Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Nice!! It’s a good eyecandy, good tileset use, but the bad part was: No music except the castle lvl.
Ammo placement good, big maps,fast paced , must have:yes,puzzles:yes rating is 9 with DR

this is the one that i want to download

[Rating (6.5) clearance. You might want to click the \“sanguis.zip\” link at the top. – cooba]

cooba (All files by this user)

[I see. ~cooba]

Very nice. =]

I don’t like this tileset, Reminds me MS lvl =/ But It’s great one, CelL did enough Review so..

This level has got the best eyecandy I’ve yet seen with this set. The level might look insanely large in JCS that would fit only like 8vs8, but practically it’s probably fine for a 5vs5 even. Fastest route from base to base takes under 10 seconds even! Thanks to a neat flow too. Pickups come with a reasonable amount and variety. D/L and host!

Sanguinary Sanctuary marks the first release of well-known community member cooba in well over a year, and also his first release since the disbanding of his levelgroup IC and his joining of the well-known yet relatively inactive OLC. So, to add some special flair to the occasion, here’s the first actual Jazz2online upload review I’ve written in give or take four years, a good deal of which I was near completely inactive in the community myself. I wasn’t going to review the level at first or not this soon at any rate, but after having the pleasure of playing it online this evening in a game with FireSworD, Bobby, PurpleJazz and others and having a bit of time on my hands I decided to take a stab at writing something on it. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at this baby shall we?

What we have here is a 245×64 (amusingly very close to JCS’s default 256×64 level size) symmetrical capture the flag level using the old but cool Dark Reign tileset by Waz. I think the first thing a lot of people will notice about this level is the sheer size, and yes, this level is indeed quite large. This is actually a very good thing in my opinion; I like CTF levels of a decent size and we need more of them, as this is obviously good for JDC events, thing like the Aniversary bash and big team games in general. That said this level is probably best played in games with six players or more, maybe even preferably eight or more, as said game that I played here was a 3vs3 and while it generally progressed quite smoothly staying alive with the flag proved to be quite easy with only two people chasing you. Still this can also make for some fun games, which indeed it did, so playing with 6 dudes should still be justifiable here.

The entire map plays pretty horizontally and there’s basically three different horizontal levels to the thing with shafts with springs and vines allowing you to move up and down between them. The layout in general seems pretty conventional and at first glance rather unexciting, and while this holds true to a degree it does make use of a few clever ideas and if not the most original still manages to be very solid and fun to play. There’s a lot of space to move around in and the level generally doesn’t get too cramped to allow a generous amount of freedom of movement. The flow here is pretty decent but still leaves a few obstacles out there in the open for you to jump over, which is actually a pretty good thing in my opinion. Instead of just having perfect slopes and float ups to smooth things out and have a perfectly flowing level, I like it when a level designer is actually bold enough to throw a few bumps into his levels to force people to actually put some more thought into getting around, instead of just holding right or left all the time, sometimes hitting a convenient spring or suckertube along the way. The level is inherently neither Spaz- nor Jazz-biased. Spaz can make use of some tricky RF jumps to travel up and down the level faster (which do seem annoying to miss as Jazz but not so good as to be truly abusive) and has some advantages with a few tricky jumps around the middle section. However, all those horizontal surfaces make it very easy for Jazz to move across the level from left to right quickly. I played this as Jazz and after getting over some initial awkwardness, mostly in avoiding some obstacles in making my jumps, I was actually able to move around quite quickly. In fact I beat Spaz players from base to base several times just by bombarding them with Seekers while smoothly coptering over the middle area, or was able to kill them by coptering over the full energy carrot area and shooting Bouncers down below me. cooba also used a nice little trick where he puts springs above bridge events (which no longer crash the game thanks to jj2+) and triggered tiles set to dissapear when the level loads, effectively making the springs float in mid-air and letting you walk a tile under the springs without hitting them. Very clever.

Event placement, as expected of a weathered level mapper like cooba, is pretty much top notch here. With the level being symmetrical the base placement is pretty standard, with blue and red bases in about the vertical middle at the left and right sides of the level respectively. The bases are reasonably out in the open, each being placed in a sort of broad hollow in a relatively open corridor and accessible from either left, right, above or bellow. cooba told me he wanted to make this level a “base camper’s hell”, and while this may not be entirely true (there being a decent amount of ways to defend with the flag if you’re clever), you can still be easily nailed by RFs, Bouncies or fastfire Pepperspray if you’re not careful, so defending certainly isn’t a no-brainer here like it is in levels such as Security Breach. Being ready to score consistently without getting hit certainly is hard. I especially like the little shafts with the vines right above the bases. They seem like an easy place to be ready to score, yet they’re actually so high up that it’s hard to see what’s actually going on at the base and it’s also hard to attack from up there (Bouncies going down the shaft have a depressingly tiny hitbox) while it’s easy to BE attacked (i.e. Seekers, shooting Bouncies up the shaft, Electro Blaster). Weathered Spaz players can also RF climb up the shafts from the bases to gain quick acces to the one health carrots above.

Speaking of carrots, this level has five of them: that’s right, you heard me, five. There’s four one health carrots and one full energy carrot. Let’s tackle the full energy first. It’s located in the top middle of the level, in a sort of pit flanked by two high walls through which people can bombard you using the Electro Blaster. It looks pretty easily campable on one hand but on the other hand campers can easily be attacked there as well as I described above, so there’s nothing really wrong there. There are two one health carrots located at the left and right of the middle area, and two more located in an out-of-the-way area above the shaft above either team’s base, as I described above. There are actually a number of warps which lead to several of the carrots, which might be easy to miss for some people. They are signified by four large gargoyle statues: there is one a slight walk either left or right of each base, and there are two in the bottom middle of the level. The warps at the bottom middle of the level will take you to the full energy carrot, while the warps at the bases will take you to either the left or right middle one health carrot, respectively. I personally found the warps at the bases the most useful as they allow you to quickly mise both middle one health carrots as they’re quite close to each other. The warps to the full energy also provide a useful way to access the otherwise pretty hard to get to full energy carrot as well, though.

Weapon-wise the level offers you all you need for a healthy bit of carnage, yet is still conservative enough for you to warrant some ammunition economics. Available are Seekers (in small amounts), Pepperspray, Electro Blasters, two Bouncer Powerups and an RF Missile powerup. Apart from the ever-present Seeker Missile, generally the best (most broken?) weapon in the game, the RF Missile and Pepperspray look to be pretty dominant in a horizontal level like this. The Toaster, always a melee-favorite, is noticeably missing, though cooba tells me he did this on purpose, and having to actually think about what weapon to switch to in close quarters instead of just mindlessly spraying fire all around isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The Bouncer powerups are placed at the far left and right end of the level, and have to be accessed by going up a semi-narrow shaft with vines. Interestingly enough, you can exit these shafts at the top and go directly into the gargoyle-warps to the one health carrots, from which you can go to the lower middle part of the level, where the RF powerup is located. This is a pretty clever idea, considering it allows you to both heal yourself and restock your ammo if in trouble, or to just go for a quick ammunitions run after getting killed before going into battle once more. The RF missiles are clearly the most abundant in this level, as cooba makes some clever use of MCE events to place two +3 RF ammo pellets in a single tile allowing you to stock up quite quickly. There is only a small amount of Seeker ammo in the level which promotes economic use of this weapon; I was personally out of Seekers half the time and had to go a bit out of my way to restock, considering the Seeker ammo, while not completely out of the way of the level’s commonly tread routes isn’t so near to key camp spots to just be able to restock the things at will. A last addition I want to mention are the Fastfires, which are present in clumps of five at the left and right bottom corners of the level. These represent an interesting choice for players to take or not: you can either forego them and forsake the possibility of nailing people effortlessly with Fastfire Pepperspray, or stock up and risk emptying half your magazine of Bouncers with a single press of a button. Personally I can’t resist the temptation of trying to machine-gun people with Pepperspray in flat levels like this so for me the choice is clear.

The overall visual style of the level is quite good-looking and very compelling. Earlier this evening I remember cooba giving a general description of the theme he was going for, which went something along the lines of “a decayed, decrepit place, abandoned since the dawn of time” with “dark mountains and an ocean of lava” in the background. Overly dramatic as that may sound, and with the coincidentally convenient weaponry and CTF bases lying around taken as a given, I don’t think anyone here will argue with me when I say that Sanguinary Sanctuary looks pretty damn good. cooba makes very effective use of Waz’s 400-tile Dark Reign tileset, and while the set makes it a bit hard to strongly break the mold and create a unique visual look with it (I know, I’ve used it in the past) cooba still manages to churn out a level with a reasonably distinct look.

Spikes portrude from the floors and ceilings, ragged curtains hang from tarnished stone, and an impressive variety of pillars, bridges and arches make for some good-looking and well-structured pieces of architecture. Not a single space is wasted as even solid floors have contain network of chains and pillars for you to gawk at. The aforementioned mountainy background looks pretty nice and it took me a while to notice the “ocean of lava” positioned underneath the mountains actually moves at a slow rate when you’re standing still. cooba also used some cool tricks with the tileset I haven’t seen before such as the broken wooden bridges in the middle of the level. I especially like the giant brickwork skull in the background of the full energy carrot area, a la Toxin Twister and very cool looking, it makes for a recognizable landmark within the level and adds to the theme very nicely. There are a good amount of nifty little details, like the gargoyles signifying the warps to the carrots shimmering slightly if you look close which is a nice touch indeed. Apart from this there’s sadly no other tricks with ambient lighting or even a basic 80% start lighting setting or whatnot, which is a shame. Just about everyone plays online with lighting disabled anyway but I still think it’d have been a nice add to the atmosphere.

The overall visual style may look cluttered and confusing to some people but I generally don’t have much of a problem with it. I found it perfectly playable in high detail but for those who prefer a faster framerate or a cleaner look cooba actually made the level fully compatible with low detail, with no noticeable layer 5 cheating or weird backgrounds that suddenly show like you find in some other levels. In the end the whole visual style makes for a good-looking gothic, dreary, decrepit sort of setting which is very well realised.

For his music selection cooba makes use of a nifty jj2+ feature which allows mp3 format files to be used as background tracks. The music used here is a nifty little mp3 track simply called Ether, released by Damballah, a music project by Michal Moskal under the Polish Kaos ex Machina netlabel. The overall sound of the music is very sullen, dreary and menacing and in that it adds rather nicely to the overall feel of the level. At first I personally found it rather repetitive and honestly a bit dull, and while part of me still thinks that I do feel that cooba made a good choice here as the music still does a very good job in adding to the level’s overall dark and foreboding feel. He told me the level was at first gonna use Shutdown.xm, an old trance/industrial module by Teque, which would’ve been decent but honestly sounds too “techish” for this level to me (if that makes any sense) so cooba made the right choice here in the end I’d say.

When thinking to myself what kind of rating this level’d deserve I was at first somewhat undecided between a 7.5 and an 8.0 (this being in my current opinion the highest mark a single-level release can get unless it STRONGLY manages to impress me), yet I was already leaning towards an 8 simply because of the sheer amount of work that obviously went into this title. After playing this in an online 3vs3 game tho’ I found the level was actually a lot more fun and interesting to play than I thought, so I now feel an 8.0 is fully justified. This is pretty much the rating I feel is deserving for levels I’d actively go back and play a decent amount and Sanguinary Sanctuary surely fits this criterium. I might actually go back and raise the rating slightly after playing this more (though at the moment I mostly subscribe to the Aiko school of reviewing in preferring to only give out whole or half points) but at the moment just go and take a high and VERY well deserved eight points!

In conclusion, Sanguinary Sanctuary is a good-looking and very playable CTF level, that everyone should consider for their 3on3 games and beyond, or for just hosting on a public server for the heck of it. It may not be the most innovative or exciting release ever but it is a very solid product indeed and it’s obvious a lot of work went into it. Everyone, go download this level now!

this is very scary how make you it
this IS GREAT i give it an 10

No, but seriously, this is a pretty good level with some nice EC tricks and smart use of bridges. The layout is a bit different, and has some interesting stuff (like the warps above the Bouncy PU) and some nice RF spots (always good to have)

The level size is 245×64, and yet you once thought a level of 200×200 was only fit for sp. It’s heavily patterned ec-wise. The gameplay does not justify the level size, and the layout may be too overcomplicated (UNLESS THIS IS IN A BIG GAME/EVENT). Some parts are amazing but others are redundant.

Your level doesn’t suck. But, it doesn’t rock either…
Nice little fun level, good length, tolerably good eyecandy, mediocre event placeage, this level does have pros.
Buggage is reasonably low, but appeal to play didn’t last too terribly long.
The level got kind of repetitive after a while, which I don’t really like. But, certain parts were cool [like the area with all the pipes]. I’ll rate you 8, with a N/A dl rec, cause I’m not sure which way to lean.

Simple yet easy to use with many different environments, and nice to look at to boot!

If I ever get inspiration to make another level, I’ll probably use this.

I luv it!!

Great tileset !
Congratulations :P
With this tileset I cam make my Dream Map ! Thx ;]

[Review changed to quick review. For more information, see \Review Rules\. – cooba]

Seeing as Toxin Twister has had it’s first birthday, I thought I’d write up a review to celebrate this. =D

EYECANDY

I have not seen the original version of this level so I cannot compare it to what it looked like before but Cooba has been very creative with everything in this tileset to make very original eyecandy.
The background in Layers 7 and 8 is much more different to what you would normally see (a textured BG in Layer 8). I really love the moving window in the Layers 6 and 7.
Also, another thing original is animating the textured BG to make really cool animations like the green lights you see all over the level.
The textured BG has also been used to make the eyes of the impressive skull seen at the bottom of the level near the Seeker PU.
It’s also the small details that make the eyecandy impressive including the fast flashing lights.
Absolutely NOTHING looks repetitive in this level so I’m gonna give the eyecandy the highest score possible.

10/10

GAMEPLAY & FLOW

The Bases are placed symmetrically, both next to each other. However, they are only accessible by going up through the One Way ceiling down the bottom as the arrows show. You will not be able to camp on Bases for too long as Seekers can be fired at you from up top down through the One Way floor and also through turrets placed on both sides as shown by the Seeker blocks.

9/10

WEAPONS & ITEM PLACEMENT

PUs are placed well, they are not too campy. There are 3 PUs (4 if you count the second Bouncer) in this level. The RF PU is in the middle of the two Bases and can only be accessed by shooting it with Electro Blasters or Bouncers.
There are 2 Bouncer PUs on both sides of the level near the bottom which are not too campy.
The last PU is the Seeker which can be found above the skull which can be accessed only by shooting with Electro Blasters (or Bouncers if you are that good with them).
The ammo itself is spread out nicely and are not placed in boring shapes.
There are 3 Carrots, one Full NRG which is above the Bases and two +1 Carrots which are at the bottom in both Sucker Tubes. Health cannot be regained too easily, you will probably be on 1 or 2 Heart health a lot of the time.

9/10

TOTAL SCORE: 28/30
OVERALL MARK = 28 / 3 = 9.3333333333333333333333333333333
ROUNDED TO 9.3

DOWNLOAD?

Of course I would recommend downloading this. I wouldn’t say N/A if I gave it over 9. So in other words, HELL YEAH!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOXIN TWISTER! :D:D:D:D

Darn, BB Code didn’t work. D:

really awesome set. didn’t find any flaws, though it will probably become overused soon.

this is the year of tilesets :X

Quite a strong feeling of Deja Vu in some cases, but nonetheless it’s a great tileset, good job Cooba. I feel it will become very popular quite soon.

This is really a great set and i can already see lots of very good levels being made with it.

First impression: Cyberspaz Tileset 2 version 1.5

Really, it reminded me a lot of that set, and with reason; a lot of tile structures can also be found in that set (the tubes look very similar to those in Dethman’s set, and so does the water). Of course, this is not a bad thing, as Cyberspaz2v may have looked fine but never was very usable or complete, while this tileset definitely is. It’s logically organized with tiles grouped by purpose, and seems complete; most tiles which need one have a counterpart with layer 4 background, platforms are easy to complete since all tiles are there, et cetera. Definitely a very good tileset in that aspect.

The tiles look a lot more polished than in Dethman’s set too, and reminded me of Disguise’s Spacey Universe. Everything looks polished and all, though I’m not too fond of the combination of the rock texture and the rest of the tiles. The contrast between the light rocks and somewhat darker “techish” parts is just a bit too high.
What I especially liked were the “block” tiles; the square (and triangular) tiles with the rusty metal look. They are shaded very nicely and the dents in them show convincing depth. The goo dripping from the top in a few variations bugs me though. I don’t know why exactly, but something just seems wrong, like it’s just been pasted on top of the tiles instead of really blended well.

Apart from that it’ll be hard for anyone to find graphical flaws in this set. Everything looks fairly monotone, but the advantage of this is that the palette can contain a lot of different hues of the same colour, allowing for increased detail and amazing textured backgrounds such as the two (!) included in this set. Which brings me to the background scenery, another strong point of this set. The aforementioned textured backgrounds are awesome, and so are the moon and clouds. Then there are some tiles which can be used to add skyscrapers. Though those could have used a bit more variation in my opinion they offer yet more possibilities for background and level theming.

Finally there’s the waste itself, without which this tileset wouldn’t be much of a waste treatment facility. To be honest I was a bit disappointed in this, I would have expected more waste and less generic space-industrial-whatever tiles. There’s the obligatory waterfalls and some layer 3 water tiles, but no barrels of waste, no real processing machinery, just waste waterfalls. Which brings me to my main problem with the set, its complete lack of originality. As said before it really looks awesome but come on, if there’s any theme which has been used to death in tilesets it’s the nondescript industrial-urban-dark-facility one. Apart from looking better than most of its predecessors this set does not really add anything to the pool of sets to choose from.

If you disregard that, however, what’s left is a tilesets that looks really good and is easy to use, and one I would certainly recommend to download. What withholds me from giving a 9+ is the lack of originality, but if you don’t care much about that I’d say go ahead and make some levels with this; they’ll probably look awesome nonetheless.

Bwahaha. Finally, you’ve released this set out in the open, out in the wild to be free and now, other JCSers can make it look bad or good. Well, I haven’t reviewed a tileset in a very long time, and I think last time I did it, I did it as if I was some crazy freak who doesn’t know how to rate stuff (which I am, hey, notice the correlation!). Well, this is the most stupid thing to start a review with isn’t it? Now ignore this and actually read the review.

Theme

I’ll start with theme as I can introduce what the set is like. So, the theme is a waste treatment facility (as said in the title ololololol). This is obviously one of those less natural sets which focuses more on pipes and metal and stuff. What’s even better is that it can be set in so many different environments as long as your creativity reaches those ideas. I’ll start with the obvious, the background tiles allows you to place buildings of different shapes and sizes, and there is also a smaller size which is suitable for layers behind this one. So basically, the author clearly thought about depth and stuff. The main background also has two different textures, atop of some extra tiles which could also be used, let your imagination blow you away I guess.

Possibilities

This was partially analysed in the above passage, but it’s kinda clear that this tileset has so many possibilities as there are so many different tiles that you could possibly work with for the many different aspects and layers of a level you’d be making. For instance, there are quite a few animations you could make and work with. The set consists of rocks, (wierd platform things that I have no idea on the name of, I wanna call them liney things) liney things, metal, rusted metal, dark metal, rocky background, pipes, more pipes, waterfalls everything you name it. The possibilities of this set are endless, as the author very cleverly created many different “types” of tiles that you could work with.

Masking

I took long with this one, but I looked through the set quite thoroughly and found nothing I could possibly complain about. The author has created every type of mask you could possibly need unless of course you’re some needy old hobo that needs stupid things. I love how I can’t say sentences like that, anyway enough rambling. The masks are all there and they are pretty easy to differintiate from what isn’t a mask. I haven’t yet found any tiles with bad masking, and ooh, the textured BG is brilliant. (Subtle aren’t I?)

Usability

This is quite an advanced set, because I know for a fact that you need to be creative in order to use this set to its full potential. I’ve already seen many different possibilities you could create (and not mentioned them, surprise surprise) and I’m sure there are many more. This set is very easy to navigate through as the layout is quite smart and also, this set has every single tile you could possibly ask for (apart from an ode to Rag which is just crucial nowadays). This tileset is also one of the few sets where you probably will never need to use layer 5 at the same speed as layer 4, which gives you an extra background layer to allow your imagination to go even more wild. This tileset isn’t missing any tiles that I would be looking for in a set, so I’m really happy with it. Very very very fun to use.

Originality

I’ve seen sets such as this before, or one set, I forget which, however it was never up to a standard such as this as once again it has every tile you could possibly ask for and more. The pallettes are all very original too as they all have very different themes. This allows even more creativity amongst the use of this tileset, as you could use snow in the “Borealis” pallette to make it look even better. That was just an example, and I’m sure there are many, many more. This tileset looks amazing on so many levels and I still have not yet found anything to criticize… yet (actually I have, there’s no tile mentioning Ragnarok, the greatest, the strongest superhero of them all!!! (Wasnt that action man? (I just wrote in bracket inside bracket, does that mean the 2nd bracket cancels out the first one?)))

Extra

This set is event-friendly, user-friendly, tile-friendly and blahblah. Well, I don’t know what I wanted to include here but if I remember, I’ll be sure to give this an edit.

I hope this wasn’t too bad for my first good tileset review thing person sort of person sort of thing. Well, I’m gonna give you a 9.9. I can bump that up to 10.0 if you just make a tile with my name on it (Im kidding, make a tile with Habib AlHasheed Akhmed’s name on it instead). Great job Coobakabooba.

Nice levels! Very original.