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Windows Dreamscene

Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:05 pm
by TGS
The other day I was bored and I was looking at my Windows 7 workstation VM desktop thinking "I really wish I had a better desktop background" then I got to thinking about some of the LT backdrops and how amazing it would be to have some really good crisp 1920x1080 or higher (For those with higher resolutions and/or multiple monitors) backgrounds of LT. Then I got to thinking... no surely we can do better! So I started looking around and I stumbled upon an old "extra" Windows Vista *spit* feature called Dreamscene. A feature I hadn't come across before that allows setting videos as your background. I started looking for a method of getting this on Windows 7 and came across one. Sadly it came from a site that appears to have bundled the "Windows 7 fix" with some adware/malware or something that I couldn't really identify as the installer on my separate Sandbox VM failed to install either the fix itself or whatever dodgy software it was bundled with. Ironic isn't it? Usually at the very least the malware gets through and the legitimate software doesn't but anywho.

The end result was that I found another version of the fix that did work and had no such bundled nasty's. I installed it coupled with one of the dreamscene videos from the more dodgy site The asteroids one. This has achieved the result that I am showing in gif right now. Not entirely sure how well it will turn out but the idea is that it shows a very beautiful asteroid background scene that is fully animated within my background and surprisingly doesn't use all that much on the resource side.

Now one might wonder what any of this has to do with LT. Well firstly the Asteroids background that I've linked that I currently have in full motion on my desktop is surprisingly LT-esq. Secondly imagine this... but actually from LT? Imagine Josh creating an LT dreamscene video for background goodness? Or better yet... imagine a version of the game that can actually run AS your background? The mind boggles! :crazy: For some of us it will be good enough to simply have LT running on a secondary screen, of which I intend to procure again specifically for this purpose as I ditched my second monitor setup ages ago.

If anyone is particularly interested in having this for their Windows 7 let me know and I'll put it up somewhere for you to download. There were two separate fixes I downloaded, one without any nasty bundled stuff that worked but had a semi-random issue with desktop shortcut text rendering and another one which appears to be an older version of the dreamsceneseven fix that does not appear to have any nasty bundled software with it like the current version on the website, that version does not seem to have the same text rendering issue. I'm not sure how they managed to fix it but it's good to have the fix because that particular glitch can be annoying, I experienced it a few times with the other fix I'd downloaded. Also I use the term "fix" because the Dreamscene feature is one of many features that IS in fact in Windows 7, merely disabled. My guess is Microsoft didn't feel it necessary to continue developing or supporting it and instead of taking it out they simply left it in but disabled it. The fix re-enables it.

Okay it turns out the gif I tried to make turned out very badly so I won't be including that, but if you go to the link I provided and go to the asteroids video and imagine that as your desktop background you'll get the idea. Josh, I know you've made the switch to linux and I don't know if Linux has any sort of similar system as I haven't actively used linux as a workstation for years, but if you do have any Windows boxes I'd highly suggest you give it a whirl at some point just to see how you like it, if you like it perhaps you'd be so kind after beta starts and you have some free time to render an LT dreamscene or three.