Doctor Who WIP

[byurick]

I'm very new to this colorization effort and trying to stumble my way through to get at least a basic working version of Doctor Who. I'll try to post updates here to help motivate me and ask questions (which will be a lot).

 

Ok first question, is it generally better to grab dump files of the screen directly from the pin (I have a real DW pin) or use the playfield.dev website? Wondering if that has anything to do with my current issue:

 

I started coloring some of the attract mode animations and first thing I noticed is that when the DW logo animation starts it seems to skip past the delay where you see the logo. Its almost like its playing too fast. Wondering if there's some simple thing I'm forgetting to do but its almost as if its ignoring the "delay" timer.

 

It also is playing the Time Stream animation twice instead of just once.

 

 

[lucky1]

If you have the real machine I would try to make a "complete" dump by removing the glass and rolling the ball by hand to trigger all scenes.

Use the RAW dumps preferably for WPC machines as they have accurate triggers.

[byurick]

Thanks for the reply. OK I will make dumps directly from my machine (I own DW). I have been able to solve some of my issues so far messing with different keyframes. I think the ones I was using to trigger weren't "clean" enough.

[FishTales10]

Make dumps with no SD card installed.  Tip I got from VBob when doing monopoly dumps.  I had done some with my current project installed and was told it wasn’t good to do it that way. 
 

[byurick]

Thanks for the tip. Still seeing some weirdness on the machine when I'm testing the animations (which work fine when using live preview) so I suspect I'll have to just record everything from the machine to get it right as some of them were colorized using dumps from the playfied.dev site.

[byurick]

Hoping can help explain this to me so I understand it better. I have two separate recordings I did some DW dmd screens and noticed that some scenes work and then at other times during gameplay the same scene will not longer work (not colorized). I went back and looked at some keyframes of the ones I noticed and saw this

 

 

I found two instances of the same animation/screen but the hash order is different which would explain why it sometimes was colorized and sometimes not. Is this just some quirk of how DW works?

[byurick]

If any colorization experts out there have a few minutes to spare I'd love to hear some tips on how to go about colorizing the multiball sequences on this game. I'm having issues finding how to get hashes to trigger scenes as it seems that nothing on the screen during this mode has any consistency and everything is moving. Happy to share a dump file if that helps (purely for research reasons of course).

[byurick]

How do you deal with different animations that all share a frame/hash sequence? There's at least 5 different animations/scenes that at one point all use the exact same frame in them (for example where the two doctors are just standing straight, see screenshot). It keeps re-triggering wrong scenes when that happens.

 

[lucky1]

Either put all variantions in one scene or use single frame scenes until the scenes are different.

[Offe]

Sorry to say I don't know anything about how to do the colorisations so can't offer any help, but I do appreciate your efforts!

 

I think color DMDs add a lot for games and I'd love to see it for DW.

[dtatane]

Hi, 

From my experience on past my colorisation projects, I end up splitting the scenes frame by frame and trigger each frame with the corresponding key frames.

 

 

In addition, when I dump the ROM and start to colorise, I skip all transition frames been under 20ms delay. It lowers the number of frames, let the machine (or your eyes) do the link. 

As an example, on Champion Pub; I started to color all frames like for this animation "pub-door" 

 

 

 

 

But it was a nightmare trying to find unique hash for all these frames because the hash may be the same one but on a different plane and you don't know in the end which scene will be trigerred !

 

I ended up skipping the 2 transition frames and set keyframes every 3 frames (the longest ones in delay) 

 

The result is smooth and you have no blank screens.

 

I highly use the "Check KeyFrame" button to make sure only 1 keyframe is trigerred when checking the recordings.

 

 

 

Being now more experienced, I'm considering using a lot more Layered ColorMAsk and LayeredReplaceMask that prevents a lot of frames from being colored completely and it also reduces the number of scenes and keyframes in the lists (ending in veeeeeery long loading times for the projects).

 

1St frame with the background colored : 

 

And then, only color the "moving part" of the scene on the next frames : 

 

I Hope this can help you a bit. If you have more questions and if I can help, do not hesite to send PM.

[byurick]

Thanks lucky1 I played around a bit with combining frames into one scene and I'm much closer to getting that part right.

 

@dtatane - thanks for the tips too, after lucky1's post I started playing with using "colormask layered" mode to do something similar to what you described rather than having many many single scenes I basically am using that mode to group them all into one so the list isn't so long.

 

I'm curious about your last two screenshots, I wasnt aware you could use those modes to only color parts of a frame scene. Any way you can describe how to do that in a bit more detail? Wondering if that could solve some of the issues I've been having with some other more complex scenes (for example the multiball scene with the 3 daleks and a moving background). I can PM you if that's easier.

 

Thanks again all!

[byurick]

Just a taste of what I've done so far (nothing fancy though)

 

 

Edited March 13, 2022 by byurick

[dtatane]

On 3/8/2022 at 10:56 PM, byurick said:

Thanks lucky1 I played around a bit with combining frames into one scene and I'm much closer to getting that part right.

 

@dtatane - thanks for the tips too, after lucky1's post I started playing with using "colormask layered" mode to do something similar to what you described rather than having many many single scenes I basically am using that mode to group them all into one so the list isn't so long.

 

I'm curious about your last two screenshots, I wasnt aware you could use those modes to only color parts of a frame scene. Any way you can describe how to do that in a bit more detail? Wondering if that could solve some of the issues I've been having with some other more complex scenes (for example the multiball scene with the 3 daleks and a moving background). I can PM you if that's easier.

 

Thanks again all!

 

Hi @byurick

 

For this topic, I would recommend the video tutorial here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tT3kNg49w

If you want to further discuss the topic -> PM !

 

[TelegramYosemiteSam]

Super excited to learn that someone is doing this! I've got a pin2dmd in my DW, but been too intimidated to try to figure out how to colorize on my own.

[byurick]

I've had little time to work on this project but for anyone interested in seeing what's been done so far here are the project files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lc0pa39v1rkuh9u/AACygR1qr8CXnIXLDQK3Td58a?dl=0

 

Feel free to make a local copy and work on fixing my many...many mistakes. But it's free and you get what you pay for

[nanuk]

wow can't wait for this to be be finish i love it so far great work

[sterpol]

Hi,
Is there anyway to get actual files for real pinball?

Regards.

[byurick]

On 10/28/2023 at 2:32 PM, sterpol said:

Hi,
Is there anyway to get actual files for real pinball?

Regards.

See my dropbox link above, there's a folder called pin2dmd-files that has the two files you need for your sd card.