[DEV][APP][LAUNCHER][ALPHA] XPMB -- A XMB-styled launcher for our Play's

So I was seeing my PSP and my XPERIA Play lying in front of me side-by-side on my desktop, looking at the UI that SONY gave them, and thought: "If my Play had it's own XMB, wouldn't it be cool?" and after some deeper tought, not one, but a stream of cool ideas came to my mind in that moment.
After searching the entire web looking for at least a decent or good-looking replacement for the launcher my phone came with, and found nothing that filled my expectations, and after I got some free time (yeah, college and a job absorbs a big quantity of free time) then I took the challenge, embarked in this very long journey and started coding.

If you want to test it, you need at least a phone that emulates the Xperia Play's physical controls, and the files listed in post #2.

The minimal android API was set to level 10 (2.3.3).

Now, what it actually does?
Does XMB-like things , animations included.

How to use it?
Right now it's locked to landscape mode so you use the Play's controller buttons to move around.

• UP: Select previous menu subitem
• DOWN: Select next menu subitem
• LEFT: Select previous menu item/close submenu
• RIGHT: Select next menu item
• CIRCLE: Closes the side-menu, submenu or exit the launcher
• CROSS: Execute the selected menu subitem or submenu item
• TRIANGLE: Show/hide side menu
• L SHOULDER: Skip to previous track (music playlist)
• R SHOULDER: Skip to next track (music playlist)

TIP: Use the Play's PSP and PSClassic live wallpapers to get better and close-to-original results!

The code and download are at http://code.google.com/p/xpmb.
The wiki is at http://code.google.com/p/xpmb/w/list.

I'm eager to get your opinions people!

Wow, seems like it was long time ago since my last post (well, really it was some weeks) but let me report what i'm working on.

As I thought about how to dynamically add items to the menu (actually they're sorta static, hence the need to load everything when entering submenus), I found that the way i was using to do it was not the correct (it was somewhat modular, and proved to be slooooow...), so I'm actually merging some code and extending other, so that's what's keeping me from releasing another test build. :silly:

Oh!, I'm finishing too the code that load themes, it should be, as I said some posts ago, compatible with uncompiled PS3 themes (that is, just the XML with the icons/pictures, zipped only, and uses just the icons and backgrounds for now), because I haven't the time to do some hacking and reverse engineering to the p3tcompiler and format itself.
Here you can find what I'm talking about, or if you just wanna see how it's composed.

About the ROM's summary, it showed along some region flags in early builds, but as the layout changed, they dissapeared, they sould appear in the future in a property screen as the PSP does with music properties, for example.

About the background issue, i'm aware of it, and it's caused by the recent layout type change (from an obsolete AbsoluteLayout to a RelativeLayout, I really hate RelativeLayouts, but I'm trying to keep from using 'obsolete' code). It should be fixed soon.

About 'open app on slider up', as they said, this event occurs inside a system service, so it can be modified somewhere in the system files, but i haven't investigated it so much, 'cause I'm focused on the app itself.

Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement! Specially to those who kept reading around, doing some 'housekeeping' and aswering some FAQ's :highfive::good:

Here, I haven't abandoned this project, just had to take care of something more important.
This screenshot shows what's going on with this:
A tiny notifications system (used for internals mainly for now), the return of extended data for ROMs, like BG images/slideshows, cover arts and so on (I think it could be easily implemented with any item from the APPs category), extended TheGamesDB code contributed by vektor88, and some fixes that were left hanging.

I'l update soon the repo. Cheers!

Rozen reporting!
Well, there's no release today but there's one silently building in the shadows.

There aren't many visible changes in the outside, but a big one in the code, and you can check it by looking at the last 2 or 3 repo commits this month.
I'm not gonna release anything until I finish writing the code that will introduce the side menu (it's almost complete, just needs testing and implementing), which will also allow to modify categories and subitems, in a rudimentary but functional copy/paste way.

For those who are getting FC's, it could be fixed with the next release as it is not required anymore to manually copy the default theme in the filesystem. It does it all by itself now
Oh!, I wrote the code that makes it screen size agnostic again, I think it just need HD assets to try to get this working on every other device, and there's touch support (again!), but still doesn't work as expected (scrolls only one item a time), but works :silly:

I said this from the very beginning, but I'll say it one more time: this is a very alpha version that could (and will!) be under constant (code and visual) change, as it's no easy task to even clone an app like this (well, maybe after this struggle to get to a working backend & UI, modules would be a breeze). So please everyone, bear with me in this long journey I have begun back in february :angel:

B.R.

Just a little update. I got faster FPS somehow (but really appreciated!) but am still getting problems with some layouts.
Maybe this night or tomorrow there will be a new apk to test :good:

Here, attached is a teaser (Note the different font in the clock because I'm using stock ROM now)

EDIT: Wow, it desn't want to do what I tell it to do, let me tame this beast first :silly: