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Pin2DMD colorizations available

You are right. They are a business and have done a fantastic job building a great product and deserve the success they have.
 
Thing is the colour DMD uses the same £30 panels as the pin2dmd. Hefty markup there.

Yeah but they are warrantied and the value of colour DMD isn’t the panels - it’s the quality of the colourisations. Heaven forbid Shawn that anyone makes any money!! If you want to really get upset go price how much an iphone costs to make vs how much Apple sell it for yet they sell billions of pounds worth despite phones that are a third of the price “that do the same thing”.

Hell why does Ferrari ever sell a car!

I do love the engineer type thinking “I CAN MAKE THIS CHEAPER” of ****ing course you can! Rather than thinking how do I build something so good it will generate demand for itself. I reckon if colordmd was $200 more they wouldn’t have lost more than 1% of sales.

There will always be folks who want to spanner their own open source solution but it’s a TINY minority of the market.


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On the flip side though, if it was $100 cheaper then people wouldnt even be looking at alternatives, and they would have sold a rake more. Horses for courses!

Cost out engineering! No thanks! We have too many engineers in the U.K. focused on cost reduction rather than on growth - it drives me mental although it’s a British cultural mentality.

But I doubt it Paul - I’ve met the guys than run colordmd many times and discussed a few features I’d like to see with the group buys and my own purchase I’ve bought a lot of them but I’ve bought as many for me as the group buy which was a saving of the VAT (so £80) and I didn’t have a huge number of orders... they are very smart folks and know the market very well - they will have looked at how much bigger the market gets if they make it cheaper vs using more money to build more colorisations.

And if you think of the LED option they have made it slightly cheaper. Look at ghostbusters and Star Trek as an examples - getting them colorised which was non trivial but sold a boat load he’ll a freaking container load.

The volume of games to be colourised is now super low given nearly all BW and Stern games are done and really the competition is games with LCDs in them.

They are still investing in new products and colourisations even in games where the market must be tiny (maverick?!).


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Neil, as you seem to know a load about color DMD. Do you know what way the colourisers (SP ?)get paid? Do they get a set amount per colourisation etc?

Just always wondered , thought they were volunteers/hobbyists doing it for their own games then selling on. Probably a lot more organised now
 
I don’t know but I’m pretty sure they are compensated as they are all under NDA.


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I will continue wondering then :rofl:
Guess they need to sign up for a game, so there's not five versions of a games made available at once (wasting peoples time) Could be done by a team of people etc etc

Cheers
 
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I spoke to one 'colordmd' artist who I met via the VP forums, he told me (he) got paid with free displays. He no longer colours for them, and he actually does not get into pin2dmd colouring.

Having seen the colour version of Star Trek LE on Pin2dmd and colordmd I would say they are as good as each other. Same with Spider Man.

Pin2dmd vs colordmd is like the following arguments:
Mac vs PC
CorelDraw vs Photoshop
Logic Audio vs Protools
Pinsound vs tilt audio

I have not seen a bad colourization of any game, as they are all better than having a single colour plasma DMD (oh make that original argument pin2dmd vs colordmd vs original DMD)....

I have no doubt that if it was not for pin2dmd - color dmd would be using solely LCD panels still.

Pin2dmd actually is (supposedly) run profit free - the license money 10 euro per activation goes to charity. Other people do make money out of them when they sell them pre made online.

Colordmd are also allowed to make profit!! That is why you mnufacture items and go into business.

I can understand why people like colordmd as you get them out the box, with supplied looms - plug them in and they work (after loading a small file via USB).

On a VP forum a while ago, someone had a conversion tool to go from colordmd to pin2dmd - this was taken down in minutes...... I did not download it (I've mentioend this before).

I keep saying to everyone, pay your money and make the choice that suits you. If money was no object then for ease I would pay £400 for each display.

The members of the pin2dmd team have also put 100s of hours worth of work into that product.
 
Personally - I think its great to have choice. I completely get why some people go for a full product - backed by a company and warranty, etc - and peace of mind that goes with it.

I enjoy the community that goes with Open Source. That's what attracted me to PIN2DMD. Really enjoyed interacting with the smart people that created the base product, and the passionate creatives that continue to release some lovely work.

With respect to quality - tough to complain about either PIN2DMD and ColorDMD from what I've seen (although I haven't seen every version of both!). They both produce a crisp, vibrant colour experience - how great is that!?.

From my experience, some of the colour translations are better than others (e.g. HS2 has some issues on PIN2DMD), but lots of examples where you can't tell the difference (e.g. Fish Tales).

As for price - its simple economics isn't it? Clearly the manufacturer has the price point set to what they feel is right and appropriate, and enough to keep them interested and investing, and the customers are happy to pay that price. Open Source - price is driven by volume.

Seems to me, whichever way you go - both are happy with their choice. Choice is good.
 
I'm currently doing a a file on my 24 with Pin2DMD using Pinball Browser, I cannot afford £400 on a display, so went for the alternative I have the Evo model. I can't tell you how many hours I've done colouring the scenes, I'm months into it and still a way off completion.
It makes me think I should have saved a little more and gone for a Colour DMD as the hours spent outlays the cost for the sure. It helps if a File has been done by someone else and a small fee paid for their hard work. Isnt one for 24 that I can find so the Hard work is on me, but next pin ill be checking if a files available if not I'll save up I think as its not an easy process to get it looking right
 
Just to add, I'm enjoying doing it and it looks good and I've options on the software to make it look less dot matrix ect, just im impatient and want it done quickly, and getting the right colours at the start of your pallette helps a lot
 
I will continue wondering then :rofl:
Guess they need to sign up for a game, so there's not five versions of a games made available at once (wasting peoples time) Could be done by a team of people etc etc

Cheers

No colordmd use a special software to do the colouring so if you don’t have that you can’t do it.

Disagree with pickholder on the quality of ST which I have seen on both - pin2dmd colours didn’t look so vibrant (could be settings) and there was definite lag which also occurs with colordmd but not as much.

If you like tinkering with stuff oin2dmd is great but IME enough goes wrong with pinballs that the last thing I want to be doing is ****ing about with the screen!



Neil


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@-NetzZwerg- 's files are very good. Extremely happy with Theatre of Magic, and the other files I have purchased off him.

Sadly I was disappointed with some of the colouring on WHITEWATER that I purhcased from another artist. The frame switching is a bit laggy.

Absolutely amazed NOBODY has done ADDAMS FAMILY GOLD. You can use the Addams family files in it (for the non gold rom) but some sequences are uncoloured.

Even with buying the colour files it still works out less than half the cost of a colordmd.

I pretty well put a pin2dmd in all the games I restore now. If they want colordmd - they can pay the extra. This has only happened once in over a dozen games.

Stern Star Trek is awesome (pin2dmd) but you must use the updated ROM file. Same with Family Guy and SpiderMan (Vault).
 
Is the .fsq file like a compiled version and I assume only editable if you have the source?

This is maybe an obvious question but I've never used the editor before, so wasn't sure.
 
You need a rom dump as well to edit the file.
I think you’ll also need the original project file to make changes. The only times these are passed on is if the author wants to pass the project onto someone else as they don’t have time to finish.
 
Is the .fsq file like a compiled version and I assume only editable if you have the source?
For Pin2DMD editor, .fsq and .pal are the output files for SD card for use on the DMD, they're created using a project which typically comprise a .xml and .ani file (at least) and the dump files in .raw or .gz format.
If you're referring to newer games coloured using Pinball Browser I'm not familiar with the process.
 
I spoke to him a month or so ago he's usually really prompt on the replies. Hope he's OK. You're trying on vpuniverse?
I tried to join vpuniverse and it put a dot at the end of the email address so i could not activate it
sent email from here and another site..
Mike sent him a email so is now sorted :clap:
He’s fit and well - thankfully! Hope he gets some more time to build on his cool content this year.
Thanks Mike,

Will have to send you some beer money...

Cheers
Dave
 
I tried to join vpuniverse and it put a dot at the end of the email address so i could not activate it
sent email from here and another site..
Mike sent him a email so is now sorted :clap:

Thanks Mike,

Will have to send you some beer money...

Cheers
Dave
Just had a great experience with Martin (NetzZerg), I needed TAF files for real pin. Sent him a donation (20 Euro) to get his attention, with my request in the Paypal note, he responded within hours. We exchanged messages on email after that, he was extremely prompt. A great guy, and the TAF is running very well. (not Gold).
I highly reccommend his work.

Respectfully
Rod
 
Is there files for 2007 Spider-Man,
They have one for the vault, and I do not believe you can put vault software in the original spiderman.

In the vault you have to put a file onto the SD card on the pin2dmd and then upload to the game a new BIN (rom) file....

I believe the flash memory on the original spiderman will not accept the vault software as its nearly 60mb, the original file is less than half that.

I can email you the files, the worst thing it will do is say it is not compatable
 
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