tHc final preview.
by Team tHc on Sat Feb 14 2004, 06:09PM
read. just do it. read.
Before we begin I'd like to make two points:
1. tHc FINAL will be the best thing ever.
2. All pictures herein, are real, genuine pics, taken FROM the dashboard, by me.
Okay, now that thats out the way...
The Blue dash always was the flagship of tHc, so its natural that blue should be the chosen colour for the alpha of FINAL.
As the entire original coding has been scrapped in favour of re-coding everything for total perfection, a major contributing factor to any slowness in development will be fine tuning all the other coloured dashes.
This also means, that, at this point, many of tHc's defining features such as playlists are absent.
However, the technology is in place.
In fact, the vast majority of technology is in place.
On the press of both thumbpads, the BRAND SPANKING NEW control panel pops up in all its brilliance.
Forget config. mode! Thats in the past.
This is where its at.
Its a replacment CLOCK, a SKIN SELECTER, a CONFIG-ERATER, a MUSIC MANAGER, a USER MANAGER . Its everything you've ever wanted!
CONFIG-ERATER
This basically does what config. mode does on current versions of tHc. From here, just three button presses away from you turning on your xbox, insanely easy to get to, is the means by which to change the way your dash looks menu-wise. You can set passwords, rename menus and select what type of a menu it is.
At this early alpha stage this feature only works for the music menu, but its damn good and damn pretty.
Trust me, you'll love it.
SKIN SELECTER
One of the majorly major new features of tHc FINAL is the hugely increased skinning technologies. The team has pushed the boat out in this respect, with massive leaps foward. You'll no longer have to replace .xip's, just put the subfolder in your thc skins folder, with the specific skin's xip's, and use this selecter to launch that specific skin. It'll detect what .xip's are there waiting to be used, and override the current skin's xips in favour of the one you just selected's.
Skinning will also be made infinitly easier to do, as well as impliment. Its hard to explain how, and I don\'t know most of the technology that'll be implimented to achieve this, but it'll happen. Trust us.
USER MANAGER
Now, you'll be able to log in with specific settings attributed to your user all WINDOWS XP style. When you boot up your xbox you'll be faced with something like the image below, allowing you to boot from specified accounts and their prefferences.
Nothing like this has been tried or achieved on an xbox dashboard to date. This is innovitave and original.
CONCEPT. PROBABLY NOT FOR USE IN FINAL VERSION:
MUSIC MANAGER
The root of the problem that caused 27/12 patched dashes to crash after 30 mins was found in the playlists coding. This has been fixed for the latest version, and a new and improved playlists system will be found in your control panel allowing you to have the best music ever playing on the best dash ever.
___________________________________________________
NEW DASH-WIDE FEATURES///////////////////////////////
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Picture grabber
As mentioned earlier, skinning will become radically easier on this dash, and so will showing off your skins! Press the \L\\ \R\\ and White buttons to take screens!
These screenshots are given a generic name of: tHc00000000001.bmp etc. and dumped on the root of your E:\\ drive. (At this stage its not possible to choose a dumping location. this may change.)
Its really that simple!
Screenshots can be taken ANYWARE in the dash, excluding the dvd player. Its a very handy feature! Kudos to ****db who brilliantly worked out the coding.
White button zoom
With the white button you can zoom in and out of your menus for capturing the ultimate screen of your dash in action and various other cosmetic effects.
Rotate
Rotation of the menu's can be done by a press of the \L\\ or \R\\ buttons, once again providing cosmetic brilliance!
REBOOT AND SHUT DOWN
Sick of a cluttered C:/ drive!? well fear no longer! We here at tHc have the answer to all your problems!
Code! rather than having two xbe's lurking loose on your C drive, you'll simply have to press a button, and the MS Dash will shut itself down!
________________________________________
Planned features:////////////////////////////
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are lots. tHc FINAL is no where near complete. The ability to copy games from disc to hdd at the press of a button is being attempted by talented people like Jb0nE.
Other features too.
And while they're being implimented, any new, achievable ideas would be welcome. Post them in our tHc Suggestions! forum.
Watch out for more previews over the week
http://www.xboxdash.net/content.php?article.28
Social Networking Bookmarks