Jazz2Online News

GOG's Ghostly Antics

Violet CLM — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 04:34:00 +0000

GOG has a new “GOG Patrons” program for people to pay them $5/month to aid in good-old-game restoration efforts. Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Secret Files is the first game you see in the background when you open the page!

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OpenGraph embed support for J2O

Violet CLM — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:33:00 +0000

Jazz2Online now has some OpenGraph support for individual downloads, articles, and news posts. When you link to these pages in websites that support OpenGraph—such as Discord, Tumblr, or Facebook—you may now see a link title and description specific to that page, rather than the default J2O description. There’ll even be a thumbnail of the first screenshot if you link to a download with one or more screenshots.

ETA: Snippets now too.

Also, j2pe files (example) are now given proper file previews. Since August 2020, we’ve recommended using the file extension j2pe instead of j2e for new episode files, because vanilla JJ2 crashes if there are too many j2e files. JJ2+ treats j2pe the same as j2e, and now J2O does too.

Thanks stijn for graciously giving me edit access to J2O, allowing me to fix some little issues like these that have built up over the years! I’ll take a look at the Site and Forum Rules, Questions & Feedback forum for more ideas, and maybe post a changelog in there… not every fix is going to be a big enough deal to warrant its own news post.

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.5

Violet CLM — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 02:18:49 +0000

Version 6.5 of JJ2+ is now available!

Today’s focus is Overtime. It could often come as a surprise whether overtime was enabled in online multiplayer, so now if you press F9 twice, there’s a new blue “OT” line among all the other advanced HUD info. If that line says “On,” you’ll know that the game will enter overtime if the time runs out and there’s a tie among winning players/teams.

Besides that, the rules have changed in Battle, Team Battle, Pestilence, and Team Battle: if there’s a tie for first place when the time runs out, and overtime is enabled, then the max score during overtime will be two points more than the highest current score. For example, if the max score is 10 but the two leading players only have 5 points when the time runs out, then the max score will be reduced to 7 (5+2) for the overtime period, and this reduced max score will be previewed in blue in the HUD.

(Overtime max score rules have not changed for other gamemodes, but we’re open to ideas.)

These visual changes only apply when both clients and servers are running the current version of JJ2+, 6.5, instead of older versions. We’ve also patched several bugs resulting from up-to-date clients joining older servers, but there are still more out there.

You can download 6.5 in-game or in-browser.

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.4

Violet CLM — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 22:35:00 +0000

Version 6.4 of JJ2+ is now available.

6.4 is focused on helping newer players understand JJ2+‘s vast array of multiplayer gamemodes. First, instead of ambiguous * and S symbols next to players’ names, we’ve added a series of graphical icons to signify different possible player states, such as a padlock for jailed players in Jailbreak. Second, the Esc menu now includes a new “Help” option which explains the current gamemode’s rules and objectives, styled after the official JJ2 manual. Mutators may add to or even overwrite the standard Help manual screens to explain their own gameplay, so players won’t have to constantly ask each other for instructions.

In Single Player or Cooperative, the Help option instead explains normal Jazz 2 gameplay and any pickups, objects, or enemies in the current level, based on language from the JJ2 manual and from the Prima strategy guide.

Finally, we’ve implemented a temporary alternate logo in the menu system to commemorate Burger, who ported Jazz Jackrabbit 2 to Macintosh computers in 1999, who died yesterday.

You can download 6.4 in-game or in-browser.

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Rebecca "Burger Becky" Heineman dies of cancer

Violet CLM — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 02:14:53 +0000

On February 4th, 1999, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was released as a native port to Macintosh computers. It ran with remarkable fidelity to the original version of the game, albeit with a few different cheat codes and without .j2b files. This was the work of Burger, a master game porter and developer, who continued to lead numerous important gaming projects in the decades thereafter. (And also write a webcomic.)

Burger is one theory for why we have a few files of the Jazz 2 source code, which has helped both JJ2+ developers and AngelScript coders. She kept the source to all her projects, and would occasionally leak some files to small groups of fans, like for the Myth series.

In early October this year, Becky was diagnosed with cancer. Based on reports from several of her friends on social media, after several days of intense pain and a grim conversation with her doctor, Becky passed away a few hours ago. We thank her for her service to Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and to the broader gaming community.

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.3

Violet CLM — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 04:08:00 +0000

Version 6.3 of JJ2+ is now available!

We took a break from the near-weekly feature releases to focus on an ongoing community discussion: how players (especially clients) in multiplayer servers should react to bullets shot by other players (especially enemies). We attempted to resolve this issue back in 5.8, without success, but there’s been renewed community interest, so we’ve rewritten the code and notably broken it down into three command settings, not just one.

When a client’s rabbit comes near a bullet, there are three different things that may cause the rabbit to move away from the bullet:

If a client locally thinks that their rabbit is touched by a bullet, and that bullet was shot by an enemy, and the client is not currently blinking, the client will locally launch their rabbit into the air in recognition that they’re about to be injured. Sometimes this results in them moving out of the bullet’s trajectory, so the server does not think the rabbit is ever touched by the bullet, and therefore no damage is ever done. This behavior can be disabled by the new /bulletpush command.
When a client rabbit is injured by a bullet, the client receives two sets of instructions for how far the rabbit should move: significantly upwards, like when a server rabbit or local splitscreen rabbit is shot, or not very far upwards, similar to touching a Hurt event. Based on network timing effects, either of these two instructions may arrive first and so it is largely random which one visibly happens. When /bulletpush is disabled, the new /injuryknockback command lets servers decide which of the two instructions to prioritize.
When a seeker, RF, or TNT bullet (or some custom weapons) explodes near a player, it sends that player flying away from the center of the explosion. Based, again, on network timing effects, this may or may not override either or both of the two instructions mentioned above. Disabling the new /blastknockback command turns off this blast effect for greater consistency across all weapons. Crucially, even when the command is disabled, your own blasts still affect you, so you can still perform RF climbs, TNT jumps, and so on.

This is admittedly very complicated, and we hope the community will be able to identify a preferred solution or two that feel good to all players in all use cases, rather than rely forever on these three separate—yet somewhat related—settings. In the meantime, though, /bulletpush and /blastknockback are both enabled by default, meaning that unless a server deliberately changes either or both settings, gameplay should remain unchanged from 6.2 and earlier. This experimentation is all opt-in.

Also, the above only applies to 6.3 clients in 6.3 servers. 6.3 clients in older servers, as well as older clients in 6.3 servers, will assume the default settings, which is to say, the gameplay from 6.2 and earlier.

Anyway, we also found time in the last couple months to track down some bug reports, targeting oversights from 5.12c, 6.0, and 6.1a. More excitingly, the Race HUD is now even better than in 6.2, especially in the track preview during the pregame.

You can download 6.3 in-game or in-browser

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2025 Jazz Jackrabbit 2 World Championship coming soon

Violet CLM — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 02:48:49 +0000

A new edition of the JJ2 World Championship is beginning, now at an alternate URL from its traditional one! The World Championship originated in 2004 and was JJ2’s first successful clan-based tournament, although this year has more of a focus on 2vs2 gameplay.

It looks like this edition will begin on Saturday August 9th, and there is a mappool posted, mostly with familiar names although “xlmbut” isn’t a level on J2O so that one may be a surprise. No rules have been posted yet, so maybe the same rules as from past tournaments. No instructions have been posted yet for how to join the tournament, but you could try sending a private message to organizer spejsboi, or emailing jj2wc3@gmail.com

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.2

Violet CLM — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 01:48:23 +0000

Version 6.2 of JJ2+ is now available, revitalizing Race mode! Race was a big feature in version 5.0, but it was gradually overshadowed by mutators, including the aptly named “race.mut.” This update changes Race mode in two major ways:

First, we realized that players weren’t happy with Race games ending as soon as any one player finished all the laps. That made sense for JJ2’s other multiplayer gamemodes, but it’s not how other racing games work, and it wasn’t a good match for JDC events. In the new model, all players must finish, but they are ranked in the order they finished, like an inverse LRS. Players who’ve finished have their names drawn in orange and can freely spectate.

Second, there was a lack of information about the level and other players. Even with race.mut, it was easy to get lost and difficult to know if you were winning. 6.2 introduces a new system for level designers to define the layout of their race levels, using Text events as waypoints. All official Race levels have been retrofitted with these new waypoints and ship with JJ2+, to give you plenty of examples besides the documentation.

Waypoints have three major effects on gameplay. There’s an onscreen minimap, showing the track layout, your location, and other players’ locations. It’s now possible to estimate who’s in first place, second place, and so on, and the new HUD emphasizes this. And during the pregame for each level, the camera automatically scrolls through the track, giving you a preview of the level and helping to put all players on an even playing field.

Since the big 6.0 release and its 32-bit graphics feature, we’ve been focusing on changes that affect online multiplayer, not level design. (Although this is a bit of both.) We hope you’re all having fun making new 32-bit levels and tilesets, and we don’t want to confuse your process by introducing other level-editing changes too quickly. If you missed the last couple JJ2+ updates because they weren’t announced on J2O, 6.1 added purple text and emoji, and 6.1a reformed how the “passing” mode works in online team games with flags or gems, among other things.

You can download 6.2 in-game or in-browser

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.0b

Violet CLM — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 23:06:00 +0000

Version 6.0b of JJ2+ is now available, adding a new /hidespectators option for when you’re having trouble seeing the game because there are too many spectators in a server, as well as assorted bug fixes, mostly based on our issues tracker. You can download 6.0b in-game or in-browser

After weekly updates through May, it’s been three weeks since 6.0, and there was no news post for 6.0a. We asked you (on J2O, the JCF, and ModDB) how updates should be announced, and what our update schedule should be in general. In those three weeks, we have received exactly one answer to the first question (keep announcing them on J2O) and zero answers to the second question, so we’ve been flying blind. Please head over to the JCF and let us know.

On the bright side, we’re happy to report that there are already two different tilesets released using the 32-bit graphics introduced in 6.0! Make sure to check them out and review them, and then please join the conversation about how to improve MLLE‘s 32-bit tileset support.

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Jazz Twosday: JJ2+ v6.0

Violet CLM — Tue, 27 May 2025 20:59:00 +0000

Version 6.0 of JJ2+ is now available, adding support for 32-bit sprites (including .j2a files) and 32-bit tiles (including .j2t files)! You can draw tilesets using any colors you want, and as many colors as you want, without worrying about a 256-color palette. A full alpha channel is also supported, so you can have images with semi-transparent windows, and images that fade at the edges, and so on. A new “plus32BitGraphics” example level is included. You can download 6.0 in-game or in-browser

We’re done focusing on the autoupdater and can now bring you other new features! We want to hear from you (ideally in our JCF thread, or you can use this news post’s comments)…

What should the update schedule be going forwards? Every week? Every two or three weeks? Something else?

Should it depend on what part of the game the next/previous update focused on, or how big the next/previous update feels?

Since JJ2+ now notifies you about updates and downloads updates on its own, do you want us to still announce every update in a J2O newspost and a JCF thread reply? Or is that redundant at this point?

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