DECEMBER 21 IS COMING!
December 21 is rapidly approaching which means only one thing. Winter is almost here! Unless you're located in the Southern hemisphere, in which case you may need to wait six months to enjoy ColorDMD's 69th supported title and first for the SPIKE platform,Game of Thrones!
Game of Thrones was masterfully colored by veteran developer, Dave Timmer, who has a long list of ColorDMD credits. Dave was the lead developer for Shadow, Road Show, Demolition Man, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Monopoly, Apollo 13, and Terminator 3 and providedsupporting contributions on many other titles including Star Trek, World Cup Soccer, and Transformers.
Dave started work on Game of Thrones back in 2015 while taking a break from Star Trek, which had run into a few technical obstacles. Even though GoT would be our first SPIKE game, we had established SPIKE support for the SIGMA platform and completed foundationalwork to support colorization. Coupled with Dave's prior experience tackling full-motion video on Transformers, we thought this "might be an easier challenge while we continued to focus improvements to return to ST".
Suffice to say that the next time I suggest to Dave that something might be "easier," I'm likely to receive a well-deserved punch in the mouth. Two years (and what Dave estimates to be around 450 hours) later, GoT represents the single largest work of uniquecolorized frames (more than 9,200) ever delivered! It's an opus!
For a long time, we feared that the color ROM would be too large to fit existing ColorDMD boards. It took several iterations and improvements to the ROM compression algorithms to find a way to make it fit -- and even then, just barely! However, as a result,we are excited to say that the GoT release is compatible with all Chroma and Rev 1.3B controller boards, as well as Pro, Premium, and LE versions of the game!
Besides improved ROM compression, development for GoT required several other technical improvements including expanded color support, new techniques for hand-painting 3D rendered animation, as well as a complete rewrite of the DMD input interface to work around differencesin video format between SPIKE and other games. (But hey, what else did I have to do?)
However the credit for this title belongs to Dave. His tenacity, attention to detail, and gentleman's patience through long waits for me to catch up and fill in missing pieces is nothing short of incredible. The results for GoT are stunningly beautiful andI hope owners will appreciate the massive investment Dave made to bring it to completion. Thanks also go to Dave's friends who helped pore over six seasons of television to identify references for the extensive animation packed into this game.
The ColorDMD for Game of Throne pinball machines shares the same easy-to-install hardware platform as previous ColorDMD releases. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMAROM 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 oursupported titles.
Displays are shipping now from our store site and through our distributors. The color ROM for Game of Thrones pinball machines is targeted for release when winter arrives on Thursday,December 21!
For more information, please visit us at www.colordmd.com.
December 21 is rapidly approaching which means only one thing. Winter is almost here! Unless you're located in the Southern hemisphere, in which case you may need to wait six months to enjoy ColorDMD's 69th supported title and first for the SPIKE platform,Game of Thrones!
Game of Thrones was masterfully colored by veteran developer, Dave Timmer, who has a long list of ColorDMD credits. Dave was the lead developer for Shadow, Road Show, Demolition Man, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Monopoly, Apollo 13, and Terminator 3 and providedsupporting contributions on many other titles including Star Trek, World Cup Soccer, and Transformers.
Dave started work on Game of Thrones back in 2015 while taking a break from Star Trek, which had run into a few technical obstacles. Even though GoT would be our first SPIKE game, we had established SPIKE support for the SIGMA platform and completed foundationalwork to support colorization. Coupled with Dave's prior experience tackling full-motion video on Transformers, we thought this "might be an easier challenge while we continued to focus improvements to return to ST".
Suffice to say that the next time I suggest to Dave that something might be "easier," I'm likely to receive a well-deserved punch in the mouth. Two years (and what Dave estimates to be around 450 hours) later, GoT represents the single largest work of uniquecolorized frames (more than 9,200) ever delivered! It's an opus!
For a long time, we feared that the color ROM would be too large to fit existing ColorDMD boards. It took several iterations and improvements to the ROM compression algorithms to find a way to make it fit -- and even then, just barely! However, as a result,we are excited to say that the GoT release is compatible with all Chroma and Rev 1.3B controller boards, as well as Pro, Premium, and LE versions of the game!
Besides improved ROM compression, development for GoT required several other technical improvements including expanded color support, new techniques for hand-painting 3D rendered animation, as well as a complete rewrite of the DMD input interface to work around differencesin video format between SPIKE and other games. (But hey, what else did I have to do?)
However the credit for this title belongs to Dave. His tenacity, attention to detail, and gentleman's patience through long waits for me to catch up and fill in missing pieces is nothing short of incredible. The results for GoT are stunningly beautiful andI hope owners will appreciate the massive investment Dave made to bring it to completion. Thanks also go to Dave's friends who helped pore over six seasons of television to identify references for the extensive animation packed into this game.
The ColorDMD for Game of Throne pinball machines shares the same easy-to-install hardware platform as previous ColorDMD releases. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMAROM 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 oursupported titles.
Displays are shipping now from our store site and through our distributors. The color ROM for Game of Thrones pinball machines is targeted for release when winter arrives on Thursday,December 21!
For more information, please visit us at www.colordmd.com.
