I'm curious if they chose the pixel 16-bit style resolution for a reason? Did it look and work better than if at higher res? I suspect the new art was made at modern resolutions and then "pixelized" for pinball? Why choose "4 times the dots" when the display does more?

I'm fine with it looking 16-bit, if that fits the game better, just curious of the decision behind it.

Why, this wasn't part of the package when it was announced

Well I guess I've read other people state on the forums that the ColorDMD platform is powerful enough to do that, for what that's worth. But ColorDMD relies on the community to actually do the work. So I would the cost wouldn't necessarily go up because they're pretty much getting donated help. There is always going to be some really dedicated people that would do that for their favorite game.

Yeah, it should be Colour DMD

If you only have one pinside post, make it a good one - tick

Well done to Chicago Gaming, they have knocked this out of the park and exceeded everyone's expectations. Think of all the wasted words of puffery by the naysaying nancy boys who have to find fault with everything to do with this project.
I liked how Doug slipped the angry mob and pitchfork carrying peasants into the video - a sly nod to the wussies and pussies who descend on every MMR thread with their over the top drama and negativity.

I think many would be happy with "original" but colored like you get with an original at no additional cost.

Still it does look great. Shut up and take other people's money!

Damn impressive!

It's no way you guys are getting that shit for free!

Er um.... Nice rack!
image.jpg

I am delighted to see the video. Nice to have some good news. Thanks!

I and many others fronted the company $1k nearly two years ago and another $7k over a year ago. A lot of interest-free cash has been invested in this enterprise by people who still have not received their machines. I'd like for Chicago Gaming to bear that in mind when they price this upgrade. A number of us have hung in there despite being sorely tempted to back out. I would appreciate having that good faith rewarded.

Nobody is getting their faith rewarded. There will be no discounts. All it took was a few admittedly dazzling clips to buy them as much time as they want and charge you guys as much as they want.

You can't help yourselves.

There absolutely is a limit to what I would be willing to spend on top of the $8k. I can help myself.

Doug,

Thanks for coming on the forums and giving Pinside some insight on this project. The new animations at the double resolution look fantastic.

I see that the color display is exclusive to MMr. Do you forsee a time when a version will be available for the original, Williams' branded Medieval Madness?

Thanks again and all the best going forward,
Lawrence

They should make this available for MM as well from the start and acquire more royalties.

Wow, the bar has officially been raised! Very cool graffics.

AFMr just got a little more interesting for me. I love the dots on that game and hope they do the same thing for it.

Begs the question.. why hasn't Stern done something similar by now?

Likely same reason this is not going to be given to everyone who already paid $8000 for a machine, the added cost. Once Stern goes down this road the cost of their machines will increase by $xxx.

People still line up to buy there games. No one has forced there hand. If GOT has the same display as previous releases I'm going to be really unimpressed.

Yep, I agree. Its the same old thing time and time again. A ton of bitching and moaning but in the end… SEND MONEY NOW! And we do!

It had to happen.

Dots are so last century.

Makes me want MMR and AFMR !

I was in the original camp but wow, I want that display.

This is great news for owners of MMR. Hopefully the MM vs MMR wars will finally be over and we can all just get along.

It's still dots.

I'm not savy on the tech but it was always my understanding it's an IP issue. If I understand correctly, ColorDMD skirts the ip issue because it colors the frames on the fly and doesn't alter the assets. If ColorDMD redrew the frames similar to what Chicago has done, they would be infringing on the ip. Therefore, ColorDMD will forever be limited to the originally rendered artwork. Again, I could be wrong but that's my understanding of it.

Thanks Doug for the screenshots of the MMR colorization from Athyrio Games and they look fantastic. So as far as the extra charge for this for owners of MMR like me I will probably buy this but please remember that I also have to save up for your next game release and if this colour upgrade is too much that my just delay
the time I have to do that and have already purchased a MMR at a pretty hefty price. For us early purchasers of a MMR LE it would be nice to at least get this at a reasonable price or a big discount much less than what a Color DMD would be, since we patiently waited for our machines and stuck with you with our cash for so many months before receiving them and many are patiently still waiting for theirs. Thanks

Color dmd is fantastic.

They'll keep churning these out at the rate of 10 a year while this all new, non-original artwork takes a couple years per title. There's room for both but I'm sure color dmd will stick to the original model that works for them.

Same with Stern for that matter. I highly doubt that this teaser will in fact send ripples throughout the entire industry- I remember people claiming that when WOZ came out, many, many years ago. "Wow! This display instantly makes stern games look ancient!!! And all you have to do is wait 5 years for every new game!!! For a radically new display that has about zero impact on the player experience!!!!"

People are still gonna prefer yesterday's technology today over today's technology on pre-order sometime during the next presidential administration at who knows what cost. The waiting pre-order game in pinball has gotten incredibly old to most people.

This upgraded color is made possible by the fact that it's running the original game through an emulator -- if I understand things correctly. I have to admit, I'm still guessing at the exact details of how this works, but ...

The CFC colorization is actually injecting new assets on the fly, BEFORE the compositing process for display. Things like dynamic text and scores still work because those are left as is and rendered (layered in, processed with masking and such) the same way they normally would but combined with the new assets instead of the old ones.

So just as an example, the dragon breathing fire in front of the castle & princess - that's multiple parts.
- The castle layer
castle.png

- The dragon layer
dragon.png

- A mask for revealing the text layer
mask.png

- The text layer itself
- And the maiden in the window (which I didn't dig around for)

The CGC process can, apparently, replace those items on the fly before they're rendered into the final image - which is a much more straight forward approach than what colorDMD does (recognizing frames after the fact and applying a color filter).

And since I have them from digging around - another example - the beer mug clank in front of the burning castle:
- beer mugs
beer.png

- mask (to keep the black parts of the beer layer from being transparent)
beer_mask.png

- castle
whole_castle.png

And I'm not sure how the stuff is being re-drawn, but individual frames in the original don't actually re-draw the whole scene every time, for example on the castle, only the bits with fire change in subsequent frames, so it may be that the redrawn bits are using the same setup:

fire2.png
fire1.png

Great explanation epthegeek! Did you use Pinball Browser for this?

Different tool (WPCEdit) that allows you to view the DMD frames in WMS Roms - but not dynamically replace things like pinball browser does (so the 'edit' is actually a little misleading)

Wonder what this means for future reissues? If say MBr was to happen would you need to get one license from Universal for the original DMD artwork and a second one to cover the redrawn images? Could an artist OK the original orange dots but refuse to let a more detailed version through?

Can't wait to see what they are able to do with MBRLE

Since CGC was so secretive about things... that leads to the question of licensing and approval.. Is WMS onboard with this level of change? As clearly this wasn't part of the original (public at least) pitch.. and if Rick didn't know the details, obviously WMS didn't either.

ColorDMD all along has had the story they could improve the games' art... including games that WMS owns all the IP for. We've had the technology to replace art for quite some time (even in donate-ware.. let alone commercially funded efforts). Yet, no one has been able to get a program together to replace art within an existing WMS game as a licensed product. And unlike a mod, these guys are trying to sell this as part of a WMS licensed game.

So Doug - whats the crystal ball tell you in terms of getting this past the WMS/PPS gates?

We've seen short views of the mmr colorization since early this year, so it's not exactly a surprise to us, we've just not been (nor needed to be) in the middle of the artwork design and are quite happy with what CGC has done. When we originally pitched the 'colorized' version nobody had an idea of what degree of colorization would be done, etc - this is what CGC had decided to do, which is a great step forward.

I'm not sure the question about getting 'what' past the WMS/PPS gates means ... this is done as part of our agreement to reproduce the game, so there are no gates.

rick

hmm just putting my 2 in
thats a great advancement
and 2 more lol
i'm thinking if they were led screens what they couldn't do
again just a thought
tom

Money makes the world go round. I don't see anything stopping anything.

We've not really discussed with CGC due to trying to get MMR out but I can assume that future games will have this degree of colorization one way or another ... the bar has been set.

rick

Wow! I had no idea they were going to completely recreate the art in a higher-res form. They also appear to be working with a much broader palette than ColorDMD. Bravo!

Incredible. MMr is the king.

So given MMr LE owners have to cough up for this colorization, does that mean future releases, eg CCr LE, will include color, but be more expensive? Or will you always sell colorization as a paid upgrade?

If MMR owners have to keep dishing out cash soon routed originals will be a bargain at 12k... again!

I'm blown away. Wow!!!

Might grab one of these instead of GoT LE from Stern now if the latest rumor is true and GoT won't have the LCD display.

You are mixing technical terms. 16-bit refers to the number of colors on the screen at the same time and has nothing to do with the size of the dots. 16 bit means 64,000+ colors, so they can make much, much smoother shading, ect. Staying with smaller but visible dots just holds true to the original and gives it an updated but still retro look.

ColorDMD by comparison can only put a handful of different colors on the screen in any one given frame. ColorDMD is 4-bit on Stern SAM games and I think it is 3-bit on MM (no more than 8 colors at once).

See, this is the REAL value of the new dots. To move machines. I hope they don't get fixated on breaking even on selling the software.

This is going to be worth the wait. holy cow. Let them finish it. Color DMD just got a run for there money. Finally Someone Knows how to build a pin in the year 2015

Lol @ this being available in 2015.

Says someone not in the USA...... Spot on! Brilliant, my friend!

PS. colourdmd.com -> colordmd.com (Good grab Randy!, if I do say so myself)

Amazing. I love how it retains dots for the retro arcade look but the color and detail make it look fantastic. Still seems like it should be free for those that put down big money long time ago. Still, if you are going to charge money for something make it great. I don't plan on getting MMr so how about doing this high scale color treatment for other games?

I think it looks great, but I can't help but wonder...

Why not try full-fledged cell drawn animation? If they are going to redo the dots anyways, make it REALLY pop with animation that looks hand-drawn. Even better...add the option to use either style.

That's precisely what I was expecting when I read "re-drawn artwork." I was surprised when it was still dots, but it was a pleasant surprise. You probably won't even see the dots when actually playing the game, so who knows? Maybe going full HD isn't the answer simply because of its implementation.

Wow, this thread did an about face from the "bad news of colorization" thread in a hurry.