[Eduardo Knuckles]

As amount of people already knowns, the Sonic Harder Project is a project created by me that include all the Sonic games. It aims to turn the games more extensive, and atractive, turning the levels more harder... In the Course of time, I've found more experience hacking, sure with help of a few friends, many do quite well known in the hacking scene.

I am actually working in the first Harder Project, that is working on Sonic 1 from Mega Drive. The game shows a lot of ported musics, new sonic animations, new level graphics, and new modified sound effects, and exclusively edited level layouts and palettes.

The most exclusively part from the hack is that him aims to restore features from another Sonic games, as the 'arrow/continuation' monitor, and musics from Master System's version of Sonic series.

There's the playlist that the game plays into the levels:

Green Hill Act 1 Green Grove Act 1 (Sonic 3D Blast)
Green Hill Act 2 Angel Island Act 2 (Sonic 3)
Green Hill Act 3 Evening Star (Knuckles Chaotix)

Marble Act 1 Aquatic Ruin *Original* (Sonic 2 Final)
Marble Act 2 Aquatic Ruin *Edited* (Sonic 2 Beta)
Marble Act 3 Volcano Valley Act 1 (Sonic 3D Blast)

Spring Yard Act 1 Casino Night (Sonic 2 Final)
Spring Yard Act 2 and 3 Casino Night (Sonic 2 Beta)

Labyrinth Act 1 Mystic Cave 2 Players (Sonic 2 Final)
Labyrinth Act 2 Mystic Cave 2P/Hidden Palace (Sonic 2 Beta)
Labyrinth Act 3 Hidden Palace (Sonic 2 Final)

Star Light Act 1 Rusty Ruin Act 1 (Sonic 3D)
Star Light Act 2 Rusty Ruin Act 2 (Sonic 3D)
Star Light Act 3 Mystic Cave (Sonic 2 Final)

Scrap Brain Act 1 Electric Egg (Sonic Chaos - Master System)
Scrap Brain Act 2 Scrap Brain in SMS version (Sonic 1 - Master System)
Scrap Brain Act 3 Panic Puppet Act 2 (Sonic 3D Blast)

Final Zone The Doomsday (Sonic & Knuckles)


First of all, thanks to all who have helped me with the bugs I've found in the wa of the work on this release.

Special credits to:

Nineko to create your fabulous xm2smps and xm3smps tool. Without it, my ports of SMS would not have been possible, and your music per-act tutorial.
Mistergambit to give me permission to use his beautiful beta backgrounds in my hack.
Tweaker to the help with sound effect porting.
Master3k by the s3 drum styles that have sended an special effect to the musics into my hack.
Puto to create the tutorial to add ss2 full spindash.
SCAA to the Sonic CD's sprites like Buzzbomber and Motobug.

All the people that got patience and gives me all the touch about the game details to improve.


An screenshot from the arrow monitor working on the hack:


Let's enjoy the hack !

Here's the download link (Hacking Contest 2013 Demo)
*Lastly updated: 8/30/2013*

This post has been edited by Eduardo Knuckles: 30 August 2013 - 12:32 PM

[ExecByte]

Good work so far. It's nice to see new level layouts.

[Eduardo Knuckles]

Thanks. I'm working on fixes in him, specially in GHZ for the next version.

[Master3k]

Good stuff you got there, Eduardo Knuckles.
My notes are
-Your AIZ 2 Music port...the volume of a channel sounded too high for me.
-Some rings on GHZ 1 are too high, even though I know this is Harder Levels.
-CONTINUE MUSIC IS AWESOME.
-[Old bug] The Sonic Team Presents screen...the positin of the writtings Eduardo Knuckles are in the very top of the screen. =P
[This post should be edited later].

[Spanner]

Great work as usual, although in SBZ Act 2 there's some mess that appears at this point.

Also the LZ background needs to be sorted out.
Overall, another good relase from you.

[Eduardo Knuckles]

Thanks, man.

By the way, I'll pay attention in this channel music to fix.
This rings in high of ghz are made of purpose. Some in the begining of GHZ act 1 are close of a set of spikes... htese second ones I've talked about, I will not move.

Continue Music is a port from Virtua Racing Deluxe.

Ehr, this screen showing ''Eduardo Knuckles TS'' I've already fixed, but you can view this fix only in the next patch.

[DalekSam]

Not very wise using a post on a hack, but this one is awesome.

All the music ports are great, level layouts that make the hack live up to its name, god, I keep getting game-overs on GHZ 1. This is HARD. And I hope your going to make the Final Boss unbeatable, somewhat like MegaMix, but harder.

This post has been edited by DalekSam: 22 March 2008 - 02:04 AM

[Graxer]

This hack is very good! I especially like the layouts.

I noticed however that in Marble Zone that the wall looks different underneath the shadow of the grass. I thought you should know incase you forgot to change it.

[Eduardo Knuckles]

DalekSam, on Mar 22 2008, 02:04 AM, said:

Not very wise using a post on a hack, but this one is awesome.

All the music ports are great, level layouts that make the hack live up to its name, god, I keep getting game-overs on GHZ 1. This is HARD. And I hope your going to make the Final Boss unbeatable, somewhat like MegaMix, but harder.

I'll do it. Thanks to remember.
You will notice that Labyrinth and Scrap Brain are the most harder levels into the game.

Graxer, on Mar 22 2008, 04:53 AM, said:

This hack is very good! I especially like the layouts.

I noticed however that in Marble Zone that the wall looks different underneath the shadow of the grass. I thought you should know incase you forgot to change it.

The main destiny from the hack is make the level harder but without destroy original layout styles from the original game.
The Marble Zone and Labyrinth zone tilesets are still unfinished in this release. To Labyrinth, I plan to remake the Master System style background, and to marble Zone, I plan change the level to got an most ruined castle look (like Aquatic Ruin/Neo Green Hill). Suggestions to both are accepted. Suggestions for level palettes are accepted too.

[Muzozavr]

Wow. I love this hack, THANK YOU!
Three things I'd like to mention:
1) In LZ2, there are a couple of places where sometimes you can pass through like normal, but sometimes you're beamed away at some unknown place and get absolutely stuck unless you reset or reload a savestate. I presume this is because the level warps, but why would it warp midway? And why this doesn't happen always?
2) In LZ3, you can almost totally skip the boss fight: When you come to the boss and start going up, there's a shield hanging. If you bop that shield from below, but do not go away, it will land right through you. Which means that Sonic is now inside a monitor.
Now the monitor is connected to a wall, and since for the game being in a monitor is the same as being in a wall, you can press the left arrow key to glitch through the wall, and after a long fall you get to the capsule. I don't think that it works in the original game, because, if I recall correctly, there's no shield in the necessary place in the original game.
3) This hack is HARD. :P

[SephyUK]

I think that this hack is probably taking a turn for the better, starting straight with the level layouts, as that is sometimes pretty neglected with some hacks (with the exception of hacks with new level art) and is a good idea to start with that.
I think I said on RH that this is a great hack so far, I really enjoyed the levels as they presented challenges, and I'm the kind of person that loves challenges and such, meaning I like this hack.
I'm very interested in how this hack develops.

I think that this hack is probably taking a turn for the better, starting straight with the level layouts, as that is sometimes pretty neglected with some hacks (with the exception of hacks with new level art) and is a good idea to start with that.
I think I said on RH that this is a great hack so far, I really enjoyed the levels as they presented challenges, and I'm the kind of person that loves challenges and such, meaning I like this hack.
I'm very interested in how this hack develops.

[Blanche Hodapp]

I've played this as far as Spring Yard, and I'm impressed with the work so far. I don't usually approve of music ports, especially those which take a different piece for each act, but yours seem to fit with the level designs quite well.

A couple of things, though;
1) This may just be me, but I feel the music in Spring Yard could be switched between acts. It felt a bit off going from the upbeat Casino Night from Sonic 2 Final to the beta's slower, more relaxed version.
2) Something I've not been able to recreate yet, but occasionally the bridges in Green Hill would fail to load properly, resulting in ugly fall-through gaps in places. On first play, the bridge at the start of Act 1 didn't load at all, which led me to believe there wasn't meant to be one, and so I jumped over the gap into an enemy who sent me falling back into the gap and to my death. It was only when the level reloaded that the bridge came into being.

In all, however, great work! I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

This post has been edited by Blanche Hodapp: 01 April 2008 - 08:42 PM

[nineko]

I just found some time to test this hack.

... awesome stuff.

[DerangedHermit]

That boss music is quite, uh...boss. Only Sonic 3 and Knuckles came close to the awesomeness of 3D Blast boss themes.

[Eduardo Knuckles]

Muzozavr, on Mar 25 2008, 10:52 AM, said:

Wow. I love this hack, THANK YOU!
Three things I'd like to mention:
1) In LZ2, there are a couple of places where sometimes you can pass through like normal, but sometimes you're beamed away at some unknown place and get absolutely stuck unless you reset or reload a savestate. I presume this is because the level warps, but why would it warp midway? And why this doesn't happen always?
2) In LZ3, you can almost totally skip the boss fight: When you come to the boss and start going up, there's a shield hanging. If you bop that shield from below, but do not go away, it will land right through you. Which means that Sonic is now inside a monitor.
Now the monitor is connected to a wall, and since for the game being in a monitor is the same as being in a wall, you can press the left arrow key to glitch through the wall, and after a long fall you get to the capsule. I don't think that it works in the original game, because, if I recall correctly, there's no shield in the necessary place in the original game.
3) This hack is HARD. :P

I found it in LZ2... And fixed. The cause of it is an badly positioned 128x128 layout in this part of level.
Thanks to talk about. Before your talk, I was not aware of the existence of this bug. Thanks.
I've fixed the ''monitor falls Sonic to the ground'' glitch putting some invisible walls/floors close to the monitors.
When the monitor falls, it now kills Sonic instead of fall him at the ground. Same kind of it I found in Marble Zone, and I have fixed too.

Sephiroth, on Mar 25 2008, 11:13 AM, said:

I think that this hack is probably taking a turn for the better, starting straight with the level layouts, as that is sometimes pretty neglected with some hacks (with the exception of hacks with new level art) and is a good idea to start with that.
I think I said on RH that this is a great hack so far, I really enjoyed the levels as they presented challenges, and I'm the kind of person that loves challenges and such, meaning I like this hack.
I'm very interested in how this hack develops.

I think that this hack is probably taking a turn for the better, starting straight with the level layouts, as that is sometimes pretty neglected with some hacks (with the exception of hacks with new level art) and is a good idea to start with that.
I think I said on RH that this is a great hack so far, I really enjoyed the levels as they presented challenges, and I'm the kind of person that loves challenges and such, meaning I like this hack.
I'm very interested in how this hack develops.

I promisse to post here some videos from the game develope's progress to the people can view and talk about and gives your opinions about it.

Blanche Hodapp, on Apr 1 2008, 08:42 PM, said:

I've played this as far as Spring Yard, and I'm impressed with the work so far. I don't usually approve of music ports, especially those which take a different piece for each act, but yours seem to fit with the level designs quite well.

A couple of things, though;
1) This may just be me, but I feel the music in Spring Yard could be switched between acts. It felt a bit off going from the upbeat Casino Night from Sonic 2 Final to the beta's slower, more relaxed version.
2) Something I've not been able to recreate yet, but occasionally the bridges in Green Hill would fail to load properly, resulting in ugly fall-through gaps in places. On first play, the bridge at the start of Act 1 didn't load at all, which led me to believe there wasn't meant to be one, and so I jumped over the gap into an enemy who sent me falling back into the gap and to my death. It was only when the level reloaded that the bridge came into being.

In all, however, great work! I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

In the next version I think if can be good to put the Casino Night 2P music instead of it. Another thing that is in my mind, is to use a music from Sonic Advance (Still secret one) in SYZ Act 2, and Casino Night 2P in Act 3.
Suggestions I consider.

nineko, on Apr 3 2008, 03:16 PM, said:

I just found some time to test this hack.

... awesome stuff.

Thank you for play it.