Ellipsis & Ellipsis HD for XBMC Media Center

xbs08 Wrote:LOL, from where?!?

sorry.. don't kill me

Update.

Hi Guys, apologies for the whole 'teasing' situation, that's not our intention. Just I've moved house and don't have internet at home so only online time has been when I can sneak a quick minute here and there in work. As you can imagine developing a skin which is a collaboration between two people 300 miles apart is useless without the internet, so here's a summary of whats happening now.

Right now, I should have internet by August 24th, Monday. Thats when we hope to start updating you more with Ellipsis and Xperience, the skin our B team are producing. Both here on the forums and on the website.

Obviously as soon as I get back online myself and Equinox will get together and start working on Ellipsis again. We have a few secret bits and bobs to develop and a few windows that are still missing, just minor stuff. Then we want to spend at least a week polishing. By that we mean, making sure font sizes look right, thickness of fonts, animations are tight, no missing textures, additional animations, things that will make the skin that bit better. Then we'll release Beta Zero for everyone.

This beta is Widescreen 720p native, so all HD resolutions should be catered for, also Widescreen Standard def should scale down nicely, only people who won't get optimal experience are those using 4:3, and frankly if you're still using that then you'll never experience Ellipsis the way it was meant to be used anyway, so we suggest you get out of the dark ages and get at least a widescreen LCD.

I really wish I hadn't have made this topic forum when I did, because it was literately a matter of days after that I found out I was moving so wouldn't be able to do the updates I wanted to.

So everyone keep their patience in check, those can't go here. I'll be back, we'll be back and we hope you'll be there with us when we finally get this bloody skin out of my head for past 3 years and onto your tv screens and monitors!

Thank's for the heads up, and i am sure most people will understand that thing's don't allway's go to plan and i'm sure once you get settled into your new home you will get back to the skin and i for one am sure they will be worth waiting for, but in the meantime chillout as much as you can as moving home is a real pain in the arse.

not everyone in them rooms got a HD or Wide TV, so your goal is to make something looking good for a 4:3 TV which is regular, getting out of the dark age with HD TV then they would get a xbox 360 as well , dont forget original xbox belongs to the dark age too . but thanks for making something a little different atleast , good job

Bigkav999 Wrote:not everyone in them rooms got a HD or Wide TV, so your goal is to make something looking good for a 4:3 TV which is regular, getting out of the dark age with HD TV then they would get a xbox 360 as well , dont forget original xbox belongs to the dark age too . but thanks for making something a little different atleast , good job

I understand your point...to a point, but just cause you have a HDTV doesn't mean you'd stop using XBMC, infact my XBMC usage increased when I got HD. Don't forget XBMC isn't only available for Xbox now, it's available for PC, Linux & Mac. You mention getting an xbox 360, XBMC cannot run on the Xbox 360, so thats a moot point.

The fact of the matter is, Ellipsis was developed to make full use of a widescreen resolution, for us to make the skin 4:3 compatible would be a lot of extra work that realistically we don't have time for. You say our goal is to make something to look good on 4:3 TV which is regular, I don't consider that to be the case at all. Our goal from Day 1 has always been to make a skin for HDTV's. There was a poll recently on XBMC.org as to what resolution and ratio people run XBMC at and the results showed that 4:3 was not really used enough to consider focusing on it. This however does not stop those of you out there who really want it, to create your own 4:3 modifications.

I designed this skin to be used in a home media center environment, on a widescreen HDTV or Projector, using in the bedroom on a little 4:3 portable is not how this skin needs to be used. There are plenty of other skins out there that are happy to give full 4:3 support, but for our first release we're not going to focus on it. We're focusing on giving back to those like ourselves, who've worked hard and invested in large screen HDTVs and have set themselves up a home theatre, for those that aren't that far along you can still enjoy the skin, just not as intended.

What are the differences, beside the textures, between Ellipsis HD and Ellipsis?

xbs08 Wrote:What are the differences, beside the textures, between Ellipsis HD and Ellipsis?

Right now, nothing. Ellipsis runs on Xbox and Ellipsis HD doesn't as the textures are too big. Features and code wise they're identical.

Update:

Some screenies that Equinox took for me this morning:

Very nice!

Looking better all the time!

It is looking brilliant.

I realize that it probably isn't on the docket for beta zero, but are there future plans to support scripts such as the TWC supplemental and/or the osd subtitle script?