The only thing I can think of is hell pits.

Though I haven't been playing in a while, so I could be wrong.

Originally Posted by St. Louis

New events (especially enemies) are more or less quite tedious to make at least in comparison to the upsides of making them (save the few that have already/recently been made).

Originally Posted by Stijn

How do you know?

Originally Posted by St. Louis

Commands to tamper with settings one couldn't affect before would just be pretty much totally useless.

Untrue. I totally disagree. How about /wc? Right now you'll have to restart the game to turn the wallcliming fix on or off. And jjnext doesn't work in co-op mode, so that could be another possibility. Just think a bit more and you'll definitely come up with more of those.

Originally Posted by St. Louis

Single player episodes, new tilesets, levels and whatnot are being made consistently and some real great ones have been made very recently.

Yeah. So why not some Single player new features?

Originally Posted by St. Louis

Pretty much anything else can be done easily (by anyone), but is pointless or worthless.

What can be done easily by anyone? And what renders it pointless or worthless? Really, you're just wasting bandwith and disk space here.

Originally Posted by St. Louis

And whatever handful of things are left would change the entire game to something else and are thus quite out of the question.

Same.

@Violet: Ok, you win, but 71.43% of those things are useless.
However, this is the one case that is a quesion of opinion and thus let's just agree that you win.
Just to clarify... the ultimate bottomline (which no one will never arrive at) is that without arguments about the aforementioned "questions of opinion"... forums like this would be (-)(-)(-)(-)ing dead.

@Stijn: I'm gonna be as immature as to answer a question with another question...
Do you think/believe it isn't?
I'm sure you can find at least one guy who considers any given step in making events or enemies rather easy, but generally speaking... If one were to build new enemies or events from scratch, not only would one have to animate a series of sprites, but to make each sprite separately.
Even if that isn't the case, animating the sprites and then doing some quick programming (or .ini -- or similar file -- editing, whatever...) isn't something one can simply call easy.
Pretty much all of this varies though, depending on the amount and complexity of the things one wants to do.

@Jerry: You've become the new heavyweight champion of the following things (when replying to a post):

-Stating an opinion about a yes/no matter
-Misunderstanding something that's impossible to misunderstand (in this case "settings")
-Answering with an incoherent word or phrase that's got nothing to do with anything (although I'm sure you did mean something, but once again fail to clarify what you had to say)
-Quoting multiple things in succession finishing with a quoted part of a post that you -- unlike the rest of what you quoted -- replied to
-Changing the point or subject completely wherever it makes the least sense

I see that you've fixed your english though, so huge props with zero sarcasm there.

Oi, behave.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

Quatsch. Top of my head:
1- Hurt in other directions
2- Working "bonus level" field
3- No Fire Zone in SP
4- More control over bosses (which displays health bar/ends level)
5- Fix Area IDs deactivating
6- Fix multiple Bollys sprite errors
7- Longer waittimes for sucker tubes

1- Yes, but its not urgent because you can make them work(ex a spike boll on a wall)
2-100% agree
3-use a transparent bomb scenery, and viola it blocks everything but bombs of course
4-I asked blur the other day about this actually, and he said eventually you will be able to make them enemies not bosses, therefore the end level thing is fixed
5- no comment
6- I disagree, because if the sprites wernt broken you couldnt tell whiuch one has the health bar.
7- Why not?

Originally Posted by Jerrythabest

The only thing I can think of is hell pits.
And jjnext doesn't work in co-op mode, so that could be another possibility. Just think a bit more and you'll definitely come up with more of those.Yeah. So why not some Single player new features?What can be done easily by anyone? And what renders it pointless or worthless? .

1- Coop has no cheats, and you can just use level cycle anyway
2- Single player is less important because multiplayer is more important....really. From my various mini-conversations with blur, SP is not being worked on because multiplayer is much more important in the community and because most SP fixes are not really worth the effort.

Originally Posted by Torkell

Oi, behave.

That was the least trollish or ungentlemanly post in an argument that I have ever made, and less than 3% have I been given note about, be there reason or not.
I won't judge you, but if you feel like judging me, so be it.
However, in so doing, you'll be working against the one thing about forums that matters most and the upside is close to unexistant at best.

Originally Posted by St. Louis

-Misunderstanding something that's impossible to misunderstand (in this case "settings")

Please define 'settings' then. I'd like to make sure I understand you correctly before I reattempt to disagree with you on that statement




And to bring stuff back ontopic, I say:

SP is important >;(
Just imagine what would happen when the [insert random enemy here] would take down the Information Superhighway?

plunK: If you look at your response to my point #4 you will see it answers your response to my point #6 nicely. Spike bolls are visible, which is against the point, and I think we've been seeing lately the bees event come into question as people start complaining that they cause problems with sugar rushes.

There are significantly more single player uploads on J2O than there are CTF uploads. That's pretty important. Also, changes like the ones I'm suggesting offer actual changes in terms of the possibilities available for JCS users. Most things JJ2+ has done are vague during-gameplay-only tweaks, the main exception being the new gametypes which actually allow JCS users to do new things. If you enable No Fire Zone or Spring Delays in SP, get the bonus level field to work, add a Lori start pos, reinsert the code to have gems give you extra lives, let secret level events specify a position in the secret level to begin in, increase the Rocket Turtle's functionality, even (optionally) remove the Robot Boss' extreme vulnerability to ice, these are actual meaningful changes that allow new level work to be done. That's a lot bigger than being able to bleach someone's name at will.

I understand that blur has his own personal preferences, and while I disagree with them, I respect them and the skill and dedication he has employed so far. I'm not saying that he is a tool and doesn't have the right to determine how he wants to use his knowledge -- this is what I would do if I myself had the tools and knowledge for how to edit JJ2. But I willingly resist other people trying to argue that single player changes are useless or unimportant.

@Jerry: Settings and commands, and even more so settings and cheats (jjnext being more of a command in itself) are very different.
Settings are things like the low detail on -setting, hardware acceleration etc and how the game works (settings that make the game what it is).
The first can be accessed either from the "Options" in the main menu of the game, or if you have the game in windowed mode, you can find those in the gray bar below the title-bar.
The other 'settings' are stuff like the .ini file and other such files that directly affect the game.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

I understand that blur has his own personal preferences, and while I disagree with them, I respect them and the skill and dedication he has employed so far. I'm not saying that he is a tool and doesn't have the right to determine how he wants to use his knowledge -- this is what I would do if I myself had the tools and knowledge for how to edit JJ2. But I willingly resist other people trying to argue that single player changes are useless or unimportant.

I pretty much agree with blur's focus on multiplayer, even though I personally would love to see enhancements to SP, and I am more interested in SP than MP. The thing is, any specific addition to JJ2+ is going to see a lot more mileage if it is multiplayer focused. With single player, he basically has to add new features and then hope they get used in levels. Therefore, efforts in this area are better put into bug fixes (the suggestion regarding hurt events and fixing bonus levels is a good example), and features that just happen to work in SP anyway (like death pits).

For a truly useful expansion of single player, the I think the person making the levels should be the one who controls what new features go in. One way to do this would be to mod the game itself, or create a "utility" like what karrotshire has. The latter is a bit easier but less powerful (it's basically just editing memory addresses).

Even better would be a scripting language that allows you to modify game variables and call functions, and I understand something like that is/was being worked on. Though I'm not sure how far along it's come or if there's even plan for a release. In any case it's been attempted before, and if something like that was ever made available, it would be FAR more useful than anything JJ2+ could do. It would allow you to write scripts that do whatever you want for levels, instead of having to write and compile new programs. And if the scripting language was designed properly, you could do crazy stuff like have a level with 20 exits and make it so triggers you activate in one level are carried over to another, to name just two of many possibilities.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

plunK: If you look at your response to my point #4 you will see it answers your response to my point #6 nicely. Spike bolls are visible, which is against the point, and I think we've been seeing lately the bees event come into question as people start complaining that they cause problems with sugar rushes.

There are significantly more single player uploads on J2O than there are CTF uploads. That's pretty important. Also, changes like the ones I'm suggesting offer actual changes in terms of the possibilities available for JCS users. Most things JJ2+ has done are vague during-gameplay-only tweaks, the main exception being the new gametypes which actually allow JCS users to do new things. If you enable No Fire Zone or Spring Delays in SP, get the bonus level field to work, add a Lori start pos, reinsert the code to have gems give you extra lives, let secret level events specify a position in the secret level to begin in, increase the Rocket Turtle's functionality, even (optionally) remove the Robot Boss' extreme vulnerability to ice, these are actual meaningful changes that allow new level work to be done. That's a lot bigger than being able to bleach someone's name at will.

I understand that blur has his own personal preferences, and while I disagree with them, I respect them and the skill and dedication he has employed so far. I'm not saying that he is a tool and doesn't have the right to determine how he wants to use his knowledge -- this is what I would do if I myself had the tools and knowledge for how to edit JJ2. But I willingly resist other people trying to argue that single player changes are useless or unimportant.

Wow i feel stupid contradicting myself 2 lines apart >.<

and those are actually all good things (well the rocket turtle is ALWAYS evil)

wait......robot boss has ice vulnerability?

Originally Posted by EvilMike

I pretty much agree with blur's focus on multiplayer, even though I personally would love to see enhancements to SP, and I am more interested in SP than MP. The thing is, any specific addition to JJ2+ is going to see a lot more mileage if it is multiplayer focused. With single player, he basically has to add new features and then hope they get used in levels. Therefore, efforts in this area are better put into bug fixes (the suggestion regarding hurt events and fixing bonus levels is a good example), and features that just happen to work in SP anyway (like death pits).

For a truly useful expansion of single player, the I think the person making the levels should be the one who controls what new features go in. One way to do this would be to mod the game itself, or create a "utility" like what karrotshire has. The latter is a bit easier but less powerful (it's basically just editing memory addresses).

Even better would be a scripting language that allows you to modify game variables and call functions, and I understand something like that is/was being worked on. Though I'm not sure how far along it's come or if there's even plan for a release. In any case it's been attempted before, and if something like that was ever made available, it would be FAR more useful than anything JJ2+ could do. It would allow you to write scripts that do whatever you want for levels, instead of having to write and compile new programs. And if the scripting language was designed properly, you could do crazy stuff like have a level with 20 exits and make it so triggers you activate in one level are carried over to another, to name just two of many possibilities.

I like that trigger idea......



but imo: here are the main things SP needs:
-customizable enemey HP's
-boss enemies
-1.23 ability to use larger tilesets
-Lori not failing miserably
-Be able to use lighting and water in the same map

Originally Posted by plunK

but imo: here are the main things SP needs:
-customizable enemey HP's
-boss enemies
-1.23 ability to use larger tilesets
-Lori not failing miserably
-Be able to use lighting and water in the same map

1. It would be an interesting option but less versatile than you think. Shooting enemies is literally the most boring part of JJ2 single player and it's good that they die fast. What makes a level interesting is platforming, exploring, finding secrets, trying not to get hit, etc. Not shooting a turtle 50 times to kill it.

2. That would be a good thing, but again it's pretty limited. It's not easy to use bosses in a way that's creative and challenging because there are only so many of them, and their patterns are all pretty basic. And modifying things beyond simple stuff is extremely difficult and no one is ever going to bother putting in the effort.

3. Use 1.24 if this bothers you. Everyone has it.

4. I like how lori is an utter failure. I want to see some levels designed specifically for that. I've decided if I ever make another SP pack, the story is going to have multiple characters, and in some (possibly all) levels you'll be forced to play as one of them. A level designed specifically around a character's limitations (and advantages) would be interesting, I think. I've already experimented with this a bit by making a spaz-only level, and I like how it opens up a lot of designs that are impossible otherwise.

5. This isn't really single player specific though. One thing that would be neat is to have the clear water that beta JJ2 had. Lighting worked with that, and it also looked a bit better in my opinion.

For Mike's responses to 1 and 2, both probably true independently, but if you combine the two then you get bosses functioning as ordinary enemies (lower its health to a single-digit number, turn off its bosshood), which sounds pretty cool to me.

Adding a scripting support is very possible, but there are a number of obstacles to overcome when it comes to implementation. I see two different stages here, the first one being an implementation of a scripting engine to a point where it actually works, and the second stage being the standardization. If you only plan to run scripts server side then that's the easy part, but it has many limitations. There are only so many things that server-side scripts can do to clients. For the real showdown you'd want to consider having the clients run scripts as well. When it comes down to running scripts, clients should have fewer priveleges than the server for obvious reasons. There's also a problem here i.e. how scripts interact over the network, how to sync client's scripts with the server's. These design decisions are yet to be discussed.

As for having clients execute scripts, we'll also need an easy way to transfer the given scripts between players. A good way would be to embed the scripts directly into a J2L so that the scripts get executed automatically when j2l is loaded, and that's in a way that doesn't crash games which don't yet support scripting. Another approach which just happens to be my personal favorite is how unreal-based games handle downloads, but that's some extra work. There are also certain security concerns here i.e. you don't want users to put malicious scripts in their levels, waiting for some unsuspecting victims to load them.

I have been working on a prototype scripting language implementation for jj2 recently and my progress is still in the early alpha stage (stage one). I haven't been very active recently, but I'll eventually release a pre-beta for people to play with. It will only support server-side scripts until it's mature enough for stage 2.


You can easily modify properties of any object with a scripting language. The only problem I see here are the limitations of jj2 i.e. you can't go beyond 127 health with this approach. Exit triggers are very possible, in fact you can trigger just about anything with scripted triggers (object spawning, death, music, level change, ammo, powerups, etc).

Scripting language will be awesome for single player^^

well what does jdc suck again and once again my pc burnsout , trying to put the usb cable of mycellphone in the normal usb front port , and badaboom by bye pc

1 fix the spaz boss sidekic]k abuse
2 make hurt events, work properlty
3 fix some other boss bugs suchas tweedel
4 jj2 plus owns
5 lol

[Sorry, I couldn't resist it.]

Originally Posted by St. Louis

@Jerry: Settings and commands, and even more so settings and cheats (jjnext being more of a command in itself) are very different.
Settings are things like the low detail on -setting, hardware acceleration etc and how the game works (settings that make the game what it is).
The first can be accessed either from the "Options" in the main menu of the game, or if you have the game in windowed mode, you can find those in the gray bar below the title-bar.
The other 'settings' are stuff like the .ini file and other such files that directly affect the game.

So you could consider the wallclimbing fix a setting if it appeared in the options. Turning that on or off in mid-game would then be 'tampering with settings one couldn't affect before', and having that possibility is not pointless at all.

Originally Posted by plunK

wait......robot boss has ice vulnerability?

lol, I didn't know that either. Just tried it.. that's funny. It unfreezes but it won't move.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

For Mike's responses to 1 and 2, both probably true independently, but if you combine the two then you get bosses functioning as ordinary enemies (lower its health to a single-digit number, turn off its bosshood), which sounds pretty cool to me.

Agreed. That sounds really cool

Originally Posted by EvilMike

3. Use 1.24 if this bothers you. Everyone has it.

Although it would be a very nice improvement if 1.23 could handle more tiles, I think Mike is right here. Levels using more tiles than 1.23 can currently handle will be incompatible with 1.23- players, just the same as 1.24 levels are incompatible with 1.23. The only pro I could see, is that 1.23+ would be capable of joining 1.24 servers hosting a level with a large tileset/a lot of tiles.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

4. I like how lori is an utter failure. I want to see some levels designed specifically for that. I've decided if I ever make another SP pack, the story is going to have multiple characters, and in some (possibly all) levels you'll be forced to play as one of them. A level designed specifically around a character's limitations (and advantages) would be interesting, I think. I've already experimented with this a bit by making a spaz-only level, and I like how it opens up a lot of designs that are impossible otherwise.

I'd play that Sounds fun. Also, the way you are forced to play a certain character allows for an interesting plot where three stories (each starring one of the playable characters) come together in the end. Many other games (and even more movies) do this already. To name just one: Super Smash Bros: Brawl does that pretty well.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

5. This isn't really single player specific though. One thing that would be neat is to have the clear water that beta JJ2 had. Lighting worked with that, and it also looked a bit better in my opinion.

Yeah

Originally Posted by Grytolle

Scripting language will be awesome for single player^^

YEAH

Originally Posted by Vivando

[Sorry, I couldn't resist it.]

Gosh.

Originally Posted by Grytolle

Scripting language will be awesome for single player^^

Implementing a scripting languauge would not only open up huge new abilities for JJ2er's to make awesome new events and such, itll also give random people greater access to make crappy new events and mods, overflowing and possibly ruining JJ2, and gives people greater ability to hack and distibute amilcious software via JJ2 scripting.

If this comes out, id restrict it to only those who are loyal community members and are good scripting wise to avoid lame low quality spamming of mods and new stuff

Originally Posted by plunK

Implementing a scripting languauge would not only open up huge new abilities for JJ2er's to make awesome new events and such, itll also give random people greater access to make crappy new events and mods, overflowing and possibly ruining JJ2, and gives people greater ability to hack and distibute amilcious software via JJ2 scripting.

If this comes out, id restrict it to only those who are loyal community members and are good scripting wise to avoid lame low quality spamming of mods and new stuff

this is literally the worst suggestion in the entire thread

Originally Posted by Jerrythabest

So you could consider the wallclimbing fix a setting if it appeared in the options. Turning that on or off in mid-game would then be 'tampering with settings one couldn't affect before...

...no

I think the chances are very low of people distributing malicious software through JJ2 scripts.

After reading http://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=18296 it seems that some of this community would be rather vulnerable. Although I agree that it seems rather unlikely.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

I think the chances are very low of people distributing malicious software through JJ2 scripts.

Well, it really comes down to the implementation and design. If you allow the scripting engine to use direct memory access, script writers can likely use this feature to overwrite some variables or function pointers, which is an excellent candidate for buffer overflows and remote code execution. The scripting engine should be implemented carefully to prevent this kind of misuse.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before but here's something that I have noticed watching 6-12 year olds play Jazz2. Most of them press the windows button in their enthousiasm when they mean to press ALT to jump. This causes the game to jump out of full screen mode and minimize.

In other words, would it be possible to make JJ2+ ignore the Windows button (at least in full screen)?

I wasn't intending to say that scripting was bad, i was just saying beware that some crappier things might be amde form it.

Also, I think that Unknown Rabbits reworder should be looked at as a posible implementation into JJ2+

When fighting a boss, could plus automatically display the health bar of the boss which has been most damaged? Or at least the boss who was hit first. This would be quite nice when playing levels with multiple boss events, especially when only one is actually being fought (Like many levels from Devres)

Now THAT didn't make any sense.




...Or did it? Imagine: in-game level editor... that could have some pros.

It is theoretically possible to collect the level data from a running jj2 process and then dump it to a J2L. The bigger part here is how to edit a level that is being played. One feature this would bring is a live preview of your level i.e. you could construct the level as you play it and debug certain things on the fly. Then when you're satisfied with the changes, dump the J2L to your HDD.

Would also be cool to host a JCS server So that others can join to see it (that's a live 'making of' ) and possibly (after getting permission from the host) help building.


That would be a great start for my never-really-started-but-I-did-make-a-thread-for-it-somewhere-on-this-board 'Lets Make A Level' project. Just cut the level into a few pieces and assign those to the participants. While they are able to design their own stuff inside the assigned area, they can easily link up with the areas around them to improve the level's 'flow'.

Originally Posted by Troglobite

When fighting a boss, could plus automatically display the health bar of the boss which has been most damaged? Or at least the boss who was hit first. This would be quite nice when playing levels with multiple boss events, especially when only one is actually being fought (Like many levels from Devres)

I agree

Originally Posted by Cpp

It is theoretically possible to collect the level data from a running jj2 process and then dump it to a J2L. The bigger part here is how to edit a level that is being played. One feature this would bring is a live preview of your level i.e. you could construct the level as you play it and debug certain things on the fly. Then when you're satisfied with the changes, dump the J2L to your HDD.

That would be awesome, i spend more than 60% of the time it takes me to build a map testing various aspects. This could prove useful

Originally Posted by Jerrythabest

Would also be cool to host a JCS server So that others can join to see it (that's a live 'making of' ) and possibly (after getting permission from the host) help building.


That would be a great start for my never-really-started-but-I-did-make-a-thread-for-it-somewhere-on-this-board 'Lets Make A Level' project. Just cut the level into a few pieces and assign those to the participants. While they are able to design their own stuff inside the assigned area, they can easily link up with the areas around them to improve the level's 'flow'.

Online grouplevelmaking.......I just see that ending up like Forge in Halo. I think attempting to do a map online as a group, unless its a collab, i dont see many high quality maps coming out of it.

But it's still cool

Who wants to test stuff that's completely unrelated to the previous discussions? This is the result of the thread where I requested code for zipping level packs which resulted in Cataphract helping out.

I want people to test out adding levels to the Level List and zipping level packs. Specific differences from Caraphract's program for zipping level packs include prompts in addition to command line arguments, and the ability to append files to existing zip files. You'll have to place plus.exe in your Jazz2 directory.

Another unrelated issue. When an idle server hosts, gun barrels always seem to drop only bouncer ammo. Could it be made so that the crate will contain whatever ammo whoever smashed it had? And it would be nice if you saw ammo as you would get it, not as the server has, when it comes to power-ups. (And please, no one respond that this bug is old and minor, and therefore shouldn't be fixed.)

It would be a lot simpler to just force barrel ammo to always be bouncers only. Though really, barrels and crates need to be fixed altogether which can't be easily achieved with JJ2's current net code.

Anyway, I have other stuff to test. Auto-relist. Basically the server checks to see if it's still connected to the list server at least every 2 minutes, and when disconnected does a reconnect every 5 minutes. For those interested in hosting dedicated servers, I want to know how often the words "Attempting to relist after disconnect" appear in the Spy Log/jazz2.log.

I've been meaning to ask you, blur: Did you have any use for my old internal gip mod-code when making that last jj2+ update? (finding hooks or whatever)

Yeah, I did.

yay kay

Just to make sure people notice this so that I can get some testers:

New plus.exe features (see post)

Auto-Relist (see post)

I get this error when trying to zip a lvl.

I have no idea why the filename extensions are missing in the error messages. What are all the steps you are using to get this problem?

Edit: Never mind, I think I know what the problem is. I'll reupload some time soon.

Edit 2: The problem should be fixed now, so you can redownload the file.

Originally Posted by BlurredD

I have no idea why the filename extensions are missing in the error messages. What are all the steps you are using to get this problem?

Edit: Never mind, I think I know what the problem is. I'll reupload some time soon.

Edit 2: The problem should be fixed now, so you can redownload the file.

It works perfectly
Is there any chance to make at the same time a zip file then that lvl's to be added to lvl list?