Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Installation (20%)

Level Packer 2 needs to have a certain program (WinBinder) installed on your computer, which is rather unusual, since most small tools need no installation. However, installing WinBinder is easy and it’s done in one or two minutes.
Level Packer 2 itself can be uncompressed in whatever directory you want.

8/10

Features (50%)

Level Packer 2 does what it promises. You choose the Jazz2 directory, select the levels you want to have in a zip file, click on the “+” button, then on “Pack!” and choose a path and file name. After that, Level Packer creates the archive file and opens the folder where you saved it.
You can also exclude levels, tilesets or music from being packed.
If a tileset or music file is not found, Level Packer asks you whether it should continue and gives you the name(s) of the missing file(s). This is very useful, because with this feature Level Packer prevents you from publishing an incomplete level pack.
A new feature, which was added for version 2.1, is reading the level list and making a zip file with the files in it. This is also very useful especially for level collections that are hosted on a server such as “Anniversary Bash 12 Files”.
When I tried Level Packer 2 the first time, I was really surprised by its speed. It reads level names, tileset names, etc. really fast and also creating a zip file is done in a short time.

I have an idea for the “File not found – Do you want to contine?” dialog, that shows up when a needed file is missing: You (DJazz) could add a button “Search J2O” that opens a web browser to search J2O for the corresponding file. (The URL is http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/search.php?inputClass%5BsearchTerms%5D=FILENAME )
But this is just an idea. It is not necessary and since i would not really need it, it does not influent the rating.

All in all Level Packer has all necessary features that make level packing easy and fast.

10/10

Usability (30%)

This tool is really user-friendly, especially in comparison with similar tools such as PackPacker or Level Packer 1. It is the first graphical tool for level packing (for Jazz2 of course).
The buttons, input boxes etc. are arranged logically. You could add some labels (for example to the lists and the input box at the top) to make it perfect. But that’s a minor issue and the help text in the about dialog compensates this very well.

9.5/10

Conclusion

Level Packer 2 is useful for level makers and for server admins who want to upload the levels they use for their servers.
In my opinion it’s the best Jazz2 level packing program so far and only a few small issues keep me from giving a 10.

0.2*8+0.5*10+0.3*9.5 = 9.45

=> 9.5
Download recommended