Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

From contest feedback:

+ Strategic layout and very different from other contest levels
+ Uncommon and balanced weapon/pickup placement

- Huge FPS drops in 8-bit mode for some reason
- The level gameplay centers around the fly carrot too much, also because the only way to get rid of it is by going underwater
- The level feels unfinished and empty in certain aspects, there isn’t much visuality nor scenery in the level
- There is only one exit from the bases unless you have a fly carrot, which makes them quite evil dead ends

/ Seems like it could only work in 3v3, partly due the fly c as well

I’m looking forward to see a more finished version later on. :)

Copy pasted from contest feedback, note this is rated on its suitability for 2v2/3v3

+ Visual appeal
+ Unique to have usage of fly-C and water mechanic, although I really wish it was used better or didn’t feel like the only way to play the level…
+ I really enjoy the small oneway climb areas towards the middle, fun gameplay-wise

- Bases feel like death traps
- I’m not a huge fan of the ammo placement, and it’s even lacking at parts. Toaster feels useless
- Whilst I complimented the fly-C/water concept, I think many of the people I played with mentioned wanting copters instead or a limited duration
- Level feels empty at parts

Other comments:
I recommend 2v2/3v3
I like the fly-C/water concept on paper, but in practice it’s a bit annoying in CTF!
I think ammo should have been unmovable given the layout
While this level is pretty good from a design perspective, I was unsure on its suitability for the mappool

A really cool map with stunning visuals. Though the only downside of this map is that the main interest of players tend to go to the special tube in the upper part of the map. So it often leads to a clustering of players near that area.
Overall a solid map with a nice layout. Download recommended.

Really solid level by cooba. The theme is well executed and it has some neat features like swinging vines. Default sprites have been replaced to give this level an extra boost towards being different than other maps. The custom weapons this map features are also helping for the given layout. The only downside for this map would be the fps loss. DR!

Pretty innovative level; the anti-grav takes a lot of getting used to and can feel very slow at times. It is very fun in general and definitely a concept I’d like to see more of. I still feel like this level could greatly benefit from more ammo, and a few minor flow tweaks. – All in all, 8.2!

I really enjoy the coin concept as it adds a layer of tactical depth not seen in many other levels. While visually the sprite layer is quite spartan, the atmosphere crafted with careful attention to colours and small motifs is nonetheless incredible. The layout is also well crafted and facilitates intelligent play as opposed to mindless ammo spam.

Cool level! I like all the stuff done with scripting and while in my opinion it isn’t the heavy mappool quality some players demand, at least it has great eyecandy and you already have fun just by running around the level!

This is a nice replica of the original tileset, but a history lesson is the only reason you may want to download it. As opposed to Diamondus Beta, this conversion is only a palette swap of Castle1N.j2t and actually removes some bottom rows of that tileset instead of adding any new tiles.

Sancrosanct is a well designed, enjoyable CTF level by veteran level maker and J2O admin cooba – his first contribution to the JCS scene as a member of the prolific levelgroup Mystic Legends.

It’s clear that the level is intended as a tribute to Sanctuary in more than just the levelname. cooba has gone a long way to try and recreate the visual style of the 2004 level that inspired him, with Sacrosanct sharing many of the same visual attributes despite using a different tileset. Sancrosanct uses a palette edit of Violet CLM’s Medvio conversion, which has been given a blue/greyish colour scheme that resembles that of the Pezrock bricks – the set which Cell’s level used. In addition, the tileset use in cooba’s level also evokes the visual style of Sanctuary, through a similar use of the pillars, minimalistic background and even with a few splashes of green here and there to break up the monotony, much like the original. However, the comparisons end there – in spite of his intentions to vaguely resemble the original Sanctuary, cooba has taken his level further and added some scripted flourishes to the visuals, primarily through the use of lanterns, coloured water and all new weather effects; the latter courtesy of JJ2+ version 5.0. While on the surface Sancrosanct may appear to be a doppelgänger of its key influence, it manages to achieve its own feel. Cell’s Sanctuary has a sort of dreamy, spaced out vibe to it, whereas Sancrosanct feels dark and murky. This hallowing feel is realised by a clever combination of elements such as the occasional use of green patches that resemble mossy overgrowths, a shallow pool of marshy-looking water at the bottom of the level and the constant deluge of rain that pours over the dilapidated structure. From a practical viewpoint, the rain might be considered distracting for some players, but fortunately cooba has provided players the ability to remove it by enabling Low Detail. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the water look terrible in 16 bit, but that’s not important and out of his control anyway.

Gameplaywise, Sancrosanct has a rather different design to Sanctuary. Whereas the original level had a slightly more typical layout, this level runs with a semi-symmetrical design where the bases are situated in the approximate centre of the level, seperated only by a thin wall. While this style of layout is nothing revolutionary (even featuring in other old CTF levels by Cell such as Zaitox, Botanica and Stone Ways, and also in Toxin Twister by cooba), this level manages to have its own distinct brand of gameplay. The bases cleverly mimic the skewed nature of the carrot placement in Sanctuary, however it is debatable whether or not this design choice has any positive impact on the gameplay. Overall, the level has a somewhat circular design, whereby players get around either by circumnavigating the main structure, or by cutting through one of the numerous side paths. The layout is pretty vertical, featuring a number of springs, vines and RF climbable passages to help you get up. However, the level features just enough x-axis gameplay in order to keep things from becoming too overly vertical. A bit of side effect as a result of this general layout style is that it makes the gameplay fairly slow paced, since it involves a lot of going back and forth when it comes to hunting down enemy players. It also feels a little on the cramped side in some areas, which may make bullet dodging difficult in some situations. One unique gameplay aspect is the JJ1 inspired “wheel spring” at the bottom of the level, which periodically moves back and forth along the lower ledge. It’s a cool feature, but has one minor issue. At some angles the spring doesn’t bounce you high enough to reach the upper ledges adjacent to the base areas, and so if you don’t time the springs exactly right you can often find yourself unable to get up without the extra height from Spaz’ double jump; this has the potential to become frustrating for the player, especially if they’re playing as Jazz or Lori.

All ammo types sans TNT are present in this level. The weapons are exceptionally well balanced here; each one brings something different to the table with the given layout. The three powerups; Bouncer, Toaster and Gun 8, all receive roughly equal use here. I think Bouncer is perhaps slightly more useful overall due to the amount of climbing involved, although Toaster still comes into play when defending in some of the narrow corridors, and Gun8 serves as a chasing weapon in the upper and lower areas. I like how Ice can be used strategically here to freeze the wheel spring at the bottom in order to temporarily halt your opponent. The level features 3 carrots – one Full NRG and 2 +1s, all of which can be shot down. The use of freeze enemy (egg timer) events is interesting, since they can delay the player’s escape from the carrot area. This is particularly potent if the carrot is shot down into the small cavity below.

The level seems to be most suited to game sizes of 3vs3 and up. Due to the layout style, killing may be quite difficult in a duel or a 2vs2, although it should be fine with more. Overall the level generally facilitates gameplay focused around defense, which may not be to everyone’s tastes but tends to lead to gameplay based upon smart, tactical play as opposed to mindless ammo spamming, which is a good thing of course. The level isn’t perfect, but it’s a very solid and respectable effort, made by a creator that has a clear understanding of good level design principles. If you’re fed up of all of the overplayed CTF levels out there and would like to find an alternative, I recommend you give this level a try, or a download at the very least.

I always love seeing new Jazz1 levels being uploaded, especially when they include completely new worlds, not just new levels on existing planets. I’ve always preferred Jazz1 to Jazz2, and I think it catastrophically lacks in custom levels in comparison to its sequel.

So, about this level: it is great. It fits into the game perfectly, I find it has the same kind of layout used in regular Jazz levels, and the music not only fits the atmosphere of the level but sounds as if it has been written by Robert Allen specifically for Jazz Jackrabbit. The level is incredibly good looking, I love its atmosphere and eye candy is perfect.

I did not find the level too difficult, in fact I’d say it is easier than most custom Jazz1 levels. I think it is just a bit harder than your average Jazz1 level.

I give this level great big 10/10 on all aspects (design, gameplay, music selection, difficulty). Downloading this is a must!

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.

I sort of remember promising I’d review this, so here we go ;-).

I don’t remember playing the very first versions of this as being a very pleasant experience for some reason. Of course the artwork is nice, the chosen enemies were awesome (except for one) and the level layout is just the way I generally like it. But there was one big something that sort of put me off.

When I started playing I immediately realized that it was the difficulty that put me off in the first place. So my very first action was to go back to the main menu and load the save game for the easy difficulty instead of the medium difficulty (thanks for adding those by the way). I’m a wimp, what can I say. I managed to get through the level only losing a single life this way. The things that made my life most difficult were the trigger happy turtles, and the toaster shooters. Okay, so that’s enough about the difficulty. On to the good stuff, because the difficulty really is the only bone I could pick with it. The level actually is a lot of fun to play.

I never really adored this tileset in particular, but I love the way it looks in JJ1. You made some clever additions too to make it fit in better, like black backgrounds and the splashing waterfall. If I wouldn’t know better I probably would have guessed that it was an original. I also really like the background in this level. It is an interesting purple that fades to blueish, black and even green colors. That might sound weird, but it doesn’t distract the player. I guess most people won’t even notice it during their first run through the level.

The layout of the level is enjoyable. There’s not a huge wealth of pickups and ammo, but it’s well balanced and carrots and checkpoints are in the right places. You can tell from cooba’s style that he enjoys puzzles. There are a few hidden passages and platforms that you need to find before you can advance to the next part of the level. It also occurs a few times that cooba sends you to an area to have you pick up an item that you need to access another area in the level. I personally am a big fan of stuff like this, but I can imagine it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

A tiny point of criticism: I thought the silver bullet enemy was kind of disappointing. Especially when you look at how much time cooba spent on all of the other sprites. This might have to do with the fact that he decided he’d rather have a level out, than have it sit on his hard drive for another two years though. It’s a tiny flaw for me, but one I can live with. I can imagine that he might not even have bothered to finish the level if he would have had to put in much more time.

Overal: if you like puzzles, Jazz1 and a bit of a challenge, I’d say go for it. Good job cooba.

Nice!! I think I’ll use it in the future for a level or two.

Nice level, though it sometimes didn’t work at certain parts.
It’s worth downloading it.

Fine enough, eyecandy is fine, though I expected much more.

Original and nice level. Tbh I dont like the flying spring. DR!

The original team battle level was not strictly a battle 1 remake, but it certainly contained elements from it. It was meant as a strong homage though, not a remake. The level used an original design that deliberately tried to avoid battle 1 style gameplay (part because it’s meant to be played with 3 hearts, and part because I never liked battle 1 much, even 10 years ago). To me, a proper “remake” of battle 1 should preserve the gameplay and overall feel of the original map, and not just have a bunch of rooms that look similar.

The level uploaded here is obviously a remake though. Also contains elements from other levels, which is interesting. Looks a lot better than my original version too, which I hope can now be considered obsolete.

Heh, I played the original Team Battle endlessly back in the days, but never realized it was based on battle1. Nice idea to remake it.

A 9.4 and a 9.5? Sorry, but while this level is solid that is grossly overrating it. It’s a 7.5 for me. Perfectly adequate, nothing major to complain about, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from cooba by now. Don’t think I’m putting level down though, I’m not. It’s a quality piece of work and well worth your time. Download recommended.

Cool level. I Played it couple of mins ago on Zeal Beta server….