Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This level implies an author who has had experience with level design, but not experience with Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Eyecandy in layer 4 is actually quite good, though it could be a bit more interesting; it’s a shame the other layers were ignored.
Event placement, while aesthetically nice and balanced, does nothing for gameplay. It feels like an attempt to emulate the default levels; for most games this is good, but since the standard levels for JJ2 are crap, it falls short completely.
Basically, forget everything you learned from the standard levels, and re-learn it from some popular, current user levels. I recommend EvilMike’s enormous single player campaign.

jalo0: Lark already did a competent Stonar conversion.

This is an interesting concept (albeit NOT A NEW ONE!), but the levels and ruleset are so severely, blatantly, and hilariously biased towards the seeking team that they could never be used for anything other than a few minutes of non-competitive fun, similar to what you get with the cheat codes.

It irks me that people are giving out high ratings just because it’s a new gamemode*, even when there was obviously hardly any effort at all put into level design, balancing, coming up with coherent rules, or even a decent trigger system.

*Perhaps the worst part, it isn’t! This particular gamemode seems to get reinvented all the time, always with very minor variations from the original Tag-style conception – the levels are long lost, but you can guess what it was like

Ktos: I can only find one on J2O, which Gus made. I remember playing quite a number of them, but unfortunately I seem to have lost most or all of the level files (Captain Cook searches were unproductive). The ones I remember are pretty old, so they would be hard to track down. I guess I don’t really have any “proof.”

Dodges, JCS coordinates start at 1,1 whereas JJ2 coordinates start at 0,0. So yes, there is a slight difference.

Written before version 2.0:

——-

This program has been over-rated, plain and simple. This does tend to happen a lot with JJ2 utilities, since the majority of the community ranks “programming” one notch above “skydiving with an anvil instead of a parachute and your hands tied behind your back.” I consider PlusLLEdit to be the most egregious example of this so far.

I will admit, it does exactly what it claims to do. The problem is, it doesn’t claim to do much – makes a ten-second job a five-second one – and it doesn’t do anything on top of what it claims.

The sad thing is that the addition of just a few more features would have made this program actually useful. Being able to select groups of levels would be great; I could put all 30 Survivor levels in my Treasure list with much less effort than would be needed otherwise. But I can’t.
If I could sort levels by level name instead of filename, perhaps even search for terms within the names, it’d make sifting through them a lot easier in some cases. But I can’t.
Even just being able to add levels with a keypress instead of dragging and dropping would have made things much better.

It doesn’t help that Plus itself already has most of this program’s functionality. You can drag-and-drop J2L files on Plus.exe, and BAM, they end up in the level list. This is actually superior to PlusLLEdit in a few ways; most notably, I can add the aforementioned 30 Survivor levels all at once.

The 10 ratings are just ridiculous. Is this Captain Cook, which massively improved the barely-functional Home Cooked Levels? No. Is this TilesetPal, which made one of the most painful aspects of tilset making easy? No. Is this Carrotade? Okay, that one is kind of an unfair example.

——-

The new features definitely improve it. I still doubt I’ll actually use the program, it’s usually just as easy to edit the level list directly, but I can see how people would want it.

I remember playing this level, or perhaps one extremely similar.

That was at least seven years ago.

A note about PT32’s point on music: using any format not supported by JJ2’s Galaxy Music System will crash non-Plus users, old-Plus users, and Plus users who use the Plus injector instead of the Plusifier.

Also, make sure the music in question is legal to use in your level. And that it hasn’t already been used in a bunch of other levels. (I recommend searching modarchive.org.)

Given that these don’t even restrict themselves to 256 colors, let alone the 32 required for a working textured background, I don’t think these really belong on J2O in the first place…

And, as KiMO said, making this stuff in GIMP/Photoshop/PSP is very, very easy.

Also, what’s with the BMP format?

Eyecandy starts out mediocre and gets considerably worse. As for gameplay, there really isn’t much of any. This is one of the easiest packs I’ve ever played; there are way too many enemies, but they’re placed without any real thought, making them nonthreatening.
That said, it’s not horrible. Short, easy, and boring, but not horrible.

Sorry, but this level is an insult to beer.

Great remix. I’m surprised that you were able to wrangle such a good song out of the admittedly mediocre piece that Megairbase is.

Eyecandy is pretty good, although a lot of places look rather bare. The level holds together surprisingly well gameplay-wise, especially as far as flow, but the bias towards blue is very unfortunate.

Well, you know what they say. Pride goeth before the fall. Or that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, if you’re the sort of person who actually quotes, rather than simply quoting quotes.

(The level is actually a pretty good effort, though.)

Great artwork, but the actual execution could be much better. I particularily dislike the reliance on layer 5.

Original eyecandy, good gameplay, and some excellent ideas, particularily the incorporation of the ice. There isn’t anything in this level that’s likely to just make you go “wow,” though.

These are very good levels, but nothing here really screams “instant classic” to me – likely to be forgotten in a year or two.
That said, they ARE good levels. The only one I actually dislike is King of the Clouds; it flows too poorly to be fun to play in.
I also think the eyecandy’s been a bit overrated; it’s good, but often messy.

The pseudo-3D style here is amazing, but the tile layout is terrible. If a user can get past the layout, however, you can create a truly spectacular-looking level.
Another huge drawback is the lack of usable slopes.

A very uniquely designed level. Powerups and carrots are superbly placed. Perhaps the level’s most unusual feature is the area at the top, somewhat isolated from the rest of the level; it contains a lot of RF ammo and (of course) a seeker powerup.
It’s unfortunate that there are so many easily campable areas, however.

Snooze: People are very frequently requesting that I upload my levels to J2O. Seriously. And if anything, the fact that I’m unsure of its quality is even more reason to upload it; I can learn what to improve.

Ragnarok wanted more reviews for this, and I can see why. The level pretty much oozes polish and quality.

The level is notable for taking advantage of JJ2+‘s capability to have very long respawn times, as well as initial spawn delays. It’s also notable for not abusing said capability.

It’s a fairly typical level aside from that. Powerups, carrots, and ammo are all well-placed. Pits are present, but they honestly feel like they were added for flavor rather than gameplay reasons.

One unusual feature is the seeker powerup that can only be obtained by those with a sugar rush. Whether anyone will ever actually get it or not is anyone’s guess.

The level’s primary selling point is definitely its visuals. It is excellently and consistently decorated throughout, with quite a few creative methods of tileset usage.

What really caught me, though, was the level’s general lack of flaws. There are no usable camping spots, no spammable weapons, nothing of the sort.

Overall, this is a rare gem of a level, and should be treated as such.