Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I downloaded this cnc-ddraw so I have 800×450 upscaled to 1600×900 resolution fullscreen using a shader (the one I selected upscales it to higher resolutions instead of just stretching to your resolution, without upscaling it too much which would make the pixelart worse). It was some tweaking to get it just right, I also tweaked the shader file, so I thought why not share it here including the tweaks, so someone else that plays this game doesn’t have to tweak it.

I set it to OpenGL so you can use more shaders for a better look, and on average it’s a good choice. But if you have a good Windows PC then Direct3D 9 is more stable! Just know that every change in the cnc ddraw puts Vsync back to false in the ddraw.ini so if you want to keep it at ‘true’ you have to edit it back every time! Or you just open the ddraw.ini while tweaking the cnc ddraw.exe, because it can’t change to false if it’s opened.

Why not play 800×600 right? It’s build in to jj2+ and it’s a higher resolution than 800×450 after all… The thing is jj2+ will stretch everything so squares become rectangles and circles become ovals if you play on a 16×9 monitor. It also seems like some layers aren’t synced with each other as intended if you stretch it like that. But if your monitor is 4×3, sure; go for that instead.

It’s just plug and play, place the files in your folder and start the game.

IMPORTANT: if you want the window options like we normally have in jj2 you have to press ALT+ENTER, and you can switch back to full-screen using that as well. Sometimes switching back gives a little white border (for me at least), then I just press the windows key and go back to jj2+ afterwards and it’s perfect again.

I added some unedited screenshots so you can see if you like it. Or just try it and if you don’t like it; just delete it again, I personally like it a lot. Sometimes I disable it (by just renaming the ddraw.dll to ddrawDISABLED.dll) so I can have multiple windows next to each other again. The default version is a bit more convenient if you’re going from window to window a lot (if you wanna read the text log for example) but this looks a bit better (imo at least).

To players who already have this cnc ddraw config.exe; you can also just try my shader (xbr-lv1-noblend.glsl), just don’t unpack the whole zip in that case. And maybe you can improve something with my tweaks, or you have something to add; feel free to leave some feedback in the review section (if you have any, but I think my tweaks are quite complete tbh).
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(If you really wanna edit it anyways:)
You could edit the cnc-ddraw config.exe anyways but tbh the settings are the best like that for most jj2+ players, but you could put the presentation mode to windowed if you don’t wanna play fullscreen. Fullscreen upscaled isn’t as good as fullscreen imo, as I said before upscaling too much can make the pixelart look worse in some cases. But fullscreen doesn’t allow me (so probably u2) to click on the chatlogger. If you want that instead borderless might be the best, it also switches between fullscreen and windowed better without issue. But it has slightly lower input latency than fullscreen presentation mode. I recommend using fullscreen if you’re gaming, and renaming ddraw.dll to ddrawDISABLED.dll if you wanna level edit/troubleshoot angel script. But if you really wanna use the chatlogger and this cnc ddraw at the same time, then borderless is the best choice anyways.

I don’t include many shaders because it’s so much tweaking (only the most standard ones). I wanna keep this simple and it’s not needed for this game. If you wanna have more shaders not tweaked for this game specifically you can download them from the link I included in the credits. Some work fine for this game too, especially xbr-lvl2noblend which is the most like mine (because I edited that one into mine using chatgpt’s help) included by that github upload. But I recommend just using the one I included here or if you use Direct3D 9 NN or whatever you like most of these 4.

If you really wanna try another shader than the one included here, try the xbr shaders. They worked best in my experience. You can find them in the zip from the url I included in the credits, just put it in the shader folder, then select it with the cnc ddraw config.exe included here. XBR noblend Lvl1 is most cpu/gpu friendly and is true to the pixelart though and I don’t see much difference, if anything if you look very closely at the details, lvl2 is a bit too edited by the effect, even more with blending on.

As I said before; if you have a good modern Windows pc you could put the renderer to Direct3D 9 within the config.exe, for better performance but you won’t be able to use the xbr shader. OpenGL is the best choice on average and can use the xbr shader. Very old gpu’s might like GDI better (no xbr shader either though), but in that case this CNC ddraw might not be a good idea anyways, but try it if you want.

And if you wanna use this for fullscreen 800×450 ddraw without a shader, you can select ‘nearest-neighbor’ in the cnc ddraw config.exe (or use GDI renderer but that’s only for older PCs). Which I will include now too (reupload).

Last but not least: if you change the cnc ddraw config, vsync in the ddraw.ini will be set to false again somehow (I put it to true in this upload). You can just change it to true in the ddraw.ini if you want vsync on, although you can also enable vsync within your gpu settings.)
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https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw (see MIT License in Description) + Djazz for letting me know it excists