Print

[MrSelfDestruct]

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Jan 7 2004, 02:16 PM)

I'll post an update to MXM tonight, probably, with the ZPoints capability.

I cant wait for this. 3d skins sounds dank

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (MrSelfDestruct @ Jan 7 2004, 11:58 AM)

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Jan 7 2004, 02:16 PM) I'll post an update to MXM tonight, probably, with the ZPoints capability. I cant wait for this. 3d skins sounds dank

I'm tweaking the "ZPoints" concept a hair.... you'll be able to tell MXM what the primitive type is (such as a triangle list, or fan) and make more complex "objects" - just make sure you get the mappings correct. So you'll be able to wrap textures around fairly complex objects. How I go about handling them with modifiers... well, that's anubody's guess.

I'll have to play around with the modifier stuff, for now, the easiest will be a tweener, which merely maps, point-for-point between two sets (no mismatches - if you are using the QUADLIST ZPoint set as the bas, you must use the same for a destination) given a value between 1.0 and -1.0 (0.0 represents the "base" location). As you scroll back and forth, during the smooth scroll process, I'll adjust the tweener number.

I may also allow a "source" (other than the smooth-scroll period) for the tweener, just to make it generic, and later allow you to put it on a timer, causing an object to move between points, for example. Dunno... I'm sure when I get it in, somebody will figure out ways to do crazy $hit with it.  

For smooth-scrolling 3-D animation in menus, you'd set up a tweener modifier with two sets of Z-Points - the Previous item location and the next item location, for each item displayed... set the source as the menuscroller, and for end items, you might have to get creative (actually, you could shift the texture mapping - the last two numbers in the ZPoint)


For those who know the math, you can do some wild things. Each "Z Point" is 6 values:

X (0-640), Y (0-480), Z (0-1.0), Normal (-1 to 1), TextureU (0 to 1), TextureV (0 to 1)

Normals can be changed to warp the image's appearance. The textureU is like the "X" of the texture (V is the "Y") and you can adjust those values to slide things around. Quads are defined in a clockwise manner (Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Right, Bottom Left).

I'll try a preview video tonight, when I get home, to make sure that still works fine.

[geniusalz]

Custom animated menus are great.  Can't wait.

Cirkular remix very high on my todo list.  (Maybe I'll make it low resource so it can be included with MXM)

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (yourwishismine @ Jan 7 2004, 02:25 PM)

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 7 2004, 01:29 PM) Custom animated menus are great.  Can't wait. Cirkular remix very high on my todo list.  (Maybe I'll make it low resource so it can be included with MXM) I liked the thought in Circular, but when I went to use it, it was really slow and seemed buggy... as it didn't accept my menu selections about 20% of the time, tryed it on both my xboxes and got the same results... it was difficult to navigate as well... as it only seemed to accept left and right on the game controller instead of the standard up and down... I'm not dissing your skin genuisalz... when I saw the screen shots of it.. I wanted to use it as my main skin.. but then I was disappointed by the troubles that I had with the above mentioned... I have used other skins that really slowed down the box, other wise great skins, just too resource hungry...

Well, to defened geniusalz on the left/right thing... I think that was the intention there. Some people like the "horizontal" navigation for menus. The option is for horizontal or vertical... not both (though I could add that, as confusing as it might be for some.).

[geniusalz]

QUOTE (yourwishismine @ Jan 7 2004, 03:25 PM)

it didn't accept my menu selections about 20% of the time, tryed it on both my xboxes and got the same results...

Not accept menu selections as in ignore the keypresses?  Don't know why it would do that.  It worked for me 100%

The skin had no video in the main layout (besides the preview vid).  I guess the problem could be that I was using 2 fullscrees alpha png's instead of just one overlay.  But that should never be a problem.
Speed was fine on my xbox.

One problem was that it didn't show folder icons properly, so I had to remove them from the smaller thumbnails.  However, the new version of MXM supports multiple thumbnails without having to create multiple menu elements, so that will be fixed.

[SlackNet]

I can't wait to see all the crazy stuff that comes for this.....It's going to be sweet!

[BenJeremy]

I should probably qualify my earlier statement, BTW... the update tonight will be a "WIP" binaries update, not a public release.

(Of course, that depends on how late I have to work tonight, since we are in crisis mode ATM)

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (DBZRacer @ Jan 7 2004, 04:52 PM)

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Jan 7 2004, 01:41 PM) (Of course, that depends on how late I have to work tonight, since we are in crisis mode ATM) Since when does work not revolve around crisis modes?

Well, the thing is, I'd be home right now, except we have to call Japan - thus the late work day... but hopefully we can resolve some issues.

[BenJeremy]

OK, I've updated the "WIP" binaries with the new "ZPoints" stuff, including the "Tweener"

New screenshot (Updated - "Refresh"if you don't see Godzilla)



Yes, those are warped videos.

and the MXM_Skin.xml used....

Look at it for an example of how to do the ZPoints and Tweener modifiers. I basically created a layout in Corel Draw, rotating my blocks, then exported as a 640x480 jpg, and used the pixel positions for each corner to position the text element ZPoints.

The tweener is a bit crude at the moment. I am considering expanding it to allow multiple "tweens" -  Instead of A -> B, you might have A -> B -> C -> D, but the tweening looked good enough in my test.

[Jezz_X]

QUOTE

<Layout Screen="Menu">   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="-2">      <TextColor>0xA8FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="117" T="126" W="101" H="32"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="-1">      <TextColor>0xD4FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="126" T="151" W="132" H="27"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle">      <TextColor>0xFFFFFF00</TextColor>      <Pos L="136" T="183" W="183" H="52"/>      <IsMenu Wrapped="true" Horizontal="false">true</IsMenu>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="1">      <TextColor>0xD4FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="123" T="210" W="186" H="32"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="2">      <TextColor>0xA8FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="107" T="238" W="205" H="52"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="3">      <TextColor>0x7FFFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="79" T="252" W="339" H="63"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="-3">      <TextColor>0x7FFFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="85" T="109" W="170" H="20"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="-4">      <TextColor>0x54FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="59" T="126" W="131" H="19"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="4">      <TextColor>0x54FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="57" T="236" W="142" H="32"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="5">      <TextColor>0x29FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="48" T="211" W="104" H="22"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Text" Source="CGTitle" Section="-5">      <TextColor>0x29FFFFFF</TextColor>      <Pos L="41" T="149" W="100" H="23"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="GameIconP">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="360" T="150" W="40" H="33"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="GameIcon">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="374" T="192" W="46" H="35"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="GameIconN">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="363" T="231" W="45" H="34"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="PreviewMediaP">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="380" T="12" W="135" H="97"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="PreviewMedia">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="462" T="155" W="141" H="107"/>   </LayoutElement>   <LayoutElement Type="Image" Source="PreviewMediaN">      <Scaling X="True" Y="True"/>      <Pos L="398" T="287" W="144" H="116"/>   </LayoutElement>    </Layout> </

[geniusalz]

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Jan 7 2004, 11:35 PM)

OK, I've updated the "WIP" binaries with the new "ZPoints" stuff, including the "Tweener" New screenshot (Updated - "Refresh"if you don't see Godzilla) Yes, those are warped videos. and the MXM_Skin.xml used.... Look at it for an example of how to do the ZPoints and Tweener modifiers. I basically created a layout in Corel Draw, rotating my blocks, then exported as a 640x480 jpg, and used the pixel positions for each corner to position the text element ZPoints. The tweener is a bit crude at the moment. I am considering expanding it to allow multiple "tweens" -  Instead of A -> B, you might have A -> B -> C -> D, but the tweening looked good enough in my test.

cool!

I tried it out, and it looks good.  However, there is a little problem with text being horizontally compressed.  Here's what I mean

When you start MXM, the text is fine.

When you go to an item with long text, it gets horizontally compressed (expected)

However, when you go back to the short text it also gets compressed (not expected)

[geniusalz]

This really is amazing.

A few suggestions:
-Allow a tween speed modifier
-Tween for the color tag as well
-Easing options

-Most important IMO, the ability to define MXM to wait for an animation to complete before starting the new one.  Animation could be speeded up by using the shift key in realtime.  I'm saying this because the current system looks amazing when you scroll one at a time, but holding the directional button down just kills the effect.

Again, thanks for an amazing dash, and continuous dedication to make it even better

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (unleashx @ Jan 7 2004, 11:13 PM)

That's some extreme stuff your doing there, BJ. Really great. Maybe I should talk to you more (but not before I reach my goal) . Keep up the good work. This is OT and please pardon me, but anyways, I'm thinking of some ways to add a new the menu layout in UnleashX. There are two things I'm looking at: 1) Horizontal (due to requests) and 2) Fix points. Number 1 is easy enough but Number 2 is what I'm very keen on doing and been giving a thougt for a while. Basically, the user (thru skinning of course), will provide a series of coordinates for each menu item (X, Y and Width only, no Z-Points ). The items will be displayed using these coordinates, instead of being listed down vertically or horizontally. This will give the user the capability to have several columns, rounded or even V-shaped layout for the menus or like the menu in DVD movies. Now, I don't know how your DVD mode or CDI (or was it XDI? I beg your pardon) mode works, but if it was something similar or even the same, I'd like you to know in advance that I'm planning to do this (too) and hope that you don't get offended or anything. The "dev scene" is a little bit shaky right now and I don't wanna rock the boat a little further. Please tell me what you think.

OK... "DVD-R" mode is basically just intended to force MXM to optimize for DVD operations. XDI mode is a compatibility mode to work with the old CPX MenuX created menus, so MXM can simply replace the menux xbe. They don't really effect skinning all that much, but alter some things to give priority for the skinner, since in all likelyhood, the skins were selected to go with the collection of games or programs on a DVD-R.

As for the "free form" menus and such, I'm using the "gadget strings" AKA text elements, to display the information. By adding the ability to use offset information in the skin, I can internally change the text to match a menu item to be displayed. The nice thing about XML is that you can "add" to your specification fairly easily. In this case, we are unhooked from a normal menu block (the logic for running it is not completely tied to the menu block in the app).

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (geniusalz @ Jan 8 2004, 04:37 AM)

This really is amazing. A few suggestions: -Allow a tween speed modifier -Tween for the color tag as well -Easing options -Most important IMO, the ability to define MXM to wait for an animation to complete before starting the new one.  Animation could be speeded up by using the shift key in realtime.  I'm saying this because the current system looks amazing when you scroll one at a time, but holding the directional button down just kills the effect. Again, thanks for an amazing dash, and continuous dedication to make it even better

The tween is currently based on a fixed value, 500ms, which will be adjustable soon. It's tied into the main system, to keep the tween value constant among all elements using it.

Color is one I hadn't thought of. I will look at adding that.... I was going to add an Opacity value to the ZPoints, too.

Easing Options?

On the issue of waiting for the animations to complete - yes, I thought about that last night. I will fix it so if the tween is in progress, it will not start a new one (unless the direction is different). Some tweeking in the special case of changing direction, though.


The text issue is another thing I will look at. I have an idea what might be happening there.

Oh.... I also forget to add the tweener to the image element. I'll throw that in tonight, depending on what time I finish work (another conference call to Japan)

[geniusalz]

Easing as in accelerating/decelerating tweens (a la Macromedia Flash)
Its a neat effect.