XBMC Skinning Contest

(alx5962 @ may 10 2004,19:00 Wrote:to use media center fonts is of course not an original work, but should be allowed.

agree that fonts can be borrowed from other projects for a skin, but not graphics (note that is for this contest and not skinning in general)

grab this tool off my site to create your own fonts

-open the fontbundle.exe
-click the fontmaker button
-load your font and fontsize
-choose charackters from file
-find the all_char.txt that comes with the archive (took me ages to track all chars down )
-check if u can see all chars in the blue rectangle
-if not, your font is missing them
-most fonts are missing 3 or 4 chars - dont worry about this
-save the two fontfiles (*.abc *.tga)
-go back to funtbundle.exe
-load the created *.abc and *.tga
-hit the build button...

tadaa  

you should try to keep the blue rectangle 256x256 px
should be fine with normal fonts

if you wanna make a real big font (like i did for the big clock) make a *.txt with just the numbers or just the letters you need and use this instead of the all_char.txt

the smaller the *.tga (blue area) is, the less memory is the font using

u need any help on this - my email adress and msn messenger account info is on my site.

i hope to see many entries in the skin contest

ill bet there are bad ass skinners out there

bring it on!!


cheers chokey

hi
thank you for the infos but your tool url doesn't work...

what do you all think about postponing the last submission date of the contest by a month?, (reason: not many skins submitted yet)

(gamester17 @ may 11 2004,17:50 Wrote:what do you all think about postponing the last submission date of the contest by a month?, (reason: not many skins submitted yet)

i think we should postpone it till "one week after 1.0 code release" (whenever this will be).
this way we will have some working skins for the point release and skinners will have enough time (one week) to adjust it to the latest code.

(hullebulle @ may 11 2004,17:33 Wrote:i think we should postpone it till "one week after 1.0 code release" (whenever this will be).
this way we will have some working skins for the point release and skinners will have enough time (one week) to adjust it to the latest code.

i already spent more than 20 hours on my skin for the contest and i still need 5-10 to finish it for sure...!
so i'm sure when xbmc 1.0 will be release if there's some major changes it will take some hours to fix the skin.
so to postpone 1 week after 1.0 release is a good idea!

gamester17, how many skins have been submitted for now?
i'm sure the rules are a bit too restrictive and as it's a very long job to create a totally new skin i'm not sure many people have entered the contest...

i'd like that, this will give me some more time to work on my second skin. i got the latest build (may 9th, 2004) yesterday and was relieved to find out that my skin still worked.

i had to scrape my first one cause i got sick of working on it and it was getting very ugly on the xml level. if there is an extention, i will clean it up and submit it as well.

and i'd also like to know how many people have already submited their work.

only skin received so far into www.xboxmediacenter.com/upload is "xbox media experince" by wabidwoveren, so it's the only official entry?
(i guess up-to-date blackblue, project mayhem, retro, hifi skin, flatstyle and lixxbox will be submitted later too by their respective artists?)

gamester17 do we have to pack our pictures into a texture.xpr for the contest or are we allowed to let them in png?

(alx5962 @ may 12 2004,13:56 Wrote:gamester17 do we have to pack our pictures into a texture.xpr for the contest or are we allowed to let them in png?

both are allowed but i would suggest to submit both (png for others to edit as required by contest rule, and texture.xpr for end-users use)