Inspired by a conversation in my server

you dont have to post top10 or even top5, becuase they are quite stupid and i am just generally interested what are the favorite jcsers of people

I'd also like to estimate that people who have are most famous for sp levels are getting ranked very highly in here

5. lol

I can't really go beyond doing a top 5, it's really too much of a close call by serveral JCSers to rank them that far. Well, here's what I think:

1. Kejero
2. EvilMike
3. BlurredD
4. Stripe
5. Violet
6. FireSworD
7. Snooze
8. Ragnarok
9. Blackraptor
10. CelL

Don't feel like writing explanations about my choices right now, although I might do so later.

EDIT: Just for the heck of things, I finished off the list just for the sake of completion seeing how everyone else is doing it to 10. I still think the individual differences in quality between 6-10 is very slim though.

Alright, guess I'll reply more seriously.

1. BlurredD - A Bunch of very user-friendly and high-quality tilesets, as well popular and versatile levels. Also his work and effort on jj2+ and other stuff is worth a mention, although that isn't JCS-related.

2. Evilmike - That's it. Five very high quality single-player episodes of the same serie, and lots of other episodes/level packs/levels that clearly stand out.

3. Kejero - Tomb Rabbit has to be one of my favourite single-player episodes too, eventhough it's hard and frustrating at times. Shockingly great storyline, and a greatly different standard of gameplay, considering what kind of other episodes were several years ago. Also a few good, but unpopular tilesets(that are for TSF though.)

4. FireSworD - Do I really have to explain? Jungle's Edge that was just FireSworD's tryout level for OLC, became one of the most popular multiplayer-levels ever. And it of course didn't remain as the only one. Even today, he continues to create as inspiring and fun-to-play levels as before.

5. Blackraptor - He wouldn't have been nro 5 otherwise, but since I saw as a betatester some of his latest work, it really impressed me. Of course, he has been a great JCSer in the past as well, but his latest work is something special.

6. Ragnarok - Well, what can I say? His works have been so far very successful, as in satisfying a great majority of players with the gameplay in his levels. Of course he has been creating only multiplayer levels, but the way they work out in real games is outstanding.

7. CelL - Started out as an average level creator, although his levels were considered great with the old standards in the past. But his levels gained quality and more of fun-factor progressively. After all, he has done a lot of work to give people some absolute classics like Zaitox Station 67, or All Your Base CTF.

8. Snooze - Well, the amount of work in the time he has got is amazing, and lately it has been very outstanding. He has been working already for a long time on levels of his 'New Ages'-serie. He has worked on both SP and MP levels, although more specially on MP. There has been both uphills and downhills. For example take New Ages I, which was a great surprise for everyone, while New Ages II, was sort of a disappointment considering how good the previous one was, at least for me. But in overall he is one another outstanding JCSer.

9. cooba - Several high-quality levels with variable game modes/themes/sizes. Also created the excellent Waste Treatment Facility-set that has been accepted very well by the community.

10. stripe - Has been inactive for years already, but created several "hits" during his time. Happy Semiconductor being the most known one, is one another of the most popular multiplayer-levels out there. Also Superconductor and Happy Castle(JAIL) were some other fairly popular and great levels, although not as much as the 'semi.' The rest of his levels were still good, or around average, but due to these he is my nro 10.

EDIT: Also I forgot about Violet, but I guess I'm too lazy to edit that anymore now though. He would have been somewhere between 6th and 9th probably. Also note that I didn't list anyone who was more focused on tileset-creation here.

In order.

1.Evilmike
2.Snooze
3.stripe
4.Kejero
5.CelL
6.FireSworD
7.Violet
8.Ragnarok
9.Blackraptor
10.FawFul

1. Ragnarok
2. BlurredD
3. EvilMike
4. FireSworD
5. cooba
6. Snooze
7. Birdie
8. Superjazz
9. PurpleJazz
10. DarkSonic

1. CelL
2. EvilMike
3. BlurredD
4. Stripe
5. BloodBunny
6. Blackraptor
7. FireSworD
8. LarK
9. Cooba/P4ul
10. CliffyB (solely for B1 alone)

1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31
1. cooldude31

BlurredD
Violet CLM
Kejero
Blackraptor
stripe
CelL
RagE
EvilMike
FireSworD

Originally Posted by cooba

BlurredD
Violet CLM
Kejero
Blackraptor
stripe
CelL
RagE
EvilMike
FireSworD

What, and I am not among them? Where was it, student, that I failed you as a master?

Originally Posted by snzspeed

I'd also like to estimate that people who have are most famous for sp levels are getting ranked very highly in here

People get ranked highly because of their creativity and experience, not because they're "famous for sp levels". Making SP doesn't automatically make you a half-arsed jcs demigod, so please cut your grandiose bull(-)(-)(-)(-) and get back on Earth.

Originally Posted by cooba

People get ranked highly because of their creativity and experience, not because they're "famous for sp levels". Making SP doesn't automatically make you a half-arsed jcs demigod, so please cut your grandiose bull(-)(-)(-)(-) and get back on Earth.

I think he was just appreciating SP in general along with the fact that it's hard to make. The best CTF levels might reach a similar level of popularity, but if I were to list the levels that have impressed me the most, basically all of them would be SP. I'd also guess that most people who rank me on their lists are doing it because of my SP levels rather than my MP levels, even though both have achieved a fair degree of popularity. So I basically agree with snooze, and I think you're overreacting here.


Anyway, to add to this thread, I agree with almost everything people have already posted. So instead, I'll offer a few names which I think are often overlooked. I'm writing this more from the perspective of someone who makes levels, rather than someone who plays them.

Bobby
This may seem like a weird choice, since he never made a huge number of levels, and none of them ever became hugely popular. However, he was one of the main people who discovered how to use trigger zones properly in multiplayer levels. Back then this was called the "Jail 2" concept, named after a level which never really got finished. Essentially, it's a trigger system that allows clients to join a server without needing to have the same triggers as the host. It works by exploiting a little trick to do with how JJ2 handles animated tiles. What sounds like a rather obscure trick actually turned out to be the main thing needed to create custom gamemodes. Early on, basically every level that used custom gameplay had some variant of the "Jail 2" system. Assassination, Jailbreak, Gold Rush, Jail-CTF, you name it. Later on other (better) tricks were discovered, but this one was really the first. Nowadays it's all obsolete because of JJ2+, of course.

URJazz
Again, not too many notable levels. However, the sort of things he managed to do with triggers means he deserves a mention. He never did anything quite as extreme as the sort of things Violet and BlurredD have made, but a lot of it was still very impressive. My favourite was when he managed to make a simplified version of Monopoly using JJ2 triggers.

Kirby
Test levels. I don't think he invented the idea, but he basically was the one who made them popular. This isn't really a testament to anything that can be called skill, but it's still an important contribution.

Ninjadodo
The Lost World Episode is cool. Go play it if you haven't. It's very "cinematic" unlike most episodes.

Dethman
He wasn't really that great of a level maker, but he was basically the first to use trigger zones in levels. MCEs too.


I think a few tileset makers deserve mention too.

Bluez
More for his tilesets than his levels. I don't think any of his tilesets have been used much except for neon (or whatever it's called), but back then they were better than almost anything else at the time. Even today they are pretty impressive. I'd say he is probably the #2 early tileset maker...

Mez
Mez would be #1. Only 4 tilesets (one of which is a joke), but there's really no arguing how important they are.

Agama
Agama tilesets tend to be rather restrictive, and most levels that are made using them look fairly similar. Still, these are some of the best tilesets ever made. Fun fact: there's actually a mostly-complete, unreleased Agama tileset floating around. It would be cool if someone could get her permission to upload it.


There are more names I might post later, since there are a few I'm sure I've left out.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

URJazz
Again, not too many notable levels. However, the sort of things he managed to do with triggers means he deserves a mention. He never did anything quite as extreme as the sort of things Violet and BlurredD have made, but a lot of it was still very impressive. My favourite was when he managed to make a simplified version of Monopoly using JJ2 triggers.

The time I spent with URJazz was definitely some of the best I've had in this community. There are lots of old levels sitting around in my JJ2 folder, most using Cool Day or Top Secret 3, from us happening upon this or that event or concept and trying everything we could think to do with it just to see what cool effects we could arrive at. Some of it failed in really obvious ways -- we tried for ages to create a sucker tube that would send you into one of three random locations, without thinking of just making the animated tiles three frames long -- but we had some great drafts and some neat stuff resulted from it, like a working money transfer system for hotels (which went through many revisions). We were always in awe of Mike, though, particularly his extended timer system for Gold Rush... we were always focused on making things work but had no concept of speed or elegance, so the player would always end up subjected to these incredibly long series of sucker tubes and warps which had the right effect in the end and yet were really annoying.

Monopoly was the culmination of a series of game levels we made... I had playable versions of Roulette, Poker, and Candyland (two-person only), and I'm sure URJazz had some other games I don't remember. (ET also made a Monopoly version which was superior to URJazz's in a few ways, but I think it was a bit buggy or something and never got released.) We were a couple of the first people to latch onto the Ground Force gametype and play around with it -- Tower of Death, for all that it's different from the rest of the Survivor pack, is actually most similar to how GF levels used to look -- but Blur undeniably took GF and ran with it far beyond anything we had imagined. We made a very technically impressive level called TW2 which again failed at concepts of gameplay (we apparently thought that backtracking was the best level design feature ever?) and somehow I ought to refurbish that and get it into the public.

URJazz also invented a gamemode related to Ground Force, called, I think, Danger Zone, that never really took off, sort of a reverse GF where each player had to destroy all the destruct scenery in the arena before the timer ran out or they'd lose. I think it was him who invented Freeze Tag, which worked well but I don't think is still around, a very simple concept where you'd freeze opponents and push them into warps in the floor. In later days he turned to CTF, particularly after winning a contest with Martian Megatropolis, but none of his later CTF levels ever ended up quite as good, which was frustrating. He focused on flow to an extreme degree, avoiding any situation where a player might conceivably hit a wall, but considerations of where a player would want to go somewhat fell to the wayside. He also made a level called Space Assault, which (to the best of my knowledge) was the first of its kind, in that both teams attacked and defended at once, and the gameplay was much shorter than that of the painful Assault3. I've paid little attention to the Assault scene so I don't really remember if this took off, but it should have. I don't think I can really explain the URORBS pack, but it was important in its own subcommunity.

I don't think Bean has gotten a mention in this thread, so I'd like to remedy that. He never released much, particularly not to any website, but the stuff he did was all very experimental and well-executed. You may be familiar with THE VOID, a monochrome platform in the middle of black space, and one of the best examples of modifying the JJ2 palette for a reason. It was one of several levels playing around with the Treasure Hunt gamemode and its possibilities, including also a very competent pass at King of the Hill. Last I remember he was playing with the textured background, he had set up a Deckstar level with the textured background as a three-dimensional floor and you had to jump over three-dimensional holes in it. It was extremely limited but quite innovative.

Mike mentioned that people are probably ranking him for his SP over his MP levels, so I'll just say mention my perception of his contribution to MP. URJazz and Bean and I, as described above, were incredibly messy people, we had these great technical ideas but they lacked polish. One great thing Mike could do, in addition to creating his own totally new concepts, was walk around in that mess and make things work for the first time. Probably the best example of that, though he might rather I didn't bring it up, is eVILHOTEL, which completely revolutionized hotels, first by adding gameplay and second by adding (limited) level design. In Mike's hands they were still vanity fests, but they were hosted in battle, and everything cost money from the furniture to the rooms themselves. This spawned a small host of imitations -- Fooville, Jmanville, Newer Rabbitaria, doubtless others I was less affiliated with -- which were largely experiments within the basic framework Mike had laid out, while we hosts ran through our heads for every possible thing we could conceivably sell in the stores or the auctions. Room extensions, metaprivileges (renaming things or tileset conversions), new and more advanced ways of attacking other people's rooms, etc. Even the duel room, bad idea as that was, got maintained in the imitation levels. Fooville, I think, although it never quite worked perfectly, was the logical next step as the store became mostly automated with an external program, and Karrot Shire seems to be the intellectual heir to that. Honorable Mike mention goes to his swiftly-canonical quiz show level design, which was more than imitated but rather copied in several other levels by other people.

There's more to talk about, but I have homework and a messy room. Sheesh. Maybe I should write my own blog sometime.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

One great thing Mike could do, in addition to creating his own totally new concepts, was walk around in that mess and make things work for the first time.

Bobby was also fairly instrumental in doing this, and he even made an original level or two. Whenever a new idea would crop up, both of us would convert a few already existing levels to the new gamemode in order to see how it would work. One level in particular, which I think was called "Evil Castle" or something along those lines (it used the hocus pocus tileset), must have had at least 10 different versions. Also, for a lot of times we weren't even coming up with the gamemodes: they were being adapted from other games, or based on other people who had good ideas but lacked the ability to execute them (this caused some drama even though we never took credit for anything). That would have been 2001 or 2002. Later on BlurredD would basically be doing the same thing, but he largely stuck with making original levels.

I should also note that in the majority of cases, it usually stayed a mess. For every good gamemode concept there were two bad ones. Some of those bad ones got made into prototypes (usually small gimmick levels), but most were just discarded. This applies even more to levels themselves. If I don't like a level, I won't host it or release it, even if it's basically finished. I've never bothered to count how many there are, but there are a lot. More MP than SP now, since I recycled most of the discarded SP levels (or sometimes just remade them from scratch, saving the parts that worked) and wound up releasing them in my various episodes. Ep5 has bits that literally date from 1999.

The whole thing was really just a big process of trial and error.

Honorable Mike mention goes to his swiftly-canonical quiz show level design, which was more than imitated but rather copied in several other levels by other people.

I think this concept predates the level you are talking about. All I remember doing really was add falling TNT as a sort of flashy gimmick. The whole level took about 10 minutes to make. Black Ninja probably deserves more credit; I remember him hosting that level (or an edit of it) a lot.

Oh, quiz show levels were around before that, definitely. My first dates from late 2001. But you streamlined the design such that all other quiz levels, at least for a while, were edits or at least responses to yours.

From back when i was still making levels:

1. blur
2. blackraptor
3. FS
4. cooba/me
5. rag/snz

Anyone who prefers gameplay to eyecandy (and can actually make good levels) is an automatic tie for first place for me.

I think eye-candy and game-play are about equally important, because a level is an interactive piece of art. Also, what I consider good game-play is whatever I find fun to play.

I don't want to list favorite designers for MP, since they are rather close in my mind, and I don't see a need to rank them. I'm not listing SP level-makers either; my current favorite at this moment is EvilMike.

I'm glad URJazz was brought up, since I remember he was very knowledgeable with triggers and jcs in general. I also remember he had me test some of his concepts, including a working bank system for a hotel he made. His monopoly level astounded me at the time, because of how he used triggers. There are a few other things he showed me that haven't been duplicated today (I'm quite surprised), and he explicitly told me to never tell anyone about them, and I won't. So there are some interesting things that most people don't know about, and it's best you guys try to figure them out on your own.

I'm surprised Spotty and/or Black Ninja hasn't been mentioned, since the whole foo race concept was big, and in my opinion it was quite genius how it all turned out. The team foo race series is, in my opinion, the highlight.

The ? may seem like an odd choice, but he made this really crazy level called Bunnies vs Golfers, and it was uploaded to J2C, and it is one of the only levels I remember from the J2C days. To this day I still appreciate the creativity behind the concept. The tile-set was made by Lesmash. After checking it out in J2C archives, the level is still mildly amusing in my opinion.

Waz's tile-sets are interesting for some reason. So yeah, there are probably more appealing tile-sets, but I think Waz makes versatile sets that also look cool.

Snooze makes seemingly innumerable amounts of very creative and inspiring levels (whether finished or not) in a relatively short period of time, most of them are MP. He is also capable of making decent looking tile-sets. He definitely has been a motivation for me to continue playing jj2.

Originally Posted by FireSworD

really crazy golfing level

Would you mind showing that to me some day?

In case you could host it, that would be great.

Originally Posted by Varkarrus

Anyone who prefers gameplay to eyecandy (and can actually make good levels) is an automatic tie for first place for me.

I like this post.

Based on this and what was said above, I wanna say that I think gameplay greatly overpowers eyecandy. Eyecandy is just for the visual aspect of the level, while gameplay determines whether the level is worth playing or not. That's what I think. =P

Birdie, CelL and cooba are my favorites. =P

since i found this i kinda had an urge to post mine
idk about the order beyond the first name.

violet - the levels this guy makes are something special imo, lots of good memories playing them back in the day. also more importantly he's been an inspiration for a lot of the levs i made in the past, and this is the guy i relied on when i couldnt figure something out in jcs

urjazz - was gonna bring you up but it looks like you got here first :P. i remember your crazy triggering system and that monopoly level you made - i learned a lot about jcs from chilling with you.

mike - your devres pack was probably the most creative (-)(-)(-)(-) ive played, and i enjoyed it even way after i lost interest in this game. i swear i'll beat it the whole way through without cheating, one day :P

blade - check out his sp levels, his formula is pretty basic but it works well and theyre really fun to play.

kirby - not really a conventional level designer, but this man had some gooodd ideas back when he was around.

blur - youre probably the only guy i cared enough to actually duel just so i could win and youd have to show me one of your unreleased lvs. good times.

p4ul - a lot of my best (imo) levels that i made and havent released yet are inspired in some way by what ive seen you do with jcs. otherwise i probably wouldnt have bothered making them

theres a lot of other people im not going to go into detail with, who i think are talented. i havent really been around to see the new things people are putting out, but these are the guys i remember from back when i played this game

btw urjazz - give me a shout, i probably still have some of them :)

Violet, Mike, Kejero

1- EvilMike
2- EvilMike
3- EvilMike
4- EvilMike
5- EvilMike
6- EvilMike
7- EvilMike
8- EvilMike
9- XSnooze
10- T. Kejero

mez?

bloodbunny!!!
it took years for anyone to come up with levels quite so good as the bb ctf pack (to my knowledge anyway).
I seem to recall only mediocre and below average levels back in 98 and 99.
Being able to do something in time T, as opposed to the most other people who reach the same level of proficiency in subsequent periods (T+1,T+2...) should count for something.

Of course even then it was mostly bblair and bbswing. He made a couple of other levels, but none of them were as good. Some people might argue that bbcity ranks up there, but its actually pretty unplayable with teams that know the levels (too many full NRG carrots, and its too easy to run away), and its not big enough to warrant larger teams. It was a great level when everyone was bad at jj2 though.