Controlling Wallpaper Engine with Rainmeter Skins? - Please help!

[Bamboo]

Hi all,

It appears it is possible to control Wallpaper Engine via Rainmeter but I cannot figure out or find out how to!

This wallpaper engine devblog (Dec 13th 2019) has a little information on the topic, noting that is possible to

"control or automate wallpaper changes, playback, playlists or even wallpaper properties"

and goes on to say;

"For example, you could create buttons in Rainmeter to control the wallpaper or hotkey macros or you could pop-out several wallpapers..."

It also provides this link to the Wallpaper Engine command line arguments, where it states

"Pro tip: You can run the command from a shortcut, a macro binding or any script/code of your choice."

And so that is what I am attempting to do, using Rainmeter as my "shortcut" to control wallpaper changes. I am not worrying about creating the perfect skins right now but instead I am just trying to get something basic working, like the "-control stop" argument.

Does anybody know how to set something like this up?

Thanks,
Bamboo

[DanDaBear]

Hi Bamboo,

I used E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper64.exe -control play
in a LeftMouseUpAction for an icon skin and it works great!

Remember to use quotes around just the path (not the -control play part) if it has spaces. (mine doesn't)

Thanks for the command line link

I now have WallpaperEngine Pause on a left click and Play on a right click of the icon!

[Bamboo]

Apologies for the late reply, but wow - It works perfectly.
No further questions, your honor!

Thanks a lot

[DanDaBear]

I got tired of the problem of trying to access the right click menu on my icon launchers when there is a RightMouseUpAction on a skin so I changed it toggle one icon between two different actions.

I created three variables:
ToggleMe, set to 1 initially, which will toggle between 1 and 0

AppChoice0=["E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper64.exe" -control pause]
AppChoice1=["E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper64.exe" -control play]
For the two different actions, which are pausing and playing the Wallpaper Engine background.

The launcher meter has:
LeftMouseDownAction=[!SetVariable ToggleMe (1-#ToggleMe#)], to toggle the variable.

To launch the action I use a nested variable, [#AppChoice[#ToggleMe]] for the launcher app variable:
Launch0App=[#AppChoice[#ToggleMe]]
which appends AppChoice with the ToggleMe variable, which will be a zero or a one giving us the variable AppChoice0 or AppChoice1

My icon launcher, which started from the tutorial launcher, uses a meter style for doing almost all the work in one place.(see Spoiler below)

I use an include file for the launcher variables, of which there are sixteen (16), also using a nested variable to append the meter name of the #CURRENTSECTION#, which are named Launch1, Launch2, Launch3 etc. all the way up to Launch16, with Icon, Label and App, giving us one of the three variables below:

Launch1Icon=#@#Images\Icons\Calculator.png, the icon.
Launch1Label=Calculator, the tool tip label that pops up on hover.
Launch1App=[Calc.exe], the program or action to launch.

so ImageName=[#[#CurrentSection]Icon] would be: Launch1Icon for the first icon, Launch2Icon for the second icon etc.

Code: Select all

[Style]
;  All the magic happens here!
ImageTint=#TextColor#
X=#Xoffset#r
Y=#IconY#
W=#ICNIconWidth2#
H=#ICNIconWidth2#
SolidColor=0,0,0,1
AntiAlias=1
GreyScale=1
StringAlign=Center
;  Nested variables below (IE: [#[#CurrentSection]Icon] are the key to putting everything in this style!
ImageName=[#[#CurrentSection]Icon]
LeftMouseUpAction=[#[#CURRENTSECTION]App]
MouseOverAction=[!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# ImageTint #HoverColor#][!SetOption Tip1 Text [#[#CURRENTSECTION]Label]][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# H (#ICNIconWidth2#+8)][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# W (#ICNIconWidth2#+8)][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# Y (#IconY#-4)][!SetOption Tip1 Y #TipY# ][!SetOption Tip1 X "([#CurrentSection#:X]+(#ICNIconWidth2#/2)+2)"][!ShowMeter Tip1][!UpdateMeter *][!Redraw]
MouseLeaveAction=[!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# ImageTint #TextColor#][!HideMeter Tip1][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# H #ICNIconWidth2#][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# W #ICNIconWidth2#][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# X #Xoffset#r][!SetOption #CURRENTSECTION# Y #IconY#][!UpdateMeter *][!Redraw]
DynamicVariables=1

The icon launchers should be on DeviantArt soon. Soons I finish tweeking them. They are also in my Bordered2Tears, Drop Top and Bottoms Up suites without the toggled icon. The latter two, Drop Top and Bottoms Up are newer.

[Jeff]

Since this is ALMOST on the same topic, to control stuff inside the wallpapers (for example, if it's a website and you have a few functions you wanna activate), you can use any simple Message Passing plugin to send commands to the container/wallapaper/site/frame...whatever it's called