Customization Help

[Kevin G.]

Hey guys,
I am a happy man since mrmajikbus45's assistance in getting my 1.4 softmod up and running smoothly. I have searched and searched, (maybe not putting in the correct search terms?)...I am used to being able to customize backdrops in skins, but, since I have to use PM3 to avoid higher memory usage, is there a way to change the background vignettes in the main menus?
I don't see a "backgrounds" folder, or "default" background image anywhere in the PM3 folder.
Always tweaking!
As always, all help is appreciated...

[Kevin G.]

bump?

[destronger]

isn't confluence lite lighter than pm3?

anywho, you should be able to create your own folder in the file explorer and modify the pictures in the appearance options.

example of my set up:

f:/pictures/hawaii.jpg
f:/pictures/mauibeach.jpg

edit: oh, and tweaking is not a good thing. say no to drugs!

[Kevin G.]

Thanks for the reply...
I think Confluence Lite is more memory hungry than PM3...(remember this is original PM3...not PM3 HD...).
I can add photos to my box, but how do I add them as custom backgrounds? (There doesn't seem to be anywhere to point to them in PM3...)
Thanks again

[Spongy]

This isn't possible in PM3 unless you mod it. However the mod is quite simple.

Edit the Home.xml in either "skin/Project Mayhem III/PAL16x9/" or "skin/Project Mayhem III/PAL/" depending on your settings.

To edit the programs background, find this.

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				<imagepath>home-myprograms</imagepath>

And replace with.

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				<imagepath>special://skin/backgrounds/Programs</imagepath>

Same for music. Replace.

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				<imagepath>home-mymusic</imagepath>

With.

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				<imagepath>special://skin/backgrounds/Music</imagepath>

Do this for all you want to modify.

Now just create the folders.
Create a "backgrounds" folder in skin/Project Mayhem III/.
Inside that folder create the other folders as you've named them in Home.xml (programs, music, etc.).
Put your images in their respective folders.

If the images are too big or you add too many to the folders, it will slow you down.

You can also keep the images elsewhere on the xbox. I keep mine in E:/images/fanart. So mine looks like this.

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				<imagepath>E:/images/fanart/music</imagepath>

Good luck

[Kevin G.]

Wow...
Thanks for the reply, but that is waaaaayyy over my head...sorry, I have done no coding, or scripting....ever! I wouldn't know where to begin with that.

[byron]

It's not that hard, download an editor such as N++ and dig in. There are people here that will be happy to guide you if you need some help. Also, my rapier mod is really lite and you can customize pretty much all bg's to your liking plus many other things if you want to (follow my signature below if you're interested in something different). The problem with skins is that none of them offer everyone exactly what they're looking for, so try to find one you really like and then make it better

[Spongy]

It's pretty simple once you get into it.
Download notepad++ from Byrons link and follow my instructions. If you get stuck ask for help, I'll help you along. I could have modded it for you in less time than it took to make my above post, but I like to show people how easy this is.

Or if you're lazy and desperate. Donate $5 or more to xbmc4xbox and I'll mod the crap out of the home screen for you.

[Kevin G.]

Thanks for the help, Gents...(and the offer Spongy). I'll kick it around.
Byron, is Rapier lighter than PM3? I do like Confluence (and Lite), as well as Aeon...they were just resource hogs for streaming.

[byron]

Okay...here's an example for you. Both of the skins were allowed to finish startup processes before I took the screenshots (i.e. totally ready to roll with no background processes running) and I also rebooted XBMC after switching skins so these numbers would be as accurate as possible...

BEFORE VIDEO AT STARTUP:

So at this point my mod has about .75mb of ram advantage over pmIII, not really that impressive.


WHILE RUNNING STREAM:

Clearly +1 for pmIII here (close to 3.75mb diff)


AFTER VIDEO EXIT:

Now this is where all of the work I've done begins to pay off...you can see that rapier has a 1.5mb edge over pmIII at this point, and that difference will only get bigger as you navigate to different views or windows in pmIII because they are all more than likely included in one way or another and almost all windows and controls in my mod are not. The difference in ram on video playback is in large part due to the VideoOSD controls being lighter on pmIII (the OSD's come into memory when a video or music is started), but I'm working on lightening up my config and then the difference in these numbers (ram usage during playback) should be cut at least in half I'm guessing...hope that helps.

---edit---

Changed what I said about includes at boot...it's likely that the views are conditionally included so there wouldn't be much of a hit on ram until the view's (or control's) include conditions are actually met. Then the ram starts to disappear, and doesn't come back until a skin reload or xmbc restart afaik.

[Rocky5]

All includes are loaded into memory on startup, well they used to be.

So to get the max performance/memory you need to not use any includes.

That includes (pun intended) anything that hasn't had its condition met.

I would just make a generic xml with everything that is needed for each window.