🥕 Anniversary Bash 26 🥕
Friday April 5th – Sunday April 7th, 2024
To celebrate the upcoming 26th anniversary of Jazz Jackrabbit 2’s (shareware) release, the latest Anniversary Bash event is happening this weekend, featuring a mix of new levels and old. All are welcome (though you’ll need the August 2023 version of JJ2+), especially community veterans!
We’re going to try experimenting with the format a little this year, with the Battle and CTF packs swapping more frequently in the first couple days, rather than entire days dedicated to specific gamemodes. On Sunday we’ll delve more into mutators and such, and potentially continue that on Monday depending on how active/excited people are on Sunday.
In an unprecedented development announced globally via Fortnite video, all elections at all levels in all countries will now be held entirely within Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Votes may be cast by scoring points for the blue or red teams.
To aid in identifying which party, candidate, position, etc. corresponds to which team, the following tests have been proposed:
- Who is more associated with blue, and who with red?
- Whose positions are more ideologically associated with the left side of the level, and whose with the right?
- Who prefers bouncer powerups, and who prefers toaster powerups?
Certain elections may limit use of the !swap command to up to a certain number of days in advance. Please consult your local laws for details.
Certain precautionary measures are being put in place to ensure high quality voters. For example, players on the opposition team in One Silver Penny will have to pay more coins to access the carrot. Meanwhile, players with certain fur colors are more likely to get automatically kicked for Hacking/Cheating.
Scoring points in the Bank Robbery gamemode will cause players to be arrested for voter fraud. Other non-CTF gamemodes are not recommended at this time, as the legal details are still being worked out; however, election officials stress that this limitation should have zero impact on current players.
The 2023 JCS Awards have concluded, our annual get-together to honor and vote for the best levels (and other creations) of the last year in our cozy Jazz Jackrabbit 2 community. Here’s a preview of the results, but click through for vote totals, runners-up, and commentary:
Best Battle Level of 2023
🥇 Freeport – Loon
🥈 Bad LSD Trip – Loon
🥉 Lake Party – Dragusela
Best CTF Level of 2023
🥇 Scarlet Weald – PurpleJazz
🥈 Blast Concussion – Violet CLM
🥉 Land of the Sn00zE – SuperJazz
Best Single Player Release of 2023
🥇 Threed Realms – Violet CLM
🥈 Jingle Jumble – Primpy
🥉 Burrowsville? – Slaz
Best Eyecandy of 2023
🥇 Scarlet Weald – PurpleJazz
🥈 Threed Realms – Violet CLM
🥉 Blast Concussion – Violet CLM
Best Mutator of 2023
🥇 Death Circle – Smoke
🥈 Multiflag – Violet CLM
🥉 True Fur – Violet CLM
🥉 Condemned – Violet CLM
Best JCS’er of 2023
🥇 Loon
🥈 Violet CLM
🥉 Dragusela
Congratulations to all! Remember to check out the winners and runners-up and write some positive reviews—there’s nothing else like that to encourage people to keep contributing to the community!
And coming soon, the Anniversary Bash 26 has just been announced for April 5 – 8. Stay tuned for details!
We’re all familiar with the other two games using the Jazz 2 engine: Battery Check and Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure. But it’s been easy to forget about the other other two games, because there’s so little reference to them online.
But that changes today: Stijn has just unearthed the installer for Melk the Game, an online multiplayer game made for the Dutch Dairy Association. Head on over to the JCF for how to run the game, and for emerging research on all the files.
The next challenge is for someone to find Orion Software Systems’ sidescroller RPG…
The 2023 JCS Awards are now open! Vote for your favorite levels, scripts, etc. of 2023 either in a JCF post or submitting a google form. Marvel at how long ago January 2023 feels.
One of the other major Jazz Jackrabbit websites, jazzjackrabbit.net, has currently been disabled due to hackers. There is not currently a timeline for when it will be restored. According to SuperJazz, if you visited that site and were “told to download and update your Chrome browser, then you have most likely encountered malicious content. In case you happened to click any links or download anything from there, be sure to run a full virus scan on your computer.”
JJ2+ version 5.12 is released through the above installer link, the manual zip, GOG Galaxy and the GOG website, and Mod DB.
The packet exchange interval code from the last news post has been incorporated into JJ2+, so that movement packets are now sent between server and clients at the maximum possible speed, unless you edit plus.ini. Check out the changelog for full information on that and a dozen or so other improvements!
Way back in 1.21, JJ2’s network code was edited so that servers and clients would update player positions to each other less frequently. However, most of us are not using 56K modems anymore. As such, there’s an experimental new JJ2+ build that allows more frequent update speeds. There are two commands:
/pxiserver sets how often the server tells clients where other players are. In theory, this should have limited effect on gameplay (except for melee attacks), but lower numbers should make the game visually smoother for clients.
/pxiclient sets how often you, a client, tell the server where you are. In theory, lower numbers should mean the server has a more accurate idea of where you are, for purposes of determining whether other players’ bullets hit you.
The hope of this release is to find the best values for each command. JJ2 players vary greatly in their locations around the world, so this will take some doing.
For full details, see SJ’s informative post on the subject. Because this code is experimental, if you are using this version of plus.dll, you will only be able to join other servers using this exact version of plus.dll.
- Information about the multiplayer server, including screenshots of almost 700 different Battle and CTF maps
- A community timeline of important dates and events from 1977 to today
- Link to our newest giveaway, partnering with Epic Games to give away free Jazz Jackrabbit shirts, never been sold
- Funky graphics
