Setting up Wallpaper Engine

Notice: Depending on the wallpaper you use, Wallpaper Engine may result in a performance hit on the Dell Optiplex 3010 (the slower school PCs that have the blue light on the power button). If the performance hit is too noticeable for your computer to be properly usable, you should either change your settings/wallpaper, or delete Wallpaper Engine and instead follow the Changing the Default ‘STUDENT’ Wallpaper(coming soon) guide to use a static wallpaper.

What You Need

  • An open copy of the legendary ‘cs’ doc(since you’re here, someone should’ve shared it with you)
  • Time to browse for wallpapers that you like

Instructions

  1. Open the ‘cs’ doc and download Wallpaper Engine from the provided link
  2. After the download is finished, open 7-Zip and browse to your Chrome folder (C:\Users\[your student num]\Downloads\Chrome\)
  3. Extract the download to its own folder
    • Note: There is a big button at the top of the 7-Zip window that says “extract”
    • Note: 7-Zip should automatically make a subfolder to extract your stuff. There’s no need to make a new one, just make sure you don’t happen to click ‘Extract here’
    • Reminder: the password will always be this(unless stated otherwise):

  4. In 7-Zip, open the extracted Wallpaper Engine folder
  5. Run launcher.exe and set your quality to ‘Low’ when asked, then click Next. This will be changed later, don’t worry
    • Note: The ‘Auto Start’ option does absolutely nothing. We will cover how to set up proper auto-start.
    • Note: The ‘Adjust Windows color’ option does work, if you want to enable that.
  6. Click Next, read the thing about the system tray icon, then press ‘All done’

  7. If it does not open automatically, open the wallpaper configurator by double-clicking on its tray icon. If you cannot see the tray icon, it may be hidden in the extra icons area, like so:

  8. Click the gear icon near the top of the window to open the settings, and adjust them according to your preference
    • My recommended settings:

Notice: Some wallpapers function better if you set ‘Other application focused’ to ‘Pause’ and such. Feel free to experiment with the settings as much as you want

  1. Click ‘ok’. Feel free to explore the built-in wallpapers. Later on, you’ll be able to download other custom wallpapers from the internet, in case you don’t want to use any of the default ones
  2. From now on, you can launch the wallpaper configurator from the tray icon at any time.

Auto-start

  1. Open 7-Zip and navigate to your Wallpaper Engine folder(the same one that has launcher.exe)
  2. Copy the folder address at the top of the window
  3. Open Explorer and go to your documents folder. Right-click in the blank space and click on New -> Shortcut
  4. Paste the address you copied from earlier, but add wallpaper64.exe to the end.
    • The final result should look something like this:

  5. Click Ok and Finish
    • If you get some sort of ‘File not found’ error here, you did something within the past few steps.
  6. Go back into 7-Zip and navigate to your documents folder. You can usually easily do this by typing H:\ in the top bar and pressing [Enter]
  7. Click on the shortcut you made here to select it(it will be a file ending in .lnk), then press the ‘Move’ button at the top of the screen. When asked where to move to, type C:\Users\[your student number]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\
  8. Wallpaper Engine should now automatically start when you log in on this computer! It takes a moment for it to start up, though.
    • If you haven’t set a wallpaper in the configurator, you may not notice when Wallpaper Engine starts at all. However, the tray icon will still show up.

Downloading additional wallpapers from the internet

  1. Copy this link and paste it in one of the very cool and neat educational ‘Titanium Phoenix’ websites available on the ‘cs’ doc. If you don’t know where to paste it, there is a button titled ‘Surf Freely’. Click on that, and then choose the local prox(important! do not choose v2 as it is broken when trying to access steam workshop)
  2. After pasting the link and pressing [Enter], you’ll be at the workshop page. You can use search and sort however you like.
    • When sorting at the top(by most popular, weekly, all time, etc.) make sure to copy the link and paste it on the Titanium Phoenix URL bar(NOT your browser’s address bar) instead of just clicking it. If you click it normally, you will get a very rude ‘Web Page Blocked’ message from MCPS.
    • NOTICE: Yes, some of the wallpapers may be inappropriate depending on how you sort it(especially if you choose something like ‘Most Popular:One Week’ or ‘Most Recent’). By default, they shouldn’t be, though.

  3. Browse around and find a wallpaper that you like, then click it to go to its workshop page. Copy the URL for it like so:

  4. Go to http://steamworkshop.download/ (if this is blocked, you can also use another one of the neat educational sites to get on it)
    • If you do this, and your download ends up being a file other than a zip, just add .zip to the end and try extracting it anyways
  5. Paste the workshop URL you copied, then click ‘Download’, then ‘Download from online Steam client’, then click on the zip link with all the numbers to start the download.
  6. Open 7-Zip, and navigate to your Wallpaper Engine folder. When inside, go to projects\defaultprojects and copy the address for it at the top.
  7. Navigate back to the where zip file with the numbers that you downloaded is. Click on it to select it, then hit the ‘Extract’ button at the top of the window.

  8. When asked where to extract to, paste the ‘defaultprojects’ address you copied earlier, and make sure this subdirectory box is unchecked(then click OK):

  9. If the wallpaper configurator is open, close it. Afterwards, open it up again, and your new wallpaper should be selectable!
    • Good job!
    • It is good to delete the zip files after you’ve extracted them to the right place and verified that they work, so that you don’t eventually get confused when you download even more wallpapers.

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