A late couple of cents:
First, this rocks. TB rocks. Ice MAN rocks. Pez rocks.

Secondly, WR, it wouldn't be bad to give Spaz his original moves if he's inserted, I think. After all, you could also alter Jazz and make their abilities more balanced.

Originally Posted by Ice M A N

eva saving jazz

That would rock so very hard.


Pageclaim in the name of rocks.

Hey just wondering, if we are able to change the sprites etc, will we be able to insert our own end of episode cut-scenes?

Originally Posted by TaZaR

You can save PSM files with modplug tracker as a different module fileformat

Thanks, I'll look into that.

Originally Posted by jmetal88

OK, I have to figure out how to port this to GP2X (shouldn't be that hard since there is an SDL library for the 2X, and it's OS is Linux).

Sounds exciting. Let me know how it goes.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

A late couple of cents:
First, this rocks. TB rocks. Ice MAN rocks. Pez rocks.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

Secondly, WR, it wouldn't be bad to give Spaz his original moves if he's inserted, I think. After all, you could also alter Jazz and make their abilities more balanced.

Although they would both need to be restricted to Jazz's original moves in single player.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

That would rock so very hard.

Yes, yes it would.

But let's not get carried away here, people. Somebody still has to actually make the sprites.

Originally Posted by n00b

Hey just wondering, if we are able to change the sprites etc, will we be able to insert our own end of episode cut-scenes?

That is theoretically possible, but I haven't figured out the cutscene format yet.

Sprites, eh.
Good sprite artists can be found all over the place in these forums.
Now, good sprite artists who have time and will to work are another cup of tea... *sigh*

Originally Posted by TaZaR

You can save PSM files with modplug tracker as a different module fileformat

PSM stands for Pro Studio Module btw. For some reason or another I remember that Modplug Tracker very rarely botched up the music when opening a PSM.
In any case if you want perfect conversions of the music you can google up Chronos Module Converter, works with just about any PSM file (Not for Extreme Pinball, those musics have some dynamic music system thingy.)

Now, good sprite artists who have time and will to work are another cup of tea... *sigh*

Just watch me, after openjazz is finished. I can spriting, and JJ1 sprites haven't got too much frame, and they not even too big, so I can handle them in the future, if somebody will make the code changes for them. If needed, I'll show you works, I've been done before.

About adding spaz new moves... It can be only ballanced, if jazz would have some new moves too, but I've got an idea, how to ballence it, without tottaly change the jj1 gameplay:
Jazz: He should have that uppercut, but he could only jump high as his running jump, he couldn't be controlled while he falled back to his starting position. So you couldn't cheat with using this move, to jump higher.
Spaz: The "buttstomp" or how is it called. That would be his new way, to beat enemyes. Maybe he shouldn't use this move against bosses, to prevent cheat (defeating them too easily), and bosses should hurt him, while doing this move.
Lori: Spinning kick. But it should be shorter, than Lori's basic jump.

And all of these should be just as a special mod, not basically added. This mod would be a lot of fun, I think

Originally Posted by Toxic Bunny

That is theoretically possible, but I haven't figured out the cutscene format yet.

DD has, right?

What?

DD is aka Doubble Dutch. Maybe you could ask her about the cutscenes?

Sorry, the person you want there is my older brother; he's tried on numerous occasions to explain to me the format, but I haven't the faintest idea about it except that it seems to consist of set backgrounds apon which still frame pictures are placed in sequence. Oh, and each file has its own palette, like the levels.

The simplest 'cutscene' file is PANEL.000

Oh, so it's not really a cutscene, but more like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, with a set (sometimes looping animated, although I don't think Jazz 1 had animated backgrounds) background with animated cels (the sprites) moving around. That makes more sense, since that would save on file size.

I get how they work, I just hadn't got around to working out the implementation yet. If they're all like Panel.000, then it should be fairly easy.

Yay

Great, I love the improvments since the last version! Still long way to go, but I have huge trust in that project. Thank you for making this all stuff, and happy holidays!
Otherwise, are there an easy way, to extract/rip the sprites from JJ1? I hope there is...

Oh, so it's not really a cutscene, but more like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, with a set (sometimes looping animated, although I don't think Jazz 1 had animated backgrounds) background with animated cels (the sprites) moving around. That makes more sense, since that would save on file size.

No, the backgrounds don't animate, although they can be refreshed.

As for the sprites, my brother has [or had] an extracter somewhere, but from what I remember of it it was very far from easy to use and crashed a lot.

Originally Posted by Doubble Dutch

As for the sprites, my brother has [or had] an extracter somewhere, but from what I remember of it it was very far from easy to use and crashed a lot.

That's not a problem, because I'm patient. Could it be possible in some way, to give me that extractor?

EDIT: Oh crap, I've ripped a lot of sprites from JJ1 with DOSBox, and some of them are wrong (especially Medivo ones), because they have same colors as the background, ahw. That was just a a waste of time.

Hey,
Firstly, TB, great work!
Someone has probably said this before, but here goes:
Here's my take on some of these things:
1. If we can do a JJ1 engine, theoretically, it should be possible to mod slightly and add some functionaliy to make a JJ3D... But I'm getting ahead of myself.
2. Have you thought about using the Jazz1 Raw level extractor to analyse level format? I read somewhere that events are specific to the level, and so are the anims...There are some useful tools in with J1CS.. this is from the help file... maybe it'll help to get the enemies working...
"Each level in JJ1 uses a different arrangement of sprites. So when you set an
animation property in J1CS, what will be shown depends entirely on which level
you are editing.
GetAnims.exe will scan a level and give you a text file describing what each frame
of each animation is. "
D'oh! I just realized, you were part of the J1CS team.. Silly me...

I can probably do some looking at the file format for JJ1 levs, menus, etc, if you want... Just ask....

I can do some good graphics work, so if you want something, lemme know...

I probably forgot something, but anyway, keep the great work coming, and let's keep Jazz1 alive!

Uniacke1 AKA CFighter

Hmm, I have noticed a bug, world 40 not works (maybe you already know about it) , and thinking on the prev & next world, that must be the B-Episode's boss level. Uuh, I almost forget who's it, but not Zoonik & neither Devan with that ball shaped stuff in lagunicus level.
Oh, and nice progress, as I said, keep up the good work!

EDIT: Sorry, forget about it, the problem was on my side, not on your's. It works now...

Originally Posted by Uniacke1

I read somewhere that events are specific to the level, and so are the anims...

The anims are specific to the level, but the events can be made any way you want.

Well... I'm sort of fudging it a bit. For the animations which are clearly level specific, those anims are in fact level specific. But the other anims, such as jazz running and the birdbox, are referenced into one specific file. If we could edit the references in the level itself, then we could allow some common references that weren't included in every level, such as the jazz fastbox.

[Edit] I didn't understand what you meant before. Yes, events are level specific in that they need to be created for each level.

I've been tried out that tileset compiler, awesome work, Ice M.A.N.!
Check the results:

(-), it was a lot of time to figure out the background color... The background color of the recolored main tileset bmp wasn't transparent, and I didn't knowed why. Of course I've been tried the hardest things you can imagine, and the solution was so simple: Just needed to replace the old palette, with the edited one's. Aw...
By the way, that an interesting thing, that JJ reads the enemies' & events' color values from the main tileset. That sometimes causes problems... And I don't know why they maded it like this, because with the bacground tiles it has 256*2 colors, and that's more than what can be stored in 8-bit. So JJ1 uses 16 bit, I guess. My question is to Toxic Bunny: Could it be possible, to make OpenJazz with stored event colors not in the tileset's palette? That should be open new ways... But I'm sure it's not the most important thing about OpenJazz right now.

Originally Posted by TaZaR

I've been tried out that tileset compiler, awesome work, Ice M.A.N.!

Originally Posted by TaZaR

And I don't know why they maded it like this, because with the bacground tiles it has 256*2 colors, and that's more than what can be stored in 8-bit. So JJ1 uses 16 bit, I guess.

at first it does seem like that, but actually the main tileset usually has a lot of "empty" palette entries which are dynamically filled with the colours for the background.. or at least I think that's what it does. I haven't done much JJ1 research in a LONG time. :P

Time to see about getting OpenJazz to work on OSX (just looks like one small change in the way the filepath is discovered)..

Hmm, later I'll try out changing the unused (in Mukamok they had the same color as the background color which shows transparent in the maps) colors into different ones, and we'll see, if they'll be still remain transparent, or it will do something with the background...
EDIT: I've found some interesting things. In the last row of main palette there's a color which one is always the same as the non used last color in the BGtileset's palette. In Mukamok's palette there was a yellow color which is pulsing in the levels, if I draw with it on the tileset. I mean changing color from brighter to darkar, than back. And there was a 3rd color, and when I used it it made samething similar when you make a JJ2 level without background. Strange. I wonder what are they for...

Wow.... I'm really terrible at programming.

I got OpenJazz to compile as a GP2X executable, but when I run it, I just get a black screen... Ah, well. I'll look over the code and see if there's anthing that might need changing.

Oh, one thing that could help me out is if you could tell me where the video mode is first set. I'll need to set it to 320 by 240 at fullscreen (or at least, non-windowed).

Originally Posted by Uniacke1

1. If we can do a JJ1 engine, theoretically, it should be possible to mod slightly and add some functionaliy to make a JJ3D... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

That would be much, much more than a slight mod, unless you want JJ3D to consist entirely of JJ1 3D bonus levels. Which would suck.

Originally Posted by Uniacke1

2. Have you thought about using the Jazz1 Raw level extractor to analyse level format? I read somewhere that events are specific to the level, and so are the anims...There are some useful tools in with J1CS.. this is from the help file... maybe it'll help to get the enemies working...

It's quite easy to modify OpenJazz to output raw level data, and I used that and a hex editor to analyse the level format. Recently, Feline kindly donated a bunch of J1CS research. Yes, events and anims are specific to the level. You wouldn't be able to see them in OpenJazz if I didn't know that

Originally Posted by Uniacke1

D'oh! I just realized, you were part of the J1CS team.. Silly me...

I made GetAnims.exe. I realised while I was making OpenJazz that GetAnims.exe is in fact wrong quite a lot of the time. With the latest release of J1CS, that doesn't matter anymore.

Originally Posted by Feline

Well... I'm sort of fudging it a bit. For the animations which are clearly level specific, those anims are in fact level specific. But the other anims, such as jazz running and the birdbox, are referenced into one specific file.

ALL animations are level-specific, but some of them just happen to be the same for every level. Some of the sprites that the animations use aren't level specific. For all intents and purposes, these should be considered to be level-specific, as their sprite indices could potentially vary from level to level. In fact, HH95 does not use most of the common sprites at all - instead, they are stored in the level-specific sprite files, which is a massive waste of space. HH95 is insane.

Originally Posted by TaZaR

Could it be possible, to make OpenJazz with stored event colors not in the tileset's palette? That should be open new ways... But I'm sure it's not the most important thing about OpenJazz right now.

As Ice M A N says, there are only 256 colours. Of course, computers are fast enough nowadays to handle a system in which dynamic palettes and 24-bit colour can coexist. If I do implement it, however, it probably won't be before all the original features are implemented.

Originally Posted by Ice M A N

the main tileset usually has a lot of "empty" palette entries which are dynamically filled with the colours for the background.. or at least I think that's what it does.

That's exactly what it does. That's why the background in OpenJazz gets bigger when you resize the window, so that a maximum of 100 background colours are visible.

Originally Posted by Ice M A N

Time to see about getting OpenJazz to work on OSX (just looks like one small change in the way the filepath is discovered)..

OS-specific code is all in main.c, lines 706 - 731 and 749 - 753. You know, the ones you've already found

Originally Posted by jmetal88

Oh, one thing that could help me out is if you could tell me where the video mode is first set. I'll need to set it to 320 by 240 at fullscreen (or at least, non-windowed).

In main.c:

To change the initial vertical resolution,
line 762: Change 200 to 240
line 764: Change 2 to 3
This may not be necessary. SDL should automatically fit the 320x200 into your 320x240 screen, in "letterbox" format.

To start in fullscreen,
line 763: Change 0 to 1
line 779: Replace SDL_RESIZABLE with SDL_FULLSCREEN
Alternatively, have you tried alt+enter? That switches to fullscreen once the game is running.

Yeah.. I've got it working in OSX... wasn't difficult. To get it running in non-debug mode I had to add some null terminators to the end of some strings (In debug mode I guess unused memory is zeroed out by default, but otherwise I was getting extra characters (usually a { ) at the end of filePath... I'll look into it and make sure it wasn't my OSX stuff introducing this problem..

I'm going to have to find a PC to play with to see what bugs are OSX specific or just unfinished whatevers..

For me it just stops doing anything after I pressed "Start".
And I have to start it from the command line to get it started in the first place.

Originally Posted by Ice M A N

Yeah.. I've got it working in OSX... wasn't difficult. To get it running in non-debug mode I had to add some null terminators to the end of some strings (In debug mode I guess unused memory is zeroed out by default, but otherwise I was getting extra characters (usually a { ) at the end of filePath... I'll look into it and make sure it wasn't my OSX stuff introducing this problem..

Whoops, sorry, my mistake. I'm surprised it worked for anybody. I've re-uploaded it, although the problem I found was with path rather than filePath.

NS, try the new version. If it still doesn't work, send me stdout.txt and stderr.txt.

Originally Posted by Toxic Bunny

although the problem I found was with path rather than filePath.

Probably my bad there. I wasn't looking at the code while I was typeing. (and haven't since then either..)

I'm wondering if a port of the sprite viewing into VB would be possible... Looks like I need to know what a lot of the functions used do...

Well, I'm glad to see such a support group for this project.
Can't wait to see the final result.
And yeah it would suck if JJ3 levels were all like J1 bonus. But, hey, it would be a start.

Originally Posted by Feline

I'm wondering if a port of the sprite viewing into VB would be possible... Looks like I need to know what a lot of the functions used do...

You mean, a sprite viewer for Jazz? That program could be awesome, I could rip the missing JJ sprites with it, without the background troubles.
I wish I could know c-language more, so I could code that, because the source already has that sprite viewing stuffs in the levels, if I'm not mistaken...
EDIT: Sorry, I've been misunderstood you, but a sprite viewer program still would be cool.

Well, I'm glad to see such a support group for this project.

Hmm, what about retexturing the 3d levels, or change the 2d sprites into 3D models? (like guys did with Duke3d, Doom 1-2, Wolfenstein, etc.) Or even a two player bonus level mod, or making race levels with the bonus level engine? That won't be hard, just an exit & some object which ones will speed you up or slow you down, or just make stop.
I'm know it's brave to say big ideas like this, in that much early stage, just I felt good to dreaming things like this.
By the way nice addition for the game would be the 2xScale effect (I think it's open source) for the 2d levels with on/off switch (some people like it, some people don't) in the future.
Aw, I'm full of ideas, so I have big hopes in that project.

SDL_mixer is cool. It's the first (well, really second) time I've done anything with programming with sound. It took just a couple minutes to figure out how to get some OGG and MOD and whatnot files playing in the background. (JJ1 with 7thheaven.mod just makes me feel so nostalgic ;p) Of course it'd be too easy if PSM was supported, but I'm going to try to work on bridgeing the gap there (unless someone else with music experience or interest wants to) and also start looking at sound effects.

I have found this:
http://library.thinkquest.org/2971/psm.txt
Hope, it will help.
By the way, I've been searched with google, and found out that, PSM is an amiga format, or something like, and there isn't fully suppert, just the one that MPTracker and some other program does. Hope, I'm wrong.
EDIT: http://www.modplug.com/
You can download here modplug tracker & player, and it's even opensource! So I think it will be possible to use the PSM files in open jazz. It seems JJ1's PSMs are working with this player. (Epic Pinball has some psms which ones didn't)

Works now. Thanks TB!

PSM is an interesting format, and yes, it first appeared on the amiga....
Though, if you must, you could probably make a small app that converts the PSM to mod or something like that, just while the music is playing...
JJ1 PSMs work fine with Modplug... I think they work with XMplay too...
Uniacke1,

I think they work with XMplay too...

Unfortunetly, not. But at least modplug is open source, so PSM support can be solved, I think.

The foo_dumb plugin for foobar2000 has perfect PSM playback save for a few tracks from the pinball games. Also, support other formats plz =P

I've got music working using libmodplug. It needs quite a considerable amount of polishing up, and Ice M A N may come up with something better, but it's a start.

Using libmodplug means that, if you edit a level with JCS94, you'll be able to have background music in any of the following formats:
(Deep breath)
669, amf, ams, dbm, dmf, dsm, far, it, mdl, med, mod, mt2, mtm, okt, psm, ptm, s3m, stm, ult, umx, wav and xm.

It needs quite a considerable amount of polishing up

As in, new samples and such?

Turns out all I needed to do was not to assume that the ageing computer I'm using over the holidays could handle sampling frequencies as exotic as 44100Hz.

Listening to Haunted.it in Medivo