Jazz2Online news for November 2024
If no news is good news, then... - November 24th 2024
Source: x, the everything app
A lot of nice things have happened recently – some a little more distant that have slipped through our radar, and some very fresh. Let’s have a look!
Universal Game Editor (pre-Jazz alpha) discovered
Already discussed in the last newspost, but I felt bad about pushing it down the list – an alpha version of the game engine used by Arjan to create JJ1 has been released! This is an addition to the Dutch article about the development of Jazz Jackrabbit.
Download the alpha here, and also check out the JCF thread for new findings.
New layout for J2O downloads
Notice how the download pages look different now? The more important info now occupies more space, reviews look better (and feature your JCF avatars), we merged reviews and quick reviews into one, and above all, you can now leave a like next to an upload!
As always, thanks Stijn for all your hard work.
JDC 33 awards
The awards for the last this summer’s JDC season have now* been posted! Personally I found this a very fun season, and I hope you did too. If you missed out on JDC, a new season is being planned for the winter – I cannot recommend it nearly enough.
Palette Suite updated to version 4.2
Turns out that every tileset designer’s favorite tool is still being worked on! In the words of AJ, “This should make the process of converting a 24-bit tileset image to an 8-bit JCS-compatible image a little easier”.
Download Palette Suite here.
Halloween Battle Contest now concluded
The contest I announced on a total whim yielded, to my surprise, four very enjoyable levels! Violet’s (mildly unsettling) entry won, but the competition was pretty tough, and every one of these levels is worth to be added to anyone’s regular Battle level rotation.
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Not bad for a month in the life of a dog food website, eh? I hope you’ve all been having fun.
Jazz Jackrabbit 1 Alpha Build Released - November 22nd 2024
Source: archive.org
The Dutch article from our last news post has been updated with a huge addition: the original engine made by Arjan Brussee that was turned into Jazz Jackrabbit! Many files are included with the engine, including a level editor and a program for creating tileset and sprites files.
The engine version is from March 1993, a year and a half before the game was released, so there are definitely format changes. For example, here the levels are 512×32 tiles, whereas JJ1’s levels are 256×64. Most of the graphics are unfamiliar, but several of the tiles from Megairbase in JJ1 turn out to have come directly from this alpha. But this release is barely an hour old, so who knows what’s in there to discover?
Video of the game engine
Video of the level editor
Forum thread for listing findings, reactions, etc.
The download link again
A cool article about the history of Jazz Jackrabbit - November 6th 2024
Source: Gamegeschiedenis.nl
Wietse van Bruggen of Dutch game history platform Gamegeschiedenis.nl has a nice feature article about the development of Jazz Jackrabbit (1), putting together existing sources and a new interview with series developer Arjan Brussee to tell the story of how a Dutch demo coder ended up programming a game about a green rabbit for emerging American game publisher Epic MegaGames (they are no longer Mega nowadays). The article is in Dutch but translates well using the usual online tools. It has some probably-never-seen-before screenshots of the game too!
A game similar to Sonic the Hedgehog was exactly what Sweeney had in mind for Epic MegaGames’ shareware titles. Brussee: “So I sent that to Tim. And Tim saw it and faxed me back. The fax was on thermal paper, and it just kept going. I think it was about six feet long. And it had AWESOME written on it in big letters!”
Fun meta fact: the article uses our interview with series graphics artist Nick Stadler as one of its sources.