Wallpaper Engine News

Verification issue while updating STEAM: Content file locked / Disk write error / Content encrypted

Hey all,

this patch makes it possible to create custom wallpaper playback rules per application and adds more effects to the editor.


You can now define custom playback behavior for any specific application in various situations. These take priority over the automatic maximized/fullscreen/audio rules.



For example, if you want to use 'Stop' for fullscreen games, but not for your browser, you may add a rule for your browser to make Wallpaper Engine keep playing the wallpapers while your browser is fullscreen, but otherwise stop them while playing:



You can also register screen recording programs to ignore them in Wallpaper Engine's audio detection. This allows you for example to keep Nvidia Instant Replay enabled on the desktop but also let Wallpaper Engine properly mute automatically while other applications are playing audio:




The 2D editor has a new multi gizmo that combines position, rotation and size of an object into one and it's now possible to edit particle control points directly on the wallpaper:



Four new effects have been added as well:



Lightning discharge example: https://streamable.com/ofhq2

There is also a new 'playback rate' option on the right for each particle. This allows you to slow down the rate at which the entire particle is simulated just like in the wallpaper browser:




Each wallpaper that has parallax allows enabling and disabling the mouse parallax effect now:




The next big content patch will bring a number of playlist features, you can check them out on the roadmap already. This should include time based playlists, probably one of the most requested features right now.

Full changelog

• Added application rules.
  
• Added particle emitter option to only emit one particle max per frame.
  
• Made playlist automatically skip missing wallpapers instead of showing an empty screen.
  
• Added option to choose whether wallpapers should unpause during Aero Peek/alt tab.
  
• Added focus per monitor option as the new default pause for focus (to be consistent with everything else).
  
• Added more preset effects.
  
• Added playback rate particle instance option.
  
• Added control point gizmo and option to particle instances.
  
• Added a multi gizmo as a new default 2D gizmo.
  
• Added mouse parallax option to browser for wallpapers with mouse parallax.
  

• Fixed web wallpaper pseudo random generator not being seeded.
  
• Fixed sprite sheet frame multiplier not being normalized on dx9/ogl.
  
• Fixed scene wallpapers jumping in time when unpausing.
  
• Fixed property presets overwriting meta information of properties (i.e. breaks image loading).
  
• Fixed CEF shutdown freeze when any blocking Windows function is used at a similar time (i.e. editor preview visibility changes).
  
• Fixed pagination when text filter is used.
  
• Fixed partial translations resetting selected language when loaded too early with a workaround.
  
• Potentially fixed a wallpaper resize issue when size changes are triggered too quickly and Windows starts blocking.
  
• Fixed filter warning not showing up for approved/audio responsive.
  
• Fixed fade window not joining the desktop icons correctly on some multi monitor configurations.
  
• Fixed unsub on Workshop tabs also deselecting the wallpaper.
  
• Fixed sound with 'loop' option only playing one sound forever instead of all sounds that were added.
  

• Trying to update Boost Filesystem again without wreaking Havoc through exceptions.
  
• Changed tray icon to use the win7 icon on win10 because it is otherwise invisible in the task manager.
  
• Changed both Discover and Workshop tabs to show a popover since both are important and new users should see them.
  

I reverted the updates for the 'Boost' library since the new version was apparently causing the browser to crash. Make sure to restart Steam and run Wallpaper Engine over Steam once to get this fix if you were having this issue.



Hey all,

a new update for Wallpaper Engine has been released that adds new effect presets and a few new particle options and components. CEF received yet another update to work around some AMD and Intel driver issues and a few general fixes have been added as well.


A number of new effect presets and variations from this update can now be used right off the bat in the editor:



The dust motes and vapor effects have subtle mouse interaction as well: https://streamable.com/cktz1

Magic effects can be combined to build complex animations: https://streamable.com/m3clq


There are also some new particle components that can be used by advanced users. These include two new particle renderers, rope and rope trail, and two new initializers, map sequence around control point and map sequence between control points. All particle renderers also have support for new 'fixed' and 'upright' orientations now.


All layers in a wallpaper can now have their transforms locked and the first imported image (usually the background image) is locked by default. This mainly helps new users avoid moving the background image by accident, since that usually ruins the wallpaper - you will end up with an empty/grey border on some side. Particles also got a visibility property now.



There is also new content on scene optimization available on the wiki: https://wallpaper-engine.wikia.com/wiki/Tutorial_Scene_Optimization This info is quite advanced, so nobody is expected to take it into account. But for those who are interested, this might be useful when you are looking to further optimize your wallpaper.


CEF has been updated again, however, this update does not include any official Chromium or CEF changes from Google. Instead, I have made custom changes to Chromium to avoid various driver crashes from AMD and Intel, any crashes related to 'amdvlk32.dll' or 'igvk32.dll' should be gone now after this update. Make sure the update is actually applied by restarting Wallpaper Engine over Steam if you experienced those.

It seems both AMD and Intel have released some drivers in 2017 with Vulkan integration that crash merely by asking them whether Vulkan is supported. We have also informed Google about this and they already worked on improving their detection and avoidance of the affected broken driver versions in Chromium officially. Another fix would be to update the driver and get a working one (released in/after December 2017).

Full changelog

• Added more particle presets.
  
• Added rope particle renderers.
  
• Added new particle orientation options.
  
• Added wrappers for pen and touch input, they should be treated better now although nothing advanced like pressure is supported.
  
• Added shift click selection to browser.
  
• Added option for small wallpaper icons.
  
• Added layer transform locking.
  
• Added particle visibility property.
  
• Added DXT3/1 compression.
  
• Added project close button to editor file menu.
  

• Disabled Vulkan info collection in Chromium completely.
  
• Fixed Chromium nullptr exception in browser process while handling mouse events when there is no render process running.
  
• Fixed remote session state not being read when the program starts.
  
• Fixed CTRL+A not selecting across pages.
  
• Fixed editor shutdown crash when Steam queries were made from wallpaper browser process.
  
• Fixed some alignment issues with SSE intrinsics.
  
• Fixed texture previews not working when there are unicode characters in the path.
  
• Fixed texture previews not working on compiled textures.
  
• Fixed entire playlist getting deleted if the currently visible wallpaper on a monitor is unsubscribed/removed.
  

• Updated Boost library. Reverted because it seemed to cause crashes.
  

Hey all,

A new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that makes discovering wallpapers in the Workshop easier and adds a few rudimentary features to the scene editor.


The wallpaper browse window received a new tab, Discover, which allows browsing the Workshop based on genres, keywords and creators.



You receive a balanced mix of all genres from the Workshop, making it easier to get an idea about what kind of wallpapers are available and helping you to find new and popular ones.



Make sure to vote on lists you really like or dislike. By doing that, more similar lists will be shown to you that belong into the same genre. For example, if you vote for game related wallpapers, you will receive more game specific lists.



You can also favorite lists to find them again more easily:



Or create a custom list by searching for a keyword through Steam:





Wallpapers in all lists will now scale along with the window and screen size better and a new download icon on the Workshop tabs indicates which wallpapers you already downloaded. The new Discover view is still based on Steam's Workshop at its core meaning wrongly tagged submissions may show up in the lists. As before, the built-in report tool can be used to flag them so they can be sorted properly by us.


The scene editor will now show a selection box for the selected object, which is especially useful for translucent images and particles.



Three buttons have been added to the top as well to quickly toggle the visibility for the new selection box, the grid and performance stats.



There is also a new tutorial about scene performance optimization that describes how expensive effects (like Shine) can be limited effectively to a small portion of the wallpaper.


CEF has been updated to the version cef_binary_3.3396.1777.g636f29b (Chromium 67.0.3396.79). To reduce some persistent CEF/Chromium stability issues, I have also implemented some additional work arounds. The web wallpaper will now only close after the wallpaper file has either been loaded or timed out to prevent an issue on shutdown. Quickly switching between web wallpapers should now apply the properties better and keep the wallpaper working as expected. Finally, the UI will now ignore mouse/keyboard input until the page has been loaded to a degree which should avoid some start up crashes (safe for a very rare one coming from the Steam overlay).

Full changelog

• Added new Workshop Discovery view.
  
• Added responsive layout for wallpaper lists.
  
• Added selection box in editor for images and particles.
  
• Added tool bar buttons for grid/selection/stats.
  
• Added proper default x ray sprite.
  
• Added last file modified time to local files so they can be sorted.
  
• Added downloaded icon to wallpapers in Workshop/Discovery browser.
  
• Made all windows save and restore their position.
  
• Added a small diagnostics tool (bin/diagnostics64.exe) to help detect other programs breaking Wallpaper Engine.
  

• Changed editor to use safe LZ4 decompress to avoid crashes from corrupted texture files due to hard drive failures.
  
• Fixed composition layer UV scaling.
  
• Possibly fixed a crash on playlist advance with multiple playlists running at the same time.
  
• Fixed adding multiple wallpapers to a playlist with the + button.
  
• Fixed boost copy crash on file read/write error when setting up a web/app project.
  
• Fixed custom URLs not being persisted in history.
  

• Added more unsolicited hook DLLs to the crash detector.
  
• Hid compose layer framebuffer texture sampler in editor.
  
• Refactored genre tags to use new exclusion system.
  
• Disabled monetization option unless a start parameter was specified.
  
• Updated Steam SDK.
  
• Changed web wallpapers to wait for loading to end before shutting down.
  
• Updated FontAwesome to version 5.
  
• Updated CEF to cef_binary_3.3396.1777.g636f29b.
  

DirectX/DXGI crash 8007000e - NVIDIA update driver Malwarebytes 3.4.4 system crash Verification issue while updating STEAM: Content file locked / Disk write error / Content encrypted

Hey all,

a new patch for Wallpaper Engine has been released that fixes a few general things and improves some image effects.

The native video player has a fallback now that will attempt to load the video a second time without audio when necessary. This mainly helps with Geforce Experience's overlay, because when it enables itself, it will latently cause the audio device to error out in Windows for a moment. Now the video should just restart (though muted) when this happens instead of fully stopping and showing the Windows error 8889000f or C00D36FA. This is not the only cause for those error codes, but recently it has been reported the most.

The opacity mask for the shake (eye blink) effect has been improved and won't distort anymore and the god rays effect has a better noise option now with a smoother animation. A new 'shine' effect has been added as well that works similar to the god rays effect, it adds a glow shape to bright parts of the image instead of just adding a ray:



CEF has been updated as well to version 3.3359.1772, still using the major Chromium version 66 as before. Google has disabled all 'autoplay' elements, but I have added the respective command line to undo that.

Full changelog

• Added soft audio device error behavior (restart video, but muted, avoids errors C00D36FA and 8889000f in most cases).
  
• Added alpha write to blend effect.
  
• Added new 'shine' effect.
  

• Fixed a video loading crash if audio output was disabled and video file contains unreadable/corrupted streams.
  
• Fixed web access filter not applying access rights anymore.
  
• Fixed shake blink opacity mask getting distorted and not properly scaling.
  
• Fixed browser settings not always saving when certain options are changed.
  

• Updated CEF to version 3.3359.1772.
  
• Changed NVAPI to only update application paths on launch, not always revert to Intel GPU on NV Optimus.
  
• Removed crash handler from web wallpaper process when it starts shutting down.
  
• Added MSI Gaming App DLL detection to crash handler (it can crash DirectX).
  

DirectX/DXGI crash 8007000e - NVIDIA driver 397.31 Malwarebytes 3.4.4 system crash Verification issue while updating STEAM: Content file locked / Disk write error / Content encrypted


Hey all,

A new patch has been released that adds a 'clone' mode for multi-monitor systems, general convenience functions to the editor and fixes a few issues.


You can now use the clone mode either by choosing the 'clone single wallpaper' layout to display a copy of the wallpaper on every monitor



or creating a custom clone group with specific monitors by right clicking a monitor.



A basic feature I have held off with for now because it's challenging to accomplish if all types of wallpapers should be supported. This solution uses Windows' thumbnail system, which is the same used by the Windows Explorer when you hover over icons on the task bar and a small preview pops up, showing the live contents of any particular window.



This means the Windows Explorer makes a fast and hardware accelerated copy of the final wallpaper image in real time. So the clones cost far less than running independent wallpapers on each screen, unless some basic conditions are not met by the computer (like not mixing unconnected graphics cards). The disadvantage is that I'm limited to what this system offers, for example, it does not allow mirroring cloned wallpapers.


The editor got support for undo/redo across renderables, effects and materials. You can use the buttons in the editor menu or CTRL+Z/Y for this.



There are also a few more features now to make editing more conventient, you can hide single effects/renderables using the new 'eye' button:



A new context menu for renderables allows you to duplicate/center/manipulate them with some preset functions:



I have also added a new tutorial to accomplish a simple eye blinking effect in the editor without having to prepare anything complex through external tools here.

The configuration of Wallpaper Engine has a backup system now that should prevent it from getting lost due to the program or computer crashing just at the time it is writing to the configuration file (i.e. power outage or Steam updating issues).


Before leaving Early Access I will attempt to further improve the wallpaper browsing experience with some alternative solutions. There has been an 'approved' list all this time already, where you could find some correctly tagged and well made wallpapers more easily, but of course many nice ones just slip through since this list has to be updated by hand.

So I will try adding a categorical browser that also allows browsing specific authors, custom themes or Steam collections. While it would still be necessary to add authors and collections there, at least the wallpapers associated with either will automatically be added afterwards.

Full changelog

• Added single clone mode across all monitors.
  
• Added user clone groups over splits and monitors.
  
• Added support for 64-bit apps as wallpapers.
  
• Added opacity mask to shake effect for proper eye blinking (Tutorial).
  
• Added effect naming.
  
• Added renderable and effect visiblity button in tree view.
  
• Added undo/redo system for renderables/effects/materials.
  
• Added texture reset button to material texture options.
  
• Added support for Microsoft's new OneDrive file system changes to fix external images from OneDrive not loading.
  
• Added visibility system to hide (not delete - because that will confuse Steam's update system) stock wallpapers via 'remove' button.
  
• Added enter as a hotkey to most modal dialogs.
  
• Added various editing buttons to context menu for renderables.
  
• Added 'backup' folder in wallpaper_engine/projects/backup that allows for easier Steam backups.
  
• Added warning about uploading images without any animation because Wallpaper Engine is not meant for that and will render them poorly.
  
• Added config backup system and removed support for deprecated config format from a year ago.
  

• Fixed description being truncated by Steam query in editor.
  
• Fixed editor gizmos 'snapping' a little while using them due to asynchronous change events.
  
• Fixed large context menus (i.e. dozens of custom folders) going offscreen.
  
• Fixed GDI bitmap leak in tray context menu.
  
• Fixed browse window not timely closing due to folder clean up behavior when shut down from the outside.
  
• Fixed sound library crashing if scene wallpapers with sounds are running on multiple monitors.
  

• Added two step process to library loading to accommodate Windows 7 without updates.
  
• Disabled safe start when updater has to terminate running processes.
  
• Changed image layer effects to use point filter if base texture uses point filter too.