Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I thought this was going to be a level to train RF climb (don’t bother making one though, we can train in those levels ourselves). But what I got instead, was a level that looked like a ground force level, that makes you guess constantly and punish you for not knowing. Even for other trial and error levels, this won’t help at all, because most trial and error levels are different in successful paths and fails.

How is this a training to “pro” level? This doesn’t train you on anything. If this level title and description weren’t so incredibly misleading, I may have rated it higher, even though I have a deep hatred for punishing trial and error levels.

What is a real training level? Practicing skills in a level. Guessing is not a skill.

It also includes bonus2.j2b which isn’t necessary, because every JJ2 comes with it.

It would be a terrible level to play race in, considering you need a ridiculous amount of knowledge to win it, and everyone who hasn’t played it before will likely fail. Good race levels are about being open and approachable (not a lot of knowledge required to play well).

Best of all, you get stuck in the pits and don’t even die in them. With plus, you have to keep using kill command everytime. Without plus, you should only attempt to play in SP and JJK, otherwise everytime you fail you have to rejoin/restart the server.

Also, it uses the blocks misleadingly. ! blocks are used for buttstomping/special moves. Use star blocks if they’re supposed to be shot.

What about the good things about this level…uh, a +0.2 for correct usage of layer 4 and 3.

Also, gotta love the “Don’t repost/reupload” because that’s already against J2O rules, it’s like putting “DO NOT STEAL” over picture descriptions on art sites.

Don’t download this, unless you love punishing trial and error levels. Play it in Single player.

IN A NUTSHELL: This program is mostly obsolete!

Back when bass.dll support didn’t exist, this program was great. You got smaller tracks which sounded the same on Jazz2’s module player. And also being a time where dial-up was far more common, anything to decrease the filesize was great.

Also, it was used to convert modules into boss tracks when there was no scripting support to change music at bosses.

But those times are over. Unless you want to make a single player level which is entirely compatible with vanilla JJ2 featuring custom boss music – you may want to use this. Otherwise, I don’t recommend levelmakers to convert to j2b at all.

It does not support some module effects and JJ2’s in-game module player can give out crackle sounds. Worse case scenario – a sample keeps playing in the background and never ends. I also recall it may have a filesize limit – I’ve had my game crash by trying to load a converted j2b before.

There is an alternative, though it is plus only. mo3 is a far superior compression format. Not only does it make files even smaller than J2b, but mo3 has much wider effect support. Bass.dll is also a much better player than JJ2’s default. Here’s a guide on how to convert modules to mo3;

http://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showpost.php?p=479930&postcount=5

EDIT: Fixed up some grammar and spelling issues. Made it a little more brief. Also added another con of using j2b.

This overlooked level provides a unique little puzzle challenge. It may be frustrating for some players. The music choice along with the pallette is questionable given the level name. Lori can kill the boss stupidly easily by spamming kick and fire against the block. Give it a try though, the flaws are minor.

This tileset is a bit overrated. The quality is decent and all, but it uses too much dithering, and lacks versatility. Some of the colours are close to the rabbit pallette, like the pavement/stony ground and greenery, which could’ve been used for efficiency so you can sneak more colours in, allowing to make it even smoother.

Overall, this isn’t as good as the 2nd pack. Some levels are cool, while some are just bad, lasting a lame 3 seconds. Infected is the worst level, with everyone annoylingly pushing because of the same start pos, dying there out of your own control, as well as being far too small and risky for seekers. I will make a longer review later.

Even though this may be a first level, I find it overrated, and I’ll explain the bad points (because I’m evil and it’s easier to point out);

Game breaking bugs come first. I’m not sure whether this is an awful trap or a serious bug, but the bottom left corner with the shield is seriously messed up. Once I got down into the room, I couldn’t get back up, no matter what character. EVENTS WILL NOT work properly when placed in the complete left/right corners of the map. Also, masking issue.

I think mazes could be more fun providing the player still at least gets a reward for taking the wrong path, like some pickup. I’m not a big fan of mazes myself, though having a risk-reward scenario (if they take the wrong path, which may be more risky, they get a decent reward) could make them more engaging. There’s some of it in this level, though.

Some of the parts in the level are just plain cheap; Things you get punished for because you don’t know they’re there, or things where you must flail around because knowing some “secret” (unindicated area) is required to pass. This may be personal preference, because there are probably are players who don’t mind it, though I don’t find it fun at all myself, as it’s unrewarding time of play that can make the level drag on longer than it’s supposed to, and make you feel stupid.

Here’s an example of it in this level: Making players require to pass something thats invisible. While it may be okay as a secret, when you make parts required to pass that are invisible, players can become confused and lose their bearings, and lose interest in passing properly (and then just “cheat”). At some point I looked it up in JCS, only to find out the trigger was invisible to pass. Then you approach a ““trap”” which actually makes you pass the level with cheap level design as the trigger crate is invisible…seriously, what?

No support for easy mode: There’s events for hard mode, but not easy. And let’s be honest, this level is easy and gets way too generous with useful pickups, such as full carrots, seekers and the blaster PU (it’s a lot stronger in SP than it is in MP). Are players that bad at SP that a million seeker pickups and powered blaster somehow doesn’t make the level too easy? Perhaps a bunch of seeker pickups and the blaster PU could be carried over to easy mode.

Oh boy, the invisible walls/winds. They just feel really tacky and unnatural. And some wierd invisible poles. They seem to suggest that you can go there, or it’s empty…but you can’t. The wierdest invisible wall is near a warp secret. The solid tiles don’t even need to be there. Due to the nature of the level design, there isn’t much that can be changed about that other than giving it a complete overhaul. So I think at least changing the wind speed to 16 would look nicer, because it doesn’t jitter the screen. And just stack them to the left/right so Lori can’t kick through them. You could remove the wind/invisible walls where you wouldn’t fall out of the level. I disagree about it adding an atmosphere, because an atmosphere comes from the eyecandy, sound and music, not the gameplay style.

There’s plenty of useless pickups, like a bunch of coins, because there’s no coin warp (or at least, I don’t see one. If there is, why would you hide such a crucial thing? What’s next, hiding the exit?). Gems don’t do anything either, unless it’s treasure or they’re scripted to give some perk. It’s not really bad, though unecessary. Yeah, okay…they add score, but who cares about scores anymore? You’ll get a higher score from the original SP pack.

There’s an awful bug with Spazkick that allows him to spam kick at some bosses, killing them in 2 seconds, and this boss isn’t an exception. Though, it’s a relatively not well known bug.

The Witch placement is lol. You can simply run across it and not get hit at all, then there’s a wierd row of TNT. God knows what it’s there for, but it looks pretty tacky the way it has been placed and adds nothing.

Lori can get stuck inside some of the masks (by kicking through thin walls), which could’ve easily been prevented. Just patch them up with full masks and it should no longer happen. Right click and show mask should help (both in tileset and level). If it causes tilebugs, just put the correct fitting tiles onto layer 3, so it should look fine.

There’s no music, and more could be done with the eyecandy (like more layers, this tileset has tiles for it!). I guess the level creator got frustrated at trying to figure out the other layers, which are awkward to learn when you add movement to them. Tile width and height really helps for the other layers. Also, please don’t use untitled as a filename. It’s really generic, and could overwrite existing levels. Even if you can’t think of a name, anything is better than untitled (since it’s the default).

Conclusion

Compared to others players first levels, it’s not as half-baked, as there’s some effort to at least make the tiles look used properly, and a decent length of playtime. There appears to be some use of unused events that do nothing, which may suggest the creator is still exploring JCS (which is probably a good thing, even though invincibility in the walls and dim light do nothing). However, there’s a lot to improve on.

Anyway, that’s enough critique for now, and I’ve probably overwhelmed you already. Don’t take it personally, I just want to help new levelmakers improve at level design. Check if you’re a hardcore classic SP fan and if you like invisible trial and error gameplay, and don’t mind novice EC. If not, skip this download.

A level that looks abysmal (lazy eyecandy, tilebugs), has no solid goal/concept, and getting stuck at the bottom if you fall. They don’t even respawn, and you can “complete” this level in a second. Music doesn’t even work, or at least isn’t included. Please, work on polishing levels and concepts before releasing them.

Well, here we have a mess…

Gameplay
With a bland, straight cramped layout, there’s not much to movement other than holding on the left/right button. It’s also annoying too because you can’t dodge anything. Oh but wait…there’s secrets! Not until someone finds them out, then they’re blatantly right there to see for everyone else, which doesn’t really make it a secret anymore. Then again, I was never a big fan of actual secrets in multiplayer that give a huge advantage, since it makes it an easy win for players who know the level, and therefore a lopsided game. The “secret” areas to fall are so tight to fall into, and with a very fast paced game, you’re likely to get slowed down a lot trying to get into them in the first place, because of people spamming shots at you. And please, any multiplayer JCSer who reads this, please stop with the one tile open spots where you have to slow down a lot, the risk isn’t worth it and it’s especially frustrating in race when you’re forced to slow down that much.

But really, secrets aren’t a component to a good multiplayer level. Accessibility (ease of learning), originality and the balance between skill and strategy are the main components to a good multiplayer level. However, a common issue I have with many race levels is that the overeliance on knowing the level itself.

Eyecandy
Apparently the author doesn’t think that using a tileset properly matters. Here, we have tilebugs everywhere and a reluctance to use the tileset properly. A tilebug in the sky, and cut off roof tiles. Having a level look half baked usually speaks for itself…that the level is bad or unfinished. No other layer usage exists.

Music
LOL, what?

I certainly don’t recommend this level.

I’d also like to mention this level is made with the original splitcreen race mode in mind, which doesn’t work very well at all online.

This tileset is okay, however I feel the artist doesn’t realise that you can actually create new colours outwith the character pallette, which dampened this tileset’s potential. The lava animation is choppy. Some particular tiles feel too scratchy, like the lava and sky. Some tiles need more contrast to become more recognisable.

Well, this was the only level I didn’t play that was nominated for JCS awards, lets see if it’s worth the title.

Eyecandy
I’m not sure what the theme is supposed to be, and some of the ec style has tilebugs (incomplete tiles), making it look wierd. Using tiles that were meant for layer 4 being used in layer 3 in some places is somewhat annoying when you play the level for the first time. Hint: Don’t use layer 4 solid masks for EC on other layers, it’s confusing, unless you use contrast. Most of the ec functioned alright, despite being nothing special. I guess it’s supposed to feel post acopalyptic, though the background doesn’t suggest much. In a nutshell it feels random for me.

Gameplay

It’s somewhat unique, though a shame it doesn’t make any use of the frogs ability at all. This then basically makes the entire level a handicap gimmick. Gimmicks can be great, though having nearly no interaction with the environment or enemies, makes it feel a bit lacking. I could see it having more potential if it wasn’t just about dodging. Interaction is possible as a frog, just more limited. On the postive side, this level isn’t all that linear and provides an interesting challenge for a while.

There’s also the layout, which bothers me. You may die because of having no idea what is down below, and no clear indication of pits. And once you have finished it at least once, you can skip some parts of the level by falling at the right places, specifically, near the start of the level where you go down. There’s also some useless maze deadends. Gems are useless if you don’t want to aim for a high score, and even so, you’re more likely to get a high score from a sp pack than a single level.

The boss arena is a little too time consuming, though quite creative. To win this, I practically stayed in the bottom right corner, and jumped when he used his attack. It seemed hard until I used this strategy. Though admittedly, I had easy mode on.

Music
For a start, the volume of the samples is too high when it has led into the main thing, and the backing feels overdone. It starts off okay then BNNBBMBMBBNBFFBFBNBNBMFF-F-F-F. It eventually irritated me so much (and slightly ached my ears) that I had to change the music. I don’t really know if it fits, because if I had to change it, then I’d rather not listen to it. The boss music is good, though.

Other
What’s with the ambient sounds? To be blunt, they were overused because they were everywhere. They distracted as well as annoyed me so much I had to mute the sound, which I have never had to do before. Why does it sound like I’m in the middle of a noisy factory? I thought I was out in nature.

Conclusion
For a little different kind of sp challenge, you may want to try this. Completing it before will give you a significant advantages of playing the level. Some stuff is annoying, but fortunately, you can mute or change it.

Others will probably enjoy more than me, overall I felt it was okay. While it tried to be unique in some places, it didn’t make much of a difference to the gameplay overall. My favourite level was The Dark Castle which has a lot of paths to traverse. Maybe a little too much dialogue at times esp. towards end, but I don’t follow the plot much.

So are you going to include the tileset, right?

If you made it in TSF JCS, it only works in TSF. However, there is a TSF to 1.23 level converter out there by ZapS I think. Levels that run in 1.23 work in TSF as well, of course. EDIT: Like I said, 1.23 levels will work on TSF as well. I know that because I have done it before many times.

Well, I decided to try this level out…

Gameplay

I played this on hard mode. It was rather cheap a few times, with the hidden bats, although there wasn’t much and the large rows of multiply enemies weren’t really necessary. Overall the enemy placement was decent though. But the confusing EC did ruin the gameplay a bit, it is really misleading when you play the level for the first time. Not good. It would be nice if there was a wider selection of ammo, too.

The level is pretty linear, you will always follow the same path, but you can try and uncover the secret paths to get the coins. I didn’t bother getting them all though, so I don’t know what the reward is. I thought that if you didn’t manage to get across the vines of the level, it would take you to a somewhat long but rewarding path which was an actual cave. But all it did was take me back up to try again. Not even any rewards. Dissapointing.

While you can play with all characters, it’s not really balanced. Spaz is going to stuggle to get across the vine part of the level, and there’s not any exclusive rewards for him. There isn’t really any character exclusive rewards/parts at all, so that decreases the replay value more (for me, at least). There’s a part where Jazz/Lori will struggle to get up from a bit, from a small platform to a bridge if you want to reach the coin across. I don’t find the struggling type of balance very fun, though.

Eyecandy

Ugh…like I said before, confusing for when you play the map for the first time. Like you think some areas are solid, but they’re not. There are also quite a noticable amount of tilebugs. I found a missing tile and cut-off ends of eyecandy.

The background was okay, although I think it needs a bit more life to it. Maybe the sky could move slowly. It’s not very forest-like either. Sure, there are some trees, but not much within the foreground.

Music

It’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t set the feeling or atmosphere of the level.

I think you could have potential with single player levels, if you keep the advice in mind. If you want to play this level, prepare to be misled by bad (confusing) EC placements. It’s not terrible, but it can be annoying at times. Thus, try if you really want to.

EDIT: Well, after the update I played it again. There’s still some tilebugs and misleading eyecandy, and the new music choice doesn’t really fit that much either, although it’s a bit more appropiate than last time. There’s also a blaster pu down the vine area, I wasn’t really thinking of that kind of reward though…but whatever. I noticed a few other minor changes too, such as some other ammo. Not a huge improvement, but better than nothing.

Coincidentially enough, I happened to have the creators company when I hosted these levels, but that’s somewhat irrevelant to the review.

Gameplay
Quite an amount of levels experiment with innovative gameplay elements, which breathes some fresh air into quite a well known custom gamemode. On the other hand, some other levels have the same fairly typical ground force gameplay elements which most are familiar with, and while those ones are nothing too special, they do okay for what they say on the tin, as there isn’t not too much freeze enemy events and ammo.

However, the less typically placed warps in some levels will leave people not realising that you’re not supposed to go there and end up being out of the game, which I noticed a lot of players were doing when they played those maps just for the first time, which happened to me as well…maybe some textstring note when you enter, perhaps?

Reguarding character balance, copter advantages in GF are inevitable. Fortunately, Spaz does get some given advantages, such as being able to reach more ammo with double jump. At first I thought it was unfair, but considering you have infinite health in GF (the original gamemode concept not LRS) , you can just get shot as Jazz/Lori to reach higher places. Power plant isn’t really much of a Lori friendly level, though, and well, reaching to the very top part in Nuclear winter can get rather tricky too. Now, before anyone gets annoyed for me saying that being that it is 1.23, remember that it’s supposed to be a balanced pack and that includes the character you all well know and love/hate.

Eyecandy
There is quite an amount of new EC elements, which brings a little something more into the standard gameplay levels, and they also fit according to the theme too, so you shouldn’t expect random EC just to fill space. That aside, the EC does feel a little bit too empty for a few levels.

Music
Nice music choices which fit most of the levels and pace of gamemode, although something about as the music progresses further in Buried, it doesn’t really fit all that well.

I think it’s pretty fair to say these levels are quite close to “Survivor” quality (a well known GF pack for you newbies out there). There are a few minor gameplay issues though, but overall, it’s decent. Download recommended.

Uuugh. I thought I’d just play this pack for the hell of it. I was not impressed…constantly recycling layouts DOES NOT deserve a 7.7. It’s extremely lazy, and boring for the player and made me lose interest in playing this very quickly. I didn’t even finish it. Actually I won’t even mention why it wasn’t converted to 1.23 since it isn’t Lori compatible anyway (maybe the tilesets were too big but I can’t be bothered checking), but since this not worth playing anyway, I don’t care.

Story

Nothing special. It’s just “Devan and the lizards are back and kill rabbits oh noes”. Didn’t pay attention to it much, and the bad grammar makes it worse. Don’t be afraid to ask others to check the grammar for you, they won’t bite your head off. I kinda feel bad for laughing at it for all the wrong reasons, including the several “Well, yeah that’s really obvious” moments. And RedRazz is a really uncreative character, just a recoloured Jazz. The “Razz” does make it kind of insulting, considering that there’s already an unreleased character called that, which has a far better character design. Maybe it’s a coincidence. The cutscenes were really long, boring and unecessary. They dragged on too much, and there was nothing interesting to find out. Lots of waiting too. Hello jjnext, hows your day today? I have to admit the actual TV cutscene was pretty cool though as a concept, but that’s about it.

Gameplay

Every gameplay style is the exact same as the other, destroy the crates in some maze-like level with recycled layouts. I have to admit I was never a fan of mazes in JJ2, and when you lose your bearings I just feel I’d rather play something else. Try different types of gameplay styles for more interesting gameplay, and for the love of god, don’t recycle layouts ever again! I’d rather play a small level with an fresh layout. The enemy placements aren’t too great, I played in Hard and it was mainly enemy spam, also it was easy to dodge them since most are all laid out across the floor, and you can easily just jump over them. Enemy spam does not necessarily equal harder if you put them in the same row, it just takes more time to kill them. Also try placing enemies in midair at the same time as well as enemies on the floor. Not a wide selection of enemies were used throughout the level pack either. Spaz got a few extra goodies while Jazz got…nothing.

Eyecandy

I’m going to slightly rewrite this part because apparently he used paint shop pro 9..now I haven’t used it, but all these rabbit people feel more like they’ve been done with MSpaint somewhat in a crude way. Asides from that, there is a few cool elements, like the subway which I forgot to mention, asides from that, the eyecandy is pretty much standard.

Music

Hit n’ miss. As in how well it fits. Some of it did alright at fitting, while some was all happy-clappy which seriously did not belong there as it felt really unclimatic.

This is not worth downloading.

I actually bothered to play this with all characters in all Easy, Medium and Hard. Not that it’s really useful to know, but it helps me know how the level works with each character.

Eyecandy:
I don’t think a custom tileset automatically makes it better (there’s some bad custom tilesets out there), but it’s a decent tileset, so I’ll give props for that. I get the theme, it works. I like how the tileset implements health bar tiles. However, there’s so much major animations found it rather distracting. Yes, there’s something called too much EC. So much that I didn’t even know what was solid when I first played the level at some points.

Gameplay:
The basis of the gameplay consists of collecting 20 coins to meet the boss while avoiding his attacks, I actually thought it was going to be Bolly Boss before I played this, considering he does look a bit like sparks (at least the eye does, anyway).

I have mixed feelings…actually, there is quite an amount of issues. The idea itself is good, but not that well implemented. I don’t really like how the enemies are somewhat hidden behind from where they generate, so by means you barely have an idea when they’re actually there. Also, spawning carrots is a bad idea for single player. Why? You can pretty much stay there and wait to recover, it’s not that hard to dodge the Boss attacks while waiting for the c’s to respawn. And I’m not sure if you know about this, but there’s a lame Spaz sidekick bug which allows you to infinitie sidekick the boss if you get close to it, killing it in seconds by holding the down and jump button. And it’s not too hard to perform here.

Now about character balances. I actually found Lori the easiest to use (heck I passed Hard in one try with her while with Spaz it took a few tries, and didn’t bother with Jazz as I explain why later), considering killing the spark enemies are a lot easier to kill with her kick, not to mention you can easily turn back with it but I don’t think this was intended to become a somewhat Lori biased level, because I don’t even think the creator of this level has TSF himself, so this won’t really impact on the rating. So I’ll only compare Spaz with Jazz here.

Spaz can get up a few places faster. Helps a bit. Then you got the sidekick boss bug with him, which I sadly don’t even think the creator even knows about.

Ok…Jazz just isn’t very useful here. Took several tries to finish the level with him, And the uppercut and sidekick blocks don’t balance anything. Why? Same rewards, in the same place. Not to mention uppercut is the slowest special move to perform.

Music:
I think the default Boss music would’ve done just as well at fitting, but I suppose it’s nice to hear something fresh every now and then. It’s okay music.

Story:
No story here. I suppose it’s possible to make a story about this level although I think improving the gameplay is far more important.

The tileset is a cool little gimmick worth seeing for a while but the gameplay leaves such to be desired. If you don’t mind hidden spawning enemies, with waiting for c’s to respawn then you might like it. By the way, character balance isn’t all that important in SP, but it’s nice if you can, although it’s not really a big issue. I just wanted to say that, because the low-ish rating is not mainly because of the somewhat imbalancedness.

Well, I’m not sure how anyone could make a serious good looking level with this. The worst part of this conversion is the surrounding white and light grey pixels around it. Couldn’t you of at least got rid of those? When you add EC in the walls, you can see them quite clearly as you can in the screenshot. I don’t get how people get so worked up about bad ratings if they know it’s bad themselves. Rather than trying to make conversions with everything you can find, it’s better if you just find something that would fit well with the style of JJ2 (no more NES game tilesets please especially. Not that I have anything against the console itself although but the graphics aren’t anything pretty for JJ2), and something that you dont have to visually modify so much, that it ends up looking strange in the end. There’s not much you can do with this either. No vines, no poles, no decent background tiles, no slopes, infact so much useful tiles are not there. And some of the existing tiles aren’t really needed for JJ2. Well there’s your load of advice which is pretty much everything I’ve wanted to say about the majority of non-JJ2 related conversions.

EDIT: Well, this lacks a lot of other basic info needed…what about flipping tiles? Textstrings? How to make a good level? How to copy event tiles? How to copy events the quick way? How to animate tiles? Despite I know these, there are still a lot of other basics missing. I only mentioned a few, as there are much more basic essential things to knowing JCS too.

I’m not even going to say anything about the “HsC tileset001”. It’s just so…horrible. Okay I lied I wasn’t going to say anything, but seriously, it has no theme whatsoever, just random clips/sprites/whatever from random franchises. What the hell did you do to Weegee with adding Animu eyes? I really hope this tileset is a joke. There’s also such a huge amount of colour loss that my eyes bleed looking at it. If you’re going to make a tileset…at least actually fix the colours and have a proper theme. And perhaps look at tileset tutorials.

The two others…the first version of “lands chaos” is extremely limited boring plain MS paint junk, but don’t get me wrong I’ve seen some great tilesets made with MSpaint out there.

The second version of “lands chaos”…is a little better, but still extremely limited in terms of making a layout and not really much of an interesting theme going on. And how is it “chaos” exactly? Looks like some kind of rather plain park/countryside to me. Of course making tilesets aren’t easy…but that doesn’t stop some from being crap though.

Yeah I can’t be bothered rating the levels…sorry if I sounded nasty…but this is my honest thoughts. If you think your tileset(s) is/are really bad yourself, it’s better to get others to test and tell what they think of it and be open for suggestions. No one will want to use badly done tilesets, to be honest.

Looks like someone had waaay too much time on their hands for sure. Anyone can make a level like this. It takes being extremely bored in JCS.

In a nutshell, this level is pretty much running in one path, holding the right/left arrow key for a long time, and wondering why the heck are you wasting your time playing this. I did not play all through this, but I cheated with jjfly and jjnowall and there is nothing else to see whatsoever.

You know what I’m going to say here. All toaster toas- I mean don’t bother downloading this.

EDIT: Okay I’m going to take off some of the stuff I said off my review since it probably sounded too much like a personal attack, although my point still stands.

EDIT 2: More comments taken off that might appear as personal.