Dazzler promo video, first look

I'm delighted to announce that Gameduino Dazzler will be run by the excellent people at Crowd Supply. The pre-launch page is here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/excamera/gameduino-3x-dazzler, where you can sign up for email updates.

A crowdfunding campaign needs a video. So my focus this week has been gathering random clips for it -- an edit order will come later. Fortunately the Dazzler's entire purpose is making images, so there's plenty of things to feature.

Most of these screenshots are linked to short video snippets. One thing to bear in mind is that this is 30 fps video, but the Dazzler output itself is 60 fps. So the real-life Dazzler is significantly smoother than the video clips.

To start with, all the existing Gameduino demos all run on the Dazzler, since it's 100% compatible with the rest of the BT815-based Gameduino 3X series. This "sprites" demo -- which dates back to the original Gameduino 1 -- will be in the video somewhere.


Another oldie-but-goodie, the spinning spaceship "Cobra" demo, looks crisp at 1280x720:


The Dazzler's built-in text mode is a really useful feature, but not quite as eye-catching. So some tilted camera angles will give it a bit more pizzazz:


On Saturday I had a lot of fun putting together a custom intro sequence. Here's a layer-by-later buildup - the finished "flying logo" clip is linked at the end. First a static background. It's some perspective lines stretching away to the horizon:


The next layer is the horizontal grid. This is a 1D texture, stretched across the screen, so only takes a few bytes.


Now for that flying logo. Another bitmap:


This thing is crying out for a glow layer. The glow uses a full-screen bitmap which is a gaussian blur of the logo:


Adding it on top gives a gentle glow:


Or by overbrightening it, a blown-out look:


Here's the complete 7-second animation: https://excamera.com/files/newsletter/grid.mp4

Thanks for reading.