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RetroHack

From Sonic Retro

Revision as of 07:21, 17 December 2008 by SOTI (talk | contribs)

Template:Infobox Website RetroHack is a small-time ROM hacking community created and run by PsychoSk8r and is also co-run by redhotsonic. It provides hosting to certain ROM hacking projects, and strives for a user-friendly approach to Sonic ROM hacking. It has a community mostly full of members from the SSRG; however, it also has a small, unique memberbase. It intends to become a bigger name in the Sonic ROM hacking community, and provides many services that help it to achieve that goal.

At the end of January 2008, the server died & RetroHack was down for 2 weeks. RetroHack re-opened on the 12th February, at 5:30pm GMT, after having been restarted from scratch. It is currently offline until further notice.

The Plans

Current plans for the website include:

  • A brief history section of each of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, where PsychoSk8r will give his own opinion on each of the games, and provide screenshots, cheats, as well as other things. (In Progress)
  • Artwork from a chosen artist at the RetroHack forums. (In Progress)
  • An archive of various music from the Sonic series, in mp3 format.
  • Various hacking guides, some written by PsychoSk8r himself.
  • A proper main page, in order to improve the accessibility of the website. (In Progress)
  • A brief personal review of some of the more established hacks in the scene.
  • 200MB worth the webspace for any hacks that look promising; however, it comes under the condition that the hostee will actively update his page.
  • An extensive emulation section focused around the Sonic series, including downloads for the likes of Sonic Jam, Sonic R, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, the MegaDrive series of games, the Sonic Advance series, the Sonic Rush series, and, with luck, the possibility of the nextgen series of games. Due to some demand, there may also be downloads for PC versions of certain games. (In Progress)

The Rise and Fall of RetroHack

On a lucky break, PsychoSk8r signed a contract with an old accomplice for web hosting, getting it at a cheap rate (£15 per month) for 1TB worth the space and bandwidth. This helped his plans towards establishing RetroHack. The name RetroHack was thought of off the top of PsychoSk8r's head; he didn't want Sonic in the title, as he wanted it not just to be a Sonic-based ROM hacking community, but to be open to other types of ROM hacks as well. RetroHack started as a PHPBB based forum, and attracted a few members. After a fortnight of being up, due to the software, the board was spammed. This led to the decision of switching to IPB. Once RetroHack was switched to IPB, it recieved a better look and feel, and opened up more forums for members to discuss subjects other than ROM hacking. After a good 5 months, the server failed.

The Resurrection

After 9 days of downtime, PsychoSk8r got together with his host to talk about what could be done about the excessive downtime. After some discussion, plans of moving to a new server were put into immediate action. After a few days, the site was back online.

PsychoSk8r wasn't too pleased with the idea of a complete restart, so after hunting through 500gb of data, he found minor pieces of the old RetroHack, and decided to completely restart; however, he only restored certain portions from the old RetroHack page.

RetroHack reopened on the February 12th, 2008, at 5:30pm GMT, supporting a new, sleek design, with subtle references to the old RetroHack theme. Shortly after reopening, a popular skin among some members, "SSRG-like," had returned, with the approval of OrdosAlpha.

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