Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

AngelScript! Woo!

This level is huge, open, and without much of a flow – that is, there’s no obvious paths to take. You kind of just run around and jump from platform to platform (which is hell if you aren’t Spaz, by the way) and hope you bump into gems or other players. Complicating things is the pit at the bottom of the level, which luckily has a big gem-saving script attached to it (I wonder why you didn’t just use warps) so you don’t lose your gems upon dying.

Gems that fall down or towards the level’s side edges because people get shot will still be lost however, which is a major problem as the game goes on and may eventually make the game unwinnable. This is a serious problem that really should’ve been fixed.

Another scripted feature of the level is your blaster, which has only 25 bullets and needs reloading when these are depleted. Reloading requires standing still and waiting while your ammo count slowly increases. This is a nice idea that could work really well in treasure hunt (where you really don’t want to stand still). However 25 bullets is perhaps a bit too few and the short range of the blaster means that it becomes really hard to actually hit other people before you run out of bullets. It’s also impossible to reload while your ammo count is above zero. This often makes it smarter to just jump in the pit and get free bullets rather than waiting for the reload to finish.

Overall an okay-ish level with some innovative ideas, but it really could’ve used some more testing and thinking about the gameplay impact of the scripted features. A shame they weren’t implemented better, or this could’ve been a really interesting level.

EDIT:
I see you’ve fixed the hook platforms to have One Way events now. That makes navigation through the level a ton easier already. Maybe try replacing the Hooks with Vine events instead? Vines allow for quicker jumps the Hooks. Other annoyances are still present, such as the high amount of open space between jumps and the leaps of faith. The unnecessary hurt events are still there as well.

And is it just me or does the blaster fire in shorter distances than it used to? If that’s the case, then I suggest editing the script to make the distance like standard or even longer, as it’s still the only weapon this level depends on.

On a side note, here’s a place you can get stuck

My original rating was 6.5, and I’ve decided to crank it up to 6.7 for now. It needs more fixing before I can truly recommend it, but it’s moving towards the right path.

Original review:
Let’s review this level as a fellow contest attendee!

First and best thing noticable in this level is the use of pits and the script made to overcome it’s problems. Normally, players would lose their gems after falling into a pit breaking treasure hunt as a whole. But the script included here will cleverly save your gems before dying and load them afterwards.

There is, however, a huge downside to this idea in the sense that when players shoot each other near the pit, gems will likely fall into it and be stuck there unless someone decides to suicide in order to get them, which will get very tedious when the match is active for a while and everyone starts to shoot each other.

Other than that, the level is lacking in a lot of ways. There is, in my opinion, too much open space which at times makes it hard to see where you can jump to. At some point it almost gets to JJ1-style leaps of faith! The platforms with hooks below them don’t really serve a purpose since you can’t one-way through them, which also makes the level a pain to navigate with Jazz, and damn (lol) tedious as Lori.

Also, the lava trunk thingy has hurt events on them, which in treasure hunt only makes players blink without losing gems. That’s just unnecessarily slowing down the gameplay even further. The level relies on using your blaster, yet it’s very vertical-oriented making it tedious to get into shooting range with each other.

I would’ve given this level a 5.5 for the fun left VS it’s problems, but decided to give an extra point for the effort in the nice script idea. May I suggest adding to the script so that gems falling into the pit will somehow respawn? I’m no good scripter, so I feel a bit weird suggesting it. Anyway, until these big issues are fixed I can’t really recommend it. Feel free to edit your level and I’m sure it can become a fun experience!

By the way, you don’t need to include default music files, as everyone has them.

I will review this once the deadline is over.

EDIT: Chances are, if someone loses the default music files, they either didn’t want them or tried to get rid of JJ2 (the completely wrong way, as you’re supposed to use the uninstaller). You can’t really delete an individual music file “by accident” considering it appears in the recycle bin and it’s not worth the effort deleting them.

I included the music file just in case someone deletes it, so that he will have it. :)

Slaz: Yeah. I kinda rushed the level for the contest, and you know... rushing isn't good. I will update the level in the future. Slaz: Ok gonna fix that soon! #2
Slaz: Updated! #3 Stijn: Well… As I said I rushed the level, though I am working on a better TH level. I have some battle levels that I didn’t show, I even have some Domination levels, and for the big part, some Singleplayer Episodes that will take a while to make, they have some cool AS codes in them (Hunger, Stamina, Wall-Climbing, Armor, Potion Effects, Fall Damage, Drop Ammo on Death…) Stamina and Wall-Climbing was not made by me, just found it on the snippets page, hunger is some sort of copy from stamina just that it does a bit of something else. Armor, Potion Effects, Fall Damage, Drop Ammo on Death ———- I made them. Those will be cool singleplayer episodes, there will be like 3, because in each episode you’ll have to play with a certain character. (Jazz, Spaz, Lori).