Originally Posted by Simon

Hi, I got reeled into the Discord community because I speedrun JJ1, and I gave JJ2 a shot today. According to BinaryBlob and TreyLina, both vanilla JJ2 and JJ2+ are eligible for running. I stumbled into two issues/missing features.

Pixel doubling

I'm happy with JJ2's field-of-view at 640x400. But this generates an extremely small window on my physical screen. I'd like the window twice as big, showing the 640x400 image at 1280x800. I don't have to see more of the map, so Bigjazz doesn't help. Fullscreen is not an option during a run, I'd read the run timer and twitch chat meanwhile. Even for casual play, fullscreen is too large on a 34-inch screen.

While I can enlarge the window by mouse-dragging its border (Archlinux with the xfce4 desktop, JJ2 runs via Wine) and get the desired pixel-scaling, this has severe drawbacks:
* It's laborius pixel-precise mouse-movement, or I'd have to script the window manager.
* The window size instantly resets when the first level starts, the window must be re-dragged.

The feature wish, thus, is pixel-doubling supported by the game.

I didn't find any option or discussion on pixel doubling. Has this ever come up in the past? Does anyone play with a 4K display, which would generate an even smaller window at 800x600?


-- Simon

I made a thread about upscaling JJ2.

In that thread, the tool I used (Borderless Gaming) lets you set a custom borderless window size (Right clicking the game name on right column).

That way you can run the game at 1280x800. Less convenient but works quite well once set.

https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=20030

Originally Posted by Simon

Edit: Oh my, A/S issue solved. JJ2 prevents for player 1 exactly the keys that player 2 is using. Obvious in hindsight, JJ2 is a multiplayer game. <_<;;

-- Simon

Ah, sorry, I should have thought of that too. If you don't want to mess with player 2 too much, I'm pretty sure that restriction isn't in place if you select "Controls" after pressing Esc ingame.

I tried setting JJ2's resolution to 320x200 and resizing the window to twice as wide and three times as high. Not only did that not break while leaving the menu and starting a new level, the next time I started up JJ2 it was still in that resolution and resizing.

Ah, sorry, I should have thought of that too.

No problem -- you helped by immediately suspecting the issue on this side.

Not only did that not break while leaving the menu and starting a new level, the next time I started up JJ2 it was still in that resolution and resizing.

I made a thread about upscaling JJ2.
https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=20030

Okay, it's even less an issue on Windows, if you take the time to adjust the window once.

I didn't see SAMI's thread before. It solves a more general problem, great.

Your solution taps into two additional Windows programs. Since I'm on Linux and already getting first results, though still hackish, with devilspie (lightweight program that recognizes a window by name and moves/resizes), I'll dive deeper into this method instead. If I get a clean solution, I'll post it to your thread.

---

Thanks for the quick replies. I've dug out the game for the first time in 5 years, yet sorted out all issues within hours.

-- Simon

Hi, I have suggestions for JJ2+.

Spectator Text Changes

It's really annoying that the spectator text appears above other AS drawn text/sprites/pixels/rectangles on the screen. It would be nice if a onDrawSpectatorText was added to AS, so scripts can interact with that and maybe even change spectator text. Something like this:

bool onDrawSpectatorText(jjPLAYER@ p, jjCANVAS@ canvas, jjOBJ@ spectatedObject/Player) { 
       return true; 
}

Update:
It might actually be better to add the spectated object/player as a jjPLAYER property. Then it will be like this:

bool onDrawSpectatingText(jjPLAYER@ p, jjCANVAS@ canvas) {
       jjAlert(p.spectatedObject + "");
       return true;
}

Spectator List

It would also be nice to be able to have a property in jjPLAYER which has a list of the players that are spectating you. Like this:

void onPlayer(jjPLAYER@ p) {
      for (uint i = 0; i < p.spectatorList.length(); i++) {
               jjAlert(p.spectatorList[i] + "");
      }
}

^
That would show which players are spectating you.

I think you should be able to set Events for Animations like with normal Tiles.
(I don't have more to say, JJ2+ rocks already!)

Originally Posted by Sonic Boom

I think you should be able to set Events for Animations like with normal Tiles.
(I don't have more to say, JJ2+ rocks already!)

What do you mean by setting Events for Animations?

He means that JCS should have the ability to set a default event for an animated tile, just like with normal tiles.

Originally Posted by Jelly Jam

He means that JCS should have the ability to set a default event for an animated tile, just like with normal tiles.

Ah. That makes sense now. I thought he was reffering to animations as sprites.

Another thing that should be added could be the ability to rebind the Team Chat key in AS.

Oh and the unpowered up RF hits the vine or hook when shooting up on them. Pls fix that somehow, it's fine with the powered up one.

I just got a new idea: Enemies should have an option to walk on Events like Platforms.

Originally Posted by Sonic Boom

I just got a new idea: Enemies should have an option to walk on Events like Platforms.

You may enjoy the first level from this: https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=19993

Originally Posted by Sonic Boom

I think you should be able to set Events for Animations like with normal Tiles.
(I don't have more to say, JJ2+ rocks already!)

JJ2+ only patches JJ2, not JCS, so this is not something JJ2+ can do.

Is it possible to add "/maxplayers current" which would set the maximum allowed players to the amount of players which are in the server already?

Just for convenience.

If you find a way for making 16bit tilesets of some sort, I swear I got everything i ever wanted in JJ2.

Originally Posted by Jelly Jam

If you find a way for making 16bit tilesets of some sort, I swear I got everything i ever wanted in JJ2.

Ask SE, he managed to do it.

Is it possible to add some sort of command line argument to have a custom named log file specified for logging IP's and chats? Currently, I have to start my servers in a specific order to keep using the same chatlog and iplog files.

IIRC JJ2+ outputs the chatlog to stdout, so if you run JJ2 with the > character you should be able to pick an output file?

Originally Posted by ShakerNL

But this on the other hand could come in handy. Keeping the max resolution at 800x600 and being able to add black borders around could be a nice thing.

I too think that this would be great. I'd use it only in fullscreen mode, though.

There are boring technical reasons that black border idea isn't possible right now--I've had this conversation too many times ingame to want to rehash it here--but there is a code branch that is working toward that being possible.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

if you run JJ2 with the > character

Ok, need help with this one, because I have no idea what you are talking about.

http://www.linfo.org/output_redirection_operator.html

How about the ability to download the music file WHILE ur in the server

It would be awesome if we could watch individual players in idle server mode like in ordinary spectator mode.

I mean at that point you're not exactly "idle"

Yeah but people in the server don't necessarily need to know that.

But I need the following stuff on the JJ2+ team part:

- a text file that will contain exact version number, down to the build, of the most recent JJ2+ version
- a zip file of constant file name that has all JJ2+ files packed and ready to unpack right into the main directory of JJ2, overwriting previous version.

Both of these need to be hosted at a fixed location (preferably under J2O) with constant file names so the updater can flawlessly download them. I can write the autoupdater myself, just need these things. Can you do that?

This is more or less how the "an update is available" notice already works (see https://update.jj2.plus), obviously with the difference that it doesn't automatically download and install the update yet.

Because the infrastructure is in place already, as you can see, an automatic updater is not super difficult to make, and may very well be included in the next version. It's more a question of "how do we want to do this" than "how do we do this" or "can we do this" at this point. Is it desirable that people's JJ2 installations are automatically updated? Should they get a choice or should it happen in the background? That sort of stuff is what's holding it back right now, not so much the implementation details.

Can you give me details on how it checks for the update and if there's a fixed location with update data? I could make it in a day or so (well, actually an hour or so, but I want it to look fancy).

Sorry if I was unclear. What I was trying to say is that we don't really need help with that feature, at least not in the form you're offering. Thoughts on the questions I mentioned above are welcome, though.

More generally, I don't doubt that you can make a system that downloads an installer from the internet and executes it based on some external variable, but I'm a bit puzzled by your claim that you could "make it in an hour" when you're not at all familiar with the JJ2+ code. That sort of statement doesn't really give me confidence in your development abilities.

I don't need to be familiar with JJ2+ code to download a zip file and unpack it into a specific folder. And it would be a separate app.

Please prevent crashes if next level is not found or empty (latter of which is a special case of "not found" as the game tries to load level ".j2l" which doesn't exist)

In that case it should just restart the current level instead. Not sure if missing music still crashes the game, but if that's the case, some default music that's played if level doesn't declare what music to use or it is missing should be chosen instead.

Please fix these issues with the way Jazz (and maybe other rabbits) controls. None of these are a huge deal, certainly not on the level of crash when freezing a gem ring, but they all make game feels unpolished and detracts from the joy of playing. Some of these are bugs, some may be bad design decisions, I don't know.

- The helicopter sfx keeps playing when you catch a rope while gliding with helicopter ears.
- When doing high jump with Jazz (crouch+jump), you can't cancel out into helicopter ears, which leads to big frustration when you miss the jump and even bigger when you lose a life. This seems to be a bug, because I sometimes am able to cancel mid-high jump into helicopter ears, but not 100% of the time
- (this issue may be shared across all rabbits as they all have this move) You need to be extremely precise with ground pounding, if you're even one pixel off-center on the barrel, destructible scenery or a crate (not sure if it happen with wooden ones, but definitely with metal crates), it won't register even though it looks like you should destroy the blasted thing. Ditto for enemies, which makes ground pounding of questionable use in combat as most of the time you get hurt.

As I've said, none of these are a huge deal, but this makes the game feel unpolished when you encounter and notice these.

Another one: Please release a better tool to compile/decompile your own j2a files. I knows there's that Python tool, but:
1) Not everyone want to install software that may give an attacker an ability to execute custom code without even compiling it once they're in someone system or even before (via social engineering, like here's a receipt for something you didn't buy from a store you never heard of, but please open it anyway). All interpreters fall under it, even PowerShell.
2) Even if they have nothing against using python, they may not get a correct version of it, especially when 2.x line (which seems to be used by the tool) is concerned. There were several changes to the 2.x branch over the years before it became such a mess that they decided to rewrite half of the interpreter and call it 3.0. For example, if a script is written for 2.4, there's no guarantee it will work correctly on 2.6.
3) It simply isn't user-friendly. Some GUI-based editor would be easier. Perhaps you could take a hint from one of the various Doom WAD editors out there - they present the content in an easy file manager-style view that everyone can understand. Then it's all matter of just putting in sprites with the correct palette there and setting up the metadata.

Originally Posted by Darkhog

Another one: Please release a better tool to compile/decompile your own j2a files.

This isn't really a JJ2+ suggestion, so it's not going to be a high priority. But I will say that the file format of sprites in j2a files is publicly available, and the other day I ran into somebody looking to help us out by writing an independent program if they were given the right specs, so maybe the two of you could work something out?

Your sound/physics suggestions from the previous post are all reasonable. The problem is they fall in that special intersection of neither fun to fix nor a major problem to leave unfixed, so they just hang around at the backs of our minds. If we (or anyone else) ever does the work to make a public issue tracker for us, it'd be nice to post that kind of issue there so we could get a sense of how many people are interested in this or that problem getting resolved.

Yeah. Lol, if the JJ2+ was open-source I could probably improve the physics myself (and also make collision checking depending on how fast player is while I'm at it, because why not). Probably won't happen, but yeah.

As for j2a thing, that unfortunately goes beyond my expertise. And even if it wasn't, I'd need full j2a specification so it could be used to safely edit/rebuild anims.j2a. In short, simple downloader/launcher/updater - I can manage. Editing custom format and writing loader for it from scratch - I can't.

Another suggestion: Allow for loading animations into standard JJ2 structures from regular bitmaps or indexed PNGs (that still use JJ2 palette) from angel script. Not sure whether it'd be easier than writing a better j2a tool, but if it is, I'd like it to be added.

We generally don't make it a high priority to implement things inside JJ2+ that users could write in angelscript themselves.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

We generally don't make it a high priority to implement things inside JJ2+ that users could write in angelscript themselves.

Well darn, I came here to make a suggestion for JJ2+ and this is what I see.

Still, I suggest adding the option to choose between Double Jump and Helicopter Ears in the Plus menu. That would be useful for those like me that want to play as Jazz or Lori but still want to Double Jump (and maybe there's someone who wants copter ears on Spaz, who knows?). I don't see how this would affect the Multiplayer experience, except from maybe deceiving your enemies a tiny bit? In rest, Jazz + D.J. = Useless ability, Lori + D.J. = Almost Spaz, Spaz + H.E. = Almost Lori.

Or at least in Single Player, that would be fine too. Yes, I know it's possible to do with AS but I won't take my time to make and apply a script for every single SP level I play.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

We generally don't make it a high priority to implement things inside JJ2+ that users could write in angelscript themselves.

Except... they can't. Not without reimplementing internal structures themselves (as your truecolor extension proves).