What did you do with your PIN2DMD?

[Toxteth O'Grady]

I thought I’d start a thread about the PIN2DMD I brought recently. With the up coming group purchase of PIN2DMD’s it would be nice to find out what others are doing with theirs and could be a good place to swap ideas and show what we can do with this product.

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

I put mine into my Creature From The Black Lagoon after I found out that there were full colourisations being done on some of the visual pinball sites.
As usual the photographs do not do justice to the real thing.

......

I contacted the artist and asked if I could donate and was told that the fact I was using his work was payment enough.
There are a few minor glitches but it is still work in progress and I’m more than happy with the result.

 

[Arv]

Stuck mine in Star Trek DE.

 

[Tony]

Looks great can I ask what does “There are a few minor glitches but it is still work in progress” actually mean? Are there areas that are not coloured? Or does the display crash? If it fully functional?
Thanks

 

[Pick Holder]

Mine is currently in an AFM that belongs to my pal Aid Cooper. It is there until I get one sorted

Got the coloured files for it. Looks really good. Just as good as a £400 colordmd in my opinion.

Also had them previously in my CV and a lot of my visual pinball machines as well.

 

[Banzaipinabll]

I have mine in TOM, TZ and SS

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Looks great can I ask what does “There are a few minor glitches but it is still work in progress” actually mean? Are there areas that are not coloured? Or does the display crash? If it fully functional?
Thanks

Some of the frames are not coloured, for example as the car drives away at the end it goes from colour to black and white. I’m led to believe that this is because some of the animations are dynamic and colourisation becomes difficult as the score and other frames can change.
None of the very slight glitches crash the dmd or detract from the game, I just thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[myPinballs]

Some of the frames are not coloured, for example as the car drives away at the end it goes from colour to black and white. I’m led to believe that this is because some of the animations are dynamic and colourisation becomes difficult as the score and other frames can change.

This is exactly what i was on about in the other thread, the sprite data doesnt look like its able to be coloured properly. I was interested to see what this software could do in case it was useful for work i already do in dmd graphic extraction and recreation on my rewrites. But looking at the quality of some of the animations and the way things are coloured i dont see it being that great and there are issues all over the place. Dmd graphics are complex and often have multiple layers with dynamic sprite data overlayed with fonts meaning any checksum is different each time. I'm not trying to put this stuff down, as i'm sure its better than nothing if you dont have a regular dmd, but for most games colour dmd's offering is the way i would go although theres stuff inst perfect either. The difference in cost isn't that much considering pinball prices these days. You pay for what you get really.

Just my opinion though.

 

[Pick Holder]

@Toxteth O'Grady 's issue is with the guy who colourised (or colorized if you are in the states) the frames.
It simply means it defaults to the original palette if nothing is entered for those frames.
Some people are better than it than others.
The AFM one is in my opinion as good as the colordmd as I have seen both (two RGB LEDs so not including upscale here).

I was happy with a pin2dmd in my CV as at the time colordmd did not use the RGB LED frames (wonder if they got the idea from pin2dmd/pindmd3)? Nobody has done a pin2dmd coloured version for CV yet.

I have done colouring myself on a couple of games. It is boring to do and I got ToM done in a couple of weeks of an hour here and there.... Sadly I lost the files. Also played with Dr Who and ended up selling the game so I did not finish it.

COLORDMD and PIN2DMD work differently. I do not think COLORDMD like this product but there is a truce from what I was told a couple of years ago. PIN2DMD has existed primarily for visual pinball, it was only in later firmware that real pinballs were added.

An X-PIN DMD is now a little shy under £200. So if the worst comes to the worst - set a pin2dmd for the mono colour of a normal DMD and you will get the same result for cheaper, It is a win win situation in my mind.

As @myPinballs also said - its all opinions. If you dont want one, then dont buy it

 

[myPinballs]

@Toxteth O'Grady 's issue is with the guy who colourised (or colorized if you are in the states) the frames.
It simply means it defaults to the original palette if nothing is entered for those frames.
Some people are better than it than others.
The AFM one is in my opinion as good as the colordmd as I have seen both (two RGB LEDs so not including upscale here).

I was happy with a pin2dmd in my CV as at the time colordmd did not use the RGB LED frames (wonder if they got the idea from pin2dmd/pindmd3)? Nobody has done a pin2dmd coloured version for CV yet.

I have done colouring myself on a couple of games. It is boring to do and I got ToM done in a couple of weeks of an hour here and there.... Sadly I lost the files. Also played with Dr Who and ended up selling the game so I did not finish it.

COLORDMD and PIN2DMD work differently. I do not think COLORDMD like this product but there is a truce from what I was told a couple of years ago. PIN2DMD has existed primarily for visual pinball, it was only in later firmware that real pinballs were added.

An X-PIN DMD is now a little shy under £200. So if the worst comes to the worst - set a pin2dmd for the mono colour of a normal DMD and you will get the same result for cheaper, It is a win win situation in my mind.

As @myPinballs also said - its all opinions. If you dont want one, then dont buy it

I just think people shouldn’t expect a colour dmd quality product for half the cost! That’s all. You might be disappointed... The afm graphics look weird in places to me to but I’m not getting into it, I’ve got better things to do. Fair enough if you just want a cheap replacement for an outgassed orange dmd. Will they work out cheap though and how much cheaper than £200??

 

[MadNat]

You’re both raising very good points. I agree with both - PIN2DMD is not a native replacement - but it is a big step up from plain mono.

I can see where Jim is coming from in a purist point of view... it’s not a compete reimagined 100% plug and play recoloured product. But it gets pretty close.

The most interest benefit of PIN2DMD for me is that it’s open source, and people can build on what’s there for quite some time to come.

Who knows Jim - with folks with you kind of skill around, a 100% replacement for some games maybe could be delivered using this technology... time will tell.

 

[Arv]

have done colouring myself on a couple of games. It is boring to do and I got ToM done in a couple of weeks of an hour here and there.... Sadly I lost the files. Also played with Dr Who and ended up selling the game so I did not finish it.

What did you save the files on?

 

[Deleted member 2463]

having helped the colordmd folks debug a couple of things - the colorisation is a painstaking process that they use - and on several occasions they have had to update the engine to cope with the latest in DMD animations. Sure its more expensive but the result in my view is very good. We have a huge number of our games at flip out with colordmd and really only just realising it today really when one of our guests who hadn't been before mentioned it.