April is quickly winding down and that means another edition of the WinCustomize Monthly Wrap-up! We've had some cool releases and announcements this past month on the software side, and we've been continuing to add a bunch of great content to the galleries!

Stardock News:

Stardock Announces New Windows Desktop Customization Tool: Curtains

Stardock announced a new customization tool today. Curtains allows users to apply new styles along the lines of Dark Mode and Light to Windows 10.

Taking advantage of the groundwork built to support light and dark mode, Curtains includes several new styles including Fluent, Cairo, and Crystal mode that enhance the look and feel of the Windows UI along with apps that already support light and dark mode.  

NOW AVAILABLE: CursorFX 4 - Customize the Windows Mouse Cursor

CursorFX v4 adds support for Windows 10 and high DPI displays, supports 144hz or higher refreshes, and includes new cursors that take advantage of these new features. The new CursorFX is compatible with the thousands of cursors from previous versions that are available on WinCustomize.com.

Community Posts You Might Have Missed:

Game Development jobs at Stardock

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Transform Your Windows Desktop with These Modern WindowBlinds Skins

New Skins and Wallpapers:

Spring is coming (wallpaper)

The Island Life (dream)

Galactic Springs (wallpaper)

Valdemar (WindowBlinds)

I’ve been spending the last several weeks in isolation (like most people), and because I have no coworkers around me to inconvenience, this means taking off the headset and blasting my music of choice out of my computer speakers. 

What I listen to usually depends on what I’m writing (for example, I have a different set of music for writing stories than I do for writing, say, software press releases). While my tastes vary widely anywhere from metal to musicals, one musical genre in particular frequently seems to suit my workflow, and that is: video game soundtracks. 

There are, of course, a lot of elements that go into making a good game: graphics, story, gameplay, mechanics - the list goes on and on. For me, one of the most important elements to an immersive and engaging game experience is its music.

Music in video games is rarely about conscious consumption, either - it’s there to lift a moment to the forefront, make you feel something about it, but it isn’t supposed to scream “LISTEN TO ME!” and make you forget about everything else that’s going on. When you’re fighting a battle against an epic monster, the music should make you feel empowered and full of adrenaline. When something emotional is happening, the music should reflect that, making you feel that moment.

Something that fascinates me in particular is listening how music evolves and grows when a certain game has multiple installments spread out across years. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is the Final Fantasy series of video games.

Nobuo Uematsu, the composer for the majority of the series, composed his first score over 25 years ago. At the time, the technological capabilities of newly emerging game systems were extremely limited, relegating Uematsu to only simple sounds that he had to meticulously program himself. In an interview about how he got his start in game composing, Uematsu said, “The NES days were tough. I had to type in every little thing by myself, like for an 8th note in C, C8, for a 16th note in E, E16 and so on. I used a goto statement to repeat and such, and had to do that endlessly, so it was really tough.”

While there are a few songs in the Final Fantasy series that have remained consistent throughout the years, new developments in technology for games has seen each iteration grow and morph into something different and more mature. As more sound options became available, eventually full orchestral versions of songs were being placed into games, taking immersion to a level that no one used to think was possible.

A few years ago, Stardock released Star Control: Origins. If you’re not aware, the game was a reboot of an old franchise that released its first game in 1990 through publisher Accolade. When we purchased the license and began looking at making a new game, one of the first questions we tackled was: what do we do about the music? The songs from Star Control II, in particular, are so memorable for most anyone who played and loved the game, we had to make sure to capture that same energy into the new game.

We got in touch with Riku Nuottajärvi, who composed the original music for Star Control II. He remastered a few of his original themes and created several more, giving rich life to the huge Star Control universe while maintaining the spirit and the essence of the original games at the same time. 

Maybe when I get a chance, I can get in touch with Riku and ask him a little more about the process. I’d love to hear his thoughts about what it was like to revisit something so many years later and help contribute to such a fun project. If you’re interested in owning the Star Control: Origins original soundtrack for yourself, you can get it here.

What game soundtracks or songs have stuck with you the most? Share your favorites with me!

Last year, Microsoft released “Dark Mode” to Windows 10 users.  Dark Mode gave users an alternative color and style option to the Windows GUI. 

Now, Stardock is preparing to release a new customization program called Curtains.  Curtains works similarly to the modes that Microsoft has implemented.  Any app that already supports the existing dark and light modes will automatically benefit from Curtains.

Stardock Curtains

Stardock Curtains includes several new styles such as Graphite, Crystal, Sky, and Midnight.  It also includes styles that give users the ability to change Windows to look like previous versions of Windows (XP, Windows 95, etc.), as well as alternative operating systems.

Stardock is well known for its customization programs including Fences, Groupy and Start10.  It also is the developer of classic GUI “skinning” apps such as WindowBlinds.  Unlike WindowBlinds, which is far more comprehensive, Curtains doesn’t take over the painting of the Windows GUI but instead works akin to how Dark and Light mode on Windows 10 works.  This means that it inherently takes advantage of different DPI settings and is able to leverage apps that already support Dark and Light Mode.

For Creators

Another big difference between Curtains and WindowBlinds is the complexity of a Style versus a WindowBlinds skin.  Because WindowBlinds essentially takes on the responsibility of drawing the GUI of windows, skins must include all of the GUI controls.  One missing element or one poorly designed control and a WindowBlinds skin can look incomplete.  By contrast, Curtains only needs to supply a handful of images and settings.  It’s simple enough that style modifying and creating is part of its configuration.

It is very simple to create or modify existing styles

Availability

Curtains will be going into beta on Stardock’s Object Desktop suite of Windows enhancements tools next week (late April 2020).  A stand-alone version is expected later in the Spring.

Visit www.objectdesktop.com to get it.

Screenshots

Fluent Peach (Peach Mode)

Dark Waters

Crystal

Fluent Red (Red Mode)

Workbench

MacMono

Midnight

Warp

We've had quite a few new and updated WindowBlinds skins hit the WB gallery on WinCustomize over the past couple of weeks. I've been featuring many to the front page, but it's always fun and useful to list them here as well.

If you have any recent favorites post them in the comments below!

Valdemar by 2of3

Faux OSX by don5318

Tang by LightStar

GreenTan by don5318

Outer Limits by vStyler

The first 3 rows are ones I set. 

The second 3 rows are just ones MS’s “frequently used” populated. 

edit: columns!!!

This early, I haven’t used much.

These are the apps I first install onto a new PC.  What are the first apps you install?

About 2 years ago, I built my first PC. It was a long time coming - I’d been using a friend’s older computer ever since mine went up in flames (dramatic, but also kind of literal) and it was really starting to lag terribly when I played games. I had decided that I wanted to build it myself in order to become more informed about the process, since I worked at a PC gaming/software company.

I’ll never do it again, but I learned a lot! One of the most notable differences for me was moving from Windows 7 over to Windows 10 - the new menu just wasn’t working for me. Before I came to Stardock, I honestly knew little-to-nothing about desktop customization and would have had no clue that I could fix this little problem of mine using Start10.

Fortunately, my squinting at the Start menu in confusion while I tried to find things was short-lived. After firing up and testing multiple games, I finally turned my attention toward optimizing a few things on my desktop. The first was that pesky Start menu.

Look, I’m all about change - change is progress! But when it comes to my Windows experience, I’ll be honest - I’m stubborn and I like what I like. This was just so much cleaner and easier for me to navigate:

To be honest, I have pretty simple wants. It wasn’t until I started thinking about writing this blog that I started to play around a little more with customizing. I found a ton of really fun Start menu buttons over on WinCustomize and, because I’m a giant nerd, I knew immediately which one I had to have. 

After adding my new button, I started to explore some of the color and transparency settings in the app. I also decided to go all-in with the theme (though I haven’t changed my desktop background yet - that’s another post!). Admittedly, the text is a little hard to see, but adjusting the transparency down to about 40% from the default 80% made it easier to look at. You could use any picture here - something personal like a family vacation or a child’s school picture, or something you’re a fan of like (in my case) Green Lantern.

I personally like using the modern style menu, and keep my taskbar a solid black color (rather than making it mostly transparent). I tried turning it green to fit my “theme,” just to see how I’d like it, and let’s just say...there’s such a thing as TOO much color, haha!

While I have a lot of fun messing with styles, colors, and pictures, the main reason I enjoy Start10 so much is because of how practical it is. It’s much easier for me to navigate in general, plus it integrates wonderfully with Fences - which is another app I just can’t live without anymore.

How do you customize your PC? What kinds of Start10 options would you want to try?

This PC is using Windows 10.  But not just Windows 10 on its own.  It's been upgraded a bit with Object Desktop. That's what Object Desktop does.  A lot of the things in Windows we see today first showed up in Object Desktop.  A few examples include transparencies, shadows, gadgets, ZIP files as folders, GUI skinning, etc.  There is a natural progression to the operating system.

On this screenshot I have Groupy, CursorFX, Fences, Start10 and a new app that hasn't been announced yet. 

The PC of the future series is going to explore where we think the desktop is going. This PC has 64 CPU cores and 128 logical processors.  It has 128 GB of memory and an extremely fast GPU.  So what are we going to do with this hardware? That’s what this series will explore.

Edit: Additional screenshots below.

I received a nice article in my email from Review Geek, going through photo editors and image manipulation and creation software for Windows systems, paid and free, so figured that in these days of being almost exclusively at home, folks might be interested in the software that's out there, and what each program does, as well as whom they're most compatible with.

I'm not going to recommend one or another, as there's no "one size fits all"...there wouldn't be an article to refer you to if that were so. If you have additional programs to add, please do so.

I'm adding OnOne Photo Raw 2020 (https://www.on1.com/), a program I use and enjoy a great deal as a stand alone, and as a Photoshop and Lightroom plugin, as well as Topaz Labs AI software which you can view here: https://topazlabs.com/shop/ . I use their Sharpen AI and Denoise AI as well as their Adjust AI programs which are both standalone and Photoshop plugins, like OnOne Photo Raw. They are truly excellent programs which save time in post production editing and help me with creative ideas, as well as just straight editing.

Anyway, the article I received is linked above, as well as here: https://www.reviewgeek.com/39536/7-great-photo-editors-on-windows-for-hobbyists-and-professionals-alike/

Have a good rest of the week, and stay safe and healthy!

CursorFX 4 was released last week and I have been having fun checking out cursor themes to use with it. Some of these are included with CursorFX, but there many more available on WinCustomize for you to download. I wanted to add a few of my favorites here to help you get started, but be sure to take some time and browse the CursorFX gallery.

There are tons of cursor themes of all types there and I'm sure you will find something that's perfect for your desktop setup!

Get more CursorFX themes here.

Zoltik by Apocalypse_67

Nemesis Fx by neone6

Hal 2030 by theAVMAN

ElectroSexual by Vampothika

Volcano Lava by Hakudos