNet or other programming libraries, developers can record game metrics during play o a remote SQLite backed database server. The company says this setup minimizes the performance impact on he game as processing is handled on the server. During Echo Chamber's analysis, data can be "queried with SQL statements and displayed using table, line graph, histogram, symbol chart, pie chart, heat map, and 3D scatter plot formats." The utility's playback supports static views, animation, and single step by frame count. Jenkins notes that Echo Chamber is is free to download, use, and modify, with the source code released under the GPL license. The company has made the source code, an example video, and other information available at its official site.