Filename(s):    bblair.j2l
Title:          BloodBunny's Lair
Tileset:        Damn 2  
Dimensions:     128x66
Music:          Dang.j2b
Type:           Capture the Flag

Author:         BloodBunny/Ninjin
Email:          Edward Kmett 
URL:            http://www.bloodshed.com/~harmless
ICQ:            1985432

Comments:

This was my first attempt at designing a CTF level. I started it because
I really wanted to see a CTF map using this tileset and because this was
my favorite music in the game.

The final result comes from a compromise between trying to make
high and low detail modes both look passable.

This level was initially going to be called 'Michigan Weather' and
have Snow Particle events. This decision was later revoked when it
was discovered that Snow Particle events, while available
when you toggle the editor into Multiplayer-only event mode, only
affect the local server. :~( This made it so that only I, as server,
could see the snow and no one else caught the joke, not that many outside
this desolate wasteland I call home would. ;-)

The lava at the bottom was originally implemented using Water Level events
not Water Blocks, but I found that the behavior of Jazz in 1-2 tiles
deep of water was erratic and annoying enough that I needed something
simpler and it gave a clear advantage to low detail because they could
see opponents in the lava. In addition, when using water-level, the water
animation effects affected frame rate and made the bottom couple of tiles
of the map rather ugly in high detail mode. (Every other scanline across
the bottom of the screen being done in blue, mixed with yellow-orange lava
is, let me tell you, quite horrendous) ;) Switching to water blocks and
putting a run of lava tiles across the bottom of the map in layer 4 allowed
the lava effect to be present in both low and high detail modes, which I
couldnt get through water level events. Also, it freed me from wrapping all
the start points with water level setting events.

Since Hurt events do not work in multiplayer on anyone except the server, I
felt that letting people splash around in the lava (and even encouraging it
by hiding a couple things down there) was rather entertaining. This is the
same reason why the happy pointy things on the level just ricochet bullets
with a pleasant *ping*.

A lot of this level is in the foreground, because I felt that it helped
make the major cave-like structures feel more enclosing. In addition, it
allowed me to overlap mismatched fore and background tiles to patch things
together which were never meant to be. Additional benefits of moving tiles
to the foreground are that the dangling stalactites (well, technically,
unsupported stalagmites with those cute little anti-gravity fins at their
base) which pretend to hold up many of the platforms have awkward masks
which can otherwise catch the player in annoying and unpredictable ways.
Moving those to the foreground consistently allowed me to avoid the problem.

Hints/Tips:

You can pick up the Missile Powerup by either using the TimeBombs above it
or by using the ElectroBlasters from below.

There are 2 gold coins tucked away on the level. The bonus warp lets you
raid either base quickly and costs 10 coins to activate, but as a safeguard
against people camping in the warp to taunt players, there is a ledge
underneath with electroblasters which can be used to chase people out of it.

There are 2 'hidden' passageways through the block of stone in the center
of the map that offer easier passage than going all the way to the bottom
and back up in many situations.

In addition, there are several little alcoves tucked away inside the rock
where goodies can be found, but none of these 'secrets' are particularly
overwhelming

Filename(s):    bbswing.j2l bbswinga.j2l
Title:          Swingin' Jazz
Tileset:        Jungle 2
Dimensions:     96x50
Music:          medivo2.j2b
Type:           Capture the Flag

Author:         BloodBunny/Ninjin
Email:          Edward Kmett 
URL:            http://www.bloodshed.com/~harmless
ICQ:            1985432

Comments:

I put this level together to address some of my frustrations with the
masks in the jungle tileset. Most of the sucker tube/spring board combos
would not be possible without using some of the dirty tricks hidden behind
the foreground layer. Rather, they would be possible but you would see
jazz's arms or ears through the sides or top of the trunk like in the in-game
levels using these tilesets.

I had initially intended to use swinging vines in this level, hence the
title, but this was a no-go for multiplayer since it appears that all of
the independantly mobile events dont work in multiplayer. Which is
understandable given the difficulties of syncronizing such behavior over the
network especially in the face of high latency where trying to make things
look right for even a nominally lagged player would be a programming juggling
act thats probably not worth the effort for event objects which are
inherently slow to navigate anyways and thus not very friendly to a player
running his tail off with the flag.

Also notable is that tiles with 'bad' masks which would cause motion to catch
are shunted to the foreground where possible or made one-way. In
the former case you just dont collide with them, in the latter you can move
upward through them even if they dont mesh quite right with the masks around
them. Examples, respectively are the bottoms of the end-of-platform on a 45
degree downslope tiles which otherwise catch your feet and the edges of the
water basin areas which otherwise if you press in close, will not let you
jump out.

There are two versions of this map included in this package because of
a relatively obscure cheat which works only when using the Flying Carrot
or Airboard in a level intended for CTF. If one enters the 'jjnowall' code
in Single Player mode, it affects you later in Party Mode. In other words,
once you touch an Airboard, you can fly though walls. This would not be a
real problem if in this state you responded to fly-off events or if the code
just didnt stick when you started the next level or joined a server to begin
with, but I can 

The 'jjnowall' cheat becomes a problem because if a person in this state
touches the flag of the opposite team, the flag vanishes. This effectively
requires the server to restart, is just as annoying as the 1.21 flag bug,
and still happens on a 1.22 server. People using this cheat are annoying
on Battle maps, but on CTF they render the server unusable the moment they
touch the flag while flying.

'bbswing.j2l' is the version of the map without the Airboards, safe for
leaving up online.

'bbswinga.j2l' is the version of the map WITH Airboards, because I feel
they add enough to the level that if you trust the people you are playing
with or are using 1.22 or above and can kick/ban people who come on
'jjnowall'ed that its worth playing. However, because of the Airboard
problem, I would not recommend leaving this version of the board in the
playing loop on a dedicated server. This version also might be worth having
around if they fix the issue with Airboards, which technically isnt a bug
because if you mark a map for CTF you arent SUPPOSED to be able to use
Airboards or Flying Carrots in the first place... but still. =)

Also, look at the sky in 16 bit color if you get a chance. ;)

-BB/N

Filename(s):    bbcity.j2l
Title:          Dirty Laundry
Tileset:        Colon 2
Dimensions:     78x68
Music:          boss1
Type:           Capture the Flag

Author:         BloodBunny of Ninjin & ELM
Email:          Edward Kmett 
URL:            http://www.bloodshed.com/~harmless
ICQ:            1985432

Comments:

This was my first attempt to work with a tileset which I actively disliked.
I started this map to try to build a Colonius map that I would actually enjoy
playing, unlike the "Colonius Wars" map included with the jazz2 full version.

Many factors contributed to my dislike of "Colonius Wars", primarily the
overabundance of small 1 health carrots (which in my experience seem to be
more appropriate to Battle than to CTF), the lack of one-way events on
window sills and several places where you can see an obvious line between
foreground and background. All in all, these factors and others led to a
frustrating time when playing on that level, making it the first 'Standard'
level which I removed from the loop on my server.

I dislike several things about this tileset as well, primarily regarding the
inability to move much of it into the foreground properly because of the
lack of a no-background version of many of the vertical walls. That and/or
having the sewer wall tiles come all the way to the tile boundary would have
settled the issue, but instead some tiles in the sewer are in the foreground
and drop a green line of 'background wall' which can occlude the flag or
jazz and just in general bothers me ;) In many places I was forced to use
the foreground layer anyways, for tunnels or to composite a fore and
background tile to make a reasonable replacement for some nonexistant tile.
One tile sorely missed is a nice 'stairtop' tile for use at coordinate
[23,29]) This kept me from using stairs afterwards because placing a building
atop the area reached by the steps requires that poorly fit tile to be used.
This is the approach used in the 'official' jazz levels with this tileset as
well.

I attempted to condense the map into a connected whole, unlike "Colonius
Wars" which has many free floating platforms and I find difficult to orient
myself in. At the same time I tried to differentiate elevations by placing
different things at different heights along the map. I.e. sewers, streets,
rooftops, clotheslines. I also attempted to reduce the arbitrariness of what
portions of the map worked and didnt. If there is a window in a wall, it
works as a tube. If there is a manhole, you can stomp it. Consistency
encourages exploration. (Another sorely missed tile is a 'foreground' half
to the wall inset windows, like at [5,20]. As it is, whenever used as a way
to walk through you appear in front of the near side of the window. I tried
to cover this by using a lot of sucker tubes inside the windows so one
would not stand around trying to discover inconsistencies.

I started 2 maps using this tileset and eventually merged them into one.
One was going to be an all-sewer map. This didnt pan out because there is
no good place to sit a CTF base in the sewer, (it doesnt stand on the floor
right) so I gradually added more area above the sewer to accomodate the
bases and eventually most of the capture routes. (One of my pet peeves
is that I wish there was an Adjust Y value in the CTF base object) In the
end I pulled my second map entirely into another layer and carved pieces
off of buildings to create the level I wanted. One thing to watch out for
when using sucker tubes is they do not appear to work on the extreme right
edge of the map. Caveat emptor.

Other peeves include the fact that the sewer manholes have masks which lip
inwards slightly relative to the holes you have to drop the player into,
this makes it so that the player can only exit from the top if he is in
the center of the vertical passageway. Since these are 2 tiles wide, I
can only provide a spring which will launch the player out of the manhole
when approached from one direction. This is why all of the springs leading
up and out of the sewer are againt a wall on one side.

Another ugly trait of this tileset is that it appears to use up too much of
the palette for the 'Warp Horizon' effect to attenuate at all in 8bit mode.
This leads to the trippy psychedelic horizon as seen in Jon McClellan's
bchbrawl when played in 8bit color. Since I can't stand this effect, I had to
rummage around in the tileset until I found a black tile. This allowed me to
black out the sky, and by using Warp Horizon anyways, I was able to place
a starfield in the backgroud, and a slight fade for highcolor users to liven
up the sky a little. (Peeve: why do some stars in the starfield move FASTER
than Jazz?) The inability to fade the Warp Horizon is why I have not done
a Beech tileset based level as well, which has the same problem. (Peeve
#345: Why is it that the relative scroll speed of the Warp Horizon
controlled by the tileset used, somehow, rather than any of the
relative x, y speed parameters in JCS?)

Despite all of my negative comments in this section, I do like the way things
turned out overall. I religiously avoided warps on this level to keep from
disorienting the player. The proliferation of sucker tubes and manhole routes
which were added over time allow for some daring escapes and limit the
effectiveness of the seeker missiles.

The sewers were my first time using echo and light events. I found doubling
"flick light" events works well, singular flickering lights dont emit
enough light for my tastes. The echo also helps to distinguish the sewer
from above ground. I used "Set Light" events heavily in the sucker tubes
and the sewers. Aside from disliking the lack of an instant light level
set, and/or the ability to control the rate of light level change. I
like the lighting effects available. I do wish that one could control the
lighting on a per-tile rather than screenwide basis, but thats something
for Jazz3 I guess.

-BB/N/ELM 

Filename(s):    bbpsych.j2l
Title:          Psych Major
Tileset:        Psych 2
Dimensions:     100x48
Music:          freeze
Type:           Capture the Flag

Author:         BloodBunny of Ninjin & ELM
Email:          Edward Kmett 
URL:            http://www.bloodshed.com/~harmless
ICQ:            1985432

Comments:

This level was designed when I found that a CTF base balanced perfectly
on a hat. Well, almost perfectly. There was the slight problem of Eva
floating in midair, so being pragmatic, I hid her behind some foreground
piping. And thus, my psychedelic map was born.

Initially there were more caterpillars than just the one in the middle, but
when running in a multiplayer game it appears these hookah smoking drug
addicts puff a little more often than in single player. (At least, they don't
wait for you to come on screen, which is logical in retrospect) so I had to
cut down on them severely.

This is my first attempt to actually incorporate animated ledges. The animated
cat ledges are used to guard the one of the faster path to blue base and as an
obstacle to obtaining the seeker powerup. I was initially using a couple of
cat 'hooks' as well, but hook events seem to be harder to jump off of than
vines in my experience. I later replaced the 'vine cat' with a 'Cheshire 2'
event, which acts as a nice levitating hook and doubled as a way to keep
people from following you into the cubbyhole under red base from below.

There are three powerups that depend on 'puzzles' to access them. They are listed in
the 'spoiler' section below. They arent very complicated puzzles, but they are
geared to be something you arent likely to grab while on the run.

Since "BloodBunny's Lair", I have been trying to get away from boring 'flat'
platforms floating in midair for no reason. This level was intended to, and
I believe succeeds at, contorting the platforms into distinctive shapes
and to tie them together with vines if nothing else. Leaving no surface
without a logical means of support. (Mind you, the issue of the tensile
strength on those vines and of the mortar holding those stones together is
a matter for future levels) 

I played around with the idea of a bonus warp, but after the puzzle driven
powerups there wasnt much to put in a bonus warp except a base raiding zone
or more unnecessary powerups, so it was scrapped.

The topology of this map is intended to provide multiple capture paths with
different speed/risk tradeoffs. For example, when running from red base to
blue base:

The fastest path i can come up with requires running through the hookah
smoke, which can make the path take appreciably longer than any of the
others if you run afoul of one of the smoke rings.

A slightly longer path requires you to go lower and come back up by bounding
off of the back of one of the cats, which may not be there when you arrive,
which could damage your run time as well.

Slower routes let you avoid any of these hazards by dropping lower
still and taking one of the tunnels in the lower left. These have the
advantage of no speedtrap issues, but don't have the speed of the best case
of the riskier routes.

The second hats above the bases provide a 'base camper' a place to wait and
align himself with the base. It is easy to drop through from above and
snatch the flag, but harder for a defender near the base to align himself with
the tophat in an emergency and chase after the flag runner. 

I also attempted to give a little more positional info than I have in the
past by using the lava lamps to denote which side of the map you
are on, and the arrow signs to direct the player to the base. 

There are 5 fast fires around the level to encourage the use of the
Blaster and Bouncy Ball weapons. This is also why these powerups are
easier to obtain than the Seeker powerup.


Hints/Tips: (Do not read past this point if you want to discover how to
             get the powerups by yourself, not that the puzzles are
             incredibly difficult or anything like that)

At the blue base if you go down through the hat, or if you come up off the
back of the animated cat from the vine, there is a Blaster powerup which you
cannot hit with anything but the bombs from above. The invulnerability to
the electroblasters from the sides is obtained by using blue springs (which
are partially visible) It would have also been possible to do so by using
'breakable' tiles which were keyed to a gun other than the electroblaster,
but I didnt do that. The Bouncy powerup on this landmass is placed as a freebie
to encourage its use, because of all of the vines and places for bouncy
ball ambushes around the level. The 'Lets Blow This Joint!' text is meant as a
clue as to how to get the blaster powerup below.

On the red base landmass through the hat are a handful of electroblasters and
two powerups embedded in the walls. A toaster powerup above and a seeker
powerup to the left. The sign is meant as a clue that you should try
attacking the seeker powerup from another direction. The toaster powerup is
also there to try to prod the player into thinking about shooting up.
One can obtain the seeker powerup by firing straight up off of the back of
the animated cheshire cat below it with the electroblaster. This was intended
to keep people from grabbing the powerup in the heat of a chase or on every
pass near this part of the map and to require at least rudimentary
intelligence and decent reflexes to obtain it.

P.S. Yes, I ramble like this in real life too.

P.P.S. Does anybody read this?

-BB/N/ELM