[jingai]

I use the steampunk colors with the leather theme to kind of achieve that. Give it a try

[MacGyver]

Also I have one more question. I kinda like the steam punk theme but I dislike the edges around images. I think for my personal liking they are to thick. I like the ones in silk better for example. Is there I way to easily edit that?

It would involve extracting files from the theme.xbt, figuring out the changes you want, editing the image files with an image editor of some kind, then packaging them back up into an .xbt file, and then moving them manually to a specific file location on your shield from an external source.

Oh, and with every update to the skin, you may have to keep moving it back.

Hard, no, but some work.  If you understood the process I described above, then go ahead and try.

I would say that if you are going to put that much time in and have an artistic ability, you should modify the theme enough to make it into a completely different and unique theme and then submit it to be included with the official Metropolis release. 

Themes are just packs of image files that look different from the official, they use the existing code in the skin to display them. It's visual, no coding required (unless you count font and color reference number changes coding).

[MacGyver]

Ok downloading and reinstalling the skin with your link fixed the problem! I guess I download the wrong version on which the themes weren't loaded correctly. Since you now gave me a direct link I am unsure where to download the future updates, could you explain how I need to download them please?

Thank you for solving my problem!

I always put it here.

I just keep updating the link in the first post of this thread, but if you want to pick an older one (for whatever weird reason someone might have, I don't judge) you can go to the release page.

I'm glad you got it working.

[ziggy73701]

Also I have one more question. I kinda like the steam punk theme but I dislike the edges around images. I think for my personal liking they are to thick. I like the ones in silk better for example. Is there I way to easily edit that?

It would involve extracting files from the theme.xbt, figuring out the changes you want, editing the image files with an image editor of some kind, then packaging them back up into an .xbt file, and then moving them manually to a specific file location on your shield from an external source.

Oh, and with every update to the skin, you may have to keep moving it back.

Hard, no, but some work.  If you understood the process I described above, then go ahead and try.

I would say that if you are going to put that much time in and have an artistic ability, you should modify the theme enough to make it into a completely different and unique theme and then submit it to be included with the official Metropolis release. 

Themes are just packs of image files that look different from the official, they use the existing code in the skin to display them. It's visual, no coding required (unless you count font and color reference number changes coding). 

For the past few years I have used my own media flags, frames and a few other changes in the Metropolis.. EVERYTIME there is a new release I create it as a new skin, make some code changes.. and copy over all media etc again.. NOT ONCE DID IT OCCUR TO ME TO PACK IT AS A THEME!!!! You have just saved me hours

[MacGyver]

Added an extra "Zoomed" fontset for the visually impaired (The fonts are basically 25% larger). It looks a little funny, but for someone that has trouble seeing the normal fonts they might not mind the impact to the style to gain some function.



New Zoomed fontset.


Default fontset.


This is about as large as I can get it without making it look really bad.

[Ladylike]

It would involve extracting files from the theme.xbt, figuring out the changes you want, editing the image files with an image editor of some kind, then packaging them back up into an .xbt file, and then moving them manually to a specific file location on your shield from an external source.

To be honost I have no idea what ur talking about :-p
but thank you for your reply.

I use the steampunk colors with the leather theme to kind of achieve that. Give it a try

When I add the leather theme and the stream punk colors they are more gray ish in stead of the colors from the steam punk with steam punk theme.

[Tobor]

Added an extra "Zoomed" fontset for the visually impaired (The fonts are basically 25% larger). It looks a little funny, but for someone that has trouble seeing the normal fonts they might not mind the impact to the style to gain some function.
...
This is about as large as I can get it without making it look really bad.

MacGyver,

An excellent feature (and very thoughtful). One of the reasons I enjoy Metropolis is because of the high read-ability at a distance, especially in the PVR guide. This fontset, and the other enhancements that you have made, make this skin my #1 recommendation. Thank you.

[MacGyver]

Made a new beta release.

Here are the changes.

-Fixed the missing studio and codec icons in the music visualization screen.
-Fixed missing cdart support for Kodi 18.
-Added Clearlogos for music artists and a setting to turn it off and on.
-Added a larger CD case,discart and codec info tiles when you turn off the clock under music visualization settings. (per user suggestion)

[scoonbag]

Metropolis 3.5.0 (beta) for Kodi 18.1 (Leia).

This thread is for posting any issues and bugs you may find in the betas so that we can fix them prior to the official release.

Currently it will display as 3.4.xx until the official release of 3.5.0 sometime after official Kodi 18 is released.

Please post any issues you find and we will fix them as we can and release newer betas for testing, please include photos if possible to help us understand any issues.

3.5.0 beta10 (aka 3.4.30) 2019-05-10 -ChangeLog.txtNote that you will need to fully uninstall previous Metropolis betas and alphas through the Addon menu prior to installing each new beta release. (some sort of Kodi issue with non-repository-based skins)

@MacGyver Thanks so much for updating the skin, MacGuyver! My Ubuntu box decided to update my Kodi install without telling me and I lost my favorite skin. You've saved me having to roll back Kodi and having to begin my very large database from scratch! Version 3.5.0 beta 10 is working perfectly except for one thing - I have no background images in any of the home menus and can't find a way of selecting new ones in the settings. I tried selecting a new skin, deleting all references to the skin on the whole hard drive, restarting Kodi and reinstalling the skin (as  you suggesting elsewhere for Windows and Android installs), but to no avail. A background image appears for a second or so in the home menu after a fresh install, and then disappears leaving alll items in the home menu showing a blank background where the image should be. Any suggestions?

[MacGyver]

Version 3.5.0 beta 10 is working perfectly except for one thing - I have no background images in any of the home menus and can't find a way of selecting new ones in the settings. I tried selecting a new skin, deleting all references to the skin on the whole hard drive, restarting Kodi and reinstalling the skin (as  you suggesting elsewhere for Windows and Android installs), but to no avail. A background image appears for a second or so in the home menu after a fresh install, and then disappears leaving alll items in the home menu showing a blank background where the image should be. Any suggestions? 

Funny you should say that, I have the same problem on my bedroom Kodi install. I know how to fix it, but I am too lazy to do it, the fix is simple it's just that I don't want to rebuild all of my menus again, hence the lazy part.
I will dig into it one more time to see if there is a non-destructive way of getting the backgrounds back tonight, and post either the fix or how to basically reset all of skin.shortcuts (which is how I fixed all the older ones)

[MacGyver]

I will dig into it one more time to see if there is a non-destructive way of getting the backgrounds back tonight, and post either the fix or how to basically reset all of skin.shortcuts (which is how I fixed all the older ones) 

 So, I looked into it. It's even more weird than I remember and I tried everything with mixed results.
I tried replacing everything Metropolis related from a donor box, no luck, got most of the pictures back and the menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I tried replacing everything SkinShortcuts related from a donor box, no luck, menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I tried switching to Estuary and removing all settings in both Metropolis and SkinShortcuts, no luck, most pictures, menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I did the last one again, but this time replaced the "script-skinshortcuts-includes.xml" from the Metropolis release, the menus worked perfectly, until SkinShortcuts started rebuilding them, then got the same results as above.

In the end I just gave up and fixed it the only way I know that works, I have a theory as to why it works but until I can get a hold of another broken one again just being able to make it work will have to be enough.

If your menu are messed up and nothing seems to fix them, do the following:

1) Switch Kodi to the Estuary skin.
2) Uninstall Metropolis and have it remove the settings.
3) Uninstall SkinShortcuts and have it remove the settings.
4) Reboot Kodi.
4) Install the beta release of Metropolis (it will force the install of the 3rd party SkinShortcuts).
5) Setup the menus how you like them.


If you have issues with finding #3 in the addons sections as I did, then to manually remove them go to:
"C:\Users\***insert-username-here***\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\" in Windows
"/home/***insert-username-here***/.kodi/addons/" in Linux
"/storage/.kodi/addons/" in LibreElec/OpenElec
"/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/addons/" in Android

and remove both "skin.metropolis" and script.skinshortcuts" folders for steps 2 and 3,

then go to:
"C:\Users\***insert-username-here***\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\addon_data\" in Windows
"/home/***insert-username-here***/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in Linux
"/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in LibreElec/OpenElec
"/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in Android

and remove both "skin.metropolis" and script.skinshortcuts" folders for steps 2 and 3.




It has something to do with the order of availability of the settings folders to SkinShortcuts at key times when they are both being installed. The menus are generated by code we have in Metropolis, but SkinShortcuts transfers that to its own folders first, then it builds the menus from those and puts it into the includes file with user settings from Metropolis. I think that when each of those is unavailable at certain points because of manually removing them or a major changes to the settings storage mechanism that it gets confused and can't generate menus correctly anymore.

I will try to look into it more to provide a definitive cause and a more surgical repair option.
For now the above will work to reset the menus to a non confused state but at the cost of removing all previous customized menus and every setting in Metropolis (it will not do anything to any other Kodi setting).

[scoonbag]

I will dig into it one more time to see if there is a non-destructive way of getting the backgrounds back tonight, and post either the fix or how to basically reset all of skin.shortcuts (which is how I fixed all the older ones) 

 So, I looked into it. It's even more weird than I remember and I tried everything with mixed results.
I tried replacing everything Metropolis related from a donor box, no luck, got most of the pictures back and the menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I tried replacing everything SkinShortcuts related from a donor box, no luck, menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I tried switching to Estuary and removing all settings in both Metropolis and SkinShortcuts, no luck, most pictures, menus mostly worked but got weird "N/A"s and "Not Available" for certain menus.
I did the last one again, but this time replaced the "script-skinshortcuts-includes.xml" from the Metropolis release, the menus worked perfectly, until SkinShortcuts started rebuilding them, then got the same results as above.

In the end I just gave up and fixed it the only way I know that works, I have a theory as to why it works but until I can get a hold of another broken one again just being able to make it work will have to be enough.

If your menu are messed up and nothing seems to fix them, do the following:

1) Switch Kodi to the Estuary skin.
2) Uninstall Metropolis and have it remove the settings.
3) Uninstall SkinShortcuts and have it remove the settings.
4) Reboot Kodi.
4) Install the beta release of Metropolis (it will force the install of the 3rd party SkinShortcuts).
5) Setup the menus how you like them.


If you have issues with finding #3 in the addons sections as I did, then to manually remove them go to:
"C:\Users\***insert-username-here***\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\" in Windows
"/home/***insert-username-here***/.kodi/addons/" in Linux
"/storage/.kodi/addons/" in LibreElec/OpenElec
"/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/addons/" in Android

and remove both "skin.metropolis" and script.skinshortcuts" folders for steps 2 and 3,

then go to:
"C:\Users\***insert-username-here***\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\addon_data\" in Windows
"/home/***insert-username-here***/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in Linux
"/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in LibreElec/OpenElec
"/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/" in Android

and remove both "skin.metropolis" and script.skinshortcuts" folders for steps 2 and 3.




It has something to do with the order of availability of the settings folders to SkinShortcuts at key times when they are both being installed. The menus are generated by code we have in Metropolis, but SkinShortcuts transfers that to its own folders first, then it builds the menus from those and puts it into the includes file with user settings from Metropolis. I think that when each of those is unavailable at certain points because of manually removing them or a major changes to the settings storage mechanism that it gets confused and can't generate menus correctly anymore.

I will try to look into it more to provide a definitive cause and a more surgical repair option.
For now the above will work to reset the menus to a non confused state but at the cost of removing all previous customized menus and every setting in Metropolis (it will not do anything to any other Kodi setting). 

Thanks a lot @MacGyver - not only for the rapid response, but for the fact that it worked! I took the manual delete approach. Didn't work first time, but then realized that the fault was mine because I decided it would be a great idea not to read all your instructions and so didn't delete the folders in "addon_data". When I did that the second time around, I got the menu wallpapers all back. Thanks again for all you have done for this wonderful skin! You're a true hero!

[MacGyver]

No problem @scoonbag , glad you got it working.

[UncT]

Is 3.5.0 beta10 (aka 3.4.30) 2019-05-10 our latest?

[MacGyver]

Is 3.5.0 beta10 (aka 3.4.30) 2019-05-10 our latest?

Yes.