Home - Xenon257R/blue-archive-rainmeter GitHub Wiki

Welcome to the wiki for the Blue Archive Rainmeter suite! This wiki is currently up to date for the v1.1.5 release.

This is the central hub for all things related to the fan-made Blue Archive Rainmeter Suite.

This wiki will assume you installed the suite using the .rmskin package and loaded up the Default Layout during installation.

All skins can be predetermined to have certain components or behaviors unless contradicted. They are as follows:

Components & Behaviors

  • @includes:
    • config.inc
  • (-1) Update Value: Only updates once on startup with a few behavioral exceptions
  • (-2) AlwaysOnTop Value: Will stick to the desktop and never render over other applications
  • (1) KeepOnScreen Value: Will be constrained within the bounds of the desktop
  • (0, 0) Anchor Point
  • Not Draggable
  • Responds to ToggleSwitch

Context Menu Options

Skins with context menu options will have this section, listing its contents. Many will typically open up UI elements for configuration which have dedicated sections in this wiki under the Settings header. Otherwise, the Context Menu Option will be explained within the section.

Mouse Actions

Mouse interactions of a skin will be listed under this header in bulletin fashion.

Details

What This Section's For

Specific behaviors or quirks a skin will be expalained at the end of the page under the Details header as shown here. They will each have their own unique header names.

:speech_balloon: Developer suggestions will be prepended with :speech_balloon:. These notes are usually opinionative and refer to design choices that readers may opt to challenge or ignore. It is also a way for me to suggest theoretical ideas that you may want to try out.

CPU Usage

Certain skins consume more resources than others. Many will like to optimize their setup to eat as little resources as possible. The very first change you can make is enabling Hardware Acceleration in the Rainmeter client and restarting Rainmeter. If this still isn't enough, the list below shows the most resource-intensive skins from worst to not-so-bad, with unlisted skins being near-neglegible. Disabling and removing them from the ToggleSwitch database will remove them properly. However, in case you still want to use them, you can follow the steps in how to reduce their consumption in exchange for some of their quality.

  1. Loadscreen
    • Do not use it. It is an optional "transition" skin.
  2. AudioVisualizer
    • Increase the Update value of the skin, reducing framerate.
    • Reduce the FFTSize value in the [MeasureAudio] measure. Will reduce the quality of the audio measurements.
    • Remove the shadow layer of the visualizer entirely from the configuration file. The Meters to remove are [AudioGridShadow] and [AudioShadow].
  3. MusicPlayer
    • Disable Animations from the context menu.
  4. SchaleFolder\mangafolder.ini
    • Disable Animations from the context menu.
  5. EventBanner
    • Disable Animations from the context menu. The marquee will also no longer automatically scroll.
  6. YouTubeBubble
    • Disable Animations from the context menu. The marquee will also no longer automatically scroll.
  7. Lists\*
    • aronagrid.ini is the most severe due to the system display (if you have it active), followed by the remaining variants due to mouse interaction animations.
      • The one exception is dungeonlist.ini, which on top of having a -1 Update cycle does not have any animated components outside of the startup tween.
    • There currently exists no way to reduce its resource consumption and still use it easily. The best compromise is to have as little database entries as possible so the lists never need to be scrolled, which is where the most graphic-instensive components lie.
  8. TrayApps (increases for every TrayApp used)
    • Disable Shine from the context menu. This option is disabled by default. This option affects every TrayApp.
    • Adaptive and Simple TrayApps have Shine switches independent of the other group.

Loadscreen is strictly opt-in using the code #LSCR#. If trying to use it chugs your system, DON'T USE IT.

As AudioVisualizer is also one of the worst offenders, it is disabled behind the Audio skin so that the user must manually switch it on/off.

A Strictly Bookmark-Only Policy

This section disregards Primarybanner\weatherbanner.ini as it is a redesigned version of JSMorley's Weather skin, who has documented it better on their own Rainmeter forum thread.

There are up to a total of 3 skins that uses information gathered from the internet to display information. The skins are the following:

  • YouTubeBubble (RSS Feed)(One-time scraping for each Channel ID and image)
  • EventBanner (RSS Feed)
  • SchaleFolder\mangafolder.ini (API)

All of the data requests above when received will be cached locally and no further requests are made until at least an hour has elapsed from the oldest piece of data. An update can be forced to override the 1-hour buffer through their context menu. Do not abuse the override feature, especially with the API requests as your IP may end up getting blocked for excessive use.

NONE OF THE ABOVE FEATURES REQUIRE AN ACCOUNT. Opening webpages or requesting account-based data requires users to provide credentials such as a username and a password. In Rainmeter, this is done by writing them directly in the configuration file or have a script read them off of a local file where you have it stored. In both cases, it compromises the safety and security of your credentials as the best place to have them is in an encrypted database, password manager or your own memory. And in the case it is properly encrypted, it's probably a security concern if a Rainmeter skin can freely decrypt your passwords for use.

As such, the above skins work on a bookmark system where pages you are interested in are put into a local json table by you, the user, without ever tying it to an account of any kind. There are no algorithms that determine what other thing you might like according to your bookmarks, nor is their any feature that streamlines web browsing, logged history or more - the skins' only job is going through what entries are put into its database, request, then display the latest update from their respective webpages.

These skins do not aim to fully replace their proper counterparts. Proper browsing is still best done in a browser/client of the service provider and you should still do your activities while signed in, ESPECIALLY if you value the features an account provides such as Recommendations, Read/Watch History, Subscriptions, Wishlisting and more.

Treat this feature like you would a physical bookmark - you mark the pages of a book you want to revisit, and the bookmark itself will do nothing until you come back another day and turn back to page 32. And to some, the bookmarks are there to just look pretty which is okay too.