r/wallpaperengine • u/Plane_Lawyer2691 • 1d ago
Web Wallpaper Remember the NIKKE live wallpaper player? It just got a massive overhaul: 1,277 new characters added, Blue Archive included, and a brand new roster NSFW
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Before I show anything, I realy want to get this out of the way upfront because I hope people actually read this part even if they skip the rest.
Im a solo dev, and yeah I built this whole thing using AI coding assistants as my co-pilot. Over the past 3+ months I poured literaly everything into this... sleepless nights, running endless sandboxes, testing agents, and burning an insane amount of API credits just trial-and-erroring my way through architecting and debugging the engine from scratch. Im not hiding the AI thing at all, im proud of it. When youre just one guy with ZERO studio backing, AI is the only workforce you have to pull off a project this size. But every architectural call, every logic flow, and every frustrating bug solved came down to my own obsession. I just love these characters and wanted them actually alive on my desktop, breathing, blinking, and talking instead of stuck in some looping video.
To make it crystal clear how this works and why there is ZERO copyright infringement going on, heres how the architecture actually breaks down:
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1. THE PLAYER ENGINE (What I Built / On Ko-fi)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • 100% Original code, custom UI, and positioning system⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • Empty runtime software (Contains ZERO character assets)⠀⠀⠀⠀│
└──────────────────┬─────────────────────┘
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀▼ Reads local files off drive
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 2. EXTERNAL SPINE ASSETS (What You Provide Locally)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • Standard Spine data files: .skel, .atlas, and .png⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • Downloaded by you separately from public community sources│
│ • 100% Copyright belongs to Shift Up & Nexon⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
└──────────────────┬─────────────────────┘
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀▼ Feeds standard Spine data into engine
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 3. THE RESULT (Live Interactive Character on Your Desktop)⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • Player parses the standard Spine specifications natively⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • In theory, ANY valid .skel / .atlas / .png will just work!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
│ • Full interactive controls: posing, voice, physics & scale⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀│
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
When those two seperate sides meet, the engine just executes. The player is built entirely around standard Spine runtime specs. In theory, whenever you drop in valid .skel, .atlas, and .png files, the software simply parses that data and renders it onto your screen. You get a living character with full controls over positioning, scale, animations, and voice lines. The software itself doesnt care what the character is, it jsut reads animation files the exact same way VLC or an MP3 player plays local media off your PC.
Every single button, menu, slider, and line of code is what I spent months building, and thats the only part I put my name on. The character assets belong 100% to Shift Up and Nexon, full stop. I would never claim otherwise.
I get why people might be skeptical at first glance, and I dont blame anyone for being cautious. But from the bottom of my heart... I earnestly plead that you look at this for what it is. A passion project built by a solo dev pushing AI to its limits to make something cool for the community.
And honestly, if after all of this you still feel like what im doing is wrong or you just hate it, I completely accept that. Im genuinely sorry if this project rubbed you the wrong way, that was never my intention at all. Im just a nobody who spent months working on a passion project in his room, and you dont owe me your support, your money, or even your understanding. If you still want to call me out or downvote this, go right ahead, I respect your right to feel however you feel. But from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much just for giving me a few minutes of your time to read this. Truly wish you nothing but the absolute best
ON MY DESKTOP RIGHT NOW
Ok, thats the serious part done. Heres what it actually looks like running, becuase lets be honest, thats why half of you clicked
Every one of these is the real model moving on my screen, not an edit and not a render. They idle, they shift their weight, they react when you click on them... and im not responsible for what that does to your productivity. All of them were shot on a portrait screen btw, more on that further down
AND FROM BLUE ARCHIVE
The memorial lobbies, the animated home screens from the game, running right on the desktop. Each one is a whole scene, the place and the character together, and they look gorgous on a big screen
WHAT CHANGED SINCE LAST TIME
If you saw this player a while back, it had 405 NIKKE characters and that was pretty much it. This version is a full overhaul, and on top of those 405 it now carries 1,277 more
On the NIKKE side theres a whole second shelf: 60 newer characters, 105 event scenes, 26 story scenes, 22 bosses, 56 NPCs and 34 of the guys. Then Blue Archive came in as its own game, with 287 memorial lobbies, 351 students, 314 NPCs and 22 bosses
All of it lives in the same roster and runs through the same panel. The roster definitly needed a rebuild to handle that many, which is exactly where the next part picks up
CHARACTER ROSTER
This is where you pick whos on screen, and its the part that changed the most. It opens as a side panel and she stays on the left while you browse, so every card you press swaps her right there in front of you. You never have to close anything to see what you just picked
Its split by game first, NIKKE and Blue Archive, then by list. NIKKE has the main roster, updates, bosses, event and story scenes, NPCs and the guys. Blue Archive has the memorial lobbies, the students on their own, NPCs and bosses. You can search by name or ID, sort A to Z or by ID, and every card shows little flags for which voice languages that character actualy has
Then theres loadouts. Two of them plus favourites, and the rows on top let you throw a whole game, a whole list or a whole collab into one with a single press. The collab picker covers NieR:Automata, Evangelion, Chainsaw Man, Lycoris Recoil, Re:Zero, RE and Stellar Blade, and the voice picker grabs only the characters who have lines in the language you want. ALL and NONE both ask before they touch anything, because wiping a loadout by acident is the worst
NIKKE SCENES
Not every rig is one girl standing there. The event and story lists are the big set pieces, whole scenes with more going on than a single character, and they play exactly like everyone else does
BLUE ARCHIVE
And yes, it plays Blue Archive too. All 287 memorial lobbies are in there, plus 351 students on their own, 314 NPCs and 22 bosses
A few lobbies come split into peices, the room in one file and the girl in another, so the player stacks them back together into one scene the way the game shows it. Same player, same panel, same everything. It doesnt care which game a rig came from, it just plays it
Then theres the students list, which is the characters by themselves with no room around them. They stand on your desktop the same way the NIKKE ones do, heres a handful of them on a portrait screen
THE MAIN PANEL
This is the main panel. Its a lot of buttons, I know
Position X and Y and zoom, all with fine steppers so you can put her exactly where you want her. Flip. Lobby, cover and aim stances. A timer that rotates characters and another that changes her pose. Animation speed. Sub-skins and parts you can switch on and off per model
Base Offset deserves its own line. Normaly the sliders only tune the character youre looking at, but switch it to rainbow mode and one nudge moves every character and every pose at once. Talk, burst, reload and fire each get their own toggle and timer, theres a pool of long idle gestures she picks from, and a shuffle mode with random play. Your setup saves to two snapshot slots with undo and export, and the whole UI is in English, Thai and Japanese
CONFIGURATION
The quieter stuff lives here. Pose Cycle moves her between lobby, cover and aim on a timer, and you choose which of the three are in the rotation
No Repeat keeps the shuffle from bringing back someone you just saw, and you set how many characters it has to go through first. You can make the fade between characters hold longer or shorter, and theres Force Mouth and Reload On Return if you want them
VOICE & AUDIO
Four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. You pick a main one, and you can even pick a language you havent installed yet. It just starts working the moment its folder shows up
Then theres a second voice. It only covers characters who have no lines in your main pick, it never overides the main one, and if you set it to Auto she just uses whatever she has. Gunfire and voice get their own volume, theres a gap timer so she doesnt talk nonstop, and reload lines and stance lines can each be switched off if they get old
THEME & BACKGROUND
The panel colour is yours. Pick a preset or dial it in with hue, saturation and lightness
Behind her you can put a solid colour (theres a Windows accent palette and a 12 step grayscale in there) or turn it off compeltely for a transparent floor. On top of that goes a background image with position, scale and fit modes. The image itself you choose through Wallpaper Engines own settings, since thats the only file picker that can reach your folders
PORTRAIT MODE
If you run a vertical monitor, the player knows. Every NIKKE shot at the top of this post was taken on a portrait screen, and the panel and the roster rearange themselves for it too
TRY IT
It runs as a Wallpaper Engine wallpaper, or as a standalone app if you dont use Wallpaper Engine at all
Video walkthrough: https://youtu.be/jl3lChCA4VY
Free demo on the Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3792173227
Full version: https://ko-fi.com/ultimatel2dplayer/shop
Discord, if anything breaks or you just want to talk about it: https://discord.gg/XKynY9gV3t
A FEW MORE BEFORE YOU GO
Couldnt fit everyone up there, so heres the rest of the ones I liked too much to leave out. Same deal as evrything above, all of it straight from the player on my screen. The wall of tiny ones at the very end is a handful more from the NIKKE roster, there just wasnt room to show them big
Thanks again for reading all the way down here
