[REQUEST] LCARS (Star Trek) inspired skin for XBMC possible? Any volunteers?
#1
Lightbulb 
Is it possible to make an LCARS skin for XBMC? Or would that be considered an illegal skin, due to images?

I know I've seen one for Media X Menu.. and one for UnleashX, but I can't find if there's one for XBMC.

Thanks!
Reply
#2
I know someone who was working on that, but got busy and haven't talked to him in a while.

I don't want to get your hopes up, but I think it would be a cool skin.

Maybe if someone was good at graphics and supplied them, I could do an Apple Movie Trailers skinfor it. But a whole XBMC skin is beyond me.
For python coding questions first see http://mirrors.xbmc.org/docs/python-docs/
Reply
#3
Information 
Hello everyone, long time user of XBMC, new to posting on your forum.

Just letting people know that i have begun developing a LCARS skin for XBMC, as I noticed many requests, and people talking about an LCARS interface.

This however will be done in 2 stages;

Firstly a "draft" theme, modelled around PMIII (PM-LCARS(working title)) as I am fairly new to skinning

Secondly, A stand-alone skin, constructed entirely from scratch not using any of PMIII (LCARSMediaCentre(Working title))

I have been given permission from Sean P. Stephenson of lcarscom.net to use any resources I require from his site, and am hopefully going to have PM-LCARS at a usable state by the middle of may (with permission of PMIII's owner)

If you do not know what LCARS is, I suggest a visit to Sean's site www.lcarscom.net.

Now, I have a few questions for the experts here,

Firstly, can an item have 2 icons set instead of one? For instance a program view having default.tbn as well as the saveimage.xbx.

Secondly, can the autoexec.py be configured to run 2 items one after another rather than similtaniously? E.g. Startup video THEN m3u playlist?

I should have some pictures of my current progress soon.
Reply
#4
It was inevitable.
Reply
#5
yeah, well like I said, I've browsing this forum for ages, and when I saw the LCARS threads i was really looking forward to it. But I suppose the best way to get a skin is to make it!

Oh, my other question, can you have skin specific splash screens? If so how?
Reply
#6
NickyZero Wrote:Oh, my other question, can you have skin specific splash screens? If so how?

Are you referring to the T3CH splash that shows up when you boot XBMC? If so, that's as simple as changing the splash.png file in \media
Reply
#7
hahaha. i actually did a ton of work on an LCARS skin before i left for spain, but my hard drive died so i lost some of the work, but i still have most of the psd's and the skin itself on the hard drive of the xbox i think. for the intro video then audio thing, you can just use an onfocus activation in the startup xml to activate the video, and then have the music start after that. Really though, for the music, for it to be proper, you would need a sort of ambient or background music option added to xbmc because as soon as anybody listens to music it wouldn't come backon anymore.
Reply
#8
I wish you the best of luck with this and will be watching it closely. With that said however, I want you to go into it with something in mind: Almost every LCARS skin of anything never works well. The reason being that LCARS was designed to be visually attractive, not functional. Any "real" LCARS type interface will have to stray from the LCARS design in order to be functional.
Reply
#9
agathorn Wrote:I wish you the best of luck with this and will be watching it closely. With that said however, I want you to go into it with something in mind: Almost every LCARS skin of anything never works well. The reason being that LCARS was designed to be visually attractive, not functional. Any "real" LCARS type interface will have to stray from the LCARS design in order to be functional.

I completely agree, most LCARS interfaces i've seen have been flash based, but, as far as I know, XBMC can't be "flash skinned" we'll have to make do,
Reply
#10
I cant waite to see some screen shots. Sounds cool!
XBMC on HTPC with Ubuntu 12.04 connected to Amahi Home Server 750GB+1TB storage.
XBMC is probably the best thing that ever happened to me...!!! You people Rock!!!

HTPC: MB: Asus P5N7A-VM DDR: 2 x 1 GB Kingston CPU: Intel Core2DUO E8400 @ 3,0 GHz Coller: Scythe Shuriken
Reply
#11
Hey NickyZero, I'm interested in seeing what you've got so far.. I've been working on my own LCARS skin off and on for a while now, and if our ideas match up well, perhaps we could discuss together.
Reply
#12
Killarny Wrote:Hey NickyZero, I'm interested in seeing what you've got so far.. I've been working on my own LCARS skin off and on for a while now, and if our ideas match up well, perhaps we could discuss together.

Yeah, I'd find it usefull, Im fairly new to XBMC skinning, I've done evoX, and UX skins before (I suppose UX stands for more, seeing how its also XML based)

So far its mostly graphic switches for PMIII until I understand more of the skin, but I hope to seperate it from PMIII asap
Reply
#13
Ok heres my first mockup for the seperate skin (the non-pm based)

Image

The info is actually (in concept) a custom default.tbn, with an overlay on top (bars around the screenshot and the "Holodeck analysis").

I also wanted to give more of the skin an LCARS/Trek feel, so im going to "re-label" some buttons (if you see what i mean, just the button title, nothing else so now confusement), for instance "View: type" becomes "Cycle view mode" (yeah, its crap but what can you do?) Gamesaves becomes "Memory Banks", XLink Becomes "Hail networks" and the whole Games/Applications section becomes "Holodeck" (I thought it was a cool idea at least...)
NickyZero - Currently making LCARS for XBMC
All info can be found here and here

I am well aware that my grammer is poor, instead of flaming about it, help me with it... "Help me, to help you!"
Reply
#14
you know I had a lot of ideas for my LCARS skin to give it that authentic and wonderfully dorky star trek feel, many of which I already implemented. I'd be willing to share what I have and what ideas I had if you're interested.
Reply
#15
timdog82001 Wrote:you know I had a lot of ideas for my LCARS skin to give it that authentic and wonderfully dorky star trek feel, many of which I already implemented. I'd be willing to share what I have and what ideas I had if you're interested.

I'd appreciate anything anyone has to offer, the only semi-relivant skinning knowledge I have is UnleashX (also skins in xml, but a single skin.xml file).

At the moment i'm just comiling some images.

Oh, BTW, I nearly have ambient audio sorted Oo but theres just a few hiccups left to sort...

Its an extremely rough way of doing things, but instead of having a half-second "blip" Sound for, say, cursor... you have a "blip" and a 30 second ambience clip. Which does, in effect, work.

However...

The down side is, you get a small, half second gap of silence between each reload of a sound file (I.e. scrolling through a list *Blip* *ambience* *SILENCE* *blip* *ambience*), Not a majorly big problem, but would be good to sort out.

Secondly, if you have the LCARS sound pack active (for testing I just made a pack, similar to "bursting bubbles") You cant change skin, as the skin tries to reload, whilst playing what XBMC thinks is just the *blip* for cursor/select when its really playing a 30 second ambience track, and ultimatly crashes.
(sorry if that made no sense...)
NickyZero - Currently making LCARS for XBMC
All info can be found here and here

I am well aware that my grammer is poor, instead of flaming about it, help me with it... "Help me, to help you!"
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
[REQUEST] LCARS (Star Trek) inspired skin for XBMC possible? Any volunteers?0