[Damac10]

All good skinners started somewhere!!! Good luck with revising this skin!!! Its very unique...

[Malthus]

Here's Revolve 0.2.0 for XBMC Gotham. I expected to make Revolve Helix-compatible first, but then I bought a HDHomerun. Now I've got digital television, so I really needed to work on Live TV/PVR.

Changes that I've made:
- I added all the PVR/Live TV windows, although I failed to find the DialogPVRGuideOSD-window. Unfortunately the EPG does not allow much skinning, so it doesn't look very special
- I added five custom options to the Home Menu, including the settings to manage these options.
- I added two semi-custom options to the Home Menu, a Games-option and a Books-option. You cannot change the option, but you can change the action that is associated with this option.
- There were a lot of bug fixes and improvements.

Things I plan to do in the future:
- I'm trying to get those great looking views that ransomed posted in this thread (currently the views look a bit bland).
- I'm still trying to find the source of some background pictures, to make sure that the skin's license will be correct.
- I'm thinking about adding sub-menus to the Home Menu.
- I would love to incorporate some more of relyter's ideas (eg. panelview, better-looking addon browser).
- I'll optimise the skin, although I don't know yet what optimisations really matter.
- There are probably plenty of bugs to fix.
- I'll make Revolve Helix-compatible.

Some new screenshots:

Thumbnailview with side menu

Landscape view with faded fanart in the bakcground

Circle view with scrollbar

Revolve view with 'watched' overlay over the movie poster

Custom option 'Internet' in the Home Menu

Revolve 0.2.0 download: - no longer available -

[patseguin]

Very original idea, I love it. I hope you can team up with a skin author.

[Tripp]

Okay this skin has really drawn me in.

May I ask, as I've never had to write it out before...in the edit custom option, what would be teh command to open customized playlists? (To view, not to play all)

It would also be great to know how to pull up the "In process" episode like the widget does? I live and breath by that widget.

[Malthus]

The command to open a video-playlist is "ActivateWindow(VideoLibrary,<playlist>)" where <playlist> obviously refers to the playplist that you want to open. For a music playlist, you can substitute "VideoLibrary" with "MusicLibrary".

The easiest way to create this action is to use the "Create" button in the "Custom Option Editor". This button opens the "Custom Action Editor". You can select an action, for example "Open your video playlist" and then browse to this playlist at "Select your playlist". This will create an action "ActivateWindow(VideoLibrary,<playlist>)". Choose "Ok" to use this action in the custom option.

Note that the "Create" button creates a new action, it cannot edit an existing action.

Unfortunately I cannot help you with these widgets. I don't use them (yet), so at this moment I don't know anything about them.

[Tripp]

Ohh, I didn't see the "create" button on the left otherwise I would have used that.

Love the skin so far. Am looking forward to you learning in progress TV widget, I noticed you added recently added in the giant circle if you press left and I think that's a great place for it. Great job!

[Malthus]

It's great to hear that you love this skin. Thanks! And I'll improve the helptext in the "Custom Option Editor" or rename the "Create" button so that its function is more obvious.

I must admit that I didn't create the "Recently added" in the giant circle. I think it was already a part of the original concept by ransomed. I really love it, so I'll try to use it for the "In progress" widget.

[Malthus]

Warning: If you upgrade from a previous version of Revolve, you might want to take another look at the skin settings (Home Menu -> Settings -> Revolve), because some settings might be disabled!

I've made a new release for the Revolve skin, version 0.3.0. I've made a repository on GitHub, and you can download the release from there: Revolve 0.3.0 on GitHub.

The most important changes in this release are:

• Added some new views: a panels view, a gallery view (based on a design by Relyter) and a banners view. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test the banners, because it seems banners are only supported with tv series.
  
• Redesigned the Weather window. It looked pretty bad, and now it looks a little bit better.
  
• Redesigned the Settings menu, and the Favourites window to look more like the Home Menu.
  
• Added windows for the RSS Editor and the CU LRC Lyrics scripts.
  
• Added a generic window to show 'items' and a script to load screen widget information in this window. This can be used to access screen widget results, like 'Random Albums' or 'Recent Movies'. This feature will probably change in the next release, breaking any custom options that you've made in this release!
  
• Changed some background pictures. All licenses for these pictures should be OK now, but I'm still missing some pictures for the Live TV-option.
  
• Fixed and extended media flagging (icons that show information about the media, like codecs, number of audio channels, ISO-value, videoresolution).
  
• Fixed a lot of bugs.
  

Things that didn't make it in this release:

• No custom submenus. I would like to use the skin shortcuts script, but I'm not sure whether it fits nicely in Revolve, so this will take some time.
  
• No translations. I'll try to add translations when the skin is more or less finished, the labels are changing too much now.
  
• Many plug-ins aren't supported yet. I'll try to support more scripts in the next release.
  
• Support for Kodi Helix. As soon as Revolve is pretty complete, I'll make a definitive release for XBMC Gotham and upgrade the skin to Kodi Helix.
  

And here are some screenshots:

Panels view with artists


Gallery view with movies and media flagging


Screen widgets: random albums


Redesigned Settings menu

I hope that you enjoy this skin, and if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear it!

[Bambutscha]

I love your skin, it's something new and interesting.

Is it possible to change the Path of the TV Series? Everytime when i click on TV Series i get the choice to choose the sort by Actor,Year and so on. I would like it, when i wouldn't have to do this kind of step just to see my Series sort by Title.

[barney stinsen]

Great work. I hoped that somebody complete this skin. One suggestion, the bannerview, can you make a highlight around the banner. It lokks a little bit strange if the banner has the same clour like the background. For example a red higlight like in other views. I hope you will continue your work, its a really nice skin.

[Malthus]

@Bambutscha, that's a great idea. I'll change it in the next version.

@Barney stinsen, I had some trouble making this banner view, because I didn't have any tv shows. I don't know why, but it seems that XBMC only shows banners for tv shows, and not for movies or music albums. Yesterday I finally managed to make XBMC think that I had a tv show, and the banner really didn't look very nice. I will certainly fix this in the next version.

[barney stinsen]

@Barney stinsen, I had some trouble making this banner view, because I didn't have any tv shows. I don't know why, but it seems that XBMC only shows banners for tv shows, and not for movies or music albums. Yesterday I finally managed to make XBMC think that I had a tv show, and the banner really didn't look very nice. I will certainly fix this in the next version.

I have no problems with the bannerview. I used him for movies and i see every banner. Kodi shows banners for all kind of mediatype.

[Malthus]

I have no problems with the bannerview. I used him for movies and i see every banner. Kodi shows banners for all kind of mediatype.

I'm still using XBMC Gotham. Maybe banners are handled differently in Kodi. Or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

[Malthus]

Warning: If you upgrade from a previous version of Revolve, you might want to take another look at the skin settings (Home Menu -> Settings -> Revolve), because some settings might be disabled, and some new settings are probably not configured properly. And if you've added custom options to the Home Menu, then these are almost certainly broken.

Here is Revolve 0.4.0. You can download the release from GitHub: Revolve 0.4.0 on GitHub.

The most important changes in this release are:

• Added submenus. I was hoping to use Skin Shortcuts as a plugin to populate my submenus. Unfortunately, this plugin-part was removed from Skin Shortcuts because it didn't perform very well, but now I couldn't use it in Revolve. So there is no Skin Shortcuts-integration with Revolve, and I've made my own submenus.
  
• Added information to the circle of the Home Menu. You could already see the recently added movies and tv shows in the circle of the Home Menu. Now you can customize the type of information (recently added, recommended or random) for movies, tv shows and albums. You can see the information from the Next Aired addon when you select the Live TV-option, and you can quickly access the exit menu from the Exit-option.
  
• Added help-texts to several custom option-related dialogs.
  
• Fixed some bugs.
  

@Tripp: I think that the in progress-widget you mentioned is populated with recommended items. You can configure these recommended items in the circle of the Home Menu (Settings -> Revolve -> Circle Items -> select movies or episodes -> select recommended movies/episodes). You can also add a dedicated option in the Home Menu (Settings -> Revolve -> Home Menu Items -> enable a custom option -> edit this custom option -> set the name -> choose the type: Items (from script) -> choose recommended movies/episodes -> Ok -> Ok). If you use another addon for your in progress information, I'd like to hear it.

@Bambutscha: Fixed. Now you will proceed to the titles when you select Movies or Albums.

@Barney stinsen: Fixed. I added a border to the banners. If a banner does not exist, Revolve will create a 'banner' from the fanart. By the way, I renamed the Banners-view to Rotate-view, and made another real Banners-view.

In my opinion Revolve is feature-complete. So I'm considering to release a final version for XBMC Gotham and then adapting the skin for Kodi Helix. I hope to make this final version for XBMC Gotham as good as possible, so I could use your help.

• If you have any suggestions or if you've found any bugs, please let me know so I can fix it. By the way, if you're using Kodi Helix or Kodi Isengard, many things (like the keyboards and the pvr-windows) are probably not working properly. I'll fix those things when I adapt this skin for Helix (and Isengard).
  
• If you find any English texts that are incomprehensible or full of errors, please tell me. English is not my native language, so there is room for improvement.
  

Finally some new screenshots:

New banners-view with replacement-banners when there are no real banners available


Custom information in the Home Menu circle: recent albums


Information about upcoming tv shows in the Home Menu circle (provided by Next Aired-addon)

[Malthus]

Here is Revolve 0.5.0. You can download the release from GitHub: Revolve 0.5.0 on GitHub.

This release consists of a few bugfixes. The most important fix is the fanart in the background. I really messed up the previous release. I changed some variables which caused the fanart backgrounds to disappear. I made this mistake almost two months ago, but it took me a really long time to notice this error, because I usually use background visualization.