Screen Transition Effects

[Jibril]

Hello Everyone,

Screen transition effects were requested, but it was said to be inefficient to do within Xlobby. I thought this was a good idea so I came up with a way to do this outside Xlobby. It's not ideal, but works fairly well.

There is a plug-in for Girder, XP OSD, that uses effects to display messages. What you can do is set the text color to the background color, so that it looks uniformed, and use the "blank" OSD screen as a transitional effect.

Here is a rough guide to setting this up:

1. Setup Girder to run the XP OSD plug-in.

2. Add a command in Girder to trigger the XP OSD screen. Change "all" to "girder event" and click learn. Give the eventstring a name.

3. Change text colors so it matches background. XP OSD will not display a screen with no text.

4. In XP OSD settings, set the display duration time out to around .5 seconds. Like to have shortened this, but Xlobby needs this time to go to the selected screen. Pick the full screen option in the Size and Position. Then go to the Animation options and test out the transition you want. This looks different on a monitor vs. a TV, so do this where you normally use Xlobby.

5. In Xlobby, add a “girder - send event string” command with name of the eventstring you chose in girder (step 2) to trigger XP OSD screen to each “goto screen” event you want a transition for. Order it to execute before the “goto screen” command in each “goto screen” event.

6. Might want to trigger the transition with the escape key too. I have not done this part yet. So I do not know how this will look or what kind of problems this will cause for my set up. Anyway, I am just mentioning this as an option.

I think all the transitions work well, except for fade. As fast as I can make it go, a full fade in and out is to slow for my taste. A half fade (either the in or out) is not too bad. The Event option under Animation determines which half of the effect is used.

Maybe later someone can come up with a plug-in more suited for this.

Later,
Jibril

[kolemieux]

This is several steps beyond something I am trying to accomplish, but think u have all of this mastered.

What might be the best way to marry XLobby and Girder to simply have a key sequence or remote (assume key sequence) load an overlay screen in xlobby. All I want to do is simulate a keyboard shortcut to load an overlay no matter where I am within Xlobby.

Thanks if u can help?

[Jibril]

That can be done through can be done through girder2xlobby found here: http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1979

The an alternate way is to set this up manually. Go to the event manager in Xlobby. Highlight the event that opens your overlay. Cllick Triggers -> send messasge tabs. Then click OS-> send message in the window. There, below, you will the wparam and lparam need by girder to trigger the highlighted event.

In girder, add a command. Then under the command tab of girder select command from the scrol menu. Target Xlobby, input in the wparam and lparam, and learn it to a key. Do the same to the close overlay event.

I think you could setup girder to just use on button on your remote instead of two, but I have taken the time yet to figure it out.

I did the same to open a Now Playing Info/Music player/(nonfunctional for now)EQ overlay.