Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I’m not able to do a full review right now, but it’s an amazing tileset. If I ever find the time and motivation to make a level again, this is the tileset I’m going to be using.

Umpisuoli ratkeaa, level is tedium!

woha
amazing!! thanks so much for uploading it!! :D

of course i got a fan of the first Rainbow runner set!
thats why i was interested of the other pieces
im so much thankfull that you uploaded it for me =)

//good things:
this tileset have a lot of interesting things!!

i like the rainbow with the sparkels very much!!
and the whale, your work is so amazing!!!!!
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and.. the sky castle
=
i love it!
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there is a lots of interesting stuff inside!! ;D

There are a handful of things that don’t wow me in this set. The silver pots are the big offenders with their surface area to color depth ratio. The giant moth or butterfly with its incongruously black outlines. The destruct blocks that are too colorful to make out their specific markings. And…….. that’s it, honestly.

Again and again while scrolling or playing through Rainbow Runner, the impression I get is "these tiles could be a tileset all on their own." You could totally have a Waz-style set with the hamster tubes, or the "blueground" of course, or the clouds and rainbows. But instead they’re here all together in a giant kaleidoscope of everything that could possibly be related to the concept of rainbows. You can be most of the way through the level or set and suddenly there’s an entirely new set of tiles you’ve never seen or dreamt of before. It goes on and on, new trick after trick, cute animal after cute animal, and yet never sacrifices quality for so much quantity.

It’s hard to know what to write for this review that isn’t just listing things in the tileset and saying how cool they are, so maybe I’ll do that. It’s a damn shame that six months later nobody else has bothered to write a review for this, so I’ll have to. Let’s talk about the clouds. They’re based on the same flat color design that bothers me in other tilesets, but here they work beautifully. They’re soft and bubbly. The option of unmasked rows of clouds against the flat background keeps things fresh and interesting, and so do the curvy and bubbly edges at every possible angle. The masked cloud rows look especially delicious when set against the unmasked ones, but even without them they’re still great, reminders of how many tilesets we’ve seen that failed to have clouds of any quality at all. And there are giant clouds too for hanging around in the foreground.

The blueground is lovely in a Skulg sort of way, and works well with the floating background trees, but what really makes it stand out is the giant staircases which I’ve never seen in any other set. Castlevania’s tiny background stairs can sit right back down, these are the real deal and they work perfectly and look phenomenal. Besides that, all the tiny little roots coming out of the bottoms of the ground reinforce the idea that these are floating platforms ripped up into the air—as they should be, up in the clouds—not just regular earth that happens to be cut off at the bottom because video games are weird. Coming up with the exact three colors of grass to look great together must have taken some time but it paid off, even though one’s green it’s not a default grass green by any means, it’s something much more interesting and fantastic.

The animals! I’m sure many of them are space fillers, like the flowerpots and other such tiny little objects taking up a tile or two in a larger section, but they’re emblematic of what may honestly be this tileset’s most distinctive feature: there are so many individual drawings. It would be impossible to catalogue them all were it not for the fact that Blade actually drew them all. It’s the exact opposite of a Raging Inferno with its single trident to distract from the tileset’s two or three textures. It’s luxury, vast, unending. The theme is rainbows and yet there is more of everything than in any dedicated tileset. And then somehow on top of all these other tiles there are animations too, scores and scores of them, territory basically untouched save for RainV and that was probably originally drawn by professionals. Not only does everything look incredible, but there are so many things that nobody else would ever even have thought to draw and include.

Over the years many fun and memorable levels have been made from limited tilesets, using flipped tiles and transparency and other funny tricks to make much out of little. Rainbow Runner presents the opposite challenge, providing so much bounty that we must learn to reduce, to find ways not to use every single element on screen—or even, perhaps, in the same level—at the same time, lest the player be utterly overwhelmed. I hope it is a challenge that somebody shall soon take up.

The background layers of Aztec 2 have taken on a life of their own since the tileset’s release, to the point that going into this review, I was crafting a narrative in my head about how they completely outweighed the rest of the tileset and people mostly struggled with how to use its vast variety of themes. But that was wrong! There are at least half a dozen levels that use Aztec 2 as a tileset primarily or exclusively. I just forgot about them somehow.

Maybe it’s just me that finds it overwhelming. Sure, there are a few sections that don’t need to be there because they hail from a time when layer 5 couldn’t be trusted as a reliable source of 1/1 layer speeds, but even putting them aside, there’s still a whole lot of stuff in here. But it’s not confusing, hard-to-use stuff by any means. It’s not all blocky (except the first section), but it’s all close enough to blocky that it’s easy to tell what goes with what. Tile order is pretty easy to follow, I can’t spot more than a handful of tiles that had to be shuffled into the next section to make the grid work. And besides being easy to use, the different tileset components (blocks, pillars, branches, foliage, etc.) all have lots of options for tiling in elaborate ways. There are a dozen or so different treetops. Rocks have short and long slopes at every angle. Tree branches can be diagonal. Water offers more options than any other tileset ever.

So why am I still kind of lukewarm about Aztec 2? Ultimately I think it’s the flat colors. They work fine for the water, which needs to be no more than a tint so it doesn’t obscure the actual gameplay behind it. Fine for the background mountains, which similarly shouldn’t be too distracting. The foreground foliage I can live with because you can have a lot of borders to break up the flat insides. Nothing is as flat as in Islands. But it’s the main blocks and the cave sections that don’t appeal to me, and they do happen to be the main building blocks of the whole tileset. They don’t look very solid and they don’t look very interesting. You have to put in a lot of time to make shapes that aren’t just rectangles, to keep things attractive, and granted you should be doing that all the time anyway, but it’s also easy to think that structures made of lots of stone blocks should be rectangular. It’s easy to get sucked into making sections of Aztec 2 levels that are nothing more than seas of undifferentiated brown.

Is it fair to criticize Aztec 2 for making it possible for level designers to not put in enough work? I’m not sure. If you stick to the more decorative stuff, the trees and the water and the gems and things, I’m happy. But it’s hard to make that carry an entire level. So do you combine with something else, and in so doing, sort of perpetuate the Aztec 2 Background Mountains issue? I dunno.

Aztec 2 is very cool. It can do a lot of things very well. It’s absolutely packed with cool little features and single-tile drawings, the antithesis of a tileset that’s nothing but textures stretched across shapes. It would be great to love it. But the flat browns are a turnoff for me personally.

Literally perfection

What a nuanced colour palette and sweet atmosphere. All the incredible details and animations. Is it a bee or a mosquito? A Beescito? True to your distinctive style. Amazing set Blade! I don’t dare to rate that magic.

10/10 HYPE

It’s the perfect tileset for making, for example, sky levels! Good job Blade!

Well, it contains a vivid, animation heavy tileset with a beautiul 3 examples for know-how. Even though it’s overly-vivid in my taste, I see there are endless possibilities for levels filled with colorful eyecandy. Good job!

I don’t really have anything to add. Just download it and see for yourself

Mieli = totaalisen puhallettu. Mind totally blown. Go blade!!!

Very real levels. How can i play secret levels please guide us there are total 7

Absolutely stunning, those are the first words that come in mind playing with this level. The eyecandy blast in your face. Blade proves once again that he knows what he is doing. Even after 10 years of absence he still has the tileset tricks. I’m so happy that this came out. We gonna see a new breed of amazing levels with stunning visuals.

What I also like is that Blade provides a small tutorial on how to use this set and how to work with it. This is not only great for the skilled and experienced level designer but also for the newbie this is good.

And ofcourse as an extra bonus from a good tile builder, he gives us a 2nd variation that I even like more :-)

The level it self is good and hard. You might give up on it a bit to quick, even on easy mode. I didn’t like the claustrophobic mazes, it felt a bit hard to navigate as Jazz Jackrabbit but eventually I got through it.

VERY detailed set with LOTS to choose from. It captures the theme very well! Magnificent!

Simply beautiful. Do I even need to write a full-fledged review for this? Just look at it, it’s gorgeous. The best fan-made JJ2 tileset by a mile. Great job!

Mostly technically proficient, quite versatile, and has a relatively simple, developed art style. While the leaves and water/waterfalls may try to emulate a certain style, I don’t like them. This is a very solid set that falls a bit from perfection in my opinion.

I really like these levels Blade! The design and eyecandy are awesome, but I also inserted some AngelScript codes, like original textured background and even weapons from Ozymandius level, and ammo set for 9999. I really recommend everybody to download this!

There’s no way I’m giving this level less than 10. Actually I consider it 11/10. This is the best level I’ve ever played. Tileset is awesome as well as the music you chose for it. I enjoyed finding secrets and coins. Also if I was careful enough i could pick up everything. Seemed like trying to get 100% items and enemies like in Jazz 1.

[This is a tileset, not a level. Thus the only content in your review is “tileset is awesome” and that’s just not good enough. ~Violet]

Geez, people. You’ll probably kill me for saying this, but I honestly think this set is a wee bit overrated…

The Twilight Park is a city tileset, a genre of sets that often gets little to no attention. It’s too bad, since metropolis/town/city sets are among my very favorites.

Unfortunately, tilesets like Twilight Park, while very good and loads of fun to use, are the reason why city sets are so infrequently done (And done well, too).

TTP has the usual whimsical Blur eyecandy (Random items buried in the ground, a doghouse with accompanying dog bowl, silly posters slapped onto a junky old alley fence, etc.), plus some unexpected surprises (A swimming pool, gardening tools sticking out of the ground as “thorns”, a small background red brick wall). Well-trimmed trees provoke intriguing visual ideas, while a background dominated by grassy parkland and distant skyscrapers lend Twilight Park a very suburbian feel.

Unfortunately, things started to fizzle out at about this point.

While all of the pluses I mentioned are nice, they’re really all there is to work with in this tileset. I mean, there’s a few more tiles than what I mentioned, but the greater extent of the set is devoted to The Average Joe’s Backyard.

The dirt is the only real “ground” material available to work with (Although, in its defense, there are two or three different surfaces for the dirt that are perfectly usable). Despite being a suburb-esque pack, there’s not even any houses or apartment buildings. Only one fencing material is at the JCSer’s disposal (And wooden fences get very old after a while). There’s no black tiles. No “cave” wall tiles (unless you count the fence, which I don’t).

Parks and naturalistic scenery can only go so far, and I have some rather serious concerns about the limitations of this set.

Don’t get me wrong, Twilight Park’s a great set and all. It has bodaciously good eyecandy and truckloads of JCSing potential…but good is only so good these days. I felt a little let down by the limitations of the set.

Still, Twilight Park IS a sweet tileset, and it’s definitely worth a download.

this mappack is perfect, a masterpiece ((: i really enjoyed getting all coins, mostly on the wasteland. i got all, but they wer well placed. this is how jj2 levels should look like :D could be harder but i’ll give it maximum rating.

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules. ~cooba]