With hardware acceleration, better animation controls?

[Virginityrocks]

With hardware acceleration coming in 4.3, I would love to see Rainmeter have better baked in animation controls that replace ActionTimer, adding an additional parameter for time to MoveMeter, and better controls for fading in/out of individual meters rather than entire skins. HideFadeMeter and ShowFadeMeter are long overdue.

I would also love to see a simple way to allow gradual variable changes to accommodate these features. For example, alongside SetVariable, TransVariable (Transition Variable), setting a variable to X over a specified number of milliseconds. (Example: [!TransVariable Variable1 "100" "5"] would transition Variable1 from 0 to 100 over 5 update cycles)

This would greatly simplify the process of animating and thereby make these features more accessible to new users who want to implement animation into their skins. More smooth and simple animations would help modernize and beautify Rainmeter skins moving forward that blend well with an increasingly more animation-heavy Windows 10 OS. The ActionTimer plugin has its place, especially when needing to perform several complicated actions in sequence with wait times between each instruction, but for simply moving meters, fading, and increasing or decreasing their size or transitioning any variable from 1 value to another, Rainmeter would be good to include a simpler set of functions for those actions.

[balala]

I would also love to see a simple way to allow gradual variable changes to accommodate these features. For example, alongside SetVariable, TransVariable (Transition Variable), setting a variable to X over a specified number of milliseconds. (Example: [!TransVariable Variable1 "100" "5"] would transition Variable1 from 0 to 100 over 5 update cycles)

No need for a such new bang, since we have !Delay. What you'd like to achieve with the [!TransVariable Variable1 "100" "5"] bang, can be done easily if you combine a !Delay and a !SetVariable: [!Delay "5000"][!SetVariable Variable1 "100"] (supposing the Update is set to the default 1000). In this case, the !SetVariable bang will be executed with a 5 seconds (5000 milliseconds) delay.

[kyriakos876]

No need for a such new bang, since we have !Delay. What you'd like to achieve with the [!TransVariable Variable1 "100" "5"] bang, can be done easily if you combine a !Delay and a !SetVariable: [!Delay "5000"][!SetVariable Variable1 "100"] (supposing the Update is set to the default 1000). In this case, the !SetVariable bang will be executed with a 5 seconds (5000 milliseconds) delay.

I think the op means to have a bang that would do this regardless of the update rate, like a built in actiontimer function.

[kyriakos876]

With hardware acceleration coming in 4.3, I would love to see Rainmeter have better baked in animation controls that replace ActionTimer, adding an additional parameter for time to MoveMeter, and better controls for fading in/out of individual meters rather than entire skins. HideFadeMeter and ShowFadeMeter are long overdue.

I would also love to see a simple way to allow gradual variable changes to accommodate these features. For example, alongside SetVariable, TransVariable (Transition Variable), setting a variable to X over a specified number of milliseconds. (Example: [!TransVariable Variable1 "100" "5"] would transition Variable1 from 0 to 100 over 5 update cycles)

This would greatly simplify the process of animating and thereby make these features more accessible to new users who want to implement animation into their skins. More smooth and simple animations would help modernize and beautify Rainmeter skins moving forward that blend well with an increasingly more animation-heavy Windows 10 OS. The ActionTimer plugin has its place, especially when needing to perform several complicated actions in sequence with wait times between each instruction, but for simply moving meters, fading, and increasing or decreasing their size or transitioning any variable from 1 value to another, Rainmeter would be good to include a simpler set of functions for those actions.

I don't think actiontimer needs improvement... You can do everything and in a pretty simple piece of code. In order to replace that as you suggested, we would need to built in way too many functions would be inpractical as you can do all if those with actiontimer. Now when it comes to specifically changing a variable with one line of code (0-100 over a specific amount of time) could be useful but I still have my doubts. (That's my take on this)

[Jeff]

While it would be nice to have more easy to use stuff, you're probably gonna be told off since you can do all the stuff in Rainmeter already (and because devs wanna hold a ground between easy to learn and hard to make), you'll just need to learn Formulas in the meanwhile and if you're like me who can't understand a new lesson with ease since 6th grade (in uni and i still can't understand shush), you're better off just copying stuff off the forum and (please) thank the people you copy pasted the code from.
If you wanna do animation, use AverageSize, it makes stuff smooth as silk.

A system like ROBLOX (yes roblox) would be nice to have imo.
https://www.robloxdev.com/api-reference/enum/EasingStyle

[jsmorley]

We take no joy from "hard to use", this isn't linux, where that is a badge of honor. However, our target is always that what we implement is flexible, powerful, and ENTIRELY under the control of the skin author. Anything that reduces the choices an author has on the altar of easy to use has always been, and always will be, viewed as the wrong direction.

Anything that smells of "cookie cutter" never gets off the ground. We view Rainmeter as a canvas, tubes of paint, and a brush. We are always delighted to add more colors of paint, but it's never going to be paint by numbers. That isn't what Rainmeter is about.

Is creating skins in Rainmeter a bit daunting to someone brand-new at it? Yes. We try mightily to document and give examples that make this as painless as possible, and we certainly depend on the unbelievable community here on the forums, but there is no doubt that there is a learning curve. I would propose however, that at the end of the day you have created something that is entirely yours, and that you created exactly as you wanted it, down to the last detail. You are only limited by your creativity.

[kyriakos876]

You are only limited by your creativity.

This should be Rainmeter's motto or something... It's as true as it gets.

[jsmorley]

This should be Rainmeter's motto or something... It's as true as it gets.

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[kyriakos876]