Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

TILESET/TILESET USE: The author uses Diamondus, but there is no background eyecandy. However, most of the tiles seem to fit together, and there is nothing horribly bad or something like that.
Pros: Fits together decently.
Cons: Doesn’t manage to look good.
Rating: 4.5

WEAPON/ITEM PLACEMENT: No. Just.. no. There’s an easily accessible (go into the warp next to the start) bubble shield, and the warp on the right will give you some seeker ammo, or seeker/blaster powerups.
Pros: No.
Cons: Yes.
Rating: 1.0

ORIGINALITY: There is little that is original about this level. The easily accessible bubble shield has been done before, only better.
Pros: Umm.. the warps between leafs was kind of original.
Cons: Yes.
Rating: 1.5

GAMEPLAY/DESIGN: The design is a flat surface with warps to goodies on either end. The gameplay is getting the bubble shield, finding someone who doesn’t have it, then trying to roast them while they desperately attack you with their powered up seeker and/or blaster.
Pros: No.
Cons: The good stuff is way too accessible, the level is way too flat.
Rating: 1.2

REPLAY VALUE/FUN FACTOR: Just.. no. No.
Pros: Still no.
Cons: There is very little fun to be had from this sort of gameplay.
Rating: 1.0

OVERALL (not an average): There is CHEESE ahead! Unless you’re going left. Anyway, this is a flat level with too much power for the players, not enough alternate routes, etc. It’s also rather Jazz-biased.
Pros: Some interesting things, showing that the author’s talent may mature.
Cons: No eyecandy to speak of, poor design, doesn’t look fun to play.
Rating: 1.5

Just in case you plan to, please do not post a review *censored*ing me to suffer in torment forever, writing long reviews with a computer that crashes just as they are almost done. I rate levels on their merits, and not depending on who the author is. CelL could have uploaded this and gotten the same basic review, with a few exclamations of surprise added on.

A Disguise tileset, with 14 downloads, and no one (at the time I started writing this) has reviewed it. Something MUST be going on here.

THEME: The theme is underwater. Nononowait, that was the earlier version. The theme is some sort of land of agony, where souls writhe in torment, and you play CTF. ….yeah! Anyway, with the proper music and good use of the eyecandy, you can indeed get it to feel like a land of agony.
Pros: The theme is carried out well by the tileset.
Cons: No shrubbery (j/k), looks a bit too underwater.
Rating: 8.0

GRAPHICS: This tileset has four different textures, really, three not counting the textured background (more on that later). They consist of the layer 4 background, the orangish viney stuff, and the pinkish coral. I’m sorry, it just does look like coral. Sadly, there are practically no variants for either the coral or the orange stuff, so you have to blend them together quite a lot to get an at all interesting wall (more on that later). The layer 4 background has the same problem, but it at least has some stuff to put on top, and it’s more distant so it makes less of an impression. I think I was supposed to be talking about graphics. They look good, except for some of the background eyecandy and the layer 8 (untextured) itself. However, while they look good, they do not look great, and if Disguise had spent more time here in addition to the various masking tricks, I wouldn’t complain.
Pros: Everything looks good.
Cons: Not enough tile variation, not as good as it could be.
Rating: 8.0

INVENTORY: I don’t feel like listing things that are here.
Pros: Everything for a tileset is here..
Cons: except for a hook.
Rating: 7.7

ORIGINALITY: This tileset is fairly original, but I can’t seem to give a rating here for some reason.

COMPETITION: The only tileset similar to this is Unreal Imagination, and that only sort of. Overall, I’d say this has the monopoly on the land of agony for lost souls department.

EASE OF USE: The author brags (if that’s the right word) that the tileset is very hard to use, but with the small strips of instructions, it looks rather simple. The only part that looks difficult is figuring out which of the orange viney stuff tiles is which, as their edges are not paticularly dominant in their appearance.
Pros: Looks pretty understandable, thanks to the instructions included in the tileset.
Cons: The orange stuff is a bit strange.
Rating: 8.2

MASKING: This is one of the areas the author seems to have spent the most time in, and it shows. You can create quite a lot of platforms and stuff with the tileset, and I can’t find any masking bugs at all. But I really need to show those leaves to Disguise and get his opinion on if they are used badly or not.
Pros: Everything is well done, though the masking for this is rather simple.
Cons: Few, if any.
Rating: 8.5

OVERALL (not an average): This is.. interesting. While I can not say I like it as much as some of the author’s other tilesets, it is very different, and hopefully will spawn some nice new levels (sadly they will probably be CTF, this feels like a CTF tileset (like Swamps..))
Pros: Good graphics, great masking, turns into a good tileset.
Cons: No hook, the textured background only Almost works, you have to use layer 5 (though I suppose this can’t be helped), some of the background eyecandy looks bad, no non-red/blue platforms.
Rating: 8.5

Edit: Oh yeah, and the night version is poorly done. The author appears to have simply adjusted the brightness for everything (including the sprite colors) instead of doing a little work on creating a good looking dark time.
Second edit: Rating fix, calculated the average incorrectly before.[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

Disguise’s first actual set with paint shop pro 8, lets see how this set does.

TILES: The basic tiles are all there, suckers, destruct blocks, vines and poles. I have no complain with the basic tiles. The other tiles though, I thought this level could use some more. It would be cool if there was a jet of fire sticking out of the ground, so you get hurt if you touch it, or some skulls and stuff, but there isnt any of that. There are some tiles of strange things which I think are people in misery, but not much extra stuff. I like those blue and red ground tiles since they would be useful in CTF, but they dont fit the theme of the set much othervise. The ground looks strange, that peachy ground and that other one which looks like roots and stuff. Though its strange, its well designed and well textured. The backround is ok, the bg eyecandy is also good, though its hard to tell what those things are unless you stare at them closely in your JCS for a while.

COLOR: The color, lets see. In the dark version there isnt that much of a variety in color, same with the light. Most of the things are a brownish color or a color similar to brown. Except for the red and blue ground and suckers (and maybe some other things which I possibly forgot) most of the tiles are a similar color. Though it is hard making an inferno or an agony tileset with as much color as a jungle one lets say (you can prove me wrong if you’d like) the set still could of had some more color.

USERFRIENDLY: The user friendliness….hmm Disguise tried his best to make the set as userfriendly as possible, by mentioning some stuff in the description, pointing out what is what in the tileset, but still, it isnt very userfriendly. Though the things Diguise did definately helped people understand the set more, it still may be quite confusing. Though it is more userfriendly than some of disguise sets (take africa as an example) it isnt what you would call “simple to use”. People can still make great levels with this, it will just take some time to get used to the tileset, which is quite natural.

TEXTURENESS: Wow, the texture is amazing here, Disguise has shown to us what PSP 8 can do. The ground and most things are quite textured, though Ive seen better, this is still great.

OVERALL: Tiles=8, COLOR=6, USERFRIENDLY=7, TEXTURENESS=9
That adds up to 8, which is what I would give this. Not the best disguise set Ive seen, but a good one to say the least. Great Job disguise.

This is what I did initially when I first opened each file…

Bilsy – small chuckle
Bolly_OuttaGas – bewildered
CryingGhost – ???
DancingMonkey – very faint noise
DevanBigGun – said “okay…” out loud
DevanRobot – shook my head
Dragon_CrankyMood – moved on to next file
FatChick_Cigatette – kinda funny
fishykiss – pretty funny
Gaybot – quickly closed.
Jazz_TryingToBeSexy – Interesting…
PegLegWartWitch – shook my head again
QueenBuckTooth – ……
RavenEatsFeathers – hmmm…
RocketTurtle_nooksNcrannies – …
Tuf – Wondering to myself why I continue to go on…
Tuffy_WannaDanceQuestion – Shoot me please…
Turtle_BananaFloat – Ha! Something actually funny! Well whaddaya know…
Uterus_RollingEyes – Thankful to be done…

That’s 4 out of 19. I would give you a 2, but… I will be nice and round it up to a 2.2

First of all, JelZe, if you think all JJ1 tilesets are blocky, you have much to learn.
Now, Battleships was always one of my favorite JJ1 planets (though it’s not exactly a “planet”), and I was not paticularly pleased with CelL’s last conversion of it, so here’s hoping (I haven’t seen it yet) for a good job.

MISSING TILES: I can think of no tiles that this is missing. The various slopes, the grey pipes, it’s all there.
Pros: All there.
Cons: None.
Rating: 9.0

ANIMATIONS: The animations would seem to all be there, too, and I don’t think they’re missing any frames (though of course I could be wrong).
Pros: Almost all there.
Cons: I think the fireball is supposed to be animated.
Rating: 8.5

COLORS: The colors look great. I don’t see any color bleaching or anything of the kind, and CelL seems to have overcome the multiple-palette problem.
Pros: Everything looks great.
Cons: None to speak of.
Rating: 9.0

ADDED TILES: Conversions often seem to fail in this category. CelL has added blocks (a mixture between stuff already in the tileset and the JJ2 blocks), vines (icky icky), poles (stolen from JJ2), sucker tubes (smaller versions of the larger ones) and some signs (the JJ1 ones).
Pros: A decent amount of stuff is there.
Cons: No hooks, no belts, a lot of it is ripped, no spikes (a flame jet pointing up, maybe?).
Rating: 7.0

MASKING: The masking is all done well except for the CPU boss things, which should probably have a mask that you can shoot through but not walk through (so shooting has some effect). While other tiles in the tileset can presumably be used, it would be nice for the CPU back to be like that, instead of just a spider.
Pros: Everything looks pretty good.
Cons: CPU needs a little work, a few of the little tiny blocks seem a bit off, the fins are a little messed up.
Rating: 7.5

OVERALL (not an average): This is a rather good conversion which does great in getting the original tiles but not quite so good at making them into a tileset. I hope to see more conversions of this quality (well.. slightly better, actually) in the future.
Pros: Everything looks to be there, the colors are great, lots of animations, added tiles.
Cons: Some things ripped, some things missing, a few masking problems, a little confusing (the slopes in paticular) in a few places.
Rating: 8.5

Well, my 350th review…

Anyways, its been a while till CelL made a conversion.

What I can see is that this is a newer version of the previous Battle ships conversion cell made.
The tileset remake is alright, I would definately prefer it than the older version. Some added on tiles here and stuff. Though it still could of had some more stuff, Its currently fine the way it is. Easy to use, and color is good. I dont feel like writing a long review on this, so Ill give it a 7.7 and a download recc.

Anyways, to extend the content of my review I will point out some things I liked in this conversion. -Great Texture in those fires -Well made arrows -Destruct blocks fit the theme and look cool -Some things looked nice and all.
……..Hmmm….my status hasnt changed…I thought surely…oh well.[This review has been edited by Blackraptor]

Ok, I’ll review this decently for heaven’s sake…unlike Waz just did…

Theme:
It seems space tilesets are becoming famous again (or still are), it’s Jazz 1 Battleships (for the fanatics, it’s the last episode’s last world).

Contents:
Well, everything from the old Jazz 1 game is there, plus some extra stuff, like poles and destructable blocks. CelL could have at least added a conveyor belt, since it’s a technical set. O, did I forget to mention the grey/blue planet for in the background? (actually it’s Scraparap’s moon)
O, CelL also put in an example, poorly made though. It doesn’t show what you can really do with the set.

Masking:
Masking is ok, no bumps, just straight. And of course messages hidden in the masks are there, though less than previous ones. I’ll name them here:
- “foo” in one of the golden barrels
- a spider in the wall next to the Central CPU
- “hi” in the star block
- the location of the world in Jazz 1
- a bicycle in the fire of the engines

User-friendlyness:
Like all Jazz 1 tilesets, this set is blocky, which makes it pretty easy to use. And the eye candy is pretty basic, as always with JJ1 tilesets.

Verdict:
Well, what can I say? A decent conversion by CelL. I don’t have a scorelist (too lazy! :P), so I’ll just give it a 7.7 for now.

- JelZe GoldRabbit

Now now, don’t go put oil onto that fire.

Leole, I think you’re missing a point here. Creating good levels requires a lot of patience. Do you honestly think good levels can be made in an instant? No, a good level takes about 15 hours (at least!) to make, levels created with in that time are generally speaking not that good (there are exceptions, trust me). I believe there’s an article about making good levels, if I find I’ll gave you the link.

- JelZe GoldRabbit

P.S. I’m doing not to tease, I just this fight to end.

P.P.S. It seems there was no article about making good levels, I got a even better link:

[This" target="_blank">http://www.jazz2online.com/articles/view.php?id=92[This review has been edited by JelZe]

First: ALWAYS INCLUDE TILESETS WHEN THEY’RE CUSTOM!! I’m getting tired of people who don’t understand that we don’t all have everything.

I only rated the two levels that use carrotus and castle, since I didn’t have the other tilesets.

Both the levels were very bad. Tileset use was horrible, layout disgusting, I won’t even talk about event placement.

Spend more time on your levels, leole. Cuz this really won’t do. A good level at least takes 3 hours to make, mostly even much, MUCH more.

EDIT: Calm down, little man, calm down. 10 levels in 5 days and get 10 is impossible, even for the best. i’M NOT an expert, but, I’m far from beeing the worst member of this society, so I know what I’m talking about(look at my rank. It’s not the first time I rate stuff), and I know that you are new here. And it’s not because I’m not an expert that I won’t give bad ratings. Even the real under-rookies rate low. These bad ratings I give are nothing personnal against you. You must understand that. And don’t expect people not to rate when they don’t like your stuff.

Since you’re new here and you seem mad that I gave you a bad rating, I’ll remove the rating this time. But, next time, I’ll have no mercy. Just spend more time on your levels. And take my advice: begin with easy-to-use tilesets. Like MEZ01. And view the “help” files if you don’t know the things you need to know.
[This review has been edited by Waz]

Cool set.

I don’t know if it’s a good conversion since I don’t have Jazz1, but I like this.

A 7.5

Not bad for a first try indeed.

There was a kinda simple layout in the level, but it wasn’t that bad. The ammo placement wasn’t great, but it will do.
The worse thing in this level is the tileset use, which wasn’t good. I saw bugs everywhere.

Overall: still good for a first.

Bad:
Way too straight level.
Too much eyecandy(that’s new. usually there’s not enough).
Bad weapon placement.

Good:
Not too bad for a first try.

I would have given a 2, but I’ve got a habbit to give a little higher ratings to first stuff.

A 3.

41… Ahem, AI Falcon creates a semi – original gameplay concept. Is it good? lets see…

Well, all i’ll say is that it’s just pretty basic. You hop on ships over and over again… Until you reach the end. It’s long and repetitive, however the ships aren’t placed in patterns it just gets to the point where it’s the same ol’ same ol’. The eyecandy was ok, but nothing that caught my attention, in fact the fast, very fast, too fast background layers were annoying. I know the author was trying to give a great sense of speed but this goes a bit too far, though this isn’t one of the bigger problems.

The fun factor is here however, though it can get boring after the first for second try. Most of the fun I could imagine would be bumping/shooting (which would be very difficult to do with out ice) other players to the ground which also makes it quite frustrating if your a very competetive player.

The tileset usage was boring but I guess it was ok for the tileset (though I noticed one tile error).

This is an ok race level, it’ll be fun maybe for a few rounds of play but you may get tired of it after that.

Download reccomendation: If you like race or need something to do when you have a lot of time.

-fs

The reason that there were no weaponry and stuff in it was because I put the events there, but apparently nothing happened. I originally wanted to have several places around the level where you could pick up ice p/us, but they simply never showed up. I’m not sure if it’s because of a sprite limit, event limit, or mix of both, but the concept was indeed there.

Well, a whole bunch of sixes. I was expecting something like this. Don’t worry, my next level will be better.

Hm… an interseting level…

GAMEPLAY:

It’s good. No long partsand stuff. A bit difficult at some pionts, expesseliy with the end boss, I’v got to less carrots :( . Only 1 spring combination, too bad, I like spring combinations… And you aren’t “pushed” together, so you can jump freely. Enough save points, and a nice idea of triggers. Too bad you copied that idea of that Turtles and that Trigger Crate…

PROS: Nice trigger stuff. Good ideas, some new some bad.
CONS: Only 1 spring combination. At some points you have to jump very long and thats makes me crazy! :)
RATING: 5.7

EYECANDY:

Good, well atleast at some points. Some stuff is just “flat” and it isn’t looking very nice. And layer 5,6,7 and 8 are used for background eyecandy. I don’t like it when you use that layers for layer 4 eyecandy. Good cave part, it’s difficult to make eyecandy in that. At some points there just too much eyecandy. There are just too many eggs liying on the ground! And with that Trigger Crate, I only see a part of the platform… Some platforms are ugly and some nice…

PROS: Good eyecandy, nice layer 3 work for secrets and stuff. Nice work, with that grass on the ground.
CONS: Bad layer 5,6,7 and 8 work. You just used it for layer 4 eyecandy, next time make it better. Too many eggs and flowers at one place. And some platforms are flat.
RATING: 4.5

ENEMIES:

Huh? Christmas enemies in a Easter level? Oh, wait I’v read your review. Okay, nice idea. But if you set in on hard there just too many enemies! Don’t put so much enemies in a level, okay? And when I destroyd that Trigger Crate, “millions” of enemies coming out of the floor. In this level you can find this enemies: I will count them :P
Oh, wait there just to many enemies! Xmas Turtles, Xmas Floating and normal Lizards. And the End Boss: Bilsy(You know that fire demon.)

PROS: None.
CONS: Too many enemies at one place.
RATING: N/A

ITEMS:

Almost no ammo and almost no carrots and only one Bouncer Power-up. More I have not to say…

PROS: None.
CONS: Too less.
RATING: 1.5

EASY, MEDIUM OR HARD?

Easy-medium. Between there

PROS: N/A
CONS: N/A
RATING: N/A

OVERALL:

This is a kind of good level. Sometimes to much enemies, and strange enemies also! To bad some platforms are flat…
But the save points are okay, as you realy need them! Try to make some more action in your levels, make a story, make a good episode or something. And, instead of making that Bilsy Boss, I should have used the Tuff Boss. That Bisly boss is far too strong, because you only have 1 Power-up, a bit of ammo and low health.

RATING: 5.7

Spent more time in your levels and practise, practise and practise. Maybe then your level will be realy good! And woud you please use layer 5,6,7 and 8 good? Mabye a download reccomend, it’s up to you. But if you realy want to play good eyecandy levels, don’t download this.

EDIT: Hey I got the longest review!
Forgot the rating. :P

By,

spazz[This review has been edited by spazz]

Good things about this level: idea was kinda original. Eyecandy is OK. It uses my tileset(the last thing doesn’t influence on the rating, but I’m happy to see someone is actually using one of my sets).

Bad things: no ice or TNT. Boring layout on layer 4( the stuff on layer 7 looked very good, by the way. But, sadly, it was only background eyecandy.) Tileset use wasn’t that great. About the tileset use: the rockets weren’t supposed to get mixed actually, and the stuff on layer 7 wasn’t supposed to go there.

Overall: give it a 6.5

Download: yes, the idea was kinda fun.

Heh, I’ve downloaded this just for… Let’s say: to view what things can make other Polish Jazzers. First of all, I want to say that I hate writing.

I’ve played all levels, expect the Diamond Rabbit, because Polish Jazzers have it on TSF CD :).

The eyecandy is good. No bugs like flying trees. I must agree with other reviewers and say that there are too much enemies. I like the Morph Machine on Tubelectric. Fun get-safe-to-exit level (it reminds me a map called Jailbreak when I played loong ago StarCraft).

Overall, a 7.5. It isn’t a perfect pack, but isn’t d00f like Bjarni-style levels.[This review has been edited by ScionFighter]

Well, I don’t write points this time, so let’s say it straight. And seems, that I’m the first reviewer.

So the level has quite lot of bad things, but the tileset looks ok and the music were from that fun game “lotus III.” I just luv that game, I would still play it, if I could have my old dos-computer still. But the music wasn’t original, it was remixed some. So I checked the tileset it was ok. But the level was quite bad. I tell ya now.

The background in the level moves tooooooooooooooo fast. And the level is also too long for a race level if there’s also a trap that if you fall, ya get back to the start. Eyecandy looks good (except the background.)

So, maybe I rate this pack by these files.

Level 6/10
Tileset 8/10
Music 8/10

+ or – extra points
none

Overall 7.3333333 Level rank: Medium level.
Download recommendation: If you like to try, but not good to play so that’s why I take 0.5 off. So 6.7 is the real rating for your level. See ya!

Superjazz was here!

Well, this turned out exactly the way I expected, especially for a first CTF level. However, this levels gameplay is barely playable and not the slightest bit enjoyable. The layout is mostly straight and totally unbalanced.

They’re no borders so you know what that means… FLAG BUG. Next time you make a CTF level make sure you border the edges with at least 2 or 3 tiles to prevent this.

The flow was ok, but with the straight layout what do you expect? the layout is just too flat and uninteresting for CTF or any gametype for that matter.

Event placement was probably the worst aspect here as the way it’s placed both to unbalance the teams/bases and the evil hurt events (That can kill the server unlike the client)and another problem is that there’re two +1 carrots placed some what in the middle, this would be ok for a full NRG but not this way. Also, you can shoot the +1’s to the bottom of the level below the warps with are in the same area, I haven’t fully tested this, but they may be impossible to reach this way.

No new strategies in this level or hardly any strategy at all, your best bet is to camp at the 2 +1’s (risking them being shot to the ground. Probably out of reach).

The eyecandy is below average since it only uses layer 4 and 8, the tileset use is average. No new interesting uses to talk of. The eyecandy is simply below average and and really nothing new about it, however, i’m glad it’s not in any way ugly (though the gems aren’t very pretty when overused like that).

I feel no need to further explain this level, for a first attempt at CTF all I have to say is good try. Keep making CTF and other levels of any gametype, just take the adivce of the reviewers, practice, and you’ll make decent or even good levels in the future, don’t be afriad to try new concepts with gameplay and eyecandy (If they are good ones ;P).

Sorry, no download reccomendation.

-fs

[This review has been edited by Fire Sword!]

I give this a 5 because you did a good job getting TILES there, but hardly any. I hope to see Violet or Cell make a conversion of this in the future……