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Star Trek colour DMD announced


JOKERPOKER

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Finally after Randy promising it 2 years ago it's finally arrived. @Koops you got in at the right time.

 

 

Star Trek is ColorDMD's 66th supported title! Thought to do something different with this release and share a little of the backstory. Hope it's worth the read! -Randy

Captain's Log: Stardate 2015.003

 

I fear the crew is preparing mutiny. Despite overcoming many challenges during this five year mission, this may be the the first time we find ourselves wholly unprepared. In our attempt to adhere to the prime directive, we have been unable to harness the energy of the red star. We have sent mission after mission, after mission, after (listen... there's really far too many damned missions here) mission. Our best crew. Smart, brave crew. Anyone we can ask... I've asked all of them. It's too daunting. We are overcome. <End Transmission>

 

 

 

Flash back a little more than two years ago and that's what the situation regarding ST looked like. I had foolishly said at the beginning of 2015... hey, we plan on working on Star Trek this year. There were several other games mentioned too, all of which progressed as expected. But the technical challenges in Star Trek turned out to be a surprise. And now I was on the hook.

 

To be fair, a lot of the fundamental elements needed to tackle Star Trek had already been developed... but we had no formal editor for the new advanced processing features. A lot of this was still being done with pen, paper, and hex editors. Furthermore, the sequences themselves were wholly uncooperative. Very little in the game could simply be colorized offline because the animations were responsive to what was happening beneath the glass on the playfield... That’s pinball!

 

 

Factor into that 3-D rendered spaceships and explosions, 18 different gameplay modes, 3 different wizard modes, Vengeance fights, warps, spins, galactic away teams, and on and on. Without realizing the difficulties, I asked Dave Timmer, an experienced ColorDMD developer, to take it on and he was excited to get going. By the middle of the year, after running into endless obstacles with the tools, Dave had managed to color all he could do. We did the only thing we could at the time... take a break and regroup.

 

 

The theory was that if tackled games with smaller incremental challenges, in the end that would probably help toward completing Star Trek. Dave (and the rest of the development team) moved on to a number of games that provided new challenges, and I tried to keep up. Over the next two years, we would complete many titles and the coloring engine evolve significantly to the point we thought we could take another stab at Star Trek.

 

I picked at different sections whenever I could squeeze time between helping to solve issues on other projects. There was progress but slower than I hoped [and I still felt on the hook to find a way to get ST done]. I asked Chris Enright to take over as lead, and I would focus on the remaining technical issues.

 

 

 

Chris started stitching together the foundation that Dave had created along with the pieces I added. I continuously nudged Eric Priepke to help out where he could. Eric had recently completed coloring TWD which was a feat in and of itself. He wanted (or needed) some less daunting challenges and took off on a tear working through WPC games, while filling in some labor intensive bits on ST. Chris asked for help with reference coloring and so I jumped in to provide some anchor points while he controlled the engine to animate the sequences and flag the places where the coloring engine was still falling short.

 

 

And this is how it went... we quadruple-teamed ST over a period of 2.5 years to get it done. The heart of it belongs to Chris as he spent the better part of this year pounding through animation after animation in time to show it off for the Chicago Pinball Expo. And it's glorious.

 

There's really too much animation in this game to show it off in a single preview or even a short video. The crew at Stern did an amazing job with this game. We've never seen anything like it or so difficult to color (although Walking Dead is a close second). We hope we did the team justice, and that you take some time to discover (or rediscover) it all for yourself.

 

 

 

The ColorDMD for Star Trek pinball machines shares the same easy-to-install hardware platform as previous ColorDMD releases. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMA ROM that supports WPC, WPC95, SAM, Whitestar, and SPIKE platforms. Multicolor operation is enabled through download and installation of a game-specific color ROM file, available from our site. ROMs can be changed at any time, allowing use with any of our supported titles.

 

 

 

Displays are shipping now from our store site or through our distributors. The color ROM for Star Trek pinball machines is targeted for preview at Chicago Expo this week and for public release by Friday, October 13!

 

For more information, please visit us at http://www.colordmd.com.

Copyright [emoji767] 2017 ColorDMD Displays LLC, All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

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Finally after Randy promising it 2 years ago it's finally arrived. @Koops you got in at the right time.

 

 

Star Trek is ColorDMD's 66th supported title! Thought to do something different with this release and share a little of the backstory. Hope it's worth the read! -Randy

Captain's Log: Stardate 2015.003

 

I fear the crew is preparing mutiny. Despite overcoming many challenges during this five year mission, this may be the the first time we find ourselves wholly unprepared. In our attempt to adhere to the prime directive, we have been unable to harness the energy of the red star. We have sent mission after mission, after mission, after (listen... there's really far too many damned missions here) mission. Our best crew. Smart, brave crew. Anyone we can ask... I've asked all of them. It's too daunting. We are overcome. <End Transmission>

 

 

 

Flash back a little more than two years ago and that's what the situation regarding ST looked like. I had foolishly said at the beginning of 2015... hey, we plan on working on Star Trek this year. There were several other games mentioned too, all of which progressed as expected. But the technical challenges in Star Trek turned out to be a surprise. And now I was on the hook.

 

To be fair, a lot of the fundamental elements needed to tackle Star Trek had already been developed... but we had no formal editor for the new advanced processing features. A lot of this was still being done with pen, paper, and hex editors. Furthermore, the sequences themselves were wholly uncooperative. Very little in the game could simply be colorized offline because the animations were responsive to what was happening beneath the glass on the playfield... That’s pinball!

 

 

Factor into that 3-D rendered spaceships and explosions, 18 different gameplay modes, 3 different wizard modes, Vengeance fights, warps, spins, galactic away teams, and on and on. Without realizing the difficulties, I asked Dave Timmer, an experienced ColorDMD developer, to take it on and he was excited to get going. By the middle of the year, after running into endless obstacles with the tools, Dave had managed to color all he could do. We did the only thing we could at the time... take a break and regroup.

 

 

The theory was that if tackled games with smaller incremental challenges, in the end that would probably help toward completing Star Trek. Dave (and the rest of the development team) moved on to a number of games that provided new challenges, and I tried to keep up. Over the next two years, we would complete many titles and the coloring engine evolve significantly to the point we thought we could take another stab at Star Trek.

 

I picked at different sections whenever I could squeeze time between helping to solve issues on other projects. There was progress but slower than I hoped [and I still felt on the hook to find a way to get ST done]. I asked Chris Enright to take over as lead, and I would focus on the remaining technical issues.

 

 

 

Chris started stitching together the foundation that Dave had created along with the pieces I added. I continuously nudged Eric Priepke to help out where he could. Eric had recently completed coloring TWD which was a feat in and of itself. He wanted (or needed) some less daunting challenges and took off on a tear working through WPC games, while filling in some labor intensive bits on ST. Chris asked for help with reference coloring and so I jumped in to provide some anchor points while he controlled the engine to animate the sequences and flag the places where the coloring engine was still falling short.

 

 

And this is how it went... we quadruple-teamed ST over a period of 2.5 years to get it done. The heart of it belongs to Chris as he spent the better part of this year pounding through animation after animation in time to show it off for the Chicago Pinball Expo. And it's glorious.

 

There's really too much animation in this game to show it off in a single preview or even a short video. The crew at Stern did an amazing job with this game. We've never seen anything like it or so difficult to color (although Walking Dead is a close second). We hope we did the team justice, and that you take some time to discover (or rediscover) it all for yourself.

 

 

 

The ColorDMD for Star Trek pinball machines shares the same easy-to-install hardware platform as previous ColorDMD releases. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMA ROM that supports WPC, WPC95, SAM, Whitestar, and SPIKE platforms. Multicolor operation is enabled through download and installation of a game-specific color ROM file, available from our site. ROMs can be changed at any time, allowing use with any of our supported titles.

 

 

 

Displays are shipping now from our store site or through our distributors. The color ROM for Star Trek pinball machines is targeted for preview at Chicago Expo this week and for public release by Friday, October 13!

 

For more information, please visit us at http://www.colordmd.com.

Copyright [emoji767] 2017 ColorDMD Displays LLC, All rights reserved.

You are receiving this email because you requested additional information or opted in at our website at http://www.colordmd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

 

Ordered mine last night. [emoji847][emoji847][emoji847][emoji847]

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Pinball definitely teaches patience :)

 

Scott, I can't even remember when we put the colordmd in ours [emoji23]

 

Haha another true believer Dave. As if STLE isn't eye candy enough this will tip it over the edge. Just make sure @Batman Fan doesn't get jealous of all the time you are going to be staring at STLE again :lol

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Star Trek colour DMD

 

I've pinged randy to see if I can get some sort of volume deal. I have a half dozen pins to do so it was worth asking. At the moment my estimate is $542 per piece landed no discount depending on exchange rate. So only ~$32 cheaper per dmd via single shipments due to free shipping.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I've pinged randy to see if I can get some sort of volume deal. I have a half dozen pins to do so it was worth asking. At the moment my estimate is $542 per piece landed no discount depending on exchange rate. So only ~$32 cheaper per dmd via single shipments due to free shipping.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Will he reduce invoice to help escape the GST?

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Sweet thanks for letting us know the rom is online and available.

 

- Con

 

Make sure you download the correct version for the DMD you have. Forgot I swapped out the STLE for a later version and was wondering why it wasn’t working. :lol

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Im checking out the colorDMD support pg

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_chroma.html - host has listed a chroma file to download

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_colordmd.html host hasn't a file to download, my controller board is 1.3A

 

chrome file wouldn't work with my board im guessing, anyone installed on older controller boards ?

 

- Con

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I have had one in mine for 2 years.......patiently waiting.

 

Me too. Picked it up at Expo in Chicago 2 years ago. Had it on Blue until yesterday.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Will he reduce invoice to help escape the GST?

 

No he wont.

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Im checking out the colorDMD support pg

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_chroma.html - host has listed a chroma file to download

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_colordmd.html host hasn't a file to download, my controller board is 1.3A

 

chrome file wouldn't work with my board im guessing, anyone installed on older controller boards ?

 

- Con

 

But the second link you posted does have a file to download!

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Im checking out the colorDMD support pg

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_chroma.html - host has listed a chroma file to download

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_colordmd.html host hasn't a file to download, my controller board is 1.3A

 

chrome file wouldn't work with my board im guessing, anyone installed on older controller boards ?

 

- Con

 

I did, yesterday.

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But the second link you posted does have a file to download!

 

Mr Koops, ya tripping me man :blink: where is it, I only see Star Trek The Next Generation ColorDMD 3.2 ROM Update

 

I did, yesterday.

 

Sweet, chroma it is.

 

Cheers fellas lets see how it goes.

 

- Con

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Im checking out the colorDMD support pg

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_chroma.html - host has listed a chroma file to download

 

http://www.colordmd.com/support_firmware_colordmd.html host hasn't a file to download, my controller board is 1.3A

 

chrome file wouldn't work with my board im guessing, anyone installed on older controller boards ?

 

- Con

 

If it’s still not working Con try another USB stick. My first attempt loaded ok on the USB but the led that has to blink 5 times on the DMD just kept blinking and not locking. Tried it twice then did the download again on another USB and loaded straight away.

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If it’s still not working Con try another USB stick. My first attempt loaded ok on the USB but the led that has to blink 5 times on the DMD just kept blinking and not locking. Tried it twice then did the download again on another USB and loaded straight away.

 

Thanks Scott, chroma.rom is for the A1 boards ( chroma ) and colordmd.rom if for the REV 1 thru to 1.4

 

chroma.rom will not be detected however renaming the file to colordmd detects it. Sweet in a few moments ill have a game, no lights on the controller board now and nothing coming up on the front screen.

 

Ill try reinstalling the firmware to see if that works, or resetting the 40-pin LVDS cable that connects the circuit board and LCD display so that can reset the dmd.

 

Moving forward, has anyone successfully installed a REV 1.3A board with chroma.rom and if so did they rename the file so that it can be recognized.

 

Cheers.

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