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GOG's Jazz 1.3: Fix bugs, add versions

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Love & Thunder Love & Thunder's Avatar

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Apr 18, 2021, 10:02 AM
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Very cool!

Had some time today, so I've done a litle investigation...
  • Tubelectric 2: J1LES didn't change the number of enemies or items for my 1.3 copy of the level.
  • Nippius 2: There's a group of 5 ice creams at the very end; at most, you can only get 2, leaving 3 impossible to get. Additionally, there are several ice creams in the spring section at the very beginning of the level that I believe to be impossible to obtain. But, as much as I love Jazz 1, I'm not very good at it! So, you're probably the best one to ask about whether those early ice creams are possible to obtain. J1LES doesn't change the number of enemies or items, so it's unlikely Epic accounted for this originally. Either way, the items count definitely needs to be reduced by at least 3.
  • Battleships 2: Yep, you can't go back round to get all the things, so the number of items and enemies will have to be revised. I used J1LES to erase all events that you couldn't reach on one path, saved it, noted the numbers, reverted back to the untouched file, and did the same for the other path. J1LES automatically figured out the numbers both times, so:
    • The original numbers in the untouched level are 55 items, 17 enemies on easy, and 40 on hard & turbo.
    • If you take the path to the right, it's 34 items, 17 enemies on easy, and 27 on hard & turbo.
    • If you take the path to the left, it's 51 items, 12 enemies on easy, 29 on hard & turbo.
    In both cases, I made sure to include any items that you could get by going partially down one path until the last point you can backtrack from; did some testing to make sure. So, I am confident that these numbers are correct.
    This in mind, I would suggest using the 51/12/29/29 numbers, since "100% completion" implies an optimal path in terms of maximising the number of items, enemies, etc. to get a high score basically. So, it makes sense the 100% completion numbers would be based on the path containing the higher number of items and enemies.
  • Deserto: I found some items that I SUSPECT are unreachable, but I don't know; I'm not very familiar with Deserto. I couldn't find the spawners you referred to in your last post. My plan was to make a blank level with a few enemies, including a spawner, and see if the lizards spawned affect the completion percentage, but I don't know which event the spawner is.
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Last edited by Love & Thunder; Apr 18, 2021 at 10:16 AM.
Violet CLM Violet CLM's Avatar

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Apr 18, 2021, 09:53 PM
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The Deserto lizard spawner is event #13 in level1.037... I don't remember if it appears in level0 too.
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Apr 21, 2021, 11:29 AM
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Thanks! Solid work on Nippius and Battleships. Deserto 1, right, the spawners don't exist in 1.3's Deserto 1, I didn't know.

Useful: Full-level images for Jazz Jackrabbit on VG Atlas

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Originally Posted by Love & Thunder View Post
Very cool!
Tubelectric 2: J1LES didn't change the number of enemies or items for my 1.3 copy of the level.
Then it's likely that Tubelectric 2 contains unreachable treasure/enemies outside the visible map. Reason: Today, I played through Tubelectric 2 on Medium in 1.3, trying to get 100 % enemies/treasures. I got 100 % enemies, but only 98 % items. For this, I tried to get all black chip treasures, I didn't collect all carrots/ammo/invulnerabilities/...

Tubelectric 2 VG Atlas image shows an out-of-bounds treasure at the very top, about 80 % at the right.

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Deserto: I found some items that I SUSPECT are unreachable
Right, those are unreachable. They shouldn't count towards 100 %: Those are rapid-fires, lives, ..., they don't seem to be treasures. If we are concerned about these, then Sluggion 2 warrants the same concern.

Anyway, I just played Deserto 1 on Medium in 1.3 and got 100 % enemies, 100 % items. It's good as-is.

Quote:
The Deserto lizard spawner is event #13 in level1.037... I don't remember if it appears in level0 too.
Deserto 1 has lizard-spawning sparkles in good 1.2 in the final strip towards the exit sign, after the castle. These sparkles are missing in 1.3. Interesting version difference that I didn't know yet! Haven't examined Deserto 2 (= level1.037) yet.

Will work on Orbitus now.

-- Simon

Last edited by Simon; Apr 21, 2021 at 12:33 PM.
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Apr 21, 2021, 01:47 PM
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Here is the promised Orbitus 2 fix, version 2021-04-21.

Tested on Medium difficulty in 1.3, I got 100 % enemies and 100 % items.

This is physically like version 2020-10-18, but I recolored the bouncy floors to match exactly the vanilla 1.3 Orbitus 2 floor colors. I.e., it fixes a coloring mistake that I introduced in 2020-10-18. Changed the out-of-bounds text blocks to read 2021-04-21.

Image: Vanilla 1.3 Orbitus 2
Image: Orbitus 2 fix 2020-10-18
Image: Orbitus 2 fix 2021-04-21

-- Simon
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Apr 21, 2021, 09:36 PM
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Battleships 2, 51/12/29/29
I've found improvements over this: I've moved my reply to fresh thread. The 100% research will be surprisingly complicated!

Let's keep the general playability issues in this thread, and the 100% problems in the new thread.

-- Simon

Last edited by Simon; Apr 22, 2021 at 05:37 AM.
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Apr 22, 2021, 10:03 AM
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Right.

So, we currently have:
And we're now working on:
  • Fixed 100%ability for Tubelectric 2, Nippius 2, Battleships 2, Deserto 1, and possibly Deserto 2 (other thread for details)
  • Possibly the manuals as goodies? I have PDF copies of some unofficial scans of the manuals for JJ1 and JJ2 that were posted on the GOG forums, but I don't know if those would be allowed (certainly they aren't ideal).

I don't think the 100%ability should be difficult or time-consuming to do, so I think if we can figure out good 100% numbers for those levels, we should be good to ship the patch.
If we can figure out an arrangement for the manuals before everything else is ready, that would be great to send along, but I feel like goodies don't need to update at the same time as the main game is patched, so we can always figure that out later.
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Apr 22, 2021, 10:40 AM
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Originally Posted by Love & Thunder View Post
Right.
So, we currently have: (list)
Yep, you've listed all fixes that I can think of!

The plan for the extra versions (1.0, good-1.2, vanilla-1.3) is to ship them alongside, but not make them selectable in the launcher. If somebody wants to play these, they'll have to mount them manually in Dosbox.

Quote:
And we're now working on: Fixed 100%
Right, let's see what we can get into the same release. The 100% topic is on good track.

Quote:
Possibly the manuals
I have nothing good to provide here, the German manual wouldn't be of much use. Let me know if you find something nice.

More stuff to do that isn't bugfixing:
  • When the release is due, let's write a readme/history file that lists the exact changes based on 1.3. This is mainly for ourselves, and for future maintainers. (I'll document the changes on lixgame.com/jazz afterwards anyway, but it's better to also have them in a readme.)
  • I'll play through the entire patched Jazz on livestream, to check that it's all solvable. Let's agree on a date once the release is ready.
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Apr 23, 2021, 02:11 PM
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Originally Posted by Simon View Post
The plan for the extra versions (1.0, good-1.2, vanilla-1.3) is to ship them alongside, but not make them selectable in the launcher. If somebody wants to play these, they'll have to mount them manually in Dosbox.
Oh? When was this agreed?

Surely it makes more sense to put them in goodies if possible, since then people may actually see them, and they're not sort of "hidden"? Plus people who don't care aren't then installing four different versions if they're only going to play one.

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I have nothing good to provide here, the German manual wouldn't be of much use. Let me know if you find something nice.
Jazz 1 manual
Jazz 2 manual
Courtesy of this thread on the GOG forums.

I also got this other scan of Jazz 1's manual from somewhere. Can't remember where. May have been on the GOG forums at some point too.

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Originally Posted by Simon View Post
  • When the release is due, let's write a readme/history file that lists the exact changes based on 1.3. This is mainly for ourselves, and for future maintainers. (I'll document the changes on lixgame.com/jazz afterwards anyway, but it's better to also have them in a readme.)
  • I'll play through the entire patched Jazz on livestream, to check that it's all solvable. Let's agree on a date once the release is ready.
These sound very good!
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Apr 23, 2021, 10:55 PM
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put them in goodies if possible, since then people may actually see them, and they're not sort of "hidden"? Plus people who don't care aren't then installing four different versions if they're only going to play one.
You're right, as goodies is better.

The point is that a default install gives prominently only the GOG0002, and the 1.0, 1.2a, 1.3 are somehow possible to pick if one explicitly wants them.

Hmm, the naming. "GOG0002" comes from when I had plans to edit the JAZZ.EXE, but we won't do that. Thus, will a name GOG0002 or GOG2 stick? I'd like to call it something different than 1.4, to clearly distinguish versions from the 90's from today's patching. Or 1.3.1, hmm, that still feels too authoritative.

-- Simon
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Apr 24, 2021, 07:08 AM
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You're right, as goodies is better.

The point is that a default install gives prominently only the GOG0002, and the 1.0, 1.2a, 1.3 are somehow possible to pick if one explicitly wants them.

Hmm, the naming. "GOG0002" comes from when I had plans to edit the JAZZ.EXE, but we won't do that. Thus, will a name GOG0002 or GOG2 stick? I'd like to call it something different than 1.4, to clearly distinguish versions from the 90's from today's patching. Or 1.3.1, hmm, that still feels too authoritative.

-- Simon
I don't think the name is important, but if we really want to have one, "The GoG patch" will suffice, I think.
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GOG contact: "I think that this minor change doesn't require changing the displayed text."
reminder, GOG is only expecting to replace a few level files, not to advertise it as a new version
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reminder, GOG is only expecting to replace a few level files, not to advertise it as a new version
Indeed.

And in fairness, the changes are quite minor; one small section of one level is rearranged a bit, a couple of other levels have one event's sprite parameters changed, and a few more have the 100% numbers changed slightly, so it's not exactly a "new version".
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"GOG Patch" is perfectly fine with me. Or "GOG Patch 1".

Gog can advertize it or not as they like, yeah. It's merely not the 1.3 anymore and needs a name. When I document the changes on lixgame.com/jazz, I'll call it something anyway, so it's good to pick something now and have the release's readme agree with how I'll call it.

-- Simon

Last edited by Simon; Apr 28, 2021 at 05:54 PM.
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I sent my fixed version of Medivo to someone on the Jazz Discord, and they pointed out a major problem with it (I forgot to reset the start position!). I've fixed this now, here.

So, here's the current contents of the patch, updated to use a link to the new, fixed version of Medivo:
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Will the moving spike balls from Pezrock and spikes from Exoticus be removed from the enemy count? I think one of the Exoticus levels has an unreachable enemy anyway, but counting spikes and environmental hazards with a ton of HP as enemies doesn't feel right.

Levels I know of or remember, where it's impossible to get 100% are:
Tubelectric 2
Nippius 2 (unless you cheat with a hoverboard)
Jungrock 1 & 2
Sluggion 2 (thanks to the unreachable section of the map)
Dreampipes 2 (unless you use cheats to get dynamite for the last 2 unreachable enemies)
Battleships 2 (unless you use a hoverboard)
Exoticus
Rainforus (not sure if you naturally get dynamite or have to use cheats, but without them, certain enemies are almost impossible to get)

also, unless the GOG version messed something up, I don't remember either Deserto levels being impossible to get 100%
I clearly remember getting all items and kills in those levels (though I was playing the version that has the extended Tubelectric 2, properly functioning Orbitus 2 level, broken Marbelara secret level and has the invisible spring removed from all levels they were in
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