It has been a while since my last release for the Master System, this game reflects my growth with regards to coding on the Sega Master System. I now have a Sega Master System and am able to test the game as it progresses on the real machine. This game uses banking which I had not got to work before and also a new and improved soundmanager code, I can now kind of get NES & Gameboy like sounds, out of the Master System, by emulating how their APU chips manage sounds. The game initially started on the Sega Game Gear, which will also be getting a RingDash game released in due course. The game started out, without using banking and was looking similar to the previous version, GemDash. I wanted to put more graphics in to this version, and decided to experiment with over sized sprites on a 8x8 background maze. I found this to work fine, and then wondered, if I could mix and match 16x16 tiles also into the level design. This also worked, so I then went through the trial and error phase of graphics design, limiting myself to the Master Systems colour palette. It can have 16 colours from a possible choice of 64, with 3 brightness ranges for Red, Green or Blue colours. But emulators also make the colours brighter and pixel perfect, which is not the case when running on the real machine on a TV screen. The graphics were constantly tweeked throughout the project, with the water levels, or rather the first one, taking more time than any other. As these levels have a colour scrolling effect, which animates the background water. They would look fine on the Emulator, but would be too bright on the TV and would hide where the player was. This can sometimes be the case, with other levels, due to the limited colour ranges, sometimes they are either too bright or too dark. Hopefully I have made the right choices. I won't have this issue with the GameGear as it has an increased colour palette over the Master System.

The next issue was Sound effects and Music, I wanted better sounds out of the Master System, but there is nothing in hardware to enable this. So I had to figure out how I would enable Volume sweeping and Tone/Frequency sweeps, like they have on the NES and GameBoy. I had tried before in the past and failed, but managed to get them working this time. Next was to come up with a music format, which could use the Sound Effects code as a virtual instrument, to play with. I am now able to pack a note (which can be one of 2 Octaves ) and a simple temple adjustment value into one byte. This has enabled me to reduce how much memory a song can take up.

I will make a video soon on my channel explaining about banking on the Master System and Game gear, as this will help people to make larger games. If you want to learn more about coding on the Master System then check out my YouTube channel 'Retro C Game Programming'