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[Yuyu]

I get what your saying with the circular menu would kinda look like a mouse wheel if you looked at it straight on, and from the side, with the menu items being on the outside layer of the wheel rotating into place,.... Oooooh wait even better example, the price is right wheel, with the menu items being the $ amounts on the wheel..... I think I am on the same page here....??

Then the the side circular menu would be the same thing except the wheel laid on its side and the menu items arranged horizontally...correct???

This post has been edited by Yuyu: Dec 4 2003, 02:38 PM

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (Yuyu @ Dec 4 2003, 10:30 AM)

I get what your saying with the circular menu would kinda look like a mouse wheel if you looked at it straight on, and from the side, with the menu items being on the outside layer of the wheel rotating into place,.... Oooooh wait even better example, the price is right wheel, with the menu items being the $ amounts on the wheel..... I think I am on the same page here....?? Then the the side circular menu would be the same thing except the wheel laid on its side and the menu items arranged horizontally...correct???

Exactly... the "Price Is Right" wheel, viewed at a slight angle. The items would move "around" the wheel to/from the back, where the text items would be smaller and more faded.


Kind of like this ferris wheel, in arrangement...

[Yuyu]

SO I guees in use, it would look something like this:



Or am I on the wrong track here... more spaced out items??... umm further tilted??
Fewer menu items displayed at once.....

Lemme know... I'm tryin to visualize it in use without actually starting in on the skinning of it yet...

[BenJeremy]

Yes, that's the right idea. I'd probably go with fewer items, and fade them more as they moved to the back. It could me angled in either direction (the Ferris picture was just the best example at hand), and possibly a hair more of an angle.

Of course, it could be turned on it's side, too...

[Yuyu]

Ok updated pic in post above I think I see what you mean now, and of course the horizontal menu would be pretty easy too... Yhe horizontal would have the back end slightly elavated though right ... So you could get the wheel effect??

Example: Lay THe ferris wheel on the ground so it is like a big circle on the ground then look at it from ground level with the back end heightened to about 5 feet off of the ground and the front still at ground level....

I can see the possibilitiesIf maybe you could write the skin.xml to wrap around the back of the preview vid so the menu kinda encircles the preview vid.... Hmmm maybe... If you draw the elements in the correct order....

[BenJeremy]

Yes, exactly right on the horizontal description and the image you've got up there for the vertical.

[geniusalz]

The offsets work fine for the text elements, the thumbnails and videos.
Test Skin

An annoyance is that the preview videos reset to beginning when they change position.

As for the new really smooth menu, have the text elements shift color, opacity and position to go to the next/previous one (They'll have to be the same font), and have the ones at the ends fade in/out.  And if the user presses something during the transform, have it wait until the transform is complete.  Otherwise it messes up the "feel" of the scrolling menu, when animations get cut off.

EDIT: Have the triggers control the speed of the transform animation (a la evox).

I was also wondering whether the same is possible for thumbnails (position and size).  So you can have OSX-style bars  

Another extension to this would be the grayscale alpha mask.  That would allow different-shaped thumbnails to move around, thus perfecting the OSX-style bar.  

Right now an overlay is needed to change the shape, and the overlay won't move with the thumbnail.

[BenJeremy]

Thanks. I'll have to check out the test skin tonight when I get home.

I'm adding Unrar, unzip and zip code right now.  ActionScripters will soon have access after I overhaul the way I do special object (like file handles), and I'm fleshing out a standard for skin packs and such. I hope to create a multi-dash skin pack standard, so you can include definition files for MXM and UnleashX in one pack.

That should make things simple, at least... users can just dump the skin packs in a single directory, and MXM will unpack the resources into a "current" directory to use.

[BenJeremy]

Tonight's update will also have a new conditional (listening, geniusalz? ):

<conditional Arg1="5" not="true">ItemSelected</conditional>

The above will be true whenever item 5 in the current menu is NOT selected and cause the element to be rendered.

Say hello to hot spots!

[geniusalz]

w00t!

Now if only the other type of scrolling can be implemented (menux style, i.e. index moves, and when index reaches predefined bounds, then the thumbs/text/vids change), then menu system would rock.  (more than it does already   )

[Yuyu]

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Dec 4 2003, 03:13 PM)

Tonight's update will also have a new conditional (listening, geniusalz? ): <conditional Arg1="5" not="true">ItemSelected</conditional> The above will be true whenever item 5 in the current menu is NOT selected and cause the element to be rendered. Say hello to hot spots!

That is going to kick some nice a$$..

[BenJeremy]

You mean for the menu itself?

I went with the text element "special" to manipulate the "free-form" menus because it gets complicated if I tie the notion of "display position" into a conditional or element.

While you can do hot-spots, that will only be truly handy on specialty menus (like a theme DVD-R game collection), where the items are known.  

To change the "relative" position of an item, I'll need another conditional - I suppose I could have a new conditional called "DisplayPos" and let you give a number there, similar to a row in a MenuX style menu. That would correspond with the relative position in the "displayed" menu (even if it's invisible). I guess you could provide for each hotspot "position" an entry named image for highlight and non-highlight, and use the offset, then use a conditional if it matches the 'display' position. OK, that might be doable.

Dammit. I guess I have more work to do. I was hoping to get away without doing that virtual menu element - but I guess I was wrong  

When the next release comes out, I'll have to hold a "funky skin" contest, to see who can create the most radical, provocative skin that warps everybody's brain into the question "how'd they do that" - like Cirkular, only MORE EXTREME.  

[BenJeremy]

OK, new "WIP" binaries are up...

Added a parameter for the special "text" element menu - "Wrapped". Set to true, this allows you to cycle through each end of the menu. Do NOT use this on "regular" Menu elements yet.

Added argument support to conditionals. New conditonal: ItemSelected:
   <conditional arg1="1">ItemSelected</Conditional>
   Works with "not" as well: <conditional arg1="3" not="true">ItemSelected</Conditional>

I'll have to work on the conditional and offsets using the display (for hotspots).

Included is a slightly modified version of Geniusalz' test skin to check out the new wrapping menu.

IR Remote once again works, too.

[geniusalz]

Wrapping works great.

But I can't figure out how to work this:
<conditional arg1="1">ItemSelected</Conditional>

I tried this, with wrapping on, then with wrapping off, but doesn't seem to work (all 3 show up always)

CODE

ItemSelected                   ItemSelected                   ItemSelected

This post has been edited by geniusalz: Dec 5 2003, 01:10 AM

[BenJeremy]

I'll have to take a look at why that's not working. It should be fine.