A question about JJ2+

[MoonBlazE]

Now I'm dumb and I have no idea how these things work, but I've always enjoyed making Jazz 2 tilesets, creating levels and inventing our own creative worlds for our green rabbit to explore.

I'd love to create a tileset on level with Dean's Dust.

http://igfv3.s3.amazonaws.com/SwKInN2ERAqaMCbOaBun_dust_aet_paxbost2012_03_450.j pg

But making something like that with only 256 colors is very, very hard and something no artist in this modern age should ever have to try. I know you've managed a number of things with JJ2+, so you can probably guess where I'm going with this now.

Isn't it possible to raise the number of colors the game can support? I'm not talking about supporting .PNGs, but even a normal .BMP file can hold more than 256 colors.

I remember an explanation about not having the source code, but I've seen JJ2+ do amazing things to the game. What are the limitations here, is it possible to support a higher level of graphic quality?

[Violet CLM]

I'd say none of the hurdles involved would be too huge, but there are a decent number of them. You'd need an alternative to .j2t files that stored things in 16-bit color instead of 8-bit, and each one would need to include a 256-color palette for <em>sprites</em> to use. JJ2+ would need to be able to read those alternative files and disable 8-bit mode when one was in use. And you'd need some software capable of editing levels that used those files.

Of course, you'd also want anti-aliasing, which might take a more major rewrite.

[MoonBlazE]

But you're saying it's possible?

What would it take to support this development, is there any glimmer of hope?

I don't really understand what anti-aliasing means and I can't really tell whether there's a smarter or easier solution, and I understand it's probably a big job that doesn't pay.

But if there's anyone willing to push through with this to support the game, I can't help but think that lifting this limitation for tileset artists might mean opening up a door to some all new amazing worlds for the community to explore.

I mean, I know how to paint and recreate almost everything in that scene, but I don't know how to make it look good with only 256 colors. Opening up the amount of colors I can use will seriously open up the amount of depth I can pool into a tileset.

[Violet CLM]

I mean if people started paying us to prioritize certain additions over others that would sound pretty exciting to me :P

Anyway. Uh, probably the biggest thing that someone outside the JJ2+ team could do, outside of drawing such tilesets in the first place, would be editing MLLE or WebJCS to be able to understand and use those files. (Otherwise the JJ2+ side of things would be even less useful than the vertically-flipped tiles code, which also no level editors currently support.) Conceivably there could be some discussion about what the new file format would look like, but I'd guess even a very basic edit of the j2t format that simply dedicated 2048 bytes to every tile image instead of 1024 would be sufficient.

<img src="http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~tadavis/cs809/aa/aliasing2.png" />

[MoonBlazE]

I mean if people started paying us to prioritize certain additions over others that would sound pretty exciting to me :P
If you set up a donation drive I could definitely throw in more than a few bucks to support the development, but other than that it would have to be out of the goodness of your heart (for my part at least). :P

Unfortunately I would have no idea how to code any of that, but a tileset I can do. As for anti-aliasing, are you saying you could support actual transparency? Because obviously being able to make smooth edges that blend into the background would be a huge deal to the graphics, but I'm not expecting that.

Even just taking a pixel brush and then painting in the boundaries of that shape without any hard color limits would still be a huge upgrade. Even just one stroke with a normal photoshop brush exceeds the color limits the current tileset palette offers. Most of the time for my Jazz 2 tilsets, I've had to make the good graphics painting in pixels. And that's just a huge time-consuming pain.

Edit: For example, take a look at this background I painted a few years back:

<object width="450" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://backend.deviantart.com/embed/view.swf?1"><param name="flashvars" value="id=312261248&width=1337"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://backend.deviantart.com/embed/view.swf?1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="360" flashvars="id=312261248&width=1337" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br><a href="http://bogrim.deviantart.com/art/Space-Station-Stadium-312261248">Space Station Stadium</a> by <span class="username-with-symbol u"><a class="u regular username" href="http://bogrim.deviantart.com/">Bogrim</a><span class="user-symbol regular" data-quicktip-text="" data-show-tooltip="" data-gruser-type="regular"></span></span> on <a href="http://www.deviantart.com">deviantART</a>

Even with aliased edges, I would still be able to replicate most of that in a Jazz tileset without the color limit.

[Violet CLM]

The trouble with donations is we'd need to figure out who got (how much of) the money, and that sounds like an instant recipe for hurt feelings...

Anti-aliasing would require a very different codebase. That's not to say it's difficult or impossible, because I'm sure there are all sorts of GPU things we could be doing to speed up the code that weren't as available or realistic in 1998, but those aren't topics I'm well-versed in.

[MoonBlazE]

I apologize. Being a hobby artist I know what it's like to have people expect you to lay down countless hours to make them something for free and I'd like to show support if you take it on, but this probably becoming a more personal discussion that should be held over notes so just let me know if you'd like to discuss it further in private.

But getting back on topic, what do you think of this as a feature? I mean, I've probably clearly expressed my feelings on the matter but do you think this is something that you and this team would consider to slate as an addition?

[AvalancheMaster]

One of the reasons I enjoy JJ2's artstyle is precisely the 256 colour palette. This forces tileset artists to use one or two main gradients that give each level its own atmosphere. All of our highly-rated tileset downloads have two colours with which you can "explain" them--"Heaven" is gold and sky blue, "Oasis" is brown and white, etc., etc. Same goes for JJ2. Now, I'm not saying that giving more colours to work with is a bad thing, but I do believe it would require unnecessary amount of work, and will change something fundamental to the game, without us knowing whether this change would be for good or not.

Moonblaze, if you've played any older sidescrollers (and I mean pre-'94), you'll know that a lot of them are ported to different platforms and computers with complete graphic overhauls. There are good examples there that a vivid world can still be beautifully represented even with an 8-colour limitation. A more modern example would be Disnay's Hercules, which got ported to PSP (IIRC), and had a lot of its sprites "cartoonified" without losing its charm.

[Stijn]

I don't think the PSP version of Hercules uses 8-bit sprites, though. That'd be a good example of how 8-bit graphics can be recreated in higher hraphical fidelity without losing their charm, actually. The recent Ducktales (http://www.mobygames.com/game/ducktales-remastered/screenshots) remake also comes to mind.

I get what you're saying though, but on the other hand, Dust's graphics are anything if not atmospheric. What I think would be a bigger issue is the potential discrepancy between the graphical fidelity of the tileset and that of the sprites (which would still be 8-bit and not anti-aliased). You could of course redraw the sprites too, but at that point you're basically creating a new game.

[MoonBlazE]

One of the reasons I enjoy JJ2's artstyle is precisely the 256 colour palette. This forces tileset artists to use one or two main gradients that give each level its own atmosphere. All of our highly-rated tileset downloads have two colours with which you can "explain" them--"Heaven" is gold and sky blue, "Oasis" is brown and white, etc., etc. Same goes for JJ2. Now, I'm not saying that giving more colours to work with is a bad thing, but I do believe it would require unnecessary amount of work, and will change something fundamental to the game, without us knowing whether this change would be for good or not.

Moonblaze, if you've played any older sidescrollers (and I mean pre-'94), you'll know that a lot of them are ported to different platforms and computers with complete graphic overhauls. There are good examples there that a vivid world can still be beautifully represented even with an 8-colour limitation. A more modern example would be Disnay's Hercules, which got ported to PSP (IIRC), and had a lot of its sprites "cartoonified" without losing its charm.
Uh no offense dude, but only someone whose not an artist would make that kind of statement. An art style isn't defined by the color limit, it's defined by the style its drawn in. You can still draw traditional tilesets even with more colors available and there are hundreds of different art styles in the uploads on the site.

You mentioned Heaven and Oasis as examples of tilesets, but I knew the artist who drew them and Agama would never have chosen the color limit if she had a choice in the matter. She was a one of a kind artist who had serious talent for drawing in this limited medium. In fact I knew a lot of the artists whose drawn "top rated" tilesets, such as Skulg and Disguise (by the way, I'm up there too), and I'm pretty sure they'd pick freedom over restriction as well.

A 256 color palette is like having a nail through your hand while you draw. You can't use any modern tools because they all exceed the color limit in a heartbeat, so you either constantly do damage control to try and minimize the quality loss from color reduction or you manually pick out your colors and draw pixel by pixel. It takes ten times longer and it basically makes the whole process much harder than it needs to be. If you look at the Dust screenshot, it's clear Dean all had the freedom in the world to draw his world exactly the way he wanted it.

I don't wanna go all ranty here and this is mostly a question pointed at Violet and the team. I haven't been in the community for a very long time so I'm not really sure who I should be asking. I've improved vastly as an artist over the last few years and I'd love to make some jazz tilesets again with the full artistic skills I've developed. Seriously I have so many awesome ideas that I'd love to put to work with a free color range.

[MoonBlazE]

What I think would be a bigger issue is the potential discrepancy between the graphical fidelity of the tileset and that of the sprites (which would still be 8-bit and not anti-aliased). You could of course redraw the sprites too, but at that point you're basically creating a new game.
Flash, honestly. ;-P

If we're worried about Jazz not fitting into the level, I think there's plenty of "less quality" tilesets that have that effect already. Making the sprites fit into the level isn't something that's defined by the colors, it's defined by the art style.

For example, most of Dean's tilesets don't actually look like their uh... "aliased" just because they're so well drawn. For example, look at Castle: The edges around the stone pillars look very... "pixelish" in the editor, but when you launch the game you don't see it because Dean has made the background hue fit the foreground so it blends together nicely.

It's actually my impression that Jazz doesn't have this pixelish graphic over it, the scenery in the original game has actually always been this very high quality artwork where the in-game objects stand out and that helps to tell the player these are objects different from the scenery that you can interact with.

But I'm not really trying to argue against having pixel edges (I'm sorry but that's my way of describing them XD) because I'd rather have a feature that Violet said is easier to implement. Just by removing the color limit you expand the possibilities so much, for example instead of having to figure out how to draw skies and mountains in a 256 color palette I can use some of the many resources I've already drawn and turn them into a tileset.

For example, I drew this for a friend's background recently:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v154/Moonblaze/tileset-resources_zps330b6929.png

And yes, those are easy to make tileable.

I could make a mountain set with that with a ground that looks like this (http://bogrim.deviantart.com/art/Mountain-Falls-Storm-312260826) and draw fallen lodges to connect the ledges and waterfalls and oh my god don't get me started. XD

Point is, no color limit would be awesome.

Edit: By the way I'm giving the game too much credit. It's not 256 colors, the sprites each up half of the palette and the water texture shares its colors with the sky texture, there's the ping ball things that eat up so many colors don't even bother supporting them in the palette and it's more around 125 to 150 colors you actually can choose for yourself. >|

[AvalancheMaster]

Uh no offense dude, but only someone whose not an artist would make that kind of statement. An art style isn't defined by the color limit, it's defined by the style its drawn in. You can still draw traditional tilesets even with more colors available and there are hundreds of different art styles in the uploads on the site.


I think there's some misunderstanding here.

I'm not saying that increasing the colour range is a bad thing by itself, but I am saying that it's not worthy of the work it will require. And, yes, while technically you can still simulate technical limits, a lot of modern graphic styles are limited by the medium. From retroesque platformers to Instagram filters, they all imitate stuff like 8-bit graphics and colourchrome images.

I do believe that implementing more than 256 will be a pain in the ears to achieve, especially considering how textured backgrounds and water works.

[MoonBlazE]

Uhh dude there was no misunderstand. You said, "One of the reasons I enjoy JJ2's artstyle is precisely the 256 colour palette. This forces tileset artists to use one or two main gradients that give each level its own atmosphere." Emphasis on the part forces artists.

I don't wanna get into some back and forth argument, so let's just drop it ok?

[cooba]

Castle is not a Dean tileset

[MoonBlazE]

Castle is not a Dean tileset
Ah well shoot me. =<

[AvalancheMaster]

Uhh dude there was no misunderstand. You said, "One of the reasons I enjoy JJ2's artstyle is precisely the 256 colour palette. This forces tileset artists to use one or two main gradients that give each level its own atmosphere." Emphasis on the part forces artists.

I don't wanna get into some back and forth argument, so let's just drop it ok?

Bad word usage on my side. I'm OK to drop it, not really what I meant. My main problem remains, though: JJ2+ needs to provide a major gameplay overhaul, rather than graphic overhaul. The game is beautiful, but dated. As I said in another thread, I do believe we need custom *.j2a files support for new enemies and bosses. I also believe the game needs a new menu, particularly when it comes to folder and sub-folder support for home cooked levels. A pack with new episodes and custom tilesets will draw some interest from ex-players.

[MoonBlazE]

Bad word usage on my side. I'm OK to drop it, not really what I meant. My main problem remains, though: JJ2+ needs to provide a major gameplay overhaul, rather than graphic overhaul. The game is beautiful, but dated. As I said in another thread, I do believe we need custom *.j2a files support for new enemies and bosses. I also believe the game needs a new menu, particularly when it comes to folder and sub-folder support for home cooked levels. A pack with new episodes and custom tilesets will draw some interest from ex-players.
Well dude what way to take JJ2+ isn't really my decision so telling me this doesn't really mean anything. I completely respect if the project has other priorities and I wasn't even expecting this discussion to go this far (I expected it to end with "sorry we still don't have the source code" XD).

But in terms of content, enabling better tileset support is content too. In my opinion, the most memorable experiences in Jazz 2 was always its single single player content, the best experiences I had in the game was always playing through my community's levels packs---Tomb Rabbit, that crazy puzzle level that was a feat of strength to get through (you know which one I'm talking about if you've played it), Mike's packs, etc. Most of those were also defined by their usages of tilesets, exploring a new world has always been a fundamental experience.

Edit: Queen of Board!

[Stijn]

My main problem remains, though: JJ2+ needs to provide a major gameplay overhaul, rather than graphic overhaul.
I'd argue that JJ2+ provides a major gameplay overhaul already (http://www.jazz2online.com/jj2plus/plus-angelscript.html)...

Besides, why not both?

[Love & Thunder]

I agree that no colour limit would be nice. I personally am only an okay pixel artist, but even doubling the 256 colours to 512 would make it a lot easier. Who knows, maybe I'd actually get pretty good? (And I doubt I'm alone in this respect)
(Although finding a program that supports 512-colour palettes would be interesting... I guess a GIMP plugin would work?)

[Violet CLM]

512 makes no sense whatsoever. It's 256 (8-bit), 65536 (16-bit), or 16777216 (24-bit).

[Love & Thunder]

To be fair, I'm just about to go to sleep so my ideas are a little rough around the edges, but you get the idea still; more colours = good in my eyes.