BE CAREFUL: THE ADMINS MESSED WITH MY ACCOUNT AND WILL PROBABLY USE IT TO MAKE IT SEEM I SAID THINGS I DIDN'T! IF I SAY ANYTHING STRANGE, IT ISN'T ME, BUT THE ADMINS TAMPERING WITH MY ACCOUNT!

is it april already?

So ... Which is the spriting software gonna be?

Make sure it is specific for sprites, allowing you to fill with gradients by using distance differences between pixels (there was an option for it in Deluxe Paint), showing you the previous frame in translucent upon your current one (onion skinning), and do whatever the software that Epic Games used did. No exceptions. It must be a flawless work.

First show me your animation, so I can tell whether it is coming out well. Then, if it is, continue to the next frame. We can do it!

I think Soulweaver has us covered.
And while all this sounds like brilliant ideas, and while I would love to see this done, and I'd love to contribute, this project would most likely die. Especially with Project Carrot already looking promising. Perhaps try talking to Soulweaver about your ideas for this, maybe Project Carrot will support a new tileset format that allows double resolution.

Basically, though, I see what you're trying to do here, Dennis, and I fully support the attitude of getting things done that you're going for, but perhaps a full remake of JJ2 isn't the best way to go about it.

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

Tiles will be 64x64 pixels large, and the minimal resolution will be 640x480.

That's not really future-proof. That concept is sooooo retro.
Tiles should be essentialy textures, and thus any size would be acceptable by the engine, giving much freedom both to tileset and level makers. Tiles would be rendered on polygons, to make use of OpenGL/DirectX.
Oh yes, and then they shouldn't be even called tiles, tiles should be deprecated. Yeah, that's the whole point

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

Each tileset will have 1024 colors in its palette. (We might need to provide more than one PCX image for a single tileset, and stack it with others)

Again, if we ever make that effort to start a complete remake, WHY use PCX and palletes? It's 2014, nobody ever uses that in game making

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

Ofcourse, this is just PART of the plan. It doesn't end here. But for now, let's amplify the FIRST part of the plan: finetuning the sprites in a double resolution. (Not the tilesets, that's a different story)

Sprites should be huge, like 512 square or even 1024, and be scalable, so it would look good even in HD and retina displays.
Also I might add the obvious, field of player's view should be same on any resolution.

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

I already tried to finetune the Jazz sprites, but the results were disappointing. We need to redraw every single sprite (alas, including the main character animations) lest its pixels look double the size of the background pixels. They also need to have each 16 colors for each hue, instead of the usual 8.
We also need a few additional sprite versions (like 5 frames for each enemy turning around, lest it changes direction immediately)

This "finetuning" is pointless. Animations would have to be redrawn by a group of artists. In full 24-bit RGBA glory.

let's read about this

Speaktrap's ideas make sense.

Let's all do as Speaktrap said!

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

let's read about this

hilarious ending, thanks for the read

I can't find any software smartly adapting the gradient to the area shape.

Like this:



It took me half a hour to do it with MSPaint. With the right software, it would take only half a second.

Only DeluxePaint has a feature for this, but it can only do it in 2 directions, 90 and 270, or 0 and 180. I need a program that can do it from and to every direction. And that can pick a gradient with more than 2 colors.

It should also be able to create round gradients, starting from the borders, ending with a spot in the center of the polygon, adapting the direction to these 2 spots.

As for the textures, though, I have to disagree. Textures, especially those made with Texture Maker, are pretty much off the style of platformers, since they're supposed to be applied on 3D models instead. Anyway, if somebody really knows how to use them, they could create perfect results.

First, there MUST be at least 3 or 4 variations of the same tile, lest the whole thing is a limbo of the same tile. And if you use Texture Maker, different seeds create non-seamless figures. They must be seamless, but also different one from another.
Colon's sewer walls ARE a limbo of the same tile, as well as all of Disguise's tilesets.
Holiday Hare 98's walls AREN'T, and that's how it is supposed to be.


Also, according to me, the tiles created for left or right walls should not use the same picture as frontal walls. They should also be seamless on the Y side, joining them with the frontal tiles, BUT NOT on the X side, joining them with other vertical walls.
Carrotus and Diamondus's vertical walls ARE erroneously seamless to the frontal walls.
Holiday Hare 98's walls still are, but it looks like they aren't because of the snow upon them.
Inferno and Haunted House's walls AREN'T, and that's how it is supposed to be.

As for the background layers, they should NEVER include same tiles rescaled.
Labrat's layers 6 and 7, as well as Colon's layers 4 to 7, DO include same tiles, and that's extremely bad IMO.
Inferno, Carrotus and Psych DON'T.

Also, every single layer should have something in it, and layer 5 should NOT be used as sprite background layer.
Psych and Jungle DO use all the layers properly.

And this is important: Layer 8 should ALWAYS use a masterpiece of art (making your gaming experience great if you use low detail, superb if you use high detail). For now, only Labrat, Inferno and Damn use one. (Medivo does too, but it isn't a really rich one) The others either use textures or composable stuff (Castle and Tubelectric)

My suggestion is to create a new level design program that incorporates tileset design and script design as well. For example if you had JCS, you could supplement the tileset window with a natural tileset drawing or painting tool. That might save you time if your plan is to remake JJ2.

But as for that, my idea is that there are only 3 layers, foreground, middle and background, and within each layer are 3 dimensions, so just place tiles in an order of priority when viewing a busy 3d foreground layer or busy 3d background layer.

Maybe, if I found the program which creates gradients the way I requested in the above post, I could start making some of these sprites.

Deluxe Paint has this feature, but it's limited in directions, and has no radial gradient fill.

Gus, your plans make no sense...

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

All the sprites shall be sized at least the double of how they currently are, and redrawn from nothing.

Each tileset will be 16 or 32 bit colors, instead of the usual 8.

Fair enough.

Tiles will be at least 64x64 pixels large, and the minimal resolution will be 640x480.

There is still a huge difference between 640x480 and 1920x1080. You'd need to decide on a target resolution to draw for, not just a minimum.

Deluxe Paint 5 or something better shall be used for tilesets. (Nick used an earlier version of Deluxe Paint)

Why? Do you think JJ2's art style is a result of the program used to draw its art? It's not, it's because that's how Nick Stadler decided to draw things. If he'd used Photoshop, there wouldn't have been a huge difference.

All tileset makers on J2O will work on tilesets, but somebody skilled as Agama will re-draw upon the tiles.

That's not for you (or us) to decide. Besides, most "tileset makers" have retired.

Layers 3 and 4 will be both used for sprite layers, and divided into 3 sublayers: 3- (SFG), 3, 3+(SBG), 4-, 4, 4+

This is laughably complicated. Just call it layers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. How did you arrive at the number of 6 sprite layers? Why not 5? Or 7? Or 34? Why not increase the amount of background and foreground layers as well? Why not have one sprite layer, and the ability to change the drawing order within that layer?

Every single background layer will have an image of its, each at least as large as the screen's resolution.

Why this limit? Why not go for what fits best with each tileset/environment?

Some professional sample creating software will be used to create samples before the musics are created.

Why do you want the music to be sample-based to begin with? And why software-synthesized samples?

I think a more fruitful way of going forward would be JJ2+; higher resolutions will almost certainly be possible somewhere down the road. Even now you could create a custom J2A in which sprites would be bigger; of course, this would probably lead to problems with existing levels, but it looks like those aren't in the equation here anyway. As far as I know additional layers are technically not impossible either. The only thing that might be hard to change is the 256 color limit, but I wouldn't put it past the JJ2+ team to somehow work around that too, in the future.

JJ2+ is quite a diffirent story. As far as I understand, the topic is about a full remake, new Jazz game with gameplay heavily based on Jazz 2, but on a completely new, rewritten engine. If such, it's a great opportunity to throw all the technical limitations. I imagine something more visually similar to Braid or Rayman Origins.
Stijin, I fully agree with you, and I doubt that this project would even start on, seeing Razz Arena, Project Carrot or even JJ3D patch progress. It's hard to take DennisKainz "plans" serious, he doesn't even have basic programming knowledge, even how to use gl_quads to render 2D graphics.
Don't look at me; I'm a horrible programmer

Originally Posted by Speaktrap

JJ2+ is quite a diffirent story. As far as I understand, the topic is about a full remake, new Jazz game with gameplay heavily based on Jazz 2, but on a completely new, rewritten engine.

Yes, but all suggestions I'm seeing are slight improvements over JJ2 vanilla. If that's the case, modifying JJ2 rather than creating a new game is far more feasible.

Well, if you are looking for a sprite editor, here are some links.

http://www.aseprite.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ase/
http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/draw.html

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

JJ3 should look like this.

Also: if you want to get people to follow you in creating something, you need to contribute something first. Ideas are cheap; let's see art and code. And if you're having trouble making pixel gradients, don't use gradients, or don't use pixels.

I think JJ3 should look like Rayman Legends, but to each their own.

Also, I agree with Violet about contributing stuff.

For a resolution I suggest starting at 4000x3000.

That would give you the greatest range to downscale from if necessary.

If you want high resolutions, try 7680x4320, since that's the standard 8K resolution(Also, apparently, 4K is a redundant format, since 8K is a very small step up from 4K technical-wise, so things will go straight from 1080p to 8K, which means that 4K is redundant, and 1080p will be obsolete in a few years).

stop posting stupid memes

What cooba said

Consider resoltion just a number. The ratios will forever be fullscreen 4:3 and widescreen 16:9.

Originally Posted by Stijn

What cooba said

Are you trolling me hard? You deleted my post where I said exactly this!

If you are Satan the Devil and you are trying to have a direct contact with me by using Stijn as your Eden's serpent, I'm listening.

You have lured me in already. This might be your decisive victory. So you'll better not ban me from JCF, or you have lost me forever! You KNOW God will protect me throughout the rest of the days.

And know that your credibility decreases the longest time you don't reply to this message.

I know everybody here has a demon. I know you can reply me immediately.

...wut.

About resolutions; perhaps if the whole thing was either in vectors, or made at seriously ridiculous sizes, then basically any resolution would work, and -- assuming you have an alpha channel in your graphics -- you get free anti-aliasing. Of course, vectors could add the bonus of being able to be manipulated in the game for some fun VFX(Such as making Jazz's ears spin around at the speed of light).
(Also, I agree with Treylina's above post)

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

Are you trolling me hard? You deleted my post where I said exactly this!

If you are Satan the Devil and you are trying to have a direct contact with me by using Stijn as your Eden's serpent, I'm listening.

You have lured me in already. This might be your decisive victory. So you'll better not ban me from JCF, or you have lost me forever! You KNOW God will protect me throughout the rest of the days.

And know that your credibility decreases the longest time you don't reply to this message.

I know everybody here has a demon. I know you can reply me immediately.

All I'm saying is that your recent flood of posts containing only (image) memes is not appreciated. There's no JCF rule against single-image posts or memes or anything, but I'd like you to stick to posts that actually have some content beyond a mere image joke which - if I might add a personal opinion - is often hard to understand or find funny, in the case of those you posted.

The difference between deleting a post where you say "what he said" and me saying exactly the same is that in the latter case, I'm saying, as a forum administrator, that I agree with cooba's point that you should stop posting these memes.

Feel free to PM me if you have more to say about this, let's not derail the thread.

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

If you are Satan the Devil

He is power abusive and corrupt hitler nerd!

that's it, I'm done with this thread

*unsubscribes*

Why don't we get back to pictures and things like in this post or this one

well, if this thread is actually about remaking JJ2, id like to have some input on that. it will never happen here because the business aspect of game design is so so unreliable.

My opinions are known(Both about remaking JJ2, and the situation of the franchise as a whole), so all I'm going to say is that we should stick to JJ2+ for now, and when the 30th of July comes, hope for the best.

Well, I'm not in the plus team so I have nothing to contribute there either. Actually, the best help I can give for plus is STOP TRYING TO SUCCESSFULLY READ .669 files. They are literally just hacked .s3m files, they can be read as if they were .s3m. That would fix the problem of plus breaking .669 compatibility.

Plus on the subject of resolution, I feel like a good first step would be allowing higher resolution in JCS, that way level designers could view maps in 1920x1080 if they really want to, before players open an untested level. Furthermore more memory would have to be allocated to the program to allow generation of objects and rendering of many more sprites and animations. Also, the number of tiles for layer 8 in textured background would need an increase from 8x8 or whatever it is now. A fixed number of tiles might mean a fixed number of pixels. I don't even see a point to that limit other than it being accurate for the official JJ2 tileset skies.

Originally Posted by KRSplatinum

Also, the number of tiles for layer 8 in textured background would need an increase from 8x8 or whatever it is now. A fixed number of tiles might mean a fixed number of pixels. I don't even see a point to that limit other than it being accurate for the official JJ2 tileset skies.

That's actually a pretty good point, though it wouldn't make much of a difference initially as all tilesets accomodate 8x8 textured backgrounds. But some more flexibility with regards to that could allow for some interesting graphical effects.

Originally Posted by KRSplatinum

Well, I'm not in the plus team so I have nothing to contribute there either.

Well, that makes two of us.

Originally Posted by KRSplatinum

Plus on the subject of resolution, I feel like a good first step would be allowing higher resolution in JCS, that way level designers could view maps in 1920x1080 if they really want to, before players open an untested level.

Would be nice.
Especially if they could add some extra features on the side(Since, to do the 1920x1080 preview, they'd need to make a JCS+).

Originally Posted by KRSplatinum

Furthermore more memory would have to be allocated to the program to allow generation of objects and rendering of many more sprites and animations.

If this is possible, it would be nice to do.
My suggestion is to have an option in the options menu so that you can select how much RAM is allocated for JJ2. It would possibly need a restart(Not familiar with how JJ2 handles things), but it could solve a lot of out of memory errors.

Originally Posted by KRSplatinum

Also, the number of tiles for layer 8 in textured background would need an increase from 8x8 or whatever it is now. A fixed number of tiles might mean a fixed number of pixels. I don't even see a point to that limit other than it being accurate for the official JJ2 tileset skies.

What Stijn said.

Well, I'm not that good of a coder because I automatically assume all Windows programs are written in C, C++ or C#. ;d

Plus, if there were actually a new JJ game for Windows it should at least be in 32-bit color. Epic should just make an all new system requirements list for Jazz and start making a new game from there.

It would require more than just a recoloration of Jazz and Spaz and Lori sprites to truly make a 32-bit game, though.