I sure hope so. I've been looking for a way to replace frames for a re-theme project I've been kicking around. Between Pinball Browser for the call-outs and this, I would think one could re-skin modes into something else entirely, although with the old rules.

There's always somebody handy to kick dents in somebody's hard work, isn't there? What the fuck does this accomplish, exactly?

How much does someone who puts in that much work get paid, since you bring it up?

Which particular algorithms are spelled out in the patent and infringed on by SmartDMD?

I was under the impression that most of the colorization efforts were unpaid/unquantified and that no actual discussion of algorithms has taken place in public. You've got my curiosity now though so I'll pull the patent filings when I have a chance. I can't stand the made-up bullshit arguments because they ruin the SNR of these threads.

Yeah I get that. The key word was algorithm but I am definitely not interested in arguing patent stuff on Pinside. I've been through this stuff a few times, my first startup back in the 90's came to a halt about $40K in because Blockbuster had patents pending that they would have been able to kill us with -- not because we were infringing but because we didn't have cubic money to fight back with. They never brought their product to market and neither did we.

Which is probably why people get touchy when patents and hobbies collide. It's easy to forget that this hobby provides a living wage for some folks when everybody else is just spending money they don't need elsewhere. I hate that patents stifle creativity and so forth but if I had patented something, you better well believe I'd be heated if somebody else was profiting from my work.

That said, the guys I know who hold patents aren't worried about competition because they're too busy to look in the rearview mirror.