> Ideally, the games themselves would have some sort of API, or some other way to either communicate what’s happening in the game so I can map colors to it
A number of games implement Mumble Link (https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link) which provides a memory-mapped file that includes positional data used to provide directional sound by voice-comms software (so when a teammate speaks you hear their voice as if you were both in your relevant locations in the shared virtual space). Some games also expose other data through this including health/mana/ammo levels which could be used to control lighting based on game state.
Although this might be much, much harder because you'd have to trick each SDK into thinking it's talking to the devices it expects. A good example of this is a nice hack that takes Logitech LED commands and sends them to a Corsair keyboard instead - http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=140755
This is one place where some common standards / APIs would have really helped. Instead, the community is left to do all the work.
That's another great idea. I'm looking for a Razer Chroma API, not much luck yet, but their site[1] seems to have some info. Of course, they're going to make it much easier for you to tell their keyboard what the color should be than to read that color...
There's been quite a few people exploring logitech gaming keyboards with LCD (G19 etc), adding pidgin plugins, games widgits etc. Maybe you can get enough from github to figure out what you need?
Or there's Roccat's power grid which interfaces games to a phone app. No idea how open or investigated that is though.
Aha! That's very interesting, thank you. I had no idea this was a thing, but it looks like I can use it for some interactions. I'll explore further, thanks again.
A number of games implement Mumble Link (https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link) which provides a memory-mapped file that includes positional data used to provide directional sound by voice-comms software (so when a teammate speaks you hear their voice as if you were both in your relevant locations in the shared virtual space). Some games also expose other data through this including health/mana/ammo levels which could be used to control lighting based on game state.