XBMC PMIII Skin.

[djdafreund]

Ok, here's some more progress on it. Lookin good so far. 3 hours worth. Time flies when your real into something. For some reason GBPVR takes about 14-15 seconds EVERY time before it finsally starts showing the screen from the time you actually click on the program. Is there a certain plugin that takes this time to initialize or something that i can disable for now to remove some of this delay? Just wondering, this doesn't seem normal.



Could a MOD. please change the forum post title to "XBMC PMIII Skin" instead of "Need help with..."? I couldn't see an option for me to do it like other places do. Different forum software i guess.

[reven]

djdafreund can you send me the photoshop files (im assuming you are using photoshop to port this skin) so i can play around making a widescreen version of it? im skin of my current skin, and well to lazy to start a port. i just want to try and hack together a my music/pics/vids/prog widescreen skin since i want a nice skin to test those plugins against.

cheers.

also do you know of a way to get extract .xpr files? since all the images for that skin seem to be compressed into a single .xpr file.

[djdafreund]

Tipster-
Thanks buddy for the tips. All the images are less then 720x480, as they are originally designed for tv's. So hopefully things should be all ok. Also, i'm not really concerned about MVP support, as i don't have one myself and don't, at this time, have any interest of supporting that. Unless it's an automatic feature with skinnings, then i guess i still need to be cautious, or maybe tell people they're at their own risk if planning on using MVP?
Test as i go, boy i hate this part so far. That's the most time consuming part of it, but it's worth it to me, makes you feel good when you see he finished product, just the way you like it. Thanks for all the advice, i'll definitely take all of it in mind with it forward. Thanx.

Reven-
I'm affraid i really want to wait til i'm done before releasing it, since only have done the main page and want to finish the rest 1st before doing a 16x9 version. I hope you understand. If you just wanting some of the art work though, i got them from the xbmc sourceforge site. Under the cvs page, then skin, then pm3, each of all the images are there. I don't have any problems giving my files to you, however i want to finish everything first. Some files i hade to redo because of the format that GBPVR uses. (IE-The background pictures on main are originally displayed behind gradients of the main screen images, but that doesn't work with GBPVR as the image is overlayed on top of the main picture file, so i redid the background images, and manually added the gradients so it still pretty looks the same, same effect at least.)

Haven't had much time working on it since Sat, and i definitely don't usually have a lot of time during the week (unless i'm off), as i work alot, and when i'm not working, i'm sleeping. But i am anxious to not take too long to complete it, so thats a good thing.

[reven]

thats for the cvs info, much easier than trying to extract a xpr file

[djdafreund]

I was just thinking. Reven, would you like to colaborate on this skin? I could use the help either way. It would go faster if you had some time, and i have some time, together would go quicker. I know wer're both busy, but would at least be quicker. I could e-mail you any progress, and vice-versa, so we are always sync'd.
Reason i am asking is because there is so much more to do then i imagined, including different plugins and such. Wow!! Some things i'm having to do from scratch of course and XBMC doesn't support functionality (IE-TV,GUIDE,etc.) so pictures, and of course xml files for the plugins.
And then the question of which plugins to make it work with initially (Built in Guide/Record, or XRecord-since i'm really liking this one lately after messing around with it a lot more.) And such. I was already planning on making the skin work with the new File Browser plugin that came out, since it fits right with XBMC already. Thats going to be cool.

Lemme know, anything you can do to work with w/me will definitely be helpfull. I just think you are an asset as a contributor to my skin. With a lot of backsite on all this stuff.

[reven]

yeah sounds good, ive done pretty much the my series of plugins. but im doing them at 856x480 and accounting for overscan. but even so, adjust them for 720x480 shouldnt be that much work.

i was thinking about making a special version of the shutdown plugin so it was possible to make it look exactly like the xbmc one, because well its just so cool.

im also programming the my series of plugins as i skin, so i can only really do those ones at the moment, ill take some screenshots and post em.

what fonts are you using for the menu buttons, the filelist items, and for things like the page number and the number of objects?

[djdafreund]

I'm using a pretty similar font and sizes that XBMC uses. I finished a File browser skin today, and revamped a weather background using photoshop. Looks like the weather part is gonna be just too much joy. Whew!
The shutdown plugin would be pretty cool for sure. That'd be neat to have an rss feed that even scrolls an rss feed just like xbmc. Maybe later.
I've also already copied the proper weather pics for the appropriate matching ones from xbmc used pics. I just have to reformate the whole weather xml's. Looks like from scratch almost. I have the screen all done (Background) but just have to reformat everything to line up now. Along with trying to figure ou thow to have it display just one for today in the upper big section, and the 4 next days in the 4 below (you know, like in weather on xbmc.)

[reven]

That'd be neat to have an rss feed that even scrolls an rss feed just like xbmc.

you can do this now, but the way gbpvr does its graphics it needs a lot of cpu and its not exactly smooth. it looks better if you just dont use it.

what are the names of the fonts and the sizes you are using (can you just post the textstyles from the skin). im add a current music track thing to the my series so its always visible in those plugins (just like in xbmc).

[djdafreund]

Sure, here it is.

<TextStyle name="ButtonText" color="White" typeFace="Arial" size="10" style="bold"/>
<TextStyle name="TaskDescription" color="White" typeFace="Arial" size="13" style="bold"/>

RSS is cool, but i can do without it with that in mind.

[LilY0da]

Also, i'm not really concerned about MVP support, as i don't have one myself and don't, at this time, have any interest of supporting that. Unless it's an automatic feature with skinnings, then i guess i still need to be cautious, or maybe tell people they're at their own risk if planning on using MVP?

Why you being a MVP hater?
As Jamie Kennedy in "Malibu's Most Wanted" Don' be hatin'

Seriously speaking, the skin you make for GBPVR is the same on the MVP unless the user specifies he wants another skin for his MVP. And considering it's the best looking skin I've seen so far, and probably the most ergonomic in its color scheme, and prof. looking, it would be awesome to make sure you don't use resolutions so small that a MVP display would be unreadable. Just my 2 cents