GAME 75! SURF'S UP!
ColorDMD is excited to announce that Baywatch is the 75th game to receive support from the ColorDMD multicolor display platform, and first full-color release for the new ColorDMD X-LED 192x64 display!
The X-LED display and support for Baywatch were recently previewed at the Texas Pinball Festival and Midwest Gaming Classic.Featuring more than 12,000 individual RGB LEDs, every rendered frame of Baywatch contains 3x the graphic content of a standardDMD. That's a lot of dots!
Baywatch was colored by veteran developer, Eric Priepke, and follows his work on Black Rose and Shrek released earlier this year. Eric loves a technical challenge, and Baywatch certainly delivered! Some challenges were familiar... Baywatch contains two different videomodes, and many other game-driven animation sequences like Trapped Diver and Chopper Rescue that vary individual elements in the animation frames based on the action under glass.
Baywatch contained a new challenge as well, incorporating the most complex choreographed score animation sequences we've encountered on any game. As numbers flip on the scoreboard, the sun glitters across fully animated crashing waves while full-color jetskiers,boats, helicopters, birds, and more careen across the screen in the background.
Eric uniquely colored every dynamic element, and devised a transparent window-like effect for the score to improve it's visibility without detracting from the background. It's not only beautiful, but (under the hood) a technically very impressive feat as objectsmove behind and between the numbers. Moreover, Eric was able to make it work with different scoring fonts as the number of players ranges from one to six.
Let's not forget the challenge of painting all the full-motion video frames scattered throughout Baywatch! Hunting through 5 seasons of Baywatch to find seconds-long video clips of running lifeguards and sunbather sequences can be grueling... but someone hadto do it. Down to the last one. [Ed. Eric got a bit of a pass on this... though my wife never bought into my explanations about the importance of the work I was doing.]
There are so many cool high-resolution animations in this game, it's tough to do it justice in a short game announcement and preview. We're not even going to reveal Squid Girl or Squid Pops! OK, maybe just this one.
The color ROM for Baywatch is designed for use with the new ColorDMD X-LED 192x64 display. The X-LED shares the same Chroma controller board as previous products. All displaysship with the factory installed SIGMA ROM that supports custom selection of a single-color. 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, allowinguse with any future X-LED supported titles.
X-LED displays are available for preorder now from our site, with a target shipping date of May 5. The color ROM for Baywatch pinball machines will be released when displays begin shipping!A video preview for Baywatch will be available prior to release.
For more information, please visit us atwww.colordmd.com.