This could be a feature request

[BritneysPAIRS]

i would love something like this

to be able to put in media folder other folders
eg media/blue/
and media/red/
and media/green
and a setting in appearence for skin and one for subset (eg in this case project mayhem 3 and default/blue/red or green spin controls)
then the textures in this folder would over ride textures in media folder.
i could use this in many ways eg diff colors/designed more for media or more for games or just use a big selection of backgrounds for skins (eg pm3 default pics or car pics or woman pics or famous movie pics)
:bowdown: this would rock and could make new graphics or additions in 10minutes that people would love. this would help modders to add mods without stuffing orig skin and credit and also mean an author could make many presets quickly without huge downloads eg 10megs for each color )

[BritneysPAIRS]

would also be great if start.wav was in sounds folder and/or splash.png was in media folder of skin it would over ride start.wav annd/or splash.png in xbmc media folder, so if you made a batman skin you could customise bootup to skin and splash to skin

[Chokemaniac]

the splash screen is loaded b4 the skin is initialized...

its mainly there to have something on screen while xbmc is initializing - so it needs to be appart from the skin

folders inside the xpr are possible allready - you just have to syncronize your xmls to use the extra foldername aswell

the problem then would be that you need different xml for all your mods - and that would be the point where its getting too tricky

only advabntage would be that you can release a new skin with xml only (telling people to use the xpr from the other skin that holds all the textures)

[BritneysPAIRS]

mainly wanted this so i could make a skin with 10 diff colors, or different theme pics (so xmls would be same ) at the moment you have to change xmls or give them a complete new skin to do this. (eg pm3 could then be about 20megs for xpr plus extra media folders and have pm3 default, pm3 car edition,pm3 girl edition, pm3 nature edition and pm3 with splashs of color and the skin would still always work in the way you wanted but with more variation without mods, and people could then add there own folders of pictures or icon changes)

also choke have done an even more major mod on your skin that i think people would like, it changes the way it works totally and will finish this weekend id say, can i release a build that is even more chopped up with your stuff or keep it to myself. oh and ill be releasing a new skin totally diff from pm3 soon if kotix and me can come to agrement on stuff, to prove im not only butchering pm3.

[Chokemaniac]

i was just wondering how xbmc would be supposed to know w*hich files to use

lets say you folder is...media/skinblue/... - in the xml it would have to say: <texture>skinblue/background.png</texture> - so you still need different xmls...

feel fre to post whatever you want - everybody does so why not you... its open source anyways

[BritneysPAIRS]

example
texture for a background = 16x9_pic_back.png in xml
skin = xxx

it would use 16x9_pic_back.png from texture.xpr in skin/xxx/media folder, unless there is more folders in skin/xxx/media folder. then if you had a folder called blue and have selected skin xxx and subselection blue in gui it would get 16x9_pic_back.png from skin/xxx/media/blue and any other graphic in blue folder called by xmls and would over ride skin/xxx/media folder (this way each folder you do would still work exactly the same xml wise but give a different look and then background image packs could be added to a skin easy as along with other mods without effecting much and make a few skins have many themes, id say you could make 10 different preset packs for background pics on home page like cars, nature, woman, tv shows, movies.......in a few hours and people would love your skin even more cause of variation but still consistancy of use).

[Chokemaniac]

ok well im not much of a cars, girls, nature etc themer. i pick one look i like and since the source images are open source now, everybody can do this.

you might aswell release a skin with the textures you wanna theme outside of the xpr and then just release modpacks with these textures only - that way u dont have to download a huge pack of 10 themes on every update, but only the one(s) you actually like

but hey, its not my call - lets see what the coders think...

[BritneysPAIRS]

its pretty hard on people to select quickly different background pics they have to edit xmls or add pics and rebuild texture.xpr, or delete texture.xpr and suffer from a sluggish interface. color packs at moment are impossible without having 10 versions of same skin that only have about 10 pngs changed. no one thinks its a good idea? *:blush:

id like to make it easy for people and give more scope for skinners but keep consistancy and add flexiblity. just that windows and other skins you can change colors etc and they are not new skins but just a few changes.

[KoTiX]

maybe i understand what britney want.
lets say we have a media folder with inside:
media\default
media\red
media\blu
media\xxx

all the folders contain the same named files but with different colors, so we don't have to worry about xmls.
when the user select from the gui a different color from default, xbmc will override the default textures with the ones contained in the selected folder.
for example instead of looking for textures only in q:\skin\pm3\media
it should look also in q:\skin\pm3\media\blu\ (selected color)
and use the textures that are in this folder in place of the default one.

i don't know if this will be doable because we are using compressed textures, probaly it will be possible with uncompressed ones *as they are single images/files.

btw right know britney you can leave the files that can be in *different colors uncompressed, include in the skin the alternative ones in a separated folder and let the user switch them manually with ftp

[BritneysPAIRS]

umm yes and no
all the folders dont contain same files
only ones changed in new folder over ride or else it will use the ones from media
so it would go something like this skin is xxx and media folder is blue *and picture in xml is pic.png
when xxx skin is set to default it would load media/pic.png
if skin was set to blue it would look for media/blue/pic.png and use that or else it would use media/pic.png

i know you can manually do all of this now but a dummy cant :) and it would mean a skin could have have more than one look

[Ph03n1x]

although i wouldn't really want this feature (can you imagine the memory usage! :shocked:) you could probably do it by adding another xml file which defines themes/colours, path and any additional info inside the xpr:

>themes.xml
<xml>
<themes>
<theme>
<name>pm3 original</name>
<path>black</path>
<default>yes</default>
</theme>
<theme>
<name>pm3 royal</name>
<path>blue</path>
<default>no</default>
</theme>
</themes>
</xml>

then in the other xml files you could define a variable (e.g $_theme) and replace this with the selected theme from within xbmc. any image without a $_theme reference could just redirect to the root of the xpr.

[BritneysPAIRS]

:)

[BritneysPAIRS]

:s mem usage is same, texture only load once when requested it wouldnt load both (ill look into this soon to make sure). i truly believe this would be a great addition that would be used heaps if put in, once people see examples of possiblilities. i may put a new skin on hold this weekend and look at coding logisics to put this is in

xml solution you have means its not for gen public. all stuff i want in place is normally for dumb arses that cant alter anything but gui spin controls and on off buttons :)

[Ph03n1x]

xml solution you have means its not for gen public. all stuff i want in place is normally for dumb arses that cant alter anything but gui spin controls and on off buttons :)
personally i think themes should remain within a skinner's control, allowing 'dumb' users to alter the gui without actually knowing what they're doing is just asking for trouble... :bomb:

[Livin]

i think what bp is talking about has nothing to do with "altering"...
it has to do with "changing" the skin to a color that is already built and ready to go. basically creating color "themes" within his skin.

so he is saying, "what if i built three color versions of the images for skin (xml) and i wanted to switch them on the fly from within the xbmc interface. i also want a method to allow me to distrobute them as if they were a single skin."

this is not uncommon... it is a feature of many apps. this acutally gets closer to what a true "theme". images and feature/function definitions are completely separate.

xmbc skins include/impliment, or exclude, features of xbmc instead of acting like a more traditional skin and be 'nearly' oblivious as to what it is skinning.

iow... instead of our skins saying...
'this image is assigned to this predefined control'... like winamp (and dozens of other app skins do), xbmc skins actually creates the controls as well.

yes, more power but also less like a traditional skin.
more like an executable (or script) that calls functions from with the os.

i know people will disagree and that is fine. i'm not stating an opinion, i'm using definitions as they are intended... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/skin_(computing)

[BritneysPAIRS]

ph03n1x sorry i dont think you know what i mean i can see ill have to look into it a little more myself. before i post again ill find out loistics of it and make an example. the home users would love it and the whole point is so they have the control not the skinners or random xml hackers.

[Ph03n1x]

ok i see i seemed to have confused a few people :blush: let me try and clarify what i mean...

the solution i suggested was a way of handling themes on a per-skin-basis (which would also allow skinners to define different themes within the xpr), it was not meant as complete solution.

i think britneyspairs wants a method that would allow users to 'drop' themes into xbmc and just have them work, this would require some sort of theme package+installer within xbmc. the installer would read the package, copy the files over to the correct directory and then update the themes.xml file (checks would need to be carried out to avoid possible conflicts). the skins section would then need to be modified to read in the new theme and display this as a sub-option under the selected skin.

if you are just swapping images (no xml mods or image name changes) this would be pretty straightforward to handle as the xbmc code could be modified to look within the specified theme folder first (if a theme other than the default is selected) then default back to the original behaviour if the image was not found. (i.e theme folder within xpr -> theme folder within media folder -> xpr -> image in media folder).

[BritneysPAIRS]

sorry man you dont understand..........ill do some examples and research into mem usage and how easy it is to code in next few days. it would require no xmls at all and the skinner could use as much as any modder if not more so.

[Nickman]

how hard can it be to understand *???

say you have a skin called projectxbmc it's located in:
f:\apps\xbmc\skin\projectxbmc\

in projectxbmc you have the normal skin files.
now if what britneyspairs wants was possible. this is how it would work. (atleast i hope so *:d )

lets say there is a new option to skinners to make a sub folder in projectxbmc called "alternetives" and in that folder put folders called yellow,white,old,new,crap,simple etc etc.

now if you choose projectxbmc as your skin xbmc looks in projectxbmc for a folder called alternetives.
if it's there you get a new option to choose an alternate color/look for the skin. in this case you would get to choose between "yellow,white,old,new,crap,simple"

lets say you choose "white".

normaly xbmc looks in the skin xml files and see a pointer to background.png (located in \skin\projectxbmc\background.png)
but you have also choosen an altarnetive look of projectxbmc called "white". this would make xbmc look in \skin\projectxbmc\alternetives\white\background.pn g instead.

ofcource the file must be named exactly like the one in the original skin.

now if i would like to make a new theme available (i assuming i'm the auther of projectxbmc) i just create a folder called lets say space and put a new background.png in that.

i then rar it up and let people download it from the net with the instruction *that it's an alternetive look for projectxbmc and that all you have to do is to unrar it and put the "space" folder in your \skin\projectxbmc\alternetives\ path.

this shouldn't be much harder then adding a new skin to xbmc should it *:shocked: i hope i'm right about this as to how it works.


for a programmer it would be fairly easy to add.
just scan the alternetives folder in curent skin (if there is one) and add all folders to a list of strings. ($string)

(the skin asks for blabla.png)
then use that string in the search path \skin\currentskin\alternetives\$string\blabla.p ng

[BritneysPAIRS]

yip that better......then theres no need for xmls changes for a theme only to update the core xmls to latest cvs (but have variants of his skin for choice) and please someone that asks for something different as well as keeping the way he likes it to look. right now its "my way or the highway"

ps

you got it right bar one point
"this would make xbmc look in \skin\projectxbmc\alternetives\white\background.pn g instead" is true but if "\skin\projectxbmc\alternetives\white\background.pn g" is not there it would still use default eg "\skin\projectxbmc\media\background.png" thus only the graphic files that are new need to be added so theme download is small

i still think its a great idea (but i would)

[Ph03n1x]

lol ok i seemed to have missed the obvious solution! scanning the folder seems like a much easier way of handling it. keep us posted on your progress, this seems as though it could be a very interesting feature. :)