Frozen Spring Glitch

[Troglobite]

After some experimenting, I've found:
If you take a frozen green spring event (not a normal spring that's been frozen), unfreeze it, and then blow up TNT next to it, it works weird, pushing you in either direction sideways. If the spring is placed on a destructable scenery tile, and the tile is removed, the spring can even propell you straight down. If you get pushed down, you tend to be forced to run to either the right or the left on landing. The direction and speed will be consistent if you run into the spring more times, but will randomly change again if you use TNT near it another time. The spring never seems to return to its normal state, no matter how many times its hit with TNT. It works in both single player and multiplayer, both for host and clients, from what I can tell, with the exception of springs hit with TNT before the player joins, in which case the spring will still be frozen.

I'd appreciate it if anyone would verify these results, correct any mistakes I've made, explain any other patterns they find, or explain why this might be happening.

[EvilMike]

These are known as "cursed springs". It's been known about for a long time, but not many people actually know how to cause this bug.

I have no idea why this happens, but somebody probably knows.

People sometimes use it to their advantage in some levels in blur's survivor pack.

[Nonomu198]

Slightly on topic, you can make fun infanate belts with some rings and tnt powerups. I just lost the example level.

[blurredd]

Good Times

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/ffseeks.jpg

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/ffseeks2.jpg

[Vegito]

Haha, yeah. Doing this in Battle 3 is fun. Fun to mess up peoples gameplay

[Troglobite]

Seeing that screenshot reminds me of another bug-ish thing. If you use Grytolle's mouse utility (http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/downloads/info.php?levelID=4970), and click shoot while on a h-pole, Jazz will shoot a ton of times, even with no fast-fire, although it only works with weapons that are affected by fast-fires. http://www.majhost.com/gallery/troglobite/JazzDarkForest/mouserapidfire.jpg

Even if you just tap the mouse button, it will keep shooting after you let go of the button for a little bit.

[plunK]

[QUOTE=BlurredD;440896]Good Times

Hmm.... On your glitches thing here, how do you do the rapid seekers and join as green team?

[plunK]

[QUOTE=BlurredD;440896]Good Times

Hmm.... On your glitches thing here, how do you do the rapid seekers and join as green team?



and evilmike, you know how u said that someone probably knows why the spring thing happens, i do.

TNT has the power to alter all motion paths. The explodsion pushes outward but the sphere part in the middle bends in a circle.

And i was playing around with this and the spring can actually activate the speed run aqcuired by tapping run where you charge up first

TNT can alter anything that causes movement. The reason for this spring glitch is the same as to why TNT can cause enemys to get super speed boosted and why every guns bullets can be bent at weird angles by it.

EDIT: did anyone ever notice if you shoot a spring with a freezer it thaws?

[Troglobite]

The rapid seekers happen when you "curse" the frozen springs on battle3 (or any other level) by blowing up TNT next to it after its warmed up, then jumping on them, and pressing shoot. As long as you're touching the messed up springs, you'll have hyper-fast-fire that works with any weapon. Now that I've played around with it a bit more, I realize the path of the spring always get pushed in the opposite direction of the TNT, so by placing the TNT well you can force the springs to do useful things. For example, if you have some spings next to each other, you can make each one push you into the other one, so you'll continuously shoot rapid-fire in both directions. Or if you place the TNT directly over the spring it'll become a trap, and will hold someone in place. It's possible to escape by pressing jump and sideways, but it would make someone an easy target for a while.

Edit: Forgot to mention, if the TNT is placed directly under the spring (which is done most easily by placing an event 58 generator on the next lower tile) it will launch you upwards, but with a pathetically small force. Maybe 1 or 2 tiles. I suppose this could be used in a level to make a spring which is weaker than a normal red one, altough I'm not sure when this would be useful.

[Cpp]

Pepper spray can sometimes flip a horizontal spring. At one point I've managed to flip the Queen boss so she was facing me with her back.

[plunK]

if you had a hallway with spikes on the roof a 2 tiles spring could get you over obstacles without hitting the roof

[Valco]

At one point I've managed to flip the Queen boss so she was facing me with her back.

I've got to try that sometime.

[Troglobite]

After further experimentation, I found that the direction the spring is pulled away when the "keep" and "delay" qualities are used is always opposite the direction the spring pushes you. This means the sping can levitate after you touch it. It stops working, even if you can still touch it. The coolest this with this was one well placed TNT caused the spring to push me straight sideways, which made the spring slide sideways half a tile, and looked perfectly usable, although it didn't do anything when I touched it.

[Grytolle]

Hmm, i just might have done some editing of the fastfire value which causes that.. I'm too lazy to open the source code though :D

[Nonomu198]

Gryrolle's Mouse Utillity is now officialy tool 4 1337 jj2 game haxors

server crash next grytolle pls kthx

[IJskonIJn]

if you shoot with your freezer on a frozen spring and then buttstomp it, it will unfreeze too

[Troglobite]

It naturally unfreezes pretty fast even if you don't do anything to it.

Another glitch I found was that in single player, if you shoot a power up, you can sometimes get more than 99 ammo. If you touch more ammo of that type, or kick/stomp/uppercut the power up, your ammo will return to 99, but you can die after you touched a save point, or save the game, and you'll have the ammo when you respawn or load the game again.http://www.majhost.com/gallery/troglobite/JazzDarkForest/21977.png

I left jazz running, and put a weight on the space bar next to the fast generating bouncer power up in Neobeo's Firetruck, and when I finally decided to stop it, I had over 20,000 ammo.

[Violet CLM]

That's been known since... I dunno, 1998, when Epic said they had fixed it.

[plunK]

I found that out years ago...

[EvilMike]

When epic fixed that one they at least fixed it in multiplayer. It used to be possible to get well over 50 seekers.

[Troglobite]

Now here's a weird bug.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/troglobite/JazzDarkForest/strangejazz.jpg
I was playing through DevRes without a blaster (and some other edited sprites). I had saved right before I hit the end zone in the first level. When I loaded, it looked something like this. Then it loaded the next level compeletely normally. I guess this is more just a random bug than a real glitch though.

[EvilMike]

Now here's a weird bug.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/troglobite/JazzDarkForest/strangejazz.jpg
I was playing through DevRes without a blaster (and some other edited sprites). I had saved right before I hit the end zone in the first level. When I loaded, it looked something like this. Then it loaded the next level compeletely normally. I guess this is more just a random bug than a real glitch though.

Well that's odd. I guess the solution is don't save right before the exit? Or maybe it's to do with how you edited the sprites (likely). Because I'm pretty sure that's not part of the level.

[Violet CLM]

Every one in a while, saving will mess up the tile cache... I'm not sure I've seen it outside of the Mac version, but that looks to be just the same thing. Someone should try to figure out what actually goes into one of those save files someday.

[Nonomu198]

Savegame files are no man's land.

[Cpp]

*waits for a girl to pop up and say: I'm no man!*

Amazingly I've never given a thought about the save files.
I'm not sure if there has been any research done and I can't check my wiki since the server died.

Hmm, i just might have done some editing of the fastfire value which causes that.. I'm too lazy to open the source code though :D

Are you giving me a hint there, gry?

[Troglobite]

Another strange thing I've found. No idea if it's new or not, but if you stand too close to too many destruct scenry you may lose your ability to shoot. Jazz will do the shoot animation and the amount of ammo you have will decrease normally, but no bullet appears. I'm guessing this is because the destruct scenery are made of animating tiles, and the game probably can't handle creating any new animations, like a bullet.

[EvilMike]

Only in single player mode.

[Nonomu198]

It also happens on Tower of Death

[Troglobite]

I've seen it happen on multiplayer, but it's much harder. I took the default sized level of JCS and filled all of laver four except a small sqaure two tiles wide for Jazz to spawn in, and neither host nor others who joined could shoot.

[Troglobite]

I was toying around with some difficult boss levels and possibly came across another glitch, which could potentially be very useful. I would like to check and see if anyone else has seen it occur before or could duplicate it themselves.

I created a level with no ground in which you fight a Uterus boss while stomping float suckers to keep from falling into a warp to a pit. The only problem was if you managed to kill it, you would fall into the pit and die immediately afterwards, so the next level could never be reached. To fix this, I added two sucker tubes with delay 7 and some invisible but masked collapsing scenery. Therefore, if someone fell they would be warped into a pit and die, but if they killed the boss, there would be enough of a delay that the level could end.

Here's where it gets interesting. It seems during the level transition, Jazz would hit the warp and instantly travel to the tile on the next level, whether or not there was a warp target there. This essentially created a new start position without editing the second level in the least. I'm going to experiment with this a bit, but if anyone else could confirm it too or figure it out more specifically, I'd appreciate it greatly.

Edit: I was able to repeat it using an end area instead of a boss and no sucker tubes or pits, on plus and nonplus 1.23. Then I used it to make this nifty little level (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=572453aa862c64755a3d773badf214301caf022d 3798250664328c9cace34742), which demonstrates the principal. You fall into the end area over some collapsing scenery and a warp. The warp target is currently located at (205,8), which should allow you to skip right to (205,8) of castle 1, which is just about the end. You could set the next level to anything you want and move the warp around to anywhere you want. Have fun.

[Violet CLM]

...I have no words. It's so simple, and it makes my old system look ridiculously overcomplicated. This has issues with different fall speeds but that can easily be fixed by a single sucker tube and maybe a freeze enemy. This opens up so many possibilities it's ridiculous. Well chanced upon and developed!

[SPAZ18]

Now, that is an excellent find. This will certainly be useful for accessing secret areas in the next level that would be otherwise impossible to find without hitting that warp.

[Stijn]

So, basically, this makes it possible to have multiple start positions, and have the start position in the next level vary depending upon which EOL event you use to end the level?

That's amazing, nice find!

[djazz]

Yeah, this is really awesome! gj! :D
Just place a sucker above it and place the target!
The only bad thing is, when you die in the warp-to-level, you will start at the normal position, but this can probably be solved with triggers (not in normal singleplayer) :)
I hope there will come some cool singleplayer with this new found feature!
nice ;)

Edit: Instead of trigger crates/zones, use checkboxes

[cooba]

That's just magical. That glitch happened to me multiple times in online games but I never thought of making use of it.

Good find!

[Unhit]

Nice, while you may not be the first one to stumble upon this, your detailed report and all certainly deserves mad props! This should offer a lot of nice stuff for non-linear single-player packs indeed.

[djazz]

I made a simple exeample level showing how to implent this in singleplayer levels, using checkboxes. This example only include one level, but could be any amount.
Download here (http://djazz.mine.nu/files/warpEOL.j2l)!

[Penalty]

This reminds me of another jj2 glitch that I found by chance long ago, but never really investigated it properly. If you look at the RHG ending (or was it RHG:TF?) you'll see how the tube system manages to trigger some unused character sprites.

[EvilMike]

Regarding multiple start positions, another technique is to take advantage of how JJ2 assigns warp targets. This information stays for the whole game (it doesn't reset with each level in other words).

So, what you do is you put a warp at the end-of-level area, and another warp at the start position in the next level. Then tweak the warp targets to get it to send you to a specific point. The problem is it can sometimes be hard to get the game to assign warp targets properly, and you also have to count how many you have in the level. This system has the advantage of not requiring you to place the warp targets in the level that you are exiting from (which would be problematic if you are going from a smaller level to a bigger one). I posted more detailed illustration of this a few years ago, but I'm too lazy to dig it up.

I like the method Troglobite posted a bit more, since a bit easier to use, as long as the level sizes are right. It could use a bit of refining though. For example, if you copter while hitting the exit, the system won't work. Putting ceiling springs over the exits will solve this by forcing the player to stomp. This means it takes up 4 tiles instead of 3, but that's not a big deal. I also recommend replacing the collapsing scenery with a sucker tube set to wait time 4, speed 0. Also, you still need the spring if you decide to go with a tube, again due to coptering.

[Violet CLM]

http://www.tachyonlabs.com/sam/warpmechsecr.j2l
Here's a working draft for how to do this same thing with secret levels, so that you return to the same level/spot afterwards. This could be used for essentially anything; for instance, one level is set in a city, and you can go into each house and be warped to the inside of that house in the secret level, which uses a different tileset and thus had to be split off.
(Unfortunately it doesn't work in JJ2+ because blur apparently broke secret levels.)

[plunK]

You could also use this for coin warp secret areas. Unknownrabbit, with you house suggestion, I would simply make it the next level and then have the finish spawn on a warp and skip to the 3rd level in the set.

[Violet CLM]

Well, yes, the coin warp secret level event is a lot easier to use than the regular one, so it didn't seem necessary to include. I can't figure out what you're talking about in the second half of your post at all, but by the time the house is going to a third level, there's no point in it even being a secret level.

[blurredd]

(Unfortunately it doesn't work in JJ2+ because blur apparently broke secret levels.)

Secret levels still work as far as I can tell. It's just that JJ2+ fixes the glitch, which cooba alluded to, where a player hits a warp event while the level cycles and then continues warping to a random warp target afterwards. To be honest, I was a little surprised to see this warp mechanism worked with JJ2+ in Troglobite's level. I'll simply make the fix for online games only.

[Violet CLM]

No, they don't at all. In normal JJ2, when you enter a secret level not using the Bonus Signpost, the game saves almost all the information about the state of the level, and transports you to the secret level. When you finish the secret level using End Area, a boss, or I think End Area Warp (i.e. not a Bonus or End signpost), you are taken back to the secret level event in the level you came from. JJ2+ breaks this functionality and uses the next level setting in the secret level for all cases.

[blurredd]

My mistake... I actually fixed the problem before doing any testing, so you're right. It will be fixed in the next update. Speaking of which, how far did you get with the Anims files? I already made the No Fire Zone and spring delay changes on my end. You can PM me or post your answer in the JJ2+ thread since this is getting off-topic.

[Jerrythabest]

Stepping back ontopic: I've done some testing with this warping mechanism. It turns out that, for me, it does not work when JJ2's framerate is below 40 fps. The warp target is then reached before the level cycles, instead of afterwards.


I'd like to see someone else trying this too, just to make sure it's not just on my computer. I used BES (http://mion.faireal.net/BES/) (says it's for XP/2000 but also works on Vista) to throttle JJ2's CPU usage so that its framerate would drop to a certain numer of fps.

The Collapse Scenery's Wait parameter might also have an impact on this. I used the original example level, which uses wait: 15.