Hey all,

A new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that improves support for translations and fixes a few new issues that have been occuring. The UI should not be freezing anymore on some PCs and the monitor order is now based on the screen position and not what Windows reports (since a reliable report from Windows doesn't seem possible).

Three new image effects have been added as well which you can see here:



The paint tool has been reimplemented on the GPU and should now perform better on large images or with a large brush size. The flow map brush has support for two additional paint modes now, pinch and spread. These can be used with the "water flow" or "shake" effect to animate circular flow or breathing effects on the image.



In order to provide some indication about performance, you now have the option to show a stats overlay with various rendering information about scenes. While there is no rule of thumb which values should be considered 'too high', you can get an idea about how effects or images affect performance this way.



Properties in the project.json file can now be translated, I added new instructions for this to the property guide:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=785994149

The next patch will introduce tools to the editor to create and edit particle effects for the wallpaper, like the snow and light ray presets that exist already.


Full changelog

• Added image effects: god rays, film grain, clouds.
  
• Added rendering statistics to scenes.
  
• Made it possible to add translations to properties in project.json.
  
• Made it possible to translate effects/properties etc in the editor.
  
• Integrated pending translation updates.
  
• Added hardware acceleration to paint brush tool.
  
• Added spread/pinch brush for flow maps.
  
• Added friction property to shake effect.
  
• Added support for more image preview types in the editor (png, gif).

• Fixed UI dead locking while creating the window.
  
• Attempted to fix a crash when video wallpapers are closed.
  
• Fixed properties in editor showing duplicates or not updating sometimes.

• Removed all flags from language list.
  
• Updated crash messages of third-party tools that hack into Wallpaper Engine.
  
• Changed monitor order to be based on position.

Hey all,

A new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that improves support for translations and fixes a few new issues that have been occuring. The UI should not be freezing anymore on some PCs and the monitor order is now based on the screen position and not what Windows reports (since a reliable report from Windows doesn't seem possible).

Three new image effects have been added as well which you can see here:



The paint tool has been reimplemented on the GPU and should now perform better on large images or with a large brush size. The flow map brush has support for two additional paint modes now, pinch and spread. These can be used with the "water flow" or "shake" effect to animate circular flow or breathing effects on the image.



In order to provide some indication about performance, you now have the option to show a stats overlay with various rendering information about scenes. While there is no rule of thumb which values should be considered 'too high', you can get an idea about how effects or images affect performance this way.



Properties in the project.json file can now be translated, I added new instructions for this to the property guide:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=785994149

The next patch will introduce tools to the editor to create and edit particle effects for the wallpaper, like the snow and light ray presets that exist already.


Full changelog

• Added image effects: god rays, film grain, clouds.
  
• Added rendering statistics to scenes.
  
• Made it possible to add translations to properties in project.json.
  
• Made it possible to translate effects/properties etc in the editor.
  
• Integrated pending translation updates.
  
• Added hardware acceleration to paint brush tool.
  
• Added spread/pinch brush for flow maps.
  
• Added friction property to shake effect.
  
• Added support for more image preview types in the editor (png, gif).

• Fixed UI dead locking while creating the window.
  
• Attempted to fix a crash when video wallpapers are closed.
  
• Fixed properties in editor showing duplicates or not updating sometimes.

• Removed all flags from language list.
  
• Updated crash messages of third-party tools that hack into Wallpaper Engine.
  
• Changed monitor order to be based on position.

Hey all,

A new patch has been released for Wallpaper Engine that improves the editor features for scene wallpapers, especially 2D ones. It is now easier to add dynamic effects and image based animations. You can also drag and drop files into the editor to import them instead of using the file dialog (depending on the type of wallpaper you created). This allows you to add new models/images and replace texture inputs of existing ones (like normal maps).



After importing an image you can add effects to it on the right side. I have added a number of preliminary effects to choose from:



Some of them allow you to draw masks right in the editor. E.g. the previous 'water flow' template is gone and you can instead paint a flow effect with the new system and the built-in brush tool:



The effects can be applied to singular images, the entire screen or an offscreen target - which will become more useful as I implement upcoming features. All layers and some effects themselves support the standard Photoshop blend modes to control how they are rendered on the wallpaper.



A new preset system will allow me to ship Wallpaper Engine with standard assets more easily. I added three presets for testing purposes for now, snow particles, light shafts and a foliage object:



Lastly, a more advanced feature, you can link any layer as a texture input to another effect/material in the wallpaper. Together with the offscreen layer, this enables the creation of complicated effects with layers and objects interoperating.

I have not updated the guides with the new features yet, but will replace the current 2D guide with an example using the new system. You can already subscribe to the example project here http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=900945540 and download the project file as well: http://www.media fire.com/file/gy79f5zc7040kw9/waterfall.zip (copy them to projects/myprojects in the installation directory of Wallpaper Engine and open them in the editor with File -> Open).


The next update will be dedicated to bug fixing/localization updates. Following that, I will also implement a simple particle editor to edit & create new particles, add more image effects and possibly implement a system for key frame animations for all object properties.

- Kristjan



Full Changelog

• Added image effect system to editor.
  
• Added fullscreen and offscreen layers.
  
• Added preset system to editor.
  
• Added additional layer options: visibility & 2D parallax X/Y scale.
  
• Added texture options when importing textures.
  
• Added texture control to configure/change textures of existing materials.
  
• Added paint brush system to draw opacity, flow and color maps in the editor.
  
• Added texture preview to editor.
  
• Added OLE drop interface to the window, to allow importing of texture/model/video files into the editor.
  
• Added resolution controls to 2D scenes.
  
• Added editable text inputs for slider control.
  
• Added composited image layer rendering to allow layer results to be used as texture inputs.

• Added text input property "textinput" to project.json and web wallpaper.
  
• Added "editable" flag to sliders in project.json, which will show a text input to allow arbitrary values.
  
• Added lossless LZ4 compression for textures.

• Fixed unfaving wallpapers in the browser.
  
• Fixed large file sizes being displayed incorrectly in the browser (at least as much as the Steamworks SDK permits, uint32).
  
• Fixed videos crashing when audio is disabled and an unrecognized audio stream is being loaded.
  
• Fixed cursor position in editor with high DPI.
  
• Fixed mip map compilation causing color banding.

Hey all,

A new patch has been released for Wallpaper Engine that improves the editor features for scene wallpapers, especially 2D ones. It is now easier to add dynamic effects and image based animations. You can also drag and drop files into the editor to import them instead of using the file dialog (depending on the type of wallpaper you created). This allows you to add new models/images and replace texture inputs of existing ones (like normal maps).



After importing an image you can add effects to it on the right side. I have added a number of preliminary effects to choose from:



Some of them allow you to draw masks right in the editor. E.g. the previous 'water flow' template is gone and you can instead paint a flow effect with the new system and the built-in brush tool:



The effects can be applied to singular images, the entire screen or an offscreen target - which will become more useful as I implement upcoming features. All layers and some effects themselves support the standard Photoshop blend modes to control how they are rendered on the wallpaper.



A new preset system will allow me to ship Wallpaper Engine with standard assets more easily. I added three presets for testing purposes for now, snow particles, light shafts and a foliage object:



Lastly, a more advanced feature, you can link any layer as a texture input to another effect/material in the wallpaper. Together with the offscreen layer, this enables the creation of complicated effects with layers and objects interoperating.

I have not updated the guides with the new features yet, but will replace the current 2D guide with an example using the new system. You can already subscribe to the example project here http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=900945540 and download the project file as well: http://www.media fire.com/file/gy79f5zc7040kw9/waterfall.zip (copy them to projects/myprojects in the installation directory of Wallpaper Engine and open them in the editor with File -> Open).


The next update will be dedicated to bug fixing/localization updates. Following that, I will also implement a simple particle editor to edit & create new particles, add more image effects and possibly implement a system for key frame animations for all object properties.

- Kristjan



Full Changelog

• Added image effect system to editor.
  
• Added fullscreen and offscreen layers.
  
• Added preset system to editor.
  
• Added additional layer options: visibility & 2D parallax X/Y scale.
  
• Added texture options when importing textures.
  
• Added texture control to configure/change textures of existing materials.
  
• Added paint brush system to draw opacity, flow and color maps in the editor.
  
• Added texture preview to editor.
  
• Added OLE drop interface to the window, to allow importing of texture/model/video files into the editor.
  
• Added resolution controls to 2D scenes.
  
• Added editable text inputs for slider control.
  
• Added composited image layer rendering to allow layer results to be used as texture inputs.

• Added text input property "textinput" to project.json and web wallpaper.
  
• Added "editable" flag to sliders in project.json, which will show a text input to allow arbitrary values.
  
• Added lossless LZ4 compression for textures.

• Fixed unfaving wallpapers in the browser.
  
• Fixed large file sizes being displayed incorrectly in the browser (at least as much as the Steamworks SDK permits, uint32).
  
• Fixed videos crashing when audio is disabled and an unrecognized audio stream is being loaded.
  
• Fixed cursor position in editor with high DPI.
  
• Fixed mip map compilation causing color banding.

Hey all,

Another patch has been released to address a few issues that have come up. I fixed a bug in the filesystem library I am using (Boost C++) that caused Wallpaper Engine to fail running properly when it was installed in a symlinked directory under certain circumstances.

Some web wallpapers in Workshop that use the open-source rain drop effect from here: https://github.com/codrops/RainEffect broke with the recent CEF update because the rain effect code was incompatible with the latest updates from Google Chromium. The original author has fixed the issue, but the copies on Workshop do not receive this fix automatically unless their authors update them too. Since these situations are unavoidable when Google releases updates to Chromium, I have implemented a system that allows me to update Workshop files after they have been downloaded by a client, since I cannot directly access the files on the Steam servers. This system can be used to apply patches in a situation like this.

So in other words, all of the rain drop wallpapers should be working again. The 'Paranoid and Shy Birds' have been fixed using the same system, the white lines are gone.

You can now use the resolution graphics option to control the rendering resolution of canvas elements in web wallpapers. Using half resolution can greatly improve performance on some web wallpapers now. So, using the rain drops as an example, the CPU load on my machine (3440 x 1440 resolution) drops while compromising on the quality:



I have also reported a number of false positives from different anti-virus products to their respective companies. These include libcef.dll for Avast and Bitdefender and wallpaper32.exe / wallpaper64.exe for Comodo. If you know about any other false positives, let me know, or feel free to report them using the links I put in this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/2/143388132201188114/

The update warning for known incompatible applications will now only be shown once per application. However, with this update, you will still see them one more time. The following updates will not show the warning unless you verify/re-install the application over Steam. And hopefully at some point I can completely remove the warning, when the respective developers have fixed the issues on their end.

- Kristjan




Changelog

• Fixed video read mode being overwritten on start.
  
• Fixed browse window showing wrong wallpapers when rapidly switching from Workshop to installed.
  
• Fixed Boost filesystem not resolving symlinks correctly.

• Web wallpaper compatibility system to overwrite Workshop files on load.
  
• Made it possible to reduce canvas resolution in web wallpapers with the half resolution option.

• Changed application warning on update to show only once per application.
  
• Refactored parts of 2D/3D wallpapers for upcoming changes to the editor.

Hey all,

Another patch has been released to address a few issues that have come up. I fixed a bug in the filesystem library I am using (Boost C++) that caused Wallpaper Engine to fail running properly when it was installed in a symlinked directory under certain circumstances.

Some web wallpapers in Workshop that use the open-source rain drop effect from here: https://github.com/codrops/RainEffect broke with the recent CEF update because the rain effect code was incompatible with the latest updates from Google Chromium. The original author has fixed the issue, but the copies on Workshop do not receive this fix automatically unless their authors update them too. Since these situations are unavoidable when Google releases updates to Chromium, I have implemented a system that allows me to update Workshop files after they have been downloaded by a client, since I cannot directly access the files on the Steam servers. This system can be used to apply patches in a situation like this.

So in other words, all of the rain drop wallpapers should be working again. The 'Paranoid and Shy Birds' have been fixed using the same system, the white lines are gone.

You can now use the resolution graphics option to control the rendering resolution of canvas elements in web wallpapers. Using half resolution can greatly improve performance on some web wallpapers now. So, using the rain drops as an example, the CPU load on my machine (3440 x 1440 resolution) drops while compromising on the quality:



I have also reported a number of false positives from different anti-virus products to their respective companies. These include libcef.dll for Avast and Bitdefender and wallpaper32.exe / wallpaper64.exe for Comodo. If you know about any other false positives, let me know, or feel free to report them using the links I put in this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/2/143388132201188114/

The update warning for known incompatible applications will now only be shown once per application. However, with this update, you will still see them one more time. The following updates will not show the warning unless you verify/re-install the application over Steam. And hopefully at some point I can completely remove the warning, when the respective developers have fixed the issues on their end.

- Kristjan




Changelog

• Fixed video read mode being overwritten on start.
  
• Fixed browse window showing wrong wallpapers when rapidly switching from Workshop to installed.
  
• Fixed Boost filesystem not resolving symlinks correctly.

• Web wallpaper compatibility system to overwrite Workshop files on load.
  
• Made it possible to reduce canvas resolution in web wallpapers with the half resolution option.

• Changed application warning on update to show only once per application.
  
• Refactored parts of 2D/3D wallpapers for upcoming changes to the editor.

Hey all,

Another small update for Wallpaper Engine has been released that fixes a few things and adds more video options. There were a few playlist issues that should be fixed now, which caused the playlist to disappear. It still takes a few seconds to show up until Steam responded with your Workshop subscriptions.

Using the center or cover video options, you can now also change the position of the video respectively with this new slider:



The effects of this slider vary based on the current mode, as illustrated here:



The alignment options are now also fully functional for WebM videos.



A new advanced option allows you to disable video hardware acceleration:



You should not use this option unless your hardware acceleration is defective, due to hardware or driver issues. Disabling hardware acceleration will cause the CPU load to increase, so in a normal scenario, it is not desirable to disable this. I added this option for two reasons:

• Some AMD hardware and driver combinations suffer from 'UVD clock' bugs. The GPU core/memory clocks get stuck while playing videos. Disabling hardware acceleration will just not cause UVD profiles to be loaded, so the driver doesn't bug out.
  
• I had a few reports of the entire screen turning black periodically on certain (Nvidia?) cards and drivers. Disabling hardware acceleration might help here, if the issue is caused by the video decoder of the GPU.

There are now resolution tags in the Workshop:



They will be automatically set. If you want to add them to your current wallpaper, just publish an empty update with the editor and it should add the tag. The 'Standard Definition' tags basically mean 'low resolution' while maintaining the respective aspect ratio. Should a video be between two resolutions, it will always pick the next lower one. If nothing fits, "Other resolution" will be set. The tags don't work for WebM yet.



I have added newer versions of the Visual Studio 2013 runtimes to the Steam install script, so starting Wallpaper Engine over Steam, those two will be installed now. The ones distributed by Steam are sometimes not being installed at all and are also old, the new runtimes include fixes for a certain locale related crash. Speaking of crashes, the crash dialog will now show more info and provide a likely solution if a known crash happens. Those include outdated Intel GPU drivers on Nvidia Optimus laptops, Precision X and RivaTuner.

- Kristjan



Full changelog

• New Visual Studio 2013 runtimes.
  
• Added more information and cancel button to update & verify dialog.
  
• Added tags for video resolutions.
  
• Added solutions for known crashes caused by drivers or third-party apps (Intel GPU drivers out of date, Precision X and RivaTuner hooks).
  
• Added option to disable video hardware acceleration.
  
• Added video alignment option for cover and center.
  
• Added process priority option.
  
• Added detection for RDP session state changes to destroy/restart wallpapers automatically.
  
• Added a work-around for video playlists on Windows 7 to reduce flashing or the static wallpaper from showing up when switching between videos.

• Fixed playlist permanently disappearing when unsubbing a wallpaper and other scenarios.
  
• Fixed double quotes in URL breaking the config.json.
  
• Fixed launcher process not creating mini dump files.
  
• Fixed focus issues of the transition effect and all wallpapers (except web...).
  
• Fixed WebM videos getting frozen when they threw a media error.
  
• Fixed Steamworks injection causing Wallpaper Engine to be detected by Steam after an update (does not apply to this patch yet).

• Updated CEF to version 3.2924.1571.gcdcdfa9.

Hey all,

Another small update for Wallpaper Engine has been released that fixes a few things and adds more video options. There were a few playlist issues that should be fixed now, which caused the playlist to disappear. It still takes a few seconds to show up until Steam responded with your Workshop subscriptions.

Using the center or cover video options, you can now also change the position of the video respectively with this new slider:



The effects of this slider vary based on the current mode, as illustrated here:



The alignment options are now also fully functional for WebM videos.



A new advanced option allows you to disable video hardware acceleration:



You should not use this option unless your hardware acceleration is defective, due to hardware or driver issues. Disabling hardware acceleration will cause the CPU load to increase, so in a normal scenario, it is not desirable to disable this. I added this option for two reasons:

• Some AMD hardware and driver combinations suffer from 'UVD clock' bugs. The GPU core/memory clocks get stuck while playing videos. Disabling hardware acceleration will just not cause UVD profiles to be loaded, so the driver doesn't bug out.
  
• I had a few reports of the entire screen turning black periodically on certain (Nvidia?) cards and drivers. Disabling hardware acceleration might help here, if the issue is caused by the video decoder of the GPU.

There are now resolution tags in the Workshop:



They will be automatically set. If you want to add them to your current wallpaper, just publish an empty update with the editor and it should add the tag. The 'Standard Definition' tags basically mean 'low resolution' while maintaining the respective aspect ratio. Should a video be between two resolutions, it will always pick the next lower one. If nothing fits, "Other resolution" will be set. The tags don't work for WebM yet.



I have added newer versions of the Visual Studio 2013 runtimes to the Steam install script, so starting Wallpaper Engine over Steam, those two will be installed now. The ones distributed by Steam are sometimes not being installed at all and are also old, the new runtimes include fixes for a certain locale related crash. Speaking of crashes, the crash dialog will now show more info and provide a likely solution if a known crash happens. Those include outdated Intel GPU drivers on Nvidia Optimus laptops, Precision X and RivaTuner.

- Kristjan



Full changelog

• New Visual Studio 2013 runtimes.
  
• Added more information and cancel button to update & verify dialog.
  
• Added tags for video resolutions.
  
• Added solutions for known crashes caused by drivers or third-party apps (Intel GPU drivers out of date, Precision X and RivaTuner hooks).
  
• Added option to disable video hardware acceleration.
  
• Added video alignment option for cover and center.
  
• Added process priority option.
  
• Added detection for RDP session state changes to destroy/restart wallpapers automatically.
  
• Added a work-around for video playlists on Windows 7 to reduce flashing or the static wallpaper from showing up when switching between videos.

• Fixed playlist permanently disappearing when unsubbing a wallpaper and other scenarios.
  
• Fixed double quotes in URL breaking the config.json.
  
• Fixed launcher process not creating mini dump files.
  
• Fixed focus issues of the transition effect and all wallpapers (except web...).
  
• Fixed WebM videos getting frozen when they threw a media error.
  
• Fixed Steamworks injection causing Wallpaper Engine to be detected by Steam after an update (does not apply to this patch yet).

• Updated CEF to version 3.2924.1571.gcdcdfa9.

Hey all,

A new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that introduces a new built-in Workshop browser to the existing wallpaper selection window. Using that, you are now able to filter out genres that you are not interested in. All in all it has become easier to try out new wallpapers from Workshop, since you don't need to deal with two separate windows anymore.



The browser also recognizes YouTube previews that have been uploaded by the creator, which you can check out right before subscribing to the wallpaper.




Video wallpapers can now be configured to be aligned in multiple ways. The previous method, "Cover", cropped the wallpaper so that it would always cover your screen, without stretching anything. You can now alternatively set it to "Center", which will add bars to compensate different aspect ratios, or to "Stretch", which stretches the video to the corners of your screen:




This update also introduces a new method of dealing with Steam's auto updates. Coming updates from Steam will be downloaded without overwriting any files used by the running application, which makes it possible to avoid (or reduce) "content locked" errors by Steam. A new update dialog deals with appropriately starting and stopping the application in order to apply pending updates:




For the next update I will start improving the editor features for 2D/3D wallpapers. The 2D features will be extended with various animation effects that you can more easily mix right in the editor. The particle system will also be improved and supported by the UI as well as generally updating options to layer and animate images.

- Kristjan



Full changelog:

• Added video alignment options.
  
• Implemented in-app Workshop browser with better filtering than the Workshop website has.
  
• Filter and sort settings are now saved after closing the window.
  
• Added support for YouTube previews in the browser.
  
• Custom update dialog to apply updates and verify the installation.
  
• Added Croatian translation.
  
• Added a Steamworks warning dialog, shown when trying to use Steam features while Steam is not available.
  
• Added unsub button to the application warning dialog.

• Fixed video resizing issues when the resolution or screen orientation changes.
  
• Fixed wallpaper restarting when it should be stopped.
  
• Fixed an issue that lead to crashes when using in-memory video loading.
  
• Potentially fixed loading of incorrect config when the application starts before the user is fully logged in.
  
• Fixed a UI shutdown crash (there is still some Chromium render process crashes left though).
  
• Fixed newly subscribed items to be added to the end of the list.
  
• Fixed DPI scaling issues in editor (video window too small, 3D stream size mismatching).
  
• Fixed scheme color control in the publish dialog.

• Renamed some playlist options to make them less confusing.
  
• Changed multi-monitor stretch layout to always use "pause all monitors".

Hey all,

A new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that introduces a new built-in Workshop browser to the existing wallpaper selection window. Using that, you are now able to filter out genres that you are not interested in. All in all it has become easier to try out new wallpapers from Workshop, since you don't need to deal with two separate windows anymore.



The browser also recognizes YouTube previews that have been uploaded by the creator, which you can check out right before subscribing to the wallpaper.




Video wallpapers can now be configured to be aligned in multiple ways. The previous method, "Cover", cropped the wallpaper so that it would always cover your screen, without stretching anything. You can now alternatively set it to "Center", which will add bars to compensate different aspect ratios, or to "Stretch", which stretches the video to the corners of your screen:




This update also introduces a new method of dealing with Steam's auto updates. Coming updates from Steam will be downloaded without overwriting any files used by the running application, which makes it possible to avoid (or reduce) "content locked" errors by Steam. A new update dialog deals with appropriately starting and stopping the application in order to apply pending updates:




For the next update I will start improving the editor features for 2D/3D wallpapers. The 2D features will be extended with various animation effects that you can more easily mix right in the editor. The particle system will also be improved and supported by the UI as well as generally updating options to layer and animate images.

- Kristjan



Full changelog:

• Added video alignment options.
  
• Implemented in-app Workshop browser with better filtering than the Workshop website has.
  
• Filter and sort settings are now saved after closing the window.
  
• Added support for YouTube previews in the browser.
  
• Custom update dialog to apply updates and verify the installation.
  
• Added Croatian translation.
  
• Added a Steamworks warning dialog, shown when trying to use Steam features while Steam is not available.
  
• Added unsub button to the application warning dialog.

• Fixed video resizing issues when the resolution or screen orientation changes.
  
• Fixed wallpaper restarting when it should be stopped.
  
• Fixed an issue that lead to crashes when using in-memory video loading.
  
• Potentially fixed loading of incorrect config when the application starts before the user is fully logged in.
  
• Fixed a UI shutdown crash (there is still some Chromium render process crashes left though).
  
• Fixed newly subscribed items to be added to the end of the list.
  
• Fixed DPI scaling issues in editor (video window too small, 3D stream size mismatching).
  
• Fixed scheme color control in the publish dialog.

• Renamed some playlist options to make them less confusing.
  
• Changed multi-monitor stretch layout to always use "pause all monitors".