Any way to TEMPORARILY change desktop users background?

AManWithAPlan

I asked this on the Godot Reddit, and I'm pretty certain they misunderstood my intentions, so I will try to ask here with a lot more clarification. If I get similar responses, then I will just scrap the idea altogether.

I am creating a very 4th-wall breaking game where the user is required to step outside of the program itself and explore their desktop for the answers to some puzzles. The one I am attempting to code at the moment is one of the first, and I'd like to make it clear to the people in the back who haven't caught on to the 4th-wall breaking shenanigans of the game. I would prefer to do this by changing their desktop background, temporarily, to hold the solution to the puzzle; if they were to leave the scene, solve the puzzle, or close the game, their background would instantaneously return to its original state. The main inspiration for this are games such as Oneshot or Inscryption. I do not plan on keeping their background in the state I made it, and just in case a bug happens and their background does end up staying like that, there will be a disclaimer on the store page and on startup that states their background "will be messed with."

If this is either not possible, or too risky, I will scrap the idea for something far more tame and safe. But, I know from personal experience playing these games that your desktop background suddenly switching without any input is both a shocking and amazing experience when done right, and on top of that, it aids in the story of my game. If there is even a possibility of this being possible, I would like to pursue it.

So, any ideas?

Megalomaniak

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Megalomaniak

I'm assuming you want to implement some kind of meta element to the game outside the godot executable.

If you know what application executable can change the desktop background/wallpaper on the respective target platforms and if they have command line arguments to use for it then you could probably use godot's OS class and the execute method it provides.

Depending on their environment it might require them to input some security credentials, such as provide an admin password to the utility application that would change the background wallpaper perhaps in which case this is probably less viable. You should probably not ask for a users system administrative creds and it would probably ruin the surprise anyways.

Erich_L

I’d say it’s a little risky, or maybe a wee bit bold? If you go risky- go full tilt. Make a whole virus ... make a ghost in the machine. Something that watches where the user goes in their computer and drops clues or leaves footprints... for some reason. You wouldn’t probably wouldn’t want to claim ownership tho.

xyz

I think "breaking the 4-th wall" is generally a bad idea for any software product. Messing with user's os settings is borderline malware, regardless of the intent.

bored_paramecium

Some suggestions to maybe turn around this problem while still using some form of meta content is to maybe try to pass your game as some type of Virtual Machine simulation with an OS like GUI where you could mess with whatever you could think of :).

Still in the meta theme, you can even add some kind of joke in the game about this, something like "Originally I wanted to mess with your actual OS, but what kind of software even does this...".

(Slight spoilers to Inscryption)

!Similar to the the second boss of the third act of the game.