Hey, I'm Max and about to start my blog Remain Online, which is all about retro multiplayer online games, jazz 2 obviously included. I loove jazz2online, and all the content and the discussion, and and I have a couple questions. Is there a way to play Jazz2 on the current Mac os x versions? (10.7 and up aka no Rosetta support)

Other thing: I am fascinated by Jazz2 s 32 player multiplayer capabilities. I'd like to call on friends, you guys, the internet to achieve that; but I'm sure you guys have hooked that up before. Is it playable/ lag's OK? Is it fun even?

Looking forward to being part of the discussion!

Hey!

As far as I know JJ2 runs pretty well on OS X via Wine, and JJ2+ mostly works as well. You can find more information about Wine here. Of the options mentioned on that page I've only used WineBottler, which worked well enough for me.

I don't play regularly any more, but it's always been fun enough. Lag is a factor like in any multiplayer game, but generally speaking the game is very playable online. Don't forget the JJ2+ patch though, it improves the game a lot and many servers require you to have it installed.

Hi Max, good to see you around here!

Over the years people have been organizing JDC events which included events where 25-32 players were pretty common. I've never really experienced that much more lag in a 32 player server than in a 6 or less player server so I don't think its an issue.

As for if it's playable/fun: some gamemodes and events like jailbreak where very nice to play with many people even though it is a bit chaotic. It is always exciting to know that 14/15 of your members rely on you :P. I think it's especially enjoyable if you just want to play a casual game and talk a bit with other people. If you want more intense or strategic gameplay you should aim for duels/2v2's/3v3's in ctf, these kind of games are usually played daily in the Camel Duel servers.

A lot of organisation and friends is required to get 32 players. Usually, 32 players happens around free-for-all JDC events, which isn't happening at the moment. It's rare for there to be 32 players any other way, and when it is, it's usually a test server or the start of the Anniversary Bash.

Thanks for the perspective guys. Good to know the game can handle it. I kinda need to see the Chaos of 32 players myself, so I'm going to ATTEMPT to organize it. Stijn, thanks for the wine links, I'll try to get that going!

However, plus is required to handle 32 connections at once. Back then, there was also a limit of 32, but it was only by players, not connections (so it would only work if every player was a splitscreener).

If you attempt to organise it, the minimal effort you need to put into it is:
Go to www.jazzjackrabbit.net and take a good look there.
Play the game online often and try to get some Skype accounts from players.
Find out what kind of event you were to organise to attract 32 players., (For example one day tournament, or a gamemode like jailbreak)
I would suggest to at least put the results of the 'tournament' online somewhere as this community is quite result orientated overall.

Good luck.

The only times a full 32 player party was realized was during the latter JDC season's opening events. As far as I remember, not even the latter Bashes could reach that amount of players and the earlier Bashes didn't have Plus to utilize the extra connections.

So if you don't want to put in the effort of trying to organize an event through JJ.net as MS stated above (which is a good suggestion), you could also wait for the community to organize a new JDC season and try to claim a place in the opening event. Just create an account on JDC at any time and keep visiting the J2O newspage and it'll eventually happen.

Well thank the doofus windows 8 for it

I got Jazz2+ working great with Wine & Wine Bottler so that's awesome, thanks for that. Thanks for all the organizing tips, I'll figure out how I'm going to approach it soon.