Neoreality Skiin

[QuadHeliX]

Can someone make a background graphic or get permission from this author of the background tell him/her we will add name to credits, or does someone want to make another background? The only way we can get that background to be a desktop only background is to do a work around somehow.
Leech do you know a way to do the PL ML ect.. like the way I had it above? Where do you guys think the EQ and buttons should go? Rontz you willin to do some light fx or VU meters? Slob you in here some where? We can start a new thread when we know where this is going.

[leechbite]

i've looked in the devaint wallpaper section, i couldnt find the grphx. there's a lot new good ones though.
what about having 4 or more backgrounds that could be cycled. we could have different grphx to suit different party moods, like futuristic, nostalgic, xmas, halloween whatever. what u guys think?

[UUL]

I'm just made a vu-meter for my own skin, you guys can use ehm if you want to and when i get on the credits off course... see attach for screenshot

[QuadHeliX]

OK I resized the Graphics so bigger resolutions have better quality.

UUL I dont think the VU meters will go with this skin, but you can help with other stuff. If we get this done in a month we can enter it in GUI OLYMPICS.


Some problems with this skin,

We have to figure a way to position
elements of the skin so they dont move around when resized. Maybe center them. The M3 skin had overlays that were the extact same size as the base. The way the overlays worked and did the animation
and special fx might be the way we have to do this. Any Ideas?
FULLSCREEN

[UUL]

a control panel to change the background, font etc

[UUL]

what happend to neoreality? did you die or are you just busy with the gui-olympics????

-UUL

[QuadHeliX]

Neoreality is the forums, its anyone that wants to do a joint project. I can pass this fullscreen off to the next coder to be coded and we can agree on the work or change some of the stuff around. Go ahead and code it if you want UUL.

[HaloHQ]

Wanted to add, I just saw this and think its an awesome idea. Its cool that you can make a skin that does more than just change the look, but would actually be useful. Is there anyway you could incorperate the skin with the jump to file plugin, so that people could just come up the the computer and enqueue a list of songs, or see the list of songs that people have enqueued already? I think that would be really helpful at parties.

[UUL]

quad, i'd like to, but you know, the gui oplympics :P

[witmer777]

you have permission to use any of my few wallpapers. http://www.witmer777.deviantart.com -just tell me which ones

[QuadHeliX]

Cool! We might use one of those!

[WHEREamI]

no offense Quad, but i *really* don't like that border in the skin. i suggest that just a nice background would be enough. having a border just looks tacky.

Actually, i really like leechbite's original screenshot. add a couple of rounded rectangles intersecting each other around the avs, and you've got yourself a skin. kinda like what's in the screenshot, but not quite.

I'd also find a way to separate the avs and the huge spectrometer. looks bad to have the spectrometer hitting the avs. maybe shift everything up a little and make the spectrometer a bit shorter? (i know it's just an early sketch, but..)

a volume bar across the top, coming out of the menu, would be cool too.

the specular on the playback buttons looks great. i would just choose a less busy background though. too busy, makes it hard to see the playback buttons.

the blue text doesn't look so good either. i think the white and grey on top of the blue-colored background looks good. also, since white/grey is so universal, it will allow you to have background customization.

okay, i think that's it for my two cents. keep it going!

~WHEREamI

[Mad Irishman]

I agree. Leechbites image was cool, but the border was too much. I forsee a system like the old sci-fi computer panels, with all simple lines that move about as you press button.
ie: This image (Based on Leach's original).

Press a button and the lines will lengthen or shorten moving the buttons around.

[Mad Irishman]

What was said earlier about a playlist thing was useful. If we use the indipendant playlist object then it can be added to the skin as an alternative to the vis object (along the bottom).

Give it a nice big font, and a button to switch back and forth.

[Mad Irishman]

Damn this 1k limit... At least I'v got an image down now. But I cant delete the excess posts.

[QuadHeliX]

ok sounds great thats what this forum is for, for all of us to agree on something. So the border you guys dont like. Where is a good place for the EQ PL ML and and the VIS?

[leechbite]

hey nice idea on the buttons. some suggestions, make them different sizes (w/ the play button the biggest of course) and dont line them up. kinda like molecules binding, if you remember your chemistry.

[UUL]

this what you mean leech?

it's chemistry baby just a quick draw

[leechbite]

yup. but still needs a bit of repositioning. ill make a sketch later to illustrate my exact point.

[SLoB]

I'm about & dont mind contributing something or some time here and there - altho not had time to do any skinning of late, but I will eventually, got a few projects to finish which are overdue

[WHEREamI]

Where is a good place for the EQ PL ML and and the VIS?"
I was thinking a drawers sliding in from one the sides would work at least for the PL and EQ. VIS i like how it is in the posted screenshots.
ML may need a sepparate mode, since it takes up so much space. maybe with a little vis to keep it dynamic. also, as an idea, have a (5 sec?) timeout for all the sepparate modes, so that it always goes back to the main mode.


ooh, another small idea, if possible: have a small bit of text (optional, perhaps) to show the next song. disabled in random mode.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Originally posted by Mad Irishman
I agree. Leechbites image was cool, but the border was too much. I forsee a system like the old sci-fi computer panels, with all simple lines that move about as you press button.
ie: This image (Based on Leach's original).

Press a button and the lines will lengthen or shorten moving the buttons around.

Umm... like the things from Star Trek? I would hardly call that "old" though...

As a Trekkie, I know those as LCARS (Library Computer Access and Retrieval System) panels. There's a couple Winamp skins out there that use them. I've been thinking of making one myself. It's the easiest thing in the world (like you say, it's all simple lines).

Yah, a LCARS-esque interface would be a nice touch, but you'd need sounds! It's all in the bl-bleeps!

[UltraZelda64]

Interesting. Installed the skin, here's what I got when trying to play a file:

"DirectSound output v2.2.10 error
Bad DirectSound driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configurationn. Error code: 88780078"

Switched to Default modern skin... hit Play... same thing.

Oh well... just another reason I'm gonna just format soon anyway. So much crap bugging up my system.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

I've got what I think is a pretty good idea for the buttons, but I'm still trying to get it to work in the skin... Let alone get my MAKI working I'll probably post something tomorrow.

It's kind of like the sci-fi interface you were talking about before.

[QuadHeliX]

very cool thanks Edge, cant wait to see it.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Hmmm... well, I've got everything working, cept that it doesn't seem to fit in the, er, mysterious-sourceless-box-that's-cutting-off-my-buttons... It's very strange.I put the buttons in the Pre-arranged group in player.main, and the box follows the group around as I move it.

[dlinkwit27]

I really don't think it looks good at all, but that's just me I guess. /shrug.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Well, here it is, still haven't been able to work out the problem with the box... (knowing me, it's probably something stupid) oh, well, here's a concept skin for the buttons, complete with .m source file and the .png images.

PS: Had to remove the background to make the zip small enough.

[QuadHeliX]

it doesnt work, you need to redo the zip format. Open the folder then select all then zip.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Yah, sorry, the forums didn't like my hitting "Esc" while it was trying to upload. It's fixed now.

I sort of designed this with a touch-screen interface in mind, which would be wicked sweet at dance parties. As such, it has large buttons, and doesn't use right-clicking at all. it also doesn't feature hover/pressed images (though those could be easily added).

I made it with the idea that the interface rearranges so the buttons are always easy to use (large), but they "fold away" so they can be used even on a low resolution display, and so that the interface doesn't look cluttered. Smooth, clean lines, going with the theme in the background image.

I was thinking that as the skin enters different modes, the icon could contract and move to the corner of the screen (for instance). Then if you click it, it could scale down / go transparent / fade to behind the 4 control icons / a combination of the three...

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Hello? is the ZIP not working still?

[leechbite]

not working still. nothing shows up.

[Mad Irishman]

Oh. I get it. The background image was removed. Extract out the Zip into your skins folder and add the image from the original skin to the player folder. Then it works.

(Although I need the latest ver of Winamp5 to use it. Can't you downgrade a litte?)

[Mad Irishman]

Here we go. This was my take on the buttons.
A finished product would have mouse-overs, and I'm not sure what to do with the Next / Prev buttons but...
Voila.

Oh. Do like I say in the above post.
(Yes, I made this by Modifying Leechbit's files)

[leechbite]

EdgeOfEpsilon, your version showed only half of the playbutton, the other buttons were not there. weird. try placing w="blah" h="blah" in the <groupdef> that might fix it.

Mad Irishman, nice work. still needs refinements though. good to see people are trying to finish this.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Sorry, I've finally gotten back on a computer that can run Winamp (AKA not Linux).

Yes, I'm well aware of the little "box" problem with the buttons, and I have absolutely no idea how to fix it. Putting Width="" and Height="" parameters in the groupdef makes no difference. I'm modifying the MAKI so that it doesn't use relative positioning for the contract action, which will solve the "traveling" problem if you try to click too fast.

I do like madirishman's concept, I'm just not sure it uses screen space efficiently. After all, we need a playlist and media library in there somewhere. It's definitely a very original interface.

Any suggestions for improvements on either concept are welcome.

[EDIT Ahh, finally fixed. I needed w="" and h="" in the group tag. /]

[Mad Irishman]

I had a thought on that.

The whole point of the skin is to have large clear display for use as a kind-of personal jukebox. Big writing is also important if we allow for touch-screen (Mentioned Earlier Post).

My idea was to have a mock-thinger above the song title display. The options would be:
Studio, Playlist & Equalizer and pressing these buttons would change everything below the song-title box according to the option pressed.. This would allow us room for the extra large fonts while still giving us easy usage.

I also though that we could program the Next/Prev buttons to serve as FF/REW buttons by differentiating between a mouse-click and a delayed mouse-down.

ie: Just like the buttons on CD walkmans.

...Just an idea!

[leechbite]

good idea Mad Irishman. especially the FF/REW idea. ill help out w/ code here and there.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Well, if the switching area is everything below the song display, I think we should go with MadIrishman's design. All he'll have to do is some bugfixing and make it resize well (I could help with that if you like).

Yes, I'd always invisioned multiple states for the skin. If Neoreality isn't going to have playbuttons in view at all times, I think we should give users some basic playback functions at all times. My idea is to use a status icon in the corner. Single-clicking (or tapping) would pause and resume playback, and double-clicking would stop. Of course, in the playlist you change songs through the list, and you probably won't be in the equalizer too long, so it would provide minimal functionality at all times. And it could glow too! I nice, reassuring pulsing glow.

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

Here's an update of Madirishman's MAKI script. It uses onPlay, onPause (etc) to trigger movement instead of onLeftButtonDown. This way it will also move if, say, the global hotkey plugin is used.