Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This is the only tool publicly available on J2O (aside from J2E Creator by the same author) that provides the much needed functionality of creating and editing j2e files, so you kind of need it if you want to have custom episode files without writing your own software. So it was received well because it was software we needed. That is not to say it is a good tool for the job.

You open this up and you’re greeted with an awful, awful user interface that is hard to call an improvement over a console application. First thing you’ll do is probably try to open some file, either a j2e or a bmp, you’ll type in the file name (don’t count on a Windows file selection dialog), and you’ll be told that nope, that file doesn’t exist, because you’ve included the file extension like any sane person would do, but J2E Editor actually appends .j2e or .bmp to whatever you type in, so it just tried to open Home.j2e.j2e.

With some effort you get used to that and you load the bitmap you wanted. You know JJ2 uses palettes, so your bitmap already has the menu palette, so all that the software needs to do is take your indexed image and put it in a j2e file. Well, it won’t do that, because your menu palette is not the menu palette it wants. The menu palette it wants is in a file included with the software in a format that nothing opens. If you manage to open it, you can find out that the palette is blatantly wrong. Literally all you have to do to obtain the menu palette from the game is take a screenshot (F12 key) in 8-bit color mode and extract it from the file, so how the author managed to obtain his very discolored version of the palette escapes me. I sort of imagine that he tried to approximate it via trial and error until it more or less looked right.

But that shouldn’t matter, right? It can just take the bitmap, see that it’s indexed, and put it in the file as it is. No, what it will actually do is make sure the provided palette matches exactly, and perform color reduction if it doesn’t. Why? Just why? You take my picture crafted exactly for the menu palette and it’s ready for you to just put directly in a j2e file, all you have to do is zlib it, yet you have to convert it to your crappy wrong palette?

Writing text into prompts relies on key press events rather than character input events, and if you know what those two are, you should be cringing right about now. This means that handy functions like copy/paste will not work, long presses of a key will not produce multiple characters (including that you have to press backspace once for every character you want to delete), and what non-alphanumeric symbol you obtain by pressing a given button is very much dependent on your keyboard layout. Whenever I have to type in something like a dot, I just go through every symbol on my keyboard with and without shift because who knows which one will happen to produce a dot. This is an actual downgrade from a console application.

Oh, and here’s another fun fact, I wondered why I can’t edit the episode’s number in the list. So I looked into the readme, and apparently it’s the only thing that you interact with not by clicking on it like everything else in this program, but by pressing numpad plus and minus keys. Nothing indicates this, you just have to open the readme to find out. It was a matter of adding something like “±” to the user interface and it wasn’t done.

This is terrible software. It’s bad at interacting with the user, and it’s bad at its job of just taking some data and structuring it into a j2e file, but I guess the files it eventually produces are at least correct in the sense that JJ2 opens the j2e files and graphics software can open the bmp files it exports, so it’s not hopelessly useless.

So here we have an updated Carrotus. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Look:
Carrotus looks pretty good, but it’s an original JJ2 Set, so instead, I will
rate the look of the variations.
Day:N/A (It just has added tiles)
Night:N/A (Read above)
Diamondus: Looks like a natural Transition.
Zombified: Spooky.
Evening: Another time of day for once.
Lava: Reminds me of Angel Island act 2 from Sonic 3…
Midnight: Now this actually looks like night.

Content:
Once again, the majority is original JJ2, but there’s some nifty stuff added below:
Fire: always a nice addition.
Updated caves and logs: Much better now.
Beanstalk extras: Nice.
Destructable Scenery Blocks: Always a good thing.

A few tiles in the original Carrotus are pretty useless(Like the optional other colo(u)rs for Destruct Blocks), so they didn’t get any variants.

Usabillity:
Carrotus is a Tileset that is almost impossible to really screw up with.
The new tiles are all at the bottom, so you’re not gonna search for them long.

Overall, pretty good update. Download recommended.
It effectively replaces the old set. There could have been more updated tiles,
but the old set was fine too, so not too much taken off.

Score: A solid 7.7 to me.
Pros: Easy to use, fits JJ2 perfectly, cool stuff added, many different variants
Cons: Not that much edited, some useless tiles are still a thing.

(Phew, what a MAMMOTH review for a simple fix!)

Well, this is something I waited for.
A simple little Tool with everything you need to make your own
.j2e files.
Could be better, but could be worse.
Download recommended.
If you like Singleplayer, get this.

This tileset is happy, nice and colorful.

IMAGE
This theme is a garden, a village, the TexturedBG works well.
Rating: 10

MASKS
The masks work well.
Rating: 7

EXAMPLE LEVEL
I dont rate this example level.

OVERALL
This tileset is very nice and useful to create levels with houses with rabbits, pools, caves and rooms!!!!
Rating: 9

Download now!!!!!!!!

Good program!
This program is to remove password in the levels!
DR? Yes!

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules.

First glimpse of this tileset is, colorful and happy. You can clearly see that some parts are hand drawn. Some tiles been borrowed from Nick Stadler’s tilesets but most are original made. I really like the countless of bunnies and that some are even animated!

This tileset is screaming for a single player level.. perhaps for an episode that is story heavy. I mean, there are so many bunnies, you can use them for small dialogs, which is perfect for story telling. The tileset can be used for multiplayer things like.. hotel levels, remember them 90’s and early 00’s Jazz Jackrabbit players?

What this tileset lacks is a proper use of layer 1 and 2. zapS, went the easy way by using rain for the first layers, which is sad..it limits the possibility for some nifty eyecandy.

I do honestly believe that zapS does have some love and put some passion in the tileset. You can make some decent levels out of it, but don’t expect to much out of it.

this shouldn’t be rated lower than the previous version!

Nice Conversion you made one question Why didn’t you made the night version of Carrotus Diamondus?

EXELENT!

Great conversion. One of my favorite tilesets. Now I have 5 more types with the original two having added tiles. They all look great. Worth downloading this.

MilloCz: OMG…Stop trolling xd

16milion-color effects from paintshop pro, right?

Probably by far the best utility I’ve ever seen for JJ2 in a long time. This certainly makes things easier for so many.

Thanks for uploading this, you’ve made my day.

And so the discussion comes to an end.

Good work! you don’t know how I needing

Looks cool

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

Balltyville Sewers

To start:
The sewer. A obvious theme for a level, however there are just a couple of tilesets about the sewer. Now I rate one of those tileset.

Practical: (20 pts)
Practical it is! It is not a very big tileset, which makes it easy to use. And actually it has almost everything you might need if you want to create a level: paths, walls, a sky, vines and even tubes to suck you through (like in Tubelectric)! However: you can’t make a nice detailed background with this tileset. Also things like spikes are missing, but if you create a level with this tileset, you can easily place some spike balls instead.
Result: 12 pts

Eyecandy: (20 pts)
Well… it’s not good. The circle shaped tiles (like the manhole cover and the lights) are not so tight. Also: the soil and road tiles are simple made: just one color with lots of small dots.
Result: 5 pts

Originality: (20 pts)
The concept of the entire level being set in a sewer is very rare on JJ2-tilesets. It’s quite original, but like you can understand from the practical- and eyecandy ratings it’s underused.
Result: 10 pts

Example level: (10 pts)
Example levels in tileset packs might come in handy, because it can show you how to use the tileset if you’re gonna use it. The example level made for this tileset is good! For example: because of the example level I know the white circle with the yellow circle are lights. Sadly enough you didn’t show us what a good boss would be for this level. I think the Tuf Boss (Schwartzenguard) fits best, but what do you think?
Result: 8 pts

Total points: 35
Maximum number of points: 60
Calculating: 35÷60×9+1
Final Rating: 6.3
Download recommendation: N/A
Why? Downloading this level pack is neither good or bad. To stay in the theme about sewers I say it’s a flush idea to download! Want to know where I got that quote? Check this video out — Is It A Good Idea To Microwave A Toilet Bowl? http://t.co/9a82oaO via YouTube!

Works well! Does it search subsequent folders (i.e. /Cache)? If so, it’d be nice to see the filename as “\Cache\dotparadise.j2l”. That was the only tsf file I had, but I had two copies of it so I didn’t know which one to delete. I ended up deleting both.

Well this is greatest utility to change version of level to 1.23. This could to be very useful in uploading levels for who got 1.23 version of jazzjackrabbit2.Is easy to convert it. I drag a level (Easter1.j2l) to J2L_Converter.exe and then the thing will happen.I must choose another letters and the TSF level converted to 1.23 version.The same thing is a upload rule which says “The Jazz2Online staff prefers uploads to be compatible with 1.23 whenever possible. Convert TSF levels and tilesets to 1.23 before uploading. Click here to learn the difference between 1.23 and TSF and how to convert files to 1.23.”. yes and this utility help this rule to be mentined totally. I always use this utility when I upload levels for 1.23 version. I’ll recommend this utillity.

hm
This is an a conversions of jungle tilesets?
I see you have added a little number
of new tiles and this is not too interesting here to upload.
You did made very borring this conversion
i dislike it from at all costs.
I think you must make levels.(better
than tilesets conversions) or your
own tilesets :D
(don’t forgot is not an a insulting to your tilesets)