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Thorn

From Sonic Retro

Revision as of 23:34, 26 November 2009 by Thorn (talk | contribs) (Stub on Sonic 2 Retro Remix no longer needed, since a full article was made.)

<forumuser name="Thorn" /> Thorn is a Tech Member on Sonic Retro and high-ranking competitor and forum admin on The Sonic Center. He is currently working on Sonic 2 Retro Remix with DNXDelta, and was a member of the original team working on Sonic 1 Pixel Perfect.

Beginnings

Thorn began hacking as a joke project for The Sonic Center titled Generic Recolor Adventure, a hack of Sonic 2 with Sonic and Tails recolored and renamed after himself and another TSC member, RPGnutter. Using an outdated level design guide from SSRG, the hack progressed into a palette and layout hack. After receiving a fair amount of constructive criticism, the hack was posted on SSRG and met with sentiments along the lines of "the hack is fun, but ewwwww recolors". Sonic and Tails were restored to their former color scheme, and the hack eventually became known as Sonic Turbo. The hack was discontinued on August 8, 2007, at which point it saw its first release on Sonic Retro with poor music imports using the Sonic 2 Beta Sound Driver, a quirky power-up system, unfinished level designs, and some artwork done by JcFerggy and DNXDelta. Despite its shortcomings, the hack was generally well-received. The sample level design seen in SSRG's tutorial is visible both in this hack and in old releases of Sonic 2 Retro Remix.

Sonic 1 Pixel Perfect

While contributing art to Sonic Turbo, JcFerggy had mentioned the possibility of getting together a team to design a Sonic 1 hack. He, Thorn, and DNXDelta started on the hack shortly after Sonic Turbo was finalized. Disagreements occured when Thorn attempted to do more than simple level designs, summed up by the following lines from a convo on MSN Messenger:


JcFerggy says:

Its just from the start, I wanted to make a "not so technical" sonic hack

Thorn says:

which is fine

I just wanna know how some technical aspects are hurting the game

You can't get by on art alone any more. ASM's become a prerequisite.


Thorn's desire to implement features such as specific music and palettes for each act tended to go against JcFerggy's view of a simple hack. Problems also arose as JcFerggy and Thorn often would not receive each other's latest work until long after it was finished, creating problems when art and level design had to be redone to accomodate the new data. NovaWizard eventually joined the hacking team, leading to more tension as Thorn doubled the amount of possible level slots to accomodate two level designers (the latest version of Sonic 1 Pixel Perfect includes both a palette-per-act system and extra acts). On October 12, 2007 at 11:05pm EDT, all four contributors met in one MSN Messenger conversation, and the following was announced:


JcFerggy says:

Nova and I are going to split off from the hack, taking what we both have created, and continue working on it, but just with the two of us. You two can continue working on a hack togeather, or you can do what ever, since DNX now has the SCAA, and latly he has been doing some compressed art, and Thorn has enough ideas to fill 3 peoples jobs. We still plan to keep the name "Pixel Prefect", and to make sure there will be no major conflicts, I have removed all of the stuff that Thorn and DNX have sent me, we would like you to do the same for us. I'm going to ask that the topics be closed, so that we can start a new one, and that Thorn can also make one if he wishes.


After the team split in two, Tweaker took it upon himself to do some detective work. Tweaker spoke with DNXDelta the following day and found that DNXDelta was not actually kicked from the team, but was said to be for the sake of making Thorn's ousting seem more tactful. Tweaker reported this to Thorn, and DNXDelta admitted it to Thorn himself five minutes afterwards. DNXDelta left Sonic 1 Pixel Perfect two days after the team split up, and informed Thorn both of this and of a conversation with Tweaker regarding Thorn and DNXDelta possibly doing work on Sonic 2 Megamix in the future. Thorn confirmed this with Tweaker shortly afterwards. Whether this was truly an invitation to do work or a tactful way of getting Thorn and DNXDelta back to hacking is unclear, but the work the two of them did afterwards went on to become Sonic 2 Retro Remix. Some layouts done for Sonic 1 Pixel Perfect were later used for Sonic 1 Remastered.