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[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (Spyrothebutcher @ Dec 2 2002, 04:42 PM)

Little Update, finally found a version of your neat little program, it's the 0.8 version, but is it normal with this version to lockup for a sec when changing games in the game menu??

                                    That's due to the loading of the screenshots.

It's one of the things cleaned up in 0.9                                    

[gcompton]

Ben, cool tool but I have one problem.
I have added 38 items to the menu and the Title Text on the menu appears very small on the selection screen.
Is this due to the amount of items in the .ini?

Thanks again for all you hard work.                                    

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (gcompton @ Dec 2 2002, 09:24 PM)

Ben, cool tool but I have one problem. I have added 38 items to the menu and the Title Text on the menu appears very small on the selection screen. Is this due to the amount of items in the .ini? Thanks again for all you hard work.

                                    It relates to the size of the largest title in the group of items.

The only way to compensate for this would be to adjust the skins you use to make area used for the titles wider.

Example from LCARS menu:
[Menu]
; Position of upper left corner of menu items
Top=30
Left=167
; size of area for menu items
Width=200
Height=95
; Number of items to be displayed
NumItems=3

By adjusting NumItems to a smaller number, you may increase the size of the text, but most likely, in this case, it would require an adjustment of the Left and Width parameters.

Finally, you'd probably have to touch up the skin's menu background to make the new, wider, menu look alright.                                    

[BenJeremy]

Well, since SpOok over at Xboxhacker.net was kind enough to provide the IR Remote additions to the code, I've released version 0.9b to the masses.

Beta 0.9b
* Added IR support, courtesy of SpOoK from the  xboxhacker.net forums
 (See the section on the IR support)
* Fixed 'overzealous' keypress issue.
* Changed dashboard sequence for the controller from BACK+START to RIGHT STICK+LEFT STICK
 It remains "PrntScr" for the keyboard.


==================================================
===   IR Remote Support                                                                  ===
==================================================

Thanks to d7o3g4q and RUNTiME for releasing their source code as without this Remote support wouldn't have been possible.

Here is the latest Build with full IR Remote Support.

The COntrols are as Follows:
============================

IR Remote up/down = scroll trhough the menu list
IR Remote Select  = Select's the Game / Emulator
IR Remote Info    = Media X Menu Version Info Displayed
IR Remote Back    = Return To Media X Menu Title Screen
IR Remote 0       = Reboot XBOX back to Dashboard

Any button on the IR Remote will come out of the screensaver and skip past menu's like the Controller does.

Note: If start or Select is pressed on the controller or remote on the Title screen MXM will execute the game / app that is selected in the main menu. Is this a bug or is it how it should be?
(This will be considered a bug.... Fixed in this version)

IR Support By SpOoK with thanks to d7o3g4q and RUNTiME for their IR Remote Code.                                    

[Weavus]

Hi,

Here is a picture of the theme I'm currently doing....

(IMG:http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~weavus/weavus_theme_example.jpg)

At the moment I have to use the box cover/text/screenshots as one large image. Any chance you can add some more fields so that I can split them up and not have to have an image for the text?

Thanks!                                    

[BenJeremy]

Wow... that's slick looking.

Well, I've considered doing a "complex" 2D theme... using XML to define the elements more precisely and allowing more complex descriptions and whatnot.

It would have to include mask layers and some other interactions (heh heh... this thing is starting to grow into a monster...).

I'll start playing around with it. It would be nice to have cover art, along with primary and secondary screenshots, but I'd probably want to include indicators to show there are more games to be viewed.

Very nice.  

[Weavus]

Thanks for the quick reply!

The bar at the bottom that is blank is where the game list appears. I use 3 lines of games in that box.

I dont need to do anything really fancy with masks and such at the moment as I'm happy to have the screenshots include the surrounding frame and shadow.

All I really need are fields called:

boxcover
screen1
screen2
description

I think the first three would be easy as you already have one graphic field and it would be just a case of adding a couple more.

I think the slightly harder part would be the description as it would need to be multiline and wrap around the defined area. It would also be nice if it could scroll in the future so you could add a complete review and have it slowly scroll up the description box while you are on the selected title.

Toodle Pip!                                    

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (Weavus @ Dec 3 2002, 10:03 AM)

Thanks for the quick reply! The bar at the bottom that is blank is where the game list appears. I use 3 lines of games in that box. I dont need to do anything really fancy with masks and such at the moment as I'm happy to have the screenshots include the surrounding frame and shadow. All I really need are fields called: boxcover screen1 screen2 description I think the first three would be easy as you already have one graphic field and it would be just a case of adding a couple more. I think the slightly harder part would be the description as it would need to be multiline and wrap around the defined area. It would also be nice if it could scroll in the future so you could add a complete review and have it slowly scroll up the description box while you are on the selected title. Toodle Pip!

                                    Good suggestions.

I would also like to add the ability to display help... I might put the 3D gamepad model in and display the functions of each item for the game - though a simpler method might be ti simply allow a "help" image to be used.

                                   

[Weavus]

The help screen would be a very nice feature.

It would also be very handy if some kind person sent you in a pre-made ini file for each game available so you could package it up with the distribution and save people a lot of effort.

Perhaps you could add the image for now and work on the fields method later when you get time.

Also, dont forget my requests for Release Date/Genre/Players/Publisher fields

Seeya

[jmelendez]

..

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (jmelendez @ Dec 3 2002, 02:55 PM)

hell yeah, that looks great! I think everyone and their brother would use this as a replacement launcher for games and stuff.

                                    Yes, it does look great....

Only now I'll have to work overtime to make it Weavus-worthy.    A programmer's work is never done :::sigh:::  

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (Weavus @ Dec 3 2002, 12:35 PM)

While I'm on the subject of whishes, can I request a new way to display selections. Instead of going up and down a list I'd prefer going left to right with a graphical element displayed if there is a left or right. Here is an example: The two arrows show because the user could go left or right to another game. If they were at either end of the list then the direction arrow would not appear. I think it looks nicer as it uses the space available in a better way. A nice fast but smooth scroll left/right as you change selections would also be very nice! Any comments?

                                    I'll have to look at doing a couple of things for the simple theme skins.... Selection orientation and single item menu boxes (with left/right or up/down indicators)

It shouldn't be too hard to do.

At the moment, I've also worked up an XML-based method for defining "complex" 2D skins.

I'm looking at adding the ability to read a generic "GameDescr.txt" file laid out as such:

<title>
<ShortDescr>
<Publisher>
<Genre>
<ReleaseDate>
<Players>
<Long
 Description
 goes
 here
 to end of file>

Such that you might have:

----------------start of file------------------
Halo
Combat Evolved!
MS/Bungie
First Person Shooter
2001
1-4 Players
Play the part of Master Chief in his powered armor
as you fight alien hordes and discover the secret
of Halo.
----------------end of file------------------

[BenJeremy]

QUOTE (Weavus @ Dec 3 2002, 05:42 PM)

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Dec 3 2002, 07:35 PM) Only now I'll have to work overtime to make it Weavus-worthy.    A programmer's work is never done :::sigh:::   Come on now...I made that skin in about 3 hours with my limited graphic skills. How long have you been coding MXM? I think its more like I'm making a skin thats MXM-worthy I have plenty more ideas/suggestions for MXM. Would you like me to post them here or email them to you?

                                    Please post them.... public commentary always spurs more creative input from others (at least, I hope it does).

I have an XML parser that should work well on the Xbox, and I'm working out the details on getting complex skin definitions working. As it will be more 'generic' in some ways, it might happen sooner than later.

[Weavus]

Can you do away with having to have 'item_1' 'item_2' 'item_3' etc etc. Its a huge pain to remove a program and then have to renumber all the items in the ini file.

I suspect this will change when you develop an xml(ish) way of describing items. It also may be fixed by the auto-config functionality but I have not had a chance to test it yet.

I'd like to see something like:

<item>
   <name>Marbles</name>
   <subtitle>Great Homebrew</subtitle>
   <date>October 2002</date>
   <publisher>Homebrew</publisher>
   <genre>Puzzle</genre>
   <players>1-2</players>
   <description>A great game of Marbles ....
   Fun for all the family.
   </description>
   <xbe>default.xbe</xbe>
   <boxcover>cover.jpg</boxcover>
   <screen1>screen1.jpg</screen1>
   <screen2>screen1.jpg</screen2>
</item>

On reading the MXM readme file about auto-config it seems that it is designed for use on DVD-R's rather than a hard drive at the moment.

I will be using MXM on the C drive but my applications/games are on the F drive. I cant see how autoconfig will work for me unless there is a paramter in the mxm.ini file that points to a base directory to start the search for MXM_Entry.ini's.

[Weavus]

After asking in a previous post for a single left/right selector I have a further request for the future to make using MXM easier.

A quick select menu.... (This screen is a bit rough as I did it in about 5 mins)



Pressing a button on the controller would bring up this screen which would display smaller boxshots for each app and you can naviagte it using the controller and pressing A would bring up the normal screen for that app.