Marvel PM3

I started a Alienware theme for PM3, but somehow that morphed it's way into me making a Marvel theme.
So for the time being (maybe a few days) I won't be working on the alienware theme, instead I will work on getting the Marvel Theme from a WIP - to being finalized and in the downloads section for all to enjoy.
Here is a screenshot of the current progress...

Thanks ChoccyHobNob for giving me ideas for home buttons !

nice! .. the more the merrier :]

Hi guys,
I have been working/playing non-stop on making the Marvel theme look as good as I can get it.
I only have to adjust a few more pics and I need to figure 1 thing out, hopefully someone can help me... I need to know the name of an image (cant find it anywhere), it's the gray colored box that contains most of the text in a submenu. Like when you are at the homescreen and you go to 'videos' a big gray box appears, and now with the recent versions of PM3 you can put a picture under it.
Hopefully someone knows what that image is.

Anyway here is some WAY more polished up screenies...

Just dropping a line to tell everyone (if anyone is even at all interested in this theme) that it will be a while before I get it released.
Seems like the more I do, I realize I have even more then I thought. I think I am going to do a complete new set of images for this Marvel theme.

I figured out what a workaround for my problem (where I couldn't compress images into an xpr using xbmctex or xprexpress)!
All I have to do is downgrade my graphics driver and stay away from the resolution settings. If I adjust the resolution, then xpr express starts bitching and the only way around it is to reinstall the outdated driver. Isn't that some crazy stuff or what?

Expect the Marvel theme when I release it

Well done :-) this is starting to look really nice!

The big grey panel is made up of three bits...

contentpanel_left.png - Left edge with alpha shadow
contentpanel.png - 1px line that is stretched to fill the rest of the screen
Content_Panel_Diffuse.png - This sits on top of fan art to blend it into the background

Yeah,
I just figured that out last night. But thanks anyway choccyhobnob.
This theme is already starting to look alot different (in a good way) than the previously posted screenshots. Here is one more screenshot...


BTW- I am going to package the theme together with a new comic book font, if that is even a feasible idea. I tried to change the font already, but it is obviously a little more complicated than I thought, and I didn't feel like investing more than 5 minutes into the font change. I'll work on that after I finish all the pics for the theme.

To change the font you will need to change the font.xml for each resolution, you could just change one and copy to each resolutions folder but it won't look right if you do that. Each resolution has slightly different size and aspect settings so you will need to do them all if you want it to look right for everyone. This of course moves your theme into the wonderful world of skin mods and you have to be aware that your mod will be overwritten every time you update to the latest build of your flavour of xbmc as they all come with the latest version of PMIII :-)

I got a comic-like font to work by just renaming the arial.ttf to "arial1.ttf" then I copied over marvel.ttf and renamed it to arial.ttf
Then go to settings and change the font to Arial. It's a ghetto workaround, but who the hell cares. The end result looks freakin sweet.

I am going to just package the marvel.xpr together with the font and instructions for how to get the font to work. And of course installing the font is optional, looks just fine without it.

Thanks for the help choccyhobnob.
I have a question for you, I have replaced a TON of images and I can't seem to find 1 last pic, it's the one you see when you hit white in a submenu, you know the tall box that has add source etc. It's bothering the hell out of me. Do you know the name of it?

Yes its the context menu

files are...

dialog-context-bottom
dialog-context-middle
dialog-context-top

As for your ghetto font workaround lol, if the font doesn't have the same metrics as arial the aspect settings will produce potentially unwanted results

Does anyone know why some images may appear garbled? I remember the Blaze theme, when it 1st came out, some of the graphics looked garbled then it was rereleased and fixed.
Here is a screenshot of what I am talking about...

Any ideas