[Amra]

Looking great. The only minor thing that feels out of place to me is the use of the apple logo to represent trailers. I think it feel slightly too modern and I would much rather have something more universal and less contemporary. Maybe something similar to this for the poster and this for the button.

Thanks. I went with the Apple logo for trailers because when I think of Movie Trailers I think of Apple Trailers. I tried playing around with some art like you suggested but just wasn't happy with it. I'm going to stick with what I've got so far BUT it will be very easy for anyone using the skin to change any of the home page images since they will all be in an "extras" folder and not in the skins Textures file. It will just be a matter of replacing the associated image file.

[Amra]

I'm not sure if anyone is still following this thread, it's been so quiet lately , but here is the initial Alpha version of Metropolis. I know I said it would be a little bit yet but I wanted to get it out this week as I will have other items monopolizing my time over the next week or so. Can anyone say "Fantasy Football"?


DOWNLOAD v0.90 Alpha (for XBMC 10.1 Dharma)
This will most likely have problems with Pre-Eden Nightlies.
To install from Confluence, go to: Settings > Add-ons > then "Install From Zip"


Please keep in mind that this is the first Alpha and, as such, it will most likely have some bugs (hopefully minor ones) that I have missed. I am only human. It will also have unfinished portions of the skin such as the Music & Pictures sections. What should be finished, with the exception of bug fixes & some tweaking, is the Video section. So if your main use for XBMC, like me, is to play videos then have at it.

Be aware that like Alaska Revisited and a few other skins, Metropolis uses banner.jpg, landscape.jpg and logo.png files to better use multiple image sizes/styles in the viewtypes. When adding items to the Library, set XBMC to download Posters by default.

Please let me know any errors that you encounter, with the exception of Music & Pictures bugs since those sections have only been worked on minimally. A screenshot is ALWAYS helpful.

I will post an updated preview video & screenshots later tonight as I made some slight (I think for the better) changes since the last previews.


[EDIT] If a Moderator happens to stop by could you please change this thread's name to "[ALPHA RELEASE] Metropolis skin". Thank you.

[butchabay]

Are you kidding? I'm waiting to try out your work since you announced it!
Great great great! Thank you for an alpha release...

[ekim232]

Amazing skin. You did a great job on all the artwork and it is very fluid and easy to navigate through. Nice work!

[Rygrath]

What a most excellent surprise, first off thank you much for letting us play around with a skin we've been anticipating for awhile now. Especially nice of you to do it before you got busy with life and had to slow your development of it.

Soon as I saw this post I immediately downloaded and installed and first impressions sure do not disappoint. Love the overall color scheme of it all. Skin feels very light and fast. View types are well thought out and the use of the non-official image types (banner, landscape, logo) are done to great effect.

Really love your image choices for settings, genres and the Icon layout for home screen. I really wouldn't want to think how much googleing that took to find images that matched up in theme.

It's a Alpha release, so won't get into requests because there is a lot I'm sure you've got planned for it. But, I'll just point out two little bugs I found.

1) Logo view type for TV Shows doesn't show the Logo.png just the label.

• In Viewtype_logo.xml I found
  Code:

  $INFO[ListItem.FolderName]logo.png
  I changed this to
  Code:

  $INFO[ListItem.Path]logo.png
  and the logos then showed up. Not sure if this is correct or not, but it worked for me
  

2) If you have music playing and go browsing around throughout the skin (TV, Movies, Addons, etc) The information panel at the bottom becomes a little cluttered.
The Now Playing info overlaps the information text.
Here's a screen shot to make it easy to see


As far as Alpha releases go, this is a pretty solid one. Running on pre-eden with no lockups, or performance issues or show stopping problems so far. Thanks again for releasing what you have so far!

Edit: I just re-read your post and just caught the "post bugs except for music and pictures, since they aren't done" Oops. In that case you can ignore Issue #2 since you are most likely already aware of it :o

[htpc guy]

I'm at work right now and so wish I could check this out. I work in IT though so I was able to VNC into my home machine and install it so now its just waiting for me when I get home.

[Amra]

What a most excellent surprise, first off thank you much for letting us play around with a skin we've been anticipating for awhile now. Especially nice of you to do it before you got busy with life and had to slow your development of it.

Soon as I saw this post I immediately downloaded and installed and first impressions sure do not disappoint. Love the overall color scheme of it all. Skin feels very light and fast. View types are well thought out and the use of the non-official image types (banner, landscape, logo) are done to great effect.

Really love your image choices for settings, genres and the Icon layout for home screen. I really wouldn't want to think how much googleing that took to find images that matched up in theme.

It's a Alpha release, so won't get into requests because there is a lot I'm sure you've got planned for it. But, I'll just point out two little bugs I found.

1) Logo view type for TV Shows doesn't show the Logo.png just the label.

• In Viewtype_logo.xml I found
  Code:

  $INFO
[ListItem.FolderName]logo.png
  I changed this to
  Code:

  $INFO
[ListItem.Path]logo.png
  and the logos then showed up. Not sure if this is correct or not, but it worked for me
  

2) If you have music playing and go browsing around throughout the skin (TV, Movies, Addons, etc) The information panel at the bottom becomes a little cluttered.
The Now Playing info overlaps the information text.
Here's a screen shot to make it easy to see


As far as Alpha releases go, this is a pretty solid one. Running on pre-eden with no lockups, or performance issues or show stopping problems so far. Thanks again for releasing what you have so far!

Edit: I just re-read your post and just caught the "post bugs except for music and pictures, since they aren't done" Oops. In that case you can ignore Issue #2 since you are most likely already aware of it :o

Thanks for the nice words. The Logo issue as well as the missing day of the week in your screenshot is most likely due to running Metropolis on a Pre-Eden nightly. Both those items work fine for me on Dharma. I haven't done any testing of this on Eden since I want to get to a 1.00 release (and let Eden age a little more) before running Eden on my HTPC.

[Rygrath]

Ah totally understand that. Well, to let you know, I have it running right now on Eden. The logo thing was easily fixed. And for the most part everything else seems to be running just fine, so yay!

It's a tough choice to stay on Dharma when quite a few skins have moved on to pre-eden, so I eventually jumped on over to it myself. What can I say I'm a sucker for new and shiney things

Since I'm using a non-compatible version of xbmc, I'll refrain from posting anything else I find since it's probably just caused by pre-Eden changes. All that said, still think this skin is fantastic and look forward to it's future growth

[sialivi]

Amra,

Amazing work

Some feedback:

Edit: *deleted since it was user error*

[Rygrath]

Amra,

Amazing work

Some feedback:

1) Even though I have banner.jpg, folder.jpg seems to load in their place in all views that use banners.
2) TV - Gallary Fanart: I think landscape.jpg would work better for this view (or perhaps a separate Gallery Landscape viewtype)
3) TV - Landscape: This viewtype uses fanart.jpg instead of landscape.jpg

Check the skin settings in Extras there are options to turn on those extra files.

[sialivi]

Oh, silly me. Not used to that being a setting, the skins I use on a regular basis use the right one automatically. Thanks for the help.

[otcho]

Very impressive for an Alpha!

In Episode-Info, the banner of the TV-Show is shown on the left side. I'll guess there should be the Season-Poster.

[Rygrath]

The Logo issue as well as the missing day of the week in your screenshot is most likely due to running Metropolis on a Pre-Eden nightly.

Was messing around with the Includes.xml to see if I could figure out the Date Label not showing, and finally figured it out.

Just changed:

Code:

<visible>SubString(System.Date,$LOCALIZE[14])</visible>

to

Code:

<visible>SubString(System.Date[b](DDD)[/b],$LOCALIZE[14])</visible>

Added the (DDD) to all the days and now got it showing up as it should. Just thought I'd pass it on as one less thing to look up for Eden

[voidy]

AWESOME cant wait to try it out

[sialivi]

Rygrath,
If you want more Pre-Eden issues to look into, there is one in the Videos section.

Steps:
1) Select one of the sections in the Movies Submenu, for example Genre.
2) Go back to the home screen.
3) Select Videos.
Result: You're taken to the subsection you picked in step 1 instead of the root node like in Dharma.