According to a reports, developer Under4MHZ has released a demo of 1992 classic Wolfenstein 3D for the SEGA Master System.
A retro SEGA forum explains some of the development process in more depth, including changes to the graphics, frame rate, and considerations of wall textures.
The creator gives further detail about different aspects of the game. Jewels and all other collectibles as well as points for valuable items can be accumulated. “The SG-1000 can only store 60 objects due to it’s 1K, so the objects are heavily culled for that platform. You can now shoot and kill guards and they animate when they’re hit. You can be shot, but only 1 health each time. Guards only shoot when visible to the player. This avoids any line of sight calculation from the guard. The guards are stationary. All enemies are shown as guards and take one hit to kill”.
Sprites are limited to one guard and one close object at a time. “It would be possible to show more objects when they are all further away, but this requires the sprite space to be managed depending on the sizes of the objects”. Object sprites alternate in appearance when there’s multiple in the scene. Limited colour palette means there are only 16 colours used for all the objects.
“The end of level screen is updated with the correct stats. The par value is always 1:50, I’ll have to go look at the original to see the what the actual values are. I fixed the door, so they stay open and then close when the player moves 3 spaces. This allows me to keep the simple logic of ignore all doors that close to the player when open”.
“So there’s some feedback when shot, the red channel of the palette is or’d with 1 to make it flash red”. The creator wants to further perfect shooting accuracy too. “It seems to favour one side over the other. Since it’s quite jumpy, I want to make the shooting range fairly forgiving. There’s also an alignment issue with the objects where they’re sometimes in the wall”.
“It may be possible to optimize it for speed more, but probably only 1fps or so. As an aside, it’s possible to do a full rotation in 4s on the original, and that’s what I’ve used as a reference for the fps vs rotation trade off. The first long corridor (behind the door) takes 4s as well on the original”.
With all of these technical improvements in the works, SEGA has the potential to join the likes of Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo consoles in sharing Wolfenstein 3D once again in the diverse world of retro gaming.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through those links. This comes at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!
