[Matoking]

Agreed, it doesn’t bother me what is used as it can be personalized by replacing the images and compiling a custom build.

[Matoking]

Why in the world would they put languages in it like that? Where do you get these files from?

[Matoking]

I generally use xvid or x264 and limit the size to 1000 kbps. This generally gives me a good quality and streamable over SMB.

[Matoking]

I agree there should be some degree of caching no matter what (assuming the metadata option is enabled.) However, the degree of caching should be optional. I think that the user should be able to set an amount of space (or maybe records) to be used at max.

• This would allow people that have large drives connected to their Wiis to utilize that space and minimise internet usage.
• At the same time people with smaller drives or SD cards can limit the space used for caching

[Matoking]

I was referring to the gradient you are using at the bottom for a back drop. I don’t think it would be an issue as one large image but if it can be broken up into rounded ends and a flat middle it would be smaller. Really it looks nice rounded so the best bet may be to just cut the bottom gradient in half horizontally and store it in memory that way. I think libwiigui can do image flipping, so it could be flipped horizontally and used for both sides with half the memory hit (If I remember correctly that is, I’m not at home to check it but will when I get back).

I threw the reflection in there as it made it look like it was sitting on that blue gradient a bit. Thought it looked neat and wanted to share. 😛

Do you have this in a PSD or XCF format? Could you post it up or PM me a link? It would make it easier to describe somethings if I have the layers separated.

Edit: Sorry just noticed where I used the word overlay, the same issue would apply to rounding the glass effect. That was my reasoning for making it flat. If the end caps had a rounded glass effect, that would be great as they do not get tiled.

[Matoking]

I must say, I like your use of the rounded fade at the bottom for the controls! How big is the fade effect, in terms of a png file size, on its own? Since it is rounded it will not lend well to the tiling effect used for most of the backgrounds and will have to sit in memory as a single image.

What do you think about giving the progress bar a little more of a glass look? I did not round it, though it would prolly give a better effect, as when it is chopped up to be tiled the rounded overlay would not play well.

Or maybe even a bit of a reflection.

I like the dragable image, but if that is done I would make the progress bar a little shorter (height-wise) so the slider does not have to be a gigantic eye-sore.

As for caching the meta, I thought about this myself and the simplest solution might be to give the end user the option as to if they want to cache it or not. I would suggest having two settings; Caching:

This way if the user has space for it, they could keep all meta data in a local cache. For those that are running it from an SD with no free room, or they don’t wont to allocate room for it, then they could opt out of the full blown caching in favour of only caching say 5-10 entries at a time.

[Matoking]

Due to the fact that network connection is not a given, I think anything that relies on a connection should be optional. For the metadata, I was suggesting hiding the pane if nothing is available as if you do not there will have to be some sort of a notification that nothing could be found. Here is what I was thinking about the meta pane.

When a file is selected the meta pane is populated with the throbber, to show it is working on it, and then populate it when the data is ready. If no data is found, in-lue of showing a blank pane or “un-known”, the pane could slide to the right and leave the open space for the file name to populate across. Just an idea of course and I could see the sliding back and forth getting annoying if the end user does not have a real naming convention they stick to.

I totally agree that ALL of these options should have an option to be disabled/enabled, as you mentioned not everyone will use them.

Even if the notification feature is not needed/wanted, could the design be made in mind with this possibly being added later? The reason I ask is I will be coding this feature, in my own fork if need-be, as it is a great feature and would be of great use in quite a few places I use this app.

The screensize can be taken into consideration when defining sizes and what not. Looking forward to seeing the mockup!

[Matoking]

Good questions.

As for the weather and and meta data, I was thinking a http call to an online service like tvdb (banners), imdb (meta), and weather. The weather would only need to be fetched say every 15 mins (or more) and meta only when needed. An ideal situation would be to have a php server gather info and return wiimc a structured output, but in its absence parsing of output from the pages could be done. (I wrote a bash script a while back that manages my tv show file names in such a manner using wget and tmp file.) Now the only catch would be to get the meta data (correctly), the end users files have to be named reasonably “filename.s##e##.avi” or similar. Again I have some logic that might help on this topic in a bash script that is suited to strip fluff added by releases and what not. If the names are just unreasonable or no data could be found then the meta pane could be hidden and the file browser stretched.

As for the phone and email, I was thinking wiimc could listen on a port for a simple data stream. it would only include a digit for the icon to show and the string for the message (optional). This feature would be used to have a more connected experience, allowing for alerts to be sent to your screen from other devices. What devices depends on what we and the community want. For example I would be throwing together a app to run on my nas and alert me of file downloads, voip calls coming in, and new email. Again all that the client would need to specify is an icon numer and the message to send. I have no problem contributing my down time to coding these into the app. I do realize some people do not have the wii connected to the internet however, I think the layout has merit even with out those ever being implemented. 🙂

I plan to put together a few mockups for the on screen settings. I would imagine sliders, , and d-pad interactions should cover most of the settings.

[Matoking]

Here are a few mockups I put together for some parts of the app, it is enough to get a general feel for the gui. I still want to put together a few more for screens like settings and the alert/dialog screens. The archive contains both widescreen and “slim” mockups.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4804818/wiimc/new_layout/new_layout.tar.gz
The file is hosted on dropbox so any updates I make will auto-magically be integrated into the archive.

*As a couple people have asked me this, the episode titles are made up on the images and do not correlate to actual shows. The product of too much coffee and not enough sleep. 😆

[Matoking]

Western Digital MyBook World’s work great, some hacking is required.

http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/hacks-and-howto

[Matoking]

My suggestion would be to see if you can get into your router via ssh, if you can then check and make sure SMB is listening on 445. More times than not it is this that kicks people using samba.

[Matoking]

You can get that by using jhb50’s expansion pack for WiiMC.

[Matoking]

Why not check out VLC-Shares? I believe it transcodes things on the fly so you can play them on your Wii.

This option would require a separate computer to do the transcoding, as well as running a WiiMC+ build.

VLC-Shares – http://code.google.com/p/vlc-shares/
WiiMC+ – http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

[Matoking]

Just to make sure I am understanding correctly, I need to scan through and put ‘#ifndef GEKKO’ / ‘#endif’ around the lines ‘#include ‘ that are in all the files?

Do I also need to do this for the files pulled from the wiimc SVN or just the devkit/libogc one?

Thanks

[Matoking]

Hey Tantric, I am actually thinking of compartmentalising alot of the onscreen stuff. In addition to making recoding simpler, it would also allow for customisation via an external config file. Right now I am trying to go through the code and make sure I know what is going on under the hood before I start to go about it.

What are your thoughts on the config file options for display layouts? By the way any tips, pointers, or quirks that I should watch out for in the code?

[Author]

Posts