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[BenJeremy]

Media X Menu is a menu system to launch applications from a DVD collection or from
a hard drive. It is intended to be very configurable and allow new "styles" to be added
in, both with simple visual changes (skins), or adding 3D effects (later) to the presentation
of the menus by re-writing the software.

It was intended to supercede Complex Menu X, which has some bugs and is lacking many
desired features that MXM now has.



What's New:

Beta 0.9f
* Moved "Font16.xpr" internal to the xbe, so no media directory is required anymore.
* Added the ability to put passcodes in the game entries. This will allow those with children
 to prevent easy access to games without having to enable parental controls or prevent unauthorized
 access to programs. (I added this so my 10 year old son would not have easy access to BMXXX)
* Changed IR remote "boot to dash" function to "Title" (Was "0" key)
* Added support for MXM and game help screens. There are 3 built-in help screens for MXM. See "Entry"
 and "Help" configuration for more details on these options.
* Help for games may also be auto-config'd like the screenshots, using MXM_GHxx.* where xx is a value
 from 01-99 (must start with 01 and continue contiguously) and '*' is a valid image extension.
* A TitleDelay of 0 prevents the display of the title screen.
* Added a TitleImage.xbx icon to be 'friendly' with NexGen. It will install the icon on startup, if it
 doesn't already exist (internally generated, no extra files needed).
* Cleaned up the launch code a bit. Now it checks to make sure a title exists before launching it;
 if the xbe does not exist, it puts up a detailed message and kicks back to the menu screen.
* Added ability of AutoConfig items to pull title and description from the Game's ID. A few titles
 have regular descriptions (in many cases, this is the part of the title following the colon) and
 for those without, the publisher's name can be used in their place.
* Odd, for some reason, the system was not initializing all of the drives (T:, U:).
* MXM should run without any MXM.xml file or support files. If it doesn't find entries, it
 will display the likely entries it finds for a dashboard.
* A new switch "AllowVideoSound" allows you to pause the music when videos are shown as
 screenshots, so the audio may play (good option to use on DVDs, too, due to speed/disc access
 issues)

Sorry, Weavus, I had to get this release out, since it's a pretty big update, so the
"Generic Skinning" options did not make it in. There is a lot of the code in there now,
but it's about 70% there right now.

0.9g is expected to be a "Feature Complete" beta, with new and improved Generic Skinning included. That release may happen in the next week.


The MXMReadMe.txt file has been posted to "The usual places" - alt.binaries.cd.image.xbox, alt.binaries.games.xbox, and alt.binaries.xbox, if you find that, I'm sure you'll find what you need   but I can't specifically tell you where to find the binaries.

Please do not PM me to get these files.

[shanafan]

Nice!

One question though, I had an opening WMV to start MXM with...does it now play the WMV's sound, or am I still going to hear the WMA I set in the skin?

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (shanafan @ Jan 13 2003, 01:03 AM)

Nice! One question though, I had an opening WMV to start MXM with...does it now play the WMV's sound, or am I still going to hear the WMA I set in the skin?

It only plays the sound for screenshot videos.

Backgrounds will still be "silent" - it all actually works pretty well.

[BenJeremy]

BTW: I'd like to get the attention of anybody from the Evo-X, Xecutor, or XBMP teams regarding IGR compatibility.

It's an annoying issue and it seems that XBMP had a similar issue but managed to solve it. I'd like any insight into why this problem even exists.

I think it might also be related to the problem with BoXplorer, which hangs int he call to DirectSoundCreate() for some odd reason.

Thanks.

[SniperKilla]

XBMP had 0 issues with the X2 IGReset, it had problems with evox's IGReboot.

and does anyone experience slow loading times for games on multi dvd compilations?

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (SniperKilla @ Jan 13 2003, 01:15 PM)

XBMP had 0 issues with the X2 IGReset, it had problems with evox's IGReboot. and does anyone experience slow loading times for games on multi dvd compilations?

It's odd... some games load fast and fine, but a couple seem to take FOREVER to load via DVD, and fast on the HD (Ghost Recon) - both loaded from MXM.

I don't think Ghost Recon had that many small files, either.

As for the IGR stuff, I figure any insight into the issue might give me some clues as to what's going on.

[SniperKilla]

yea, i put whiteout and morrowwind on a dvd with the last version of MXM just to see how it worked, and they both take about 10 minutes to load, i went and ate dinner and came back up and morrowwind wasent done loading yet

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (SniperKilla @ Jan 13 2003, 01:37 PM)

yea, i put whiteout and morrowwind on a dvd with the last version of MXM just to see how it worked, and they both take about 10 minutes to load, i went and ate dinner and came back up and morrowwind wasent done loading yet

I have those, but I don't recall the loading times. Maybe tonight I'll look to see what the loading time is like between HD and DVD.

It might be a flaky media issue.... but Ghost Recon seemed to load slow over several burns (UDF), and very quickly over HD. Odd.

[ips]

UDF discs are MUCH slower than an XDFS ISO. On one compilation the difference was like 15 minutes vs 1 minute lol. I guess the xbox does really make use of those forward and back pointers . Ususally its only a real problem with compilations that have many small files on it instead of just a few large files. The differences between UDF and XDFS on compilation with big data files is a lot smaller.

This post has been edited by ips: Jan 13 2003, 08:37 PM

[SniperKilla]

what if i build the dir into a iso with xISO, then burn, will it load much faster?

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (SniperKilla @ Jan 13 2003, 03:47 PM)

what if i build the dir into a iso with xISO, then burn, will it load much faster?

Uh-oh.... here comes the flood of xISO warnings... :::groan:::  

[SniperKilla]

the hells wrong with xiso

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (SniperKilla @ Jan 13 2003, 04:05 PM)

the hells wrong with xiso

Heh, heh, some people here just hate it.

I burn with UDF for convenience.


Anybody here try the latest version of MXM, 0.9f, yet? I just want to hear how people like the new help options and whatnot.

[SniperKilla]

well ok then, ill build with GDFimage

im gonna test it in a few off my xbox hdd

we need a good source for wmv "trailers" of games, itspretty hard to find good ones

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (SniperKilla @ Jan 13 2003, 04:13 PM)

well ok then, ill build with GDFimage im gonna test it in a few off my xbox hdd we need a good source for wmv "trailers" of games, itspretty hard to find good ones

I've been finding quite a few WMV files in the games themselves. You can also use Bink to convert BIK files, if you have time (I did one, but I'm too busy to do it too often).

After 1.0 clears, I'll try and get XMV files working as well. I'll probably need a preview tool though, unlesss somebody has a PC based XMV viewer.