Building a skin from scratch - a tour - (4 Viewers)

[kiwijunglist]

PM me, note added image above

 

[catavolt]

Aah, now I saw your 2nd screenshot - yes,I tried that already - doesn´t look very nice because a lot of the video is cut off

 

[Dadeo]

1. for the thread mbuzina - awesome! Skinners working together? Super awesome!
2. for the descriptions of the process - it's like reading my own internal monologue (tho' your's is more polite/PG - just add multiple screen, font sizes, and global layout options and cover size options, and custom list widths and you will know why I checked into the loony bin long ago !)
3. As Pog has pointed out skin expressions are VERY picky and exact perfect syntax is a must - one typo and you are screwed and have to reload MP and log rarely gives you enough info to figure out the error (and docs desperately need checking and more examples!)
4. Skin expressions (even string.equals aso) vs skin.settings are completely psychotic in MP1 - I still have not figured it all out perfectly - in some cases strings are interpreted as integers and vice versa and it seems to vary depending on the control/tag you use them in (and I have even run into cases where it varies when used in visibility conditions). It's enough to rename this thread to 'My trip to the funny farm" LOL

OK, do you guys seriously think this is easier than MP2 skinning? Imagine how awesome MP2 skins would be if we did the same thing for learning how to skin in MP2? I know it is almost impossible to get started. The docs Albert, morph and chefkoch have written are a good start, but they are mainly from a developers pov. What we really need is skinners to do what you have done here mbuzina - and document the process of actually developing a skin for MP2 from a skinner's perspective!

What is really ironic is that when I first started skinning I found the MP1 wiki skinner's guide (I use the term loosely!) next to useless. I was determined to write a proper guide for new skinners. Here we are years later and although we have improved the docs some (at least all controls, tags, features/changes are mostly documented)I still have never managed to do it So it's quite funny that we expect MP2 wiki to offer what we never managed for MP1 skinning.

 

[catavolt]

What is really ironic is that when I first started skinning I found the MP1 wiki skinner's guide (I use the term loosely!) next to useless. I was determined to write a proper guide for new skinners. Here we are years later and although we have improved the docs some (at least all controls, tags, features/changes are mostly documented)I still have never managed to do it So it's quite funny that we expect MP2 wiki to offer what we never managed for MP1 skinning.

Soooo true

 

[Pog]

The Wiki guides have improved so much in the last year or two it's night and day. You can see the effects of this with all the new skinners doing mods and themes for Titan.

Getting more people into playing with skin code for MP1 will see lot of them start working with MP2 when the time is right. There will be a tipping point over the next year or so.

I have a feeling it will be around 2 years before I can but the wife in front of MP2, she is still finding her way around MP1.

 

[Dadeo]

The Wiki guides have improved so much in the last year or two it's night and day. You can see the effects of this with all the new skinners doing mods and themes for Titan.

Thanks for the nice words about wiki Pog, however I think the increase in skinning probably has more to do with the introduction of skin features like themes, that allow skinners to jump in without starting a skin from scratch - as well as the skin expressions and settings which you guys are using so much in this thread. What mbuzina (and others) are achieving in this thread, and in skins these days, simply could not have been done a year or so ago, without those features, and when conditional animations were not even working properly

 

[mbuzina]

Of course it is possible to improve the docs, but right now they are really helpful - but there are so many little quirks in MP 1 skin engine, getting to know those takes very long and probably just works "by experience" (if I would have read about the exact syntax issues I have here I would never have started this ;-).

As I stated before I would not mind doing MP1 & MP2 in parallel but I tried starting and I could not even get an empty skin to work at all...

I asked for what the first steps need to be - no answer yet.

 

[mbuzina]

Do we have an issue with using <visible>control.hasfocus(1302)</visible> in Dialogs? I want to show the tracklist in the DialogAlbumInfo.xml if a button is focused, but it does not work???

 

[morpheus_xx]

As I stated before I would not mind doing MP1 & MP2 in parallel but I tried starting and I could not even get an empty skin to work at all... I asked for what the first steps need to be - no answer yet.

Yes you are right. I didn't forget about your request, but had no time yet to help more. I will start a new thread inside MP2 skinning subforum once I find some time.

And a first note: in MP2 it's not required to start with an "empty skin". The philosophy in MP2 is to override the things you want to change and leave everything else inside default skin. No more "missing screen" again as long default has one

If you look at the BlackBackdrop themes (not even full skins!), you will see how few things were changed and what a big difference in layout is happening.

 

[Pog]

Do we have an issue with using control.hasfocus(1302) in Dialogs? I want to show the tracklist in the DialogAlbumInfo.xml if a button is focused, but it does not work???

Dialogs have their own issues and limitations. You can not access the state of other controls within the dialog layer but you can access the controls in the underlying window.