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Colourising DMD - The Getaway


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Hey @JustAnotherRat I notice you've posted over at VPU, whch is the thing to do.

 

Stefan may be good at creating all this PIN2DMD stuff, but as you are fast finding his documentation skills are severely lacking. You will also find that he'll lead you a merry dance when he inevitably replies to your post on VPU whereby he will imply that the answer is in some obscure README or change log file over at GitHub, but then not link you to it as he assumes everyone knows how to navigate their way around GitHub.

 

So my advice would be to tread gently good man!

 

Also, once you've got a bead on how it all works, do the known universe a favour and document it PROPERLY for others to follow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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So after having no progress for a week and not finding any useful information, someone on Facebook did some stirring and cutting to the chase, Rappelbox from over at VPUniverse gave me a call and told me what I've done wrong and how to correct it. He gave me a couple of other pointers that I am working on as well.

 

Anyway, I was able to extract the project so far and test it on my cab. Out of the 3 scenes that I've colourised so far, one doesn't appear to be working, one does work and the other, well stuffed if I can play the game to get the animation up to test it at the moment. All in all, the call from Rappelbox was very positive and I hope to be able to better utilise the Pin2DMD Editor.

 

It was great being able to see my work on the Pin2DMD in game and now that I have seen it I will adjust the colours a bit.

 

A quick video of the colour of one scene can be seen on YouTube:

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So with a little more confidence, and another heap of hours wasted, I have made a little more progress.

 

Launch

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p065xl5242s4gg2/Car%20Driving%20Off.gif?dl=0

 

 

Freeride

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7ihfdbisc0ac79/FreeRide.gif?dl=0

 

 

Multiball

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ykcka6oabuur64g/Multiball.gif?dl=0

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Those scenes look great.

Please tell me you are documenting how to do this.

I am sure you would be everybody's best friend (no pressure) :D

Do you know how many scenes there are in Getaway? And what percentage do your clips cover?. I am sure there are many, many hours of work but it should get easier as your experience level increases.

Really enjoying your work.

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Those scenes look great.

Please tell me you are documenting how to do this.

I am sure you would be everybody's best friend (no pressure) :D

Do you know how many scenes there are in Getaway? And what percentage do your clips cover?. I am sure there are many, many hours of work but it should get easier as your experience level increases.

Really enjoying your work.

 

I haven't started documenting yet as I am still trying to get my head around it. I am thinking of what needs to be documented though. The problem is that I am still making mistakes and when I try to do something the way I thought I did it previously it doesn't work the next time.

 

I haven't counted how many clips in the game, but it's fair to say that there is more than I first thought... but some things that I originally wasn't going to colour I now think that I will. I would say at a guess that I'm less than 15% of the way through this process... I'm probably due to export it and test it again on my cab.

 

There are a few things that I have no idea how the colourisation works such as the video mode as it changes everytime it's not just colouring through a set of allocated frames/scenes.

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Hey @JustAnotherRat - don't know whether you saw this or not:

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/topic/3426-super-mario-brothers/

 

The guy seems to have a pretty good grasp on how the Pin2DMD editor works, maybe you could drop him a line and have him explain how it works from more of an "end user" perspective. You may learn a lot more in a shorter period of time that trying to get the same info from Lucky1........

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Hey @JustAnotherRat - don't know whether you saw this or not:

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/topic/3426-super-mario-brothers/

 

The guy seems to have a pretty good grasp on how the Pin2DMD editor works, maybe you could drop him a line and have him explain how it works from more of an "end user" perspective. You may learn a lot more in a shorter period of time that trying to get the same info from Lucky1........

 

I saw this post and downloaded the files but have yet to put them on my cab. I had a bit of a look at the configuration as he has made the whole project available and saw that he has done some things a little different.

 

I'll try pushing on for now, I might send ScottyC a message at some stage. I have sent a message to Malenko on VPUniverse but that was about a week ago and it is still showing as unread. I was told that he has done quite a bit of colourising one of the other tables I was keen on doing so I don't know whether it is worth me doing it, but for now I have plenty of work to do on Getaway, I just need to find more time to work on it.

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I haven't started documenting yet as I am still trying to get my head around it. I am thinking of what needs to be documented though. The problem is that I am still making mistakes and when I try to do something the way I thought I did it previously it doesn't work the next time.

 

I haven't counted how many clips in the game, but it's fair to say that there is more than I first thought... but some things that I originally wasn't going to colour I now think that I will. I would say at a guess that I'm less than 15% of the way through this process... I'm probably due to export it and test it again on my cab.

 

There are a few things that I have no idea how the colourisation works such as the video mode as it changes everytime it's not just colouring through a set of allocated frames/scenes.

 

 

Sounds like you are getting involved with "sprites" ? .... next step from numbers in the score.... hmmm

 

Even colorDmd exhibit errors at times in this aspect. Colours mixed along a line of text after high score entry on Demolition Man. Roadshow has a few as well. So this is something even the pro's toil over to get right I guess.

 

I have a Pin2Dmd XL on it's way for my Baywatch... I have wondered about some colourisation for pamela... :P

 

Baywatch will have the same issue with both of its video modes :tequila:

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I deleted the key frame that was causing the problem with the one scene and recreated it and it only sort of worked. The scene now starts with the default pallette colours and then part way through the scene plays the start again with an incorrect palette. Not sure what is going on to be honest.

 

Two scenes seem to play fine which are the ball save "Don't Move" scene and the first ball lock scene. Other than that, not much success. I have noticed some weird things going on where frames that aren't colourised are popping up in un-colourised scenes that they shouldn't and I have no idea what would be causing that.

 

I decided to have a bit of a play with the Super Mario colourisation that was done (by ScottyC) and while some of the scenes look great in that, other parts art just really buggy. Maybe it's the nature of the beast or perhaps it's simply that I don't (and perhaps ScottyC doesn't either) understand the process well enough. A number of things appear incorrectly on this colourisation. I am not trying to knock ScottyC's efforts, it just further points out that I am not alone with these problems. An example of the problems is that I scored the Grand Champion score however I was not able to put my name in as the letters don't change. I attempted to put in my initials and thought I'd see whether I got it right when it scrolls though after the game however when it shows my score, the screen doesn't fully display and the initials that come up I believe are the original ones, not whatever I managed to put in.

 

I am rethinking how I should do this. There are still the scenes that I don't know how to colour and need to mask sections and there are scenes that have sort of worked but are not using the palette I set for them. Maybe there is a better approach.

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It sounds like you are struggling a bit but I am sure at some point it will click into place, at least, I hope so.

I'm enjoying this thread as it goes :)

It's a really slow process (at least the way I'm doing it) and that means a long time to try new ideas for testing.

 

I am getting more of an understanding of some things but other things are very confusing.

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Have been working on this over the holiday period when time permits. So far I would estimate having spent somewhere around 30 hours on this project although I haven't really been tracking it.

 

I still have to learn some more of how the editor works for some parts and will look into that soon.

 

An example of what I need to work on can be seen here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhc6pdeyz6meb9i/Car%20Across%20Score.gif?dl=0

What I need to learn is how to mask the car coming across so that the score still shows the correct score and not the one captured in the recording I have. I have seen a video explaining this on YouTube so I just need to go back and rewatch and learn.

 

A couple more scenes that I have colourised:

 

Ball Lock 2

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjkux434jf0d8d9/Ball%20Lock%202.gif?dl=0

 

Ball Lock 3

https://www.dropbox.com/s/le6clftozwzuztd/Ball%20Lock%203.gif?dl=0

 

Kickback

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugkljcclq7myvfr/Kickback.gif?dl=0

 

 

I'm going to export what I have done so far and test. I have learnt that once you change the colourisation method used that you must delete the keyframe that you have created and create a new one. Each time I test it I see more problems. Hopefully I am learning enough that there are less problems as I move on. I think at this stage I have colourised most of the video scenes. I still have no idea how I am going to do the video mode part or the Burn Rubber animations.

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Have been working on this over the holiday period when time permits. So far I would estimate having spent somewhere around 30 hours on this project although I haven't really been tracking it.

 

I still have to learn some more of how the editor works for some parts and will look into that soon.

 

An example of what I need to work on can be seen here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhc6pdeyz6meb9i/Car%20Across%20Score.gif?dl=0

What I need to learn is how to mask the car coming across so that the score still shows the correct score and not the one captured in the recording I have. I have seen a video explaining this on YouTube so I just need to go back and rewatch and learn.

 

A couple more scenes that I have colourised:

 

Ball Lock 2

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kjkux434jf0d8d9/Ball%20Lock%202.gif?dl=0

 

Ball Lock 3

https://www.dropbox.com/s/le6clftozwzuztd/Ball%20Lock%203.gif?dl=0

 

Kickback

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugkljcclq7myvfr/Kickback.gif?dl=0

 

 

I'm going to export what I have done so far and test. I have learnt that once you change the colourisation method used that you must delete the keyframe that you have created and create a new one. Each time I test it I see more problems. Hopefully I am learning enough that there are less problems as I move on. I think at this stage I have colourised most of the video scenes. I still have no idea how I am going to do the video mode part or the Burn Rubber animations.

 

these look really good. geez it must be time consuming. imagine how much time you could save if you had a 'tweener' like graphics apps have, even for simpler things like moving the car along, shrinking or growing an object, or loading in text. you have to hope it will come eventually as the software matures.

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these look really good. geez it must be time consuming. imagine how much time you could save if you had a 'tweener' like graphics apps have, even for simpler things like moving the car along, shrinking or growing an object, or loading in text. you have to hope it will come eventually as the software matures.

 

The software isn't as yet awesome, but it is usable... everything does take me a long time although I might not be doing things the most efficient way. There are some methods that are better than others and I am trying to learn how to determine which way to do things as the easier ways have limitations.

 

Still dealing with scenes that don't work or play the start of the scene twice before moving on or playing the start of the scene twice but not the end and am unsure of how to fix them. I think I'll be calling for some help from the VPUniverse guys again but am thinking I might get the project closer to finished and ask them to help with fixing the problems. The problem with doing it that way is that if I am doing something wrong I am concerned that I might need to recolourise scenes I've already done, but hopefully if that is the case I can just copy and paste them even if it is frame by frame.

 

There probably isn't that many things left to colour. I am happy with leaving much of the basic stuff red and white.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just received a pin2dmd XL to put in one of my sega Jumbo DMD games... looks like they come up with updates for the editor fairly frequently?

 

Just got the registration part sorted out on the weekend, looking forward learning how to dump Baywatch or Batman Forever with the glass off and playing with that editor! :P

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I just received a pin2dmd XL to put in one of my sega Jumbo DMD games... looks like they come up with updates for the editor fairly frequently?

 

Just got the registration part sorted out on the weekend, looking forward learning how to dump Baywatch or Batman Forever with the glass off and playing with that editor! :P

Pretty sure someone is doing Baywatch already but I'd have to find the thread.

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Of course there's still Batman, Frankie or Maverick....

 

The Baywatch is enlisted as one of the games for ACS Adelaide in Feb, it would be cool to have a couple of surprise colour sequences in there at least... just for some of the wizard modes, maybe multiball jackpot where the chick slides off her shorts :D

 

*It's getting a good going over now, cleaning, change switches etc. .... install the pin2dmd is on the list as well. 2nd to bottom line can't get back to life on the original plasma.

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