We need more competition in this area. Price for the ColorDMD's aren't bad, but could be better and the selection of Pins would be greater by now.

Somebody has already been colorizing games in his spare time, can't find the video/thread though. So yeah there is definitely interest.

Edit: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dmd-extender/page/2#post-763879

I'd like to see them interchangeable. Like if I buy one for my AFM and decide to sell the game. I would like to be able to pull the ColorDMD...flash it...and stick it in my MM or WH2O

How is it setup now? Is there a chip for it to put in your board or is it specifically in each DMD?

ed- by your post sounds like no chip.

From my understanding the software specific to each machine and is setup to be colorized with an associated key.

according to colordmd website

If I buy a ColorDMD for Game X, can I later update it to work with Game Y?

No. For multicolor operation, the ColorDMD is configured during manufacture to colorize a specific game through a product key that is unique to each driver board and game. However, the ColorDMD may be moved to another game and operated in single-color mode.

No reason this can't be done. I'm sure the displays are all the same, just different ROM. So can it be done?,most likely,,,, does it make financial sense?,,, well, maybe not. But if ColorDMD ROMs were interchangeable, then the cost would be much cheaper. There is still the colorization backlog issues that still need to be addressed.

Hopefully others will get into this space and produce interchangeable ROM's at a price point that makes this upgrade more affordable.

I think it's not in their best interest at this time. either way, someone else will start building them and our choices will expand.

Inviting others to join the coloring effort has been planned since inception of ColorDMD and has started. Coloring games can be a long and arduous process, and requires training and support to use our tools. Nearly every game we have done so far has presented unique challenges that require ingenuity and changes to our coloring engine to work through. If you're willing to invest the time and think you are up to the challenge, please contact us.

Please remember that ColorDMD has only existed as a company for 13 months, during which we have produced 5 multicolor displays and a unique upscaling engine for other games and game platforms. We have two additional games in development now and expect to have three more before the end of this year. Most (if not all) of the highly requested titles should be supported within the next year.

We have endeavored to create and innovate a unique and easy to use display for legacy game systems. This took more than 2.5 years of invested time and development prior to release of our first product, and multiple iterations of custom boards, brackets, and cables to deliver what we ship and support today. If it looks or seems easier than it was, then maybe we got a few things right.

Stay tuned for some upcoming announcements that will further deliver on some of the requests made in this thread! As always we appreciate your interest and support in our products!

Randy

I am still willing to work on FT colorization Randy.

Let me know if that ever becomes an option.

Yep, Randy's work on colorizing DMD's was an excellent move and surely will pay off. Hopefully in the near future the price can be brought down so that we can buy Color DMD's for all of our Pins.

Keep up the good work Randy...

This. Dear god, this.

You guys have no idea. It's a long slow slog on my project (adding color to Cactus Canyon Continued), and I have the luxury of adding color directly to the source files! Adding on the fly color is far more involved labor wise, as you have to work out all the frames/sprites to color first. Then do the actual color.

+1000000000000

Such is the problem with everyones interpretation around here as to what it takes to "Code/Program". It's understandable that most don't grasp what actually goes into game code amongst other things but what makes it interesting as they may not be developers but its the comments that say: They should have done this or it would be "nothing" to add this feature that throw me for a loop.

Folk's just don't understand how involved code is. The average developer writes 200-250 lines of USABLE code a day. Super developers 350ish. Anyone want to guess how many lines of code approximately go into each game? 150,000-170,000ish for established platforms is my guess. I don't have the source code so I can't say for certain but that seems about right. Some of that is reusable from previous games some not. Do the math... A single developer working 300 days out of the year can't complete it in 12 months even with code reuse.

Based on how fast technology moves, the mountain of self-motivation that drives certain people to recreate whole pinball machines in 3D for play on their computer, certain ideas that have been shared in this thread, and the other thread with the DMD extender, it's merely a matter of time until this kind of thing gets a homebrewed kit that anyone can do.

That's not to say what ColorDMD makes is not a fantastic product, it truly is. What I think they need to do is to make(or have made) either a specially sized LCD panel(as in a direct DMD-sized replacement) or game specific, proprietary "cartridges"(much like your old Atari 2600). That way, they retain some level of specialty and exclusivity that gives them the edge in the "DIY vs. Buy" decision. There will be a market that won't want to go anywhere near a computer to program or color anything, so they'll just buy the cartridges/displays for the games they've got. The others will just buy all the pieces they need and color it how they think it should be done.

I can see the cartridges idea getting to a place where a typical collector has five pins, perhaps even all B/W 90's titles, and buys one display, but all five cartridges. Then after trying them all out in each of his machines, he buys one or two more displays for the machines he likes the ColorDMD setup in the best. If the cartridges were like $50 a piece and the displays were $279, I think this would be the way to go for securing the future of ColorDMD's market viability. Granted, the collector would be out that extra $100 from the extra cartridges, but he also managed to save $360 overall versus buying the ColorDMD for EACH of his machines.

Either that or just make the price $299 so it becomes a no brainer to just buy the ColorDMD when you go to replace your regular DMD. Otherwise, people's ingenuity tied with the vast resources of the internet and forums will develop a product that will be more customizable, easy to piece together from pre-existing parts, and the plans for which will be freely traded back and forth, much like VP already is.

That's just my opinion, but I think it's all a distinct possibility of what might/could happen.

The WPC DMD driver pushed what, 2 planes per frame? You would have to figure out which planes to draw first to get the layering right, and not waste time colorizing pixels what will be overlapped by superimposed planes. Maybe you can cut corners a little by applying the luminance values of each respective plane to their affected pixels without having to choose a dark color manually.

That's what color dmd does. Apply tint to the existing brightness. But the on the fly coloring system they do has to know what drawn frames (or sprites) to look for to apply the color. So you have to play the game a bunch and capture the frames to be colored so the colordmd system can identify them. Then produce the color overlays.

Right, but I was talking more along the lines of "let's make the whole White Water raft solid yellow" and let the software add the shading based on the existing luminance information rather than coloring bright yellow, then coloring gold, then coloring light brown, etc.