Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

The irony of Forest Forgotten is that the forest part of it really is better off forgotten.

I’ll explain. The level is divided, like A Generic Single Player Level II, into various biomes, though not as distinctly as in blacky’s take on the same tileset. There’s a leafy forest in the bottom left, a dead forest in the top right, a shrine in the bottom right, and a bunch of vertical spaces, platforms, vines, and grass everywhere else. Most of it’s fairly interesting, but the leafy forest is mostly just aggravating… layer 3 leaves cover up your view of some of JJ2’s most persistent enemies, and there are so many random single food pickups it becomes tedious to try to collect them all. The lack of visibility is the main issue, though. This would be okay as an interlude in the middle of some other level, but here the forest comes right at the beginning—well, depending on which direction you start walking—and gives much the wrong impression for what the rest of the level will be like.

Because I rather liked most of the rest of the level, for all its bizarre design choices. As far as I can tell, the only part of the main level area that’s directly important to completing the level is the ruined shrine in the bottom right. Everything around it—all the grassy platforms, swinging vines, hidden coins, etc.—is there in case you want to beat the level by collecting 40 (mostly hidden, often behind layer 3) coins instead of doing things the more traditional way. Personally I only found 39, but I trust there was another one out there somewhere.

A thought occurs to me that maybe besides the coins, that large area was also there to provide bouncer pickups for accessing the shrine with. In that case, maybe my being able to shoot the toaster powerup through the wall with a bouncer bullet (and thereby gain more than enough ammo to power down through the pit) was a bug, not a clever use of a nearby bouncer pickup to tell me what I was supposed to do. :|

Anyway. I’m not sure this particular brand of non-linear design quite worked for me, mainly because there weren’t a lot of obvious hints pointing the way forward and a lot of the level all looked the same. I had to resort to the tried and true test of looking for uncollected food/undefeated enemies to see if I’d already been somewhere or not. This is a common problem with a lot of sets, but from Xargon I guess I’d have expected more eyecandy diversity.

That confusion aspect is a shame, because when I could tell what was going on, Forest Forgotten was fun, engaging, and creative. Swinging platforms, arrows, animated tiles, crates, and more are all put to good use in puzzles that you’re given just enough information to figure out how to solve. The shrine area sends you on several puzzle-heavy quests in order to smash certain trigger crates before you can beat the level, and they (and the shrine in general) are definitely the most memorable aspects of the level and also where it feels most like a Spaztic work, albeit one that is much fairer than her Mines of Moria ever was. Good fun stuff. The wider exploration areas with all the coins and enemies are close, but there’s something missing that keeps them from feeling quite right.

I don’t know if there was ever a larger story surrounding this level—the shrine at the end stretches on for long enough that I felt it had to be building up to something, but that something never came—but it probably doesn’t really need one. Forest Forgotten is an interesting, often exciting set of ideas that aren’t quite supported by their eyecandy and aren’t quite clearly connected to each other, but definitely worth a play nonetheless.

(Note that depending on your control scheme, it may be difficult to use this while facing left, since some keyboards do not allow the simultaneous press of Left arrow, Up arrow, and Space. This is a bug in your keyboard, not the script, so kindly do not rate szmol down for it.)

Note for those who, like me, don’t have a numpad: Do a find and replace in the script file and change “0×6” to “0×3”.

Administrative notes: I don’t know why this level is listed as TSF+; I played it in 1.23+ just fine. Also you need to include the tileset (Desolation7th.j2t) or a lot of people won’t be able to play it.

That aside, this is pretty cool. With all the power that JJ2+‘s angelscript implementation offers, Survival Mission 1 is a good reminder that you don’t need to use every single function and rewrite every last bit of JJ2 and pretend you’re writing an entirely new game just to make a playable level. SM1 uses angelscript to take certain actions just a little farther than they could be done in JCS alone—cutscene-like dialogues, flashing lights, announcements—without creating the impression it’s anything other than a JJ2 single player level. It’s very subtle, and we could definitely use more levels like it in that respect.

(Also there’s mouse aiming and several of the enemies have higher hit counts, but besides that it would be very easy not to realize the level is scripted at all, if you’re a casual player who isn’t incredibly familiar with every single thing JCS can or cannot accomplish.)

Of course, once scripting is involved at all it’s easy to think of places that could have been a bit more elaborate. At least one point in the level would feel more complete with an accompanying music change. And I found myself getting lost a whole lot while playing; text alerts would announce that some door had been opened but woudn’t tell me where that door was, and those would have been excellent use cases for moving the player’s camera to focus on the newly opened door for a few seconds. And some more lighting effects would have been nice.

Anyway, how’s the level? It’s all right. It’s a classic sort of level where there are various places with labels like “generator” or “engine room”, and you have to find various trigger crates/zones to progress. Some enemies are supposed to be guarding various rooms, as indicated by their sitting in giant chairs or stuff like that. You shut down a “core” and then find your way out again. We’ve seen this exact theme in Another Story, and maybe other levels even older than that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I have to say, though, the layout was too cramped for my tastes. It definitely made the mouse aiming feel incredibly useful at times, particularly when I was climbing up a tower and shooting the enemies walking around on the ledges above me, but it also meant that the seekers and RFs didn’t have very much to do. (And there wasn’t a lot of ammo at all, especially in a level where half the enemies had higher-than-usual hit counts.) And the level was also quite compact, forcing a lot of paths to be right above or below one another even if they weren’t necessarily close to each other in terms of semi-linear layout. This made things more confusing than they needed to be, and also reduced the possibility of making different areas of the map visually distinct from one another.

So there are definitely various improvements that the author can make here, but it’s a pretty playable experience provided you don’t get too lost. I think the level of scripting is just fine, and the visuals are plain but serviceable, so I’d suggest concentrating primarily on design in the immediate future. Don’t be afraid to make things bigger. Work on getting the layout to match the theme. Find ways of indicating what path needs to be followed. Compare the ammo you offer to the places they can be used.

Download recommended? Sure. It’s not spectacular, but it’s a solid foundation. For players, there are some decently attractive areas and reasonable challenges—float suckers put in several appearances in their classic role as buttstomp targets—and you’ll get a chance to kill some enemies and stomp some crates, so long as you don’t get too confused about where to go next. For level makers, it’s a reminder that the barrier of entry to angelscript is only as high as you want it to be, and you can make a level that only needs it for one specific purpose instead of worrying about the whole level being a backseat to showing off your scripting skills. It’s a traditional JJ2 SP experience with some mouse aim thrown into the mix, so if you’re into that sort of thing—and, well, you are on J2O—have at it?

This is exactly what Overlord’s j2ff does, except j2ff can also recompile them for you. (Granted, the recompilation messes up on TSF-only levels, but otherwise it’s all good.)

Novel as the fact this is a .lev is, there is really no other reason to download this. The tileset uses about four distinct colors, and the level about six distinct tiles in a 20×15 space. The only challenge is jumping over a tuf turtle. Marinata_1997, please spend more time on your levels, and/or read www.jazz2online.com/tilesets

I think you want the Articles section?

Either I don’t understand why a jcs.ini is included in this upload, or you don’t. A jcs.ini file affects only JCS: which events you can place, what they’re called, what you think their parameters are. It has no effect on JJ2, and you do not need any specific jcs.ini — in fact, you do not need a jcs.ini at all — in order to be able to see blue ghost enemies in TSF.

Way too full of very simplistic errors. Animation speeds are wrong (esp. the boss), animations are wrong, blaster uses the RF sprite for no clear reason, and there’s really no level design to speak of. At the least, glance at the tiles and make sure they look like they tile right before uploading. The bonus level has boundary issues.

I see a lot of good design principles that are let down by poor execution. You definitely have a sense of what kind of challenges are germane to single player — respectable enemy placement, some precision platforming, triggers, collapse scenery, and other such things — but it’s all done way too quickly. The running section (you should know, btw, that fast feet events don’t actually do anything in JJ2) is ended by a wall which signals that it’s dangerous once again and there’s an enemy coming; that’s a great touch. I see tiles being used for specialized purposes, and definite hints of JJ1 design philosophy (e.g. the secret level hidden behind the end of level sign). As PJ said, you just need to spend a lot more time polishing your levels and making the good ideas that you have more appealing to look at and play. Choosing different tilesets will also benefit you tremendously. Inferno is difficult to use even for experienced level designers, and the other sets you used aren’t really very high quality. Find a nice good-looking, easy to use set and see if you can’t find some inventive graphical tricks to complement your level design intuitions. Keep it up.

Nice as it is to see a custom Battery Check level (this is possibly the first???), this really has no other redeeming qualities. It’s tiny, tiles don’t match up too well, and there’s little challenge and absolutely no use for the batteries. But please keep practicing: we need more Battery Check levels!

The atmosphere’s not bad, although you owe the tileset a large debt there. Eyecandy does get repetitive. Occasional tile bugs but fewer than usual for Carrotus. Not nearly enough ammo (pretty much just powerups), and too many walls, especially that carrot portion. No incentive to hang around the dangerous pit area. Good ideas, but too cramped.

A small level that takes no real risks and could use a bit more polish. The ammo placement is bizarre — somewhat sparse, but with lots of pepper spray and even some TNT — and the path to the blaster powerup is way too long and slow and unbranching. Not fond of the upper right. Eyecandy is serviceable, if unadventurous, and there are good areas.

The authorship looks a bit too much like a he-said-she-said situation for me to try to resolve, and there’s not much to say about the gameplay here, but I do like the eyecandy. :) You(?) make Top Secret look pretty.

The issue with alternate palettes is that the tileset is 100 rows and I already had to truncate its background somewhat to fit in that space. Creating a more straight up Carrotus expansion with regular palette and background but all the expanded walls/bridges/vines/thorns/etc. — CarrotusV, obviously — would definitely result in TSF-only territory. If there’s demand I guess I could do that, but it wasn’t my top priority.

Alien Temple ][? Hell yeah.

The tileset and the music? Really?

It’s an okay list for what it does, but the fact that a better list came out two days before it rather limits the incentive to use it. At the very least you should have combined it with Pyromanus’ long-existing list so that it would describe which sprites each sound activated. Finally, I’m not sure how much this really belongs in the downloads section as opposed to an article or ERE page.

EDIT: “Neobeo’s post doesn’t even list HALF of all the Ambient sounds, so I’m not sure why it was even mentioned in this discussion. His list serves a completely different purpose from mine.” <- This is totally false. I think you may be looking at blur’s list instead of Neobeo’s, which is later down the thread? Neobeo’s goes straight from 0 to 255 without gaps. Compare his 42-62 to yours, for instance.

Also, I didn’t say this should be an MCE list. However, as noted by Pyromanus, ambient sounds are linked to MCEs in that different ambient sounds will load sprites into memory. They don’t place events in the level; rather, they affect what will happen if one does place such an MCE somewhere. These sprites are directly tied to specific ambient sounds, and it doesn’t really make sense in 2011 to have an ambient sound list that only specifies one dimension of the ambient sound event.

Also, if this had been an ERE page, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because other people could simply make the requisite edits to bring yours up to date with Neobeo and Pyro’s findings.

And yet there have been nine downloads that were neither the uploader nor Grytolle, so there must be at least some demand. :-?

Compare n00b’s Colonial Building Remake.