Android DMD (or LED) Animated Table shown prior to beginning a game does not show.

[bigvaughn57]

There are many tables (ex: Theater of Magic, Taxi, Medieval Madness, etc.) that the animated DMD does not show in the pregame table model (rotating model that you play the game in). It doesn't affect gameplay (obviously) but it does affect the overall experience aesthetically. When you compare the Models w/ either a static picture of what would appear on the DMD (title screen or just a black box - as if the machine was off when they took a picture of the backglass) and a table where it is working (ex: STNG, Attack from Mars, Whitewater) the latter are noticeably more "finished looking. I spoke w/ Pinball Arcade Support and they said it was a bug - but gave no indication they gave a rip about it...

 

[Kolchak357]

You probably guessed correctly. If it doesn't hurt gameplay it most likely isn't high on the priority list. Game breaking bugs come first, and there are still some of them out there. But yeah, little touches like that would be nice to have.

And welcome to the forum.

 

[bigvaughn57]

Yeah - it just seems like it would be a pretty simple thing to do....maybe just mapping the DMD or LED displays to show in a prescaled area on the Table model. If one had the Farsight Developer table models one might think it would take maybe 1 or 2 minutes a table to edit and export.
Oh well....I guess I'm just a sucker for the aesthetics.

You probably guessed correctly. If it doesn't hurt gameplay it most likely isn't high on the priority list. Game breaking bugs come first, and there are still some of them out there. But yeah, little touches like that would be nice to have.

And welcome to the forum.

 

[Rudy Yagov]

Kind of nitpicky, but they're not LEDs, they're gas displays. There are third-party LED displays that you can buy to replace the gas displays, but they didn't come with them from the factory.

 

[TomL]

Kind of nitpicky, but they're not LEDs, they're gas displays. There are third-party LED displays that you can buy to replace the gas displays, but they didn't come with them from the factory.

Thank you so much for pointing out about the gas discharge tube displays. From what I can tell, it's a tiny neon-like tube. Here's a page I found about someone rebuilding a FP table, gives lots of technical details:

http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/staff/mcsele/Pinball.html

 

[Carl Spiby]

It's a performance thing, ideally they would like animated backglass and DMD on the model but Android devices can't push enough pixels whilst maintaining playable framerates.

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

I spoke w/ Pinball Arcade Support and they said it was a bug - but gave no indication they gave a rip about it...

Since it doesn't effect gameplay it's not a high priority. Also to fix it would require an update of the resources for those tables (large download). And we prefer to only update resources when we have multiple fixes.

Also as Carl said it can cause performance issues on some older phones.

 

[TomL]

It's a low priority bug as others have stated, but for completeness sake, here's what's buggy and working on Android 1.15.0:

buggy tables where the backglass score display doesn't animate during attract mode:
BOP
CC
CEN
DD
EATPM
FH
MM
MB
NGG
PB
RBION
SpSh
TOTAN
TAXI
TOM
WhWi

working tables where the backglass animates during attract mode:
AFM
TCP
CV
CFTBL
HD
ScSt
STTNG
TZ
WhWa

No animation, as designed:
BS
BH
BK
CP
FP
GEN
GG

 

[bigvaughn57]

It's a low priority bug as others have stated, but for completeness sake, here's what's buggy and working on Android 1.15.0:

buggy tables where the backglass score display doesn't animate during attract mode:
BOP
CC
CEN
DD
EATPM
FH
MM
MB
NGG
PB
RBION
SpSh
TOTAN
TAXI
TOM
WhWi

working tables where the backglass animates during attract mode:
AFM
TCP
CV
CFTBL
HD
ScSt
STTNG
TZ
WhWa

No animation, as designed:
BS
BH
BK
CP
FP
GEN
GG

Thank you for clearing that up - half the previous responses weren't even remotely related to the bug I was referring to. Kinda disappointing that even the farsight employee gave a bogus response. Uh - if it's a performance, how come the newer more robust tables (ex: stng, twilight zone, Champion Pub) can display the DMD in attract mode on my Android device without any lag?

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Thank you for clearing that up - half the previous responses weren't even remotely related to the bug I was referring to. Kinda disappointing that even the farsight employee gave a bogus response. Uh - if it's a performance, how come the newer more robust tables (ex: stng, twilight zone, Champion Pub) can display the DMD in attract mode on my Android device without any lag?

DMD doesn't cause performance issues. The plasma displays (older style) are a massive performance hit. Notice the list of tables where it shows during attract mode are all DMD only.

As for DMD tables like Tales, Theater, Medieval, those didn't have that tech when we shipped, which is why it's missing. And since its a low priority issue, we haven't updated an entire 30MB resource to fix that. We'd prefer to clump multiple art fixes together.

BOP - Plasma
CC - This actually went out as a bug. It's on my whiteboard as a todo fix.
CEN - Plasma
DD - Plama
EATPM - Plasma
FH - Plasma
MM - Done before we had the tech
MB - Done before we had the tech
NGG - Done before we had the tech
PB - Plasma
RBION - Done before we had the tech
SpSh - Plasma
TOTAN - Done before we had the tech
TAXI - Plasma
TOM - Done before we had the tech
WhWi - Plasma

 

[TomL]

Thanks for the update. On the tables where the animation is in place, it looks awesome.

 

[bigvaughn57]

Thanks for the update & I look forward to those DMD updates to the older (and newer: Cactus Canyon) tables (even if it'll be years from now

DMD doesn't cause performance issues. The plasma displays (older style) are a massive performance hit. Notice the list of tables where it shows during attract mode are all DMD only.

As for DMD tables like Tales, Theater, Medieval, those didn't have that tech when we shipped, which is why it's missing. And since its a low priority issue, we haven't updated an entire 30MB resource to fix that. We'd prefer to clump multiple art fixes together.

BOP - Plasma
CC - This actually went out as a bug. It's on my whiteboard as a todo fix.
CEN - Plasma
DD - Plama
EATPM - Plasma
FH - Plasma
MM - Done before we had the tech
MB - Done before we had the tech
NGG - Done before we had the tech
PB - Plasma
RBION - Done before we had the tech
SpSh - Plasma
TOTAN - Done before we had the tech
TAXI - Plasma
TOM - Done before we had the tech
WhWi - Plasma

 

[Punisher]

I hope that in some time in the future, we can get a view of these animated DMDs, as well as the playfield, like in CV. It would be a nice touch.