Hello!

E-Sports. Some Love It, Some Hate It, Some Get Really Angry In It, And Some Just Play It Because Their Bored Or Because They're Really Good At It!... But What The......... Is YCITCLAB's E-Sports GUI, And How Exactly Is It Deployed And Used?? Well, I'll tell you!

The YCITCLAB E-Sports GUI is a wonderful GUI that packs 3 things into 1, to ensure fair play, no cheating and ease of use and a quick way in to just "Let me get into a match already!!".

But how Ryan?!?! You may ask.. Well, you see, in the Lab we use a fair bit of Group Policy Objects for the different Users and Computers that we run within the College and within one of the Group Policy Objects that pertain to the E-Sports Members only is one of the absolute main things that holds the majority of all this together, and that is the Policy Object for 'Custom User Shell'. Why 'Custom User Shell'? Well, because it allows you to essentially swap out explorer.exe upon login, so rather than the end user seeing a Desktop (loaded by explorer.exe), they instead see whatever exe you've thrown in there so long as the End User has access to said exe / folder! Of course we don't just apply that Object and call it a day, there are many other objects we add such as disabling the Run box, Disabling Task Manager, Disabling System Sleep & Hibernation etc to ensure a smooth and thorough game play experience!

Essentially.. this GUI alongside enforced restrictions using Group Policy Objects makes it so that Students who actively participate within E-Sports at the College cannot access Explorer and / or other applications and programs they shouldn't be accessing (Thus making it harder to run cheats and bad programs on the Systems). The GUI has everything in it such as accessibility options to make the mouse bigger / smaller, adjusting the volume settings etc.

So now you're probably wondering.. but Ryan.. those policies surely break Windows left and right.. right??? Wellllll... yes and no! Whilst it breaks the Windows Operating System in terms of the End-User not having a Desktop, no Audio Controls so they can't even turn their Volume Up, Down or even Mute their Sound or anything like that... for the most part, Windows still works perfectly fine....

But Ryan, Surely for E-Sports these are critical and essential right?? What if the sound is too loud and you need to take off your headset or the output device is set incorrectly?? No one can do anything about it can they?? (You're probably wondering...) WELL... KIND READER!!! Let me tell you, that this has also been covered, End Users don't need to panic because if you remember at the start I pointed out "The YCITCLAB E-Sports GUI is a wonderful GUI that packs 3 things into 1".. I just never told you what those three things were! So let me tell you now!

Firstly, You have the E-Sports GUI itself obviously, and as I've already spoken about that we're just going to gloss over it entirely and hopefully you'll have read the above and know mostly all about it at this point! But here's the interesting bits you didn't know... Secondly, We have a VolumeHUD and... Thirdly, We have a ChatHUD!

But what are those?? What do they do?? How do they work?? Woah woah woah, slow down... I'm getting to that point.

The GUI includes its own VolumeHUD, since Explorer isn't running; Windows' Volume HUD does not appear and the Volume buttons on the Keyboards / Headsets no longer work since they depend on Explorer to be running to make these critical controls work... So, to fix this issue, the VolumeHUD essentially restores all that functionality by mapping the keybinds and whatnot directly to its own application and taking control of them from Windows and allowing the end user to turn the Volume Up, Down or Mute again!

Ooh fancy! (I know right?!?!) BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHAT OVERLAY / HUD!!! Hey!! No shouting... But the Chat Overlay / Hud is definitely worth a read and I'll tell you all about it...

The GUI includes a Discord-like Chat Overlay which includes Voice Channels and Chat Channels handled by a Docker Container on a Local Linux Server (Alma Linux) in the Lab which also prevents inappropriate language from Students using the machines, anyone who attempts to use inappropriate language in any Chat Channels will be notified that their message has not been sent due to inappropriate language and their Student ID + Message(s) are then logged to the Docker Containers' Logs in the event that any action from Staff needs to be taken to ensure that if safeguarding need to be involved, they will be and then hopefully kind communication, no bullying and fair playing can continue!

And that's it really!

That's the wrap up of the YCITCLAB E-Sports GUI.

(Photos Coming Soon!)

So.. What Exactly IS YCITCLAB E-Sports GUI?!?!