Exiting times! I got to play it already and it is a lot of fun. The kit allows you to enjoy is as well. It comes with everything you need (and some things you don't need but which are pretty cool). If you are at TPF you can give it a try there. We will probably publish a video of the presentation around TPF as well. You might find gameplay footage in this thread already (but don't tell anyone) .

It comes with a RGB DMD display (based on Pin2DMD) as shown in the picture. Not sure if COLOR DMD supports sending frames via USB. If yes that could be added but you already get a new display with the kit so that should be hopefully enough. There is more but that will be announced later.

He got help from the homebrew community. Some people associate with a certain vendor. But a lot of people don't and focus more on their game. I for example support all vendors in MPF (find a list here: https://docs.missionpinball.org/en/latest/hardware/index.html). I do not associate with any vendor.

As somebody who wrote significant portions of the documentation about the P-Roc (and FAST and a lot of other hardware platforms) in MPF I doubt that. I also run one of the support forums for homebrew pinball (https://groups.google.com/g/mpf-users). Again we support hardware for all vendors. Some vendors maintain their portions in MPF others are maintained by me or others. We are proud if somebody builds and produces a game with our software (such as Haggis). So within the MPF community I do not expect that and this did not happen in the past. This might be different in vendor associated communities.

Our goal here is to produce a great game with a valid license because that is why we do this stuff. This is our hobby. We do this for fun, to build a great game and share that with others.

On Friday: https://texaspinball.com/tpf/fat-event/the-forgotten-tales/?sd=1648224000&ed=1648227600

Have a look here: https://docs.the-forgotten-tales.com/. Will be updated with more information on settings and new rules later. In the installation section you can see what you will get.

Basically: New CPU, new RGB DMD, new software, new sound system, speaker bazel, new 2-way speakers, subwoofer, autolauncher, apron cards and a few cables/installation material.

Unfortunately, ColorDMD won't work as those DMD frames are send in color (and not colored by the DMD). As far as I know we cannot easily send frames to ColorDMD via USB. Theoretically, we could ship it without new speakers but it would be less than 100 bucks off. I cannot publish the cost breakdown but you might image that a significant part of the costs for such a project are one time costs (such as development costs, license or various setup costs) which have to be split between the kits and then the other part is material, logistics (shipping is expensive), support and so on. Adding multiple variants increases costs in quite a few other areas so overall it would probably not save any money (i.e. support and maintenance would become more effort, other shipping boxes etc). For that reason we decided to stick for one feature set only for now. We got a lot of ideas on what you could add but you have to stop somewhere or it will never be finished. Benoit will certainly continue to add stuff to the software and we might also come up with a few more extras in the future.

I think this is a good approach for a first project. It is a lot less likely we are messing up one product with one variant than messing up one product with multiple variants. We want to make this right for everybody and that requires focus on one thing. I am certain that we missed things (the machine at TPF already showed us one) but we are here to fix those. When everything looks good we might add more add-ons or options but at the moment we simply do not have a lot of experience in distributing and supporting 2.0 kits, yet. This will hopefully change over the next few month. Hope this makes sense.

You can see what is inside the box here: https://docs.the-forgotten-tales.com/installation/. Also the picture below shows how it looks installed inside the backbox.

We agree that there is some room for better support at Mirco for playfields sold by him (for playfields sold by a 3d party he is not the right person to talk to). I let him talk on how he plans to improve that in the near future. However, we will separate support for this kit from playfield support very soon. That is already in the making and will happen within the next few weeks. We are very happy working with Mirco and simply would not be able to procure, finance, produce, sell and distribute those kits without his help. Sure we can do software and build a few board. However, there is quite a bit more (financially, legally etc) to bring a product to market.