XBMC PMIII Skin.

[djdafreund]

I am really wanting to make a skin , ALA XBMC PMIII style. I am willing to do the work, but i'm not keen on the workings. Would someone be interested in co-developing it with me here???
I just need assistance. For those not into that scene, it is an XBOX media center program, and the skin used is pretty nice actually. I actually helped a lot fixing/making 2 different very popular skins for the xbmc, but this is a lot different for me. SO i can definetely use help with someone to make it.

[reven]

i would love to see this skin in gbpvr, any of the PM skins (not sure which one i like the most.....). i can help with some parts, like if you need help with xml etc, the best way to get help for this is just to post what you are stuck on, there are many users around who know enough about the skinning side of gbpvr to help you out.

just be warned, you cant have horizontal buttons on the main menu (like the settings and files button in PM3). so it would have to look more like PM1 or PM2 in the main menu (well the button alignment).

[djdafreund]

Definitely the pm3 skin for sure. Pm1 is like the 1000k other win media center skin. So tired of seeing skins like that now. PM2 is cool, but dated now. I just like the professionism looks of PM3.
Thanx for the advice, and help. I'll definitely take you up on it. I guess the horiz. might be tricky then. Any plans of adding support?? Hmm.. i suppose for those screens, i can redo that a little, that shouldn't be too hard. Settings wouldn't really be used come to think of it. Files would still be fine if using list like in list mode, but a bit bigger like with xrecord plugin where it shows info next to the name of program. That way it's different, but still works good. I'll play with that and tweak it to make it work i guess.
Well, i guess i'll start looking at things, and start seeing what i can do then. Whew, hope this ain't that bad. Wish me luck!!

[reven]

I guess the horiz. might be tricky then. Any plans of adding support??

i doubt it, sub usually doesnt add these types of features, too much work to implement and hardly any benefits, he focuses on more important things.

Wish me luck!!

good luck

btw i designed the my series of plugins from the xbmc counter parts, so they should look right at home in that skin.

[djdafreund]

That's cool. I did all the 16x9 stuff for the Orb skin. And helped out also with his x360 skin a lot.
The only thing i have concerns for is i know from time to time the skin format might change as it has in the past, and i don't know what changes so much that it really breaks the skin's compatibility. But if it changes, i won't have much time or skills to have to redo things to compliancy.
So, if i am using the main skin now to create it off of, as in, nothing fancy of changes other then text layouts, and pictures/icons stuff, do you think i might stull run into issues? Or maybe would that only happen if i changed/added a lot of stuff like some skins have, where they incorporate plugin addins and stuff? And if it wouldn't matter if THAT, and would have to change things no matter what because of other things, do you think it's just really little things i would need to do to make them still compliant.
Thanks, i'm just asking this because i don't want to spend all this time making it, and then not even a month goes by, and it's no longer complient, or doesn't work anymore even, and might not have the skills to update the proper things. Well, maybe you can help out with that if so? Man i talkative today. LOL. Sorry.

[djdafreund]

Ok, so far so good. Here's a picture of progress. Only started working on the Main page so far.



I know it's not that great. I had to take the shot with my camera phone since i can't do a screen capture. I will be working on the images to the right next. I have a few questions though i need help with.

1) Any way to refresh after each change other then having to exit out, and load gbpvr again to see each change? That's pretty time consuming otherwise, only because every thing in xml file is unknown to me, so each small change is a while with having to reload the program to see it. Or at least, is there an easier way to see the change. I've made approximately 29 changes already just til i finally got what i got right.

2) Is it possible to have a picture for the button backgrounds?

3) What are all the different button background colors as choice. Black is actually perfect for now, but just for future help.

4) Can each screen have a different background (IE-Main, Guide, Video's, etc.)?

That's all the questions i have so far. Thanks again for the help.

[sub]

1) Any way to refresh after each change other then having to exit out, and load gbpvr again to see each change?

No there isnt. You'll need to exit and restart.

2) Is it possible to have a picture for the button backgrounds?

Yes, if you look at some of the skin.xml files you'll see examples of the <DrawImage> tag being used in the CompositeImages. This could also be done with the button CompositeImages.

3) What are all the different button background colors as choice. Black is actually perfect for now, but just for future help.

See http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2698&postcount=3. Alternatively use the "#RRGGBB" format.

4) Can each screen have a different background (IE-Main, Guide, Video's, etc.)?

Yes.

[reven]

one request, could you make this skin widescreen? like 856x480, and take overscan into account?

The only thing i have concerns for is i know from time to time the skin format might change as it has in the past, and i don't know what changes so much that it really breaks the skin's compatibility. But if it changes, i won't have much time or skills to have to redo things to compliancy.

sub does change a few things every once in a while, but they're usually very small changes, and he has done quite a few recently, which hopefully means he wont be doing them as frequent in future releases (since hes fixed most of the skinning issues already).


plugins do tend to update their skins more often however, the "my series" of plugins should be fine once my pictures 3, my music 3, my program 3 comes out. and err my videos 5. you might want to hold off on skinning, my music and my pictures at first, the rest will take awhile to be updated, and when they are updated they will be using most of the same skin as my pictures 3 is (im making them all pretty much use the same skin, and only have minor differences).

[djdafreund]

Cool, thanks. That's all i need for now.

[djdafreund]

I'm affraid i don't have a wide screen tv, so testing would be hard if i were to make a widescreen version. The 16x9 stuff i did on the 2 xbox skins, is because of my screen in my car is widescreen and i use that a lot. And it was easy initally to make because of using the S-Video input of my hauppauge card i use for testing, with the display software mode switched to 16x9 mode, so the aspect ratio is correct. But with this being PC software, and not having a widescreen tv (other then my car, which would be hard.) to test all the changes, isn't really feasable for me. I'm sorry. Maybe later after everything is done though, i might make a 16x9 version and it will be easy to just change dimentions and figure changes instead of making a skin ground up. Hopefully by then i may even have a 16x9 HDTV but doubtfully.