DeskScapes 1.01 Released - Introducing Dynamic Dreams!
Say goodbye to looping video...
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 by Zoomba | Discussion: WinCustomize News
For the past month, Windows Vista Ultimate users have been enjoying the benefits of the Stardock DeskScapes, an extension Microsoft DreamScene (an extra given only to owners of Vista Ultimate Edition). DeskScapes took basic DreamScenes one step further by allowing authors to retain credit for their work through the use of the .Dream format. Anyone who made a video could attach their name to it, a brief description, and a link back to their website. In addition to giving artists the ability to receive credit and recognition for their work, we also launched the community site Dream.WinCustomize.com, the premier site on the web for Dreams on Windows Vista.
However, providing a basic by-line and a link for artists wasn't all DeskScapes would do. From the beginning we have been working to not only allow users to play videos on their desktop, but also be able to run triggered content that could change based on time of day, local weather, or other set events, not to mention dynamically generated content, rendered on-the-fly on their system. A looping video is cool, but what about a rotating planet Earth that accurately shows where it is currently day or night? Or maybe a lake scene that changes from day to night based on your computer clock?
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| Desktop Earth draws the day/night cycle of the planet in real time. | |
Today, we're ready to unleash DeskScapes 1.01 upon the world! 1.01 includes support for triggers and dynamic dreams. Users of Object Desktop have been testing dynamic dreams for a week now, and the response has been great. DeskScapes 1.01 is a free update and comes with an updated DreamMaker so you can start creating your own triggered animated wallpapers!
Head over to Dream.WinCustomize.com now to get the latest version and start experiencing what Stardock has made possible for Windows Vista!
If you're a current Object Desktop Subscriber, you can get the latest update via Stardock Central. Subscribers also get the Desktop Earth dynamic dream for free!
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Reply #23 Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:42 PM
I believe the plan is to put the SDK out next week.
Reply #24 Thursday, March 29, 2007 5:05 PM
Elias - You can find your old dreams in this directory:
\programdata\stardock\Deskscapes
off your root drive.
Reply #25 Thursday, March 29, 2007 5:19 PM
Yes, windowblinds is the greatest thing in skinning and make XP looks great with Glass style and all as if it were Vista. Why no one ever came up with that kind of idea first since Windowblinds and SkinStudio do it so well? Now Microsoft comes with the animated wallpaper (I’ve seen animated wallpapers way before though) but Stardock simply make it better. It seems stardock does not invent much, but uses ideas and make them better.
Who says Microsoft invented animated wallpaper? DeskScapes development precedes animated wallpaper from Microsoft. We simply chose to combine our strengths and work together for mutual benefit.
And dynamic animated wallpaper is quite an achievement. Load up the cube one and check your CPU use. Tell me if anyone else could do that. Those people floating around on the net ttrying to get you to play a screen saver as your wallpaper or some WinXP user saying how you could hack animated wallpapers should try to do it while using less than 5% CPU use the way DeskScapes does it.
We have a number of internal projects but they take time to come out.
Many of the things we "invent" we rarely get credit for. We "invent" the concept of widgets and companies like Konfabulator/yahoo Widgets get the credit.
We were the ones who first introduced ZIP files as folders. Does anyone remember that? Probably not.
And now we have DeskScapes which is a pretty significant innovation. Even little things like the .dream format will likely be forgotten in time. Does anyone seriously think animated wallpapers would be taking off like they are if users were forced to scrounge around for .WMV files or .MPEG files? Talk about a search term of doom. And consider all the development effort necessary to support .DREAM - the tools, the website, the video previews, large scale upload handilng, etc. These are things that quickly get taken for granted -- we want them to because it should be invisible.
But never confuse seamlessness for resting on ones laurals.
I will say truthfully that we have changed in that we won't develop something new that we can't adequately market. I can tell you it stings our development team considerably every time we read about how "Konfabulator" "invented" desktop widgets or that Apple/Microsoft were copying them while we get no coverage.
Check out this desktop from the year 2000. That's Windows 2000. SEVEN years ago. Wow, a alpha blended, glass "sidebar" of "widgets" on the right. Good thing this was invented 3+ years later by other people or that Apple "invtented" it with Dashboard. And that's a theme from this site by a user (there's hundreds of this kind of thing).
Rant aside, the point is that we are as inventive as ever, we simply are more careful to keep things under wraps until they have matured further. We kept DeskScapes under wraps even as it was running on our Longhorn betas nearly a year ago. If you saw what we had in development, your eyes would pop out. 
Reply #26 Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:41 PM
Reply #27 Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:19 PM
Yeah, because that's a much better place then the following.
Who comes up with these decisions anyway? I haven't checked to see if this is correct, but why would they put in under personal files? They should have programmed it in such a way that it keeps the dream files in the same freaking place that MS's side of things keeps their own animated wallpaper files. Wouldn't that make much more sense. WTF?
Reply #28 Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:24 PM
Carmen Elektra "live" on your desktop? Hell yes !!
Reply #29 Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:59 PM
Reply #30 Thursday, March 29, 2007 9:22 PM
UPDATE:
I went to Program Files > Stardock > Object Desktop > DeskScaped but they aren't there. I won't say they were deleted. I see people mentioned about "Pragamdata" There is no such folder.
Whenever I download them, I always cut and paste them in the DeskScapes Animated wallpapers in Personalization window , so I never knew the direct folder where they are being kept.
Reply #31 Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:18 PM
There's a common push these days to locate user-specific data into the 'my doc' section of the directory...eg the default location for [what can be really huge] VMWare files is /my documents/my virtual machines/.
As Snidely said...it can be a simpler method for people to backup user-specific files...
Reply #32 Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:51 PM
Reply #33 Friday, March 30, 2007 1:45 AM
Open up the run dialog, enter in the following and press enter:
"%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Stardock\DeskScapes\Dreams"
This will take you to the old place Dreams were stored. (That above path is equivalent to your "C:\ProgramData\Stardock\DeskScapes\Dreams" where "C:\" is the drive Vista is installed onto)
Do the same with the following:
"%HOMEPATH%\Documents\Stardock\Dreams"
That will take you to the new place Dreams are stored. (Takes you to the Stardock\Dreams subfolder of your Documents folder)
Move everything from the old to the new, and you'll be all set. There was code in there to do this automatically, but I'm feeling perhaps security dealings got in the way for some users, not sure at this point. If the folder doesn't exist, then chances are your Dreams have already been moved over.
Also to note, we decided to keep dreams inside the Documents folder by default as we felt Dreams were personal files that belonged in the common place for personal files. Makes it easier for backup too. We were thinking a similar place to where Microsoft keeps theirs at first, but then upon thinking further, doesn't seem to make much sense to keep personal data off of a subdirectory of your windows folder. Seems bad practice! hah. Anyways, sorry that the change caused troubles for some... but I hope everyone's enjoying the new dynamic dreams
Reply #34 Friday, March 30, 2007 6:19 AM
Didn´t find!
Tks
Reply #35 Friday, March 30, 2007 8:55 AM
DeskScapes and DreamMaker new version
is this working with Vista 64bit now ???
had to unload first version has it been updated
Thanks for any info you can pass along -
Reply #36 Friday, March 30, 2007 9:09 AM
Reply #37 Friday, March 30, 2007 9:15 AM
Thanks i know where to get it - I just wondered
if the update is ready for 64bit vista ??
can you help with that , please ?
Reply #38 Friday, March 30, 2007 9:24 AM
Reply #39 Friday, March 30, 2007 9:31 AM
Reply #40 Friday, March 30, 2007 9:47 AM
But so is the alpha transparancy, and WB5 does that. Any chance at all of XP dreams?
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Reply #21 Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:14 PM
DeskScapes requires tech that is only in Windows Vista.