Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

OK, here’s a fresh one. I did rate that one a bit wrong. So, I’ll try again.

The colour of the castle has been changed to light blue but it does get boring after a while. I don’t really like the green on some of the tiles, it’s too bright. There are some other tiles ripped from other sets by the looks of it, these are the seaweed and the background for layer 8. The ripped tiles do look a bit grainy. It’s an OK set but it’s not the best. It looks OK underwater but I don’t think this set would be used that much. I’m gonna give this a 6.5 because it’s not terrible but it can be improved.

Originally, this was a 9.2, but I rated the wrong things.

RATING: 6.5
GRADE: D = OK

DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION?

Maybe.

I left the edit from Cooba in the review to show that I did it wrong previously.

Purplejazz7 made this conversion specially for me!!!
Isnt he nice!!!

——————————————————————

I gave a responce of the review by: Janus aka Jahari.

U said: I think you should consider making an original tileset for a change. You keep zipping out these tileset combo/conversions that have rather limited use.

eeehhhm Janus: Purplejazz7 made this tileset conversion cause it was a request of me, i wanted him to make a castle tileset that looked like underwater castle, and i wanted him to let it look the same as the original castle tileset, only then other colours and extra eyecandy stuff for underwater, so its not his idea to be exact, so if you want to complain, complain than to me, not to purplejazz7, cuz he only MADE my idea to a REAL tileset. Why he did that is for the fact that i cant or nearly cant make a tileset or conversion, sooooo….

Purplejazz7 is learning well, I can tell you that. Compared to the Dam 3 set, this is a major improvement.

Colors
How evil can you get, everything a nice shade of red (I’m a poet and I don’t know it). Somehow the red reminds me of Bluez’ Blood tileset back in the early days of JJ2. The best thing is it’s uniform: no “wacky” or “out-of-place” colors show up through the entire set. What surprising is that the regular background (the one with the “face”) looks like a negative of the original: the brightness level have been switched around. Intentional or not, to me it gives it a bit of a glow effect if you’re used to the original. But I understand if it may irk a few.
I do have a little complaint: the bigger spires are a bit too bright compared to the rest of the set. That doesn’t really detract from the overall appeal.

Added stuff
I’d say this is a first for PurpleJazz7, and a nice go at that. First it’s a textured background, non-standard even. Those are always welcome. It doesn’t have to be Hell all the time you know, you can also make it into a gigantic Demonic Graveyard (don’t be stealing this name). Did I mention it works both in 8-bit and 16-bit?
The rest of the extras are mainly ripped. Starting with the lava fall from Kaven’s Thermal K.1 edit of Carrotus. The lava rain is just a single drop, but it points both left and right. Nice idea.

Mask
No changes here, he basically used Dam1’s mask for this conversion. No problem.

Miscellaneous Comments
PurpleJazz7, ever thought of compiling with a 1.23 JCS next time? You may not know this, but tilesets and levels done in TSF only work with TSF, and not everybody has that (yet). If you could convert it for use with 1.23, that would be really great :)

Final Verdict
Better keep an eye on him, guys. With this set he’s shown he’s capable of making good edits. It’s not on the level of Noka’s and BlurredD’s, but still worth a look. If only it was 1.23…

EDIT: And now it is! That was quick. Thanks! :)

I’d REALLY want to see a tex bg that says I’m in hell. Thats what The Dam Nation tileset is, Hell.

Not some Samurai War (Which is what the tex bg conjures up for me), Hell.

Hell is down in the Earth, why is there SKY in hell? Before you pull the “Hell on Earth” card, I’m going to toss this: If it was Hell On Earth, why didn’t you do something more with that idea?

Pretty good level. Very moody.

Flag placement – Pretty good places where you put them. I like where they are un the top upper right and left corners. I am grateful where you put them. No ctf bug, Yay! 8/10

Carrot placement – These are okay spots where you put them. They are pretty even which makes the game fair for both teams. 8/10

Ammo – The warp secrets to power ups. A classic. One to rf’s and again one to seeks Pu.The ammo is placed pretty evenly. The bonus is pretty cool too. 8/10

Layers – Pretty much every layer is used but im just looking at the level my self.Layer 1 isnt used but that layer is hardly used at all. Placement of the layers if good and layer 2 was used good with the trees. 8/10

Music/tileset – Atlantis is perfect for this level which makes it moody and peaceful. Tileset. THis tileset is perfect for the level you used. It matches with the music you used. This tileset isnt very common but I like how you used a tileset like this. It gives us something new. 9/10

8/10 + 8/10 + 8/10 + 8/10 + 9/10 = 8.5!

~Hitch

A solid paintish tileset with a realistic halloween-theme.

Main Tiles: Most ground tiles are there. Not all combinations of ground types are possible (I mostly miss the 1*X tile platforms). There’s a textured BG; it looks good on 16 bit and only very slightly buggy on 8 bit mode. There is also a “layer 4 background”, although you’ll have to use layer 5 for it and it doesnt look that good. Vine, hook, and hurt events are there; the V-pole is missing, and so are the sucker tubes. Text and exit signs are here, and so are the arrows, in two shades of red which allows for animation.
Uh, and there are also some destruct blocks (or something), although these look pretty ugly.
->You can make levels with this tileset, although you can’t be too innovative with the tile placement.
6.2

Eyecandy: This tileset has a decent amount of eyecandy. While the tileset itself is city-themed, the halloween theme comes in here. There are pumkins, animated glowing carved pumpkins, gravestones, bones, weird shape monsters.. a neat layer 6 or 7 house background and a neat layer 6 or 7 weird-shaped-monster background. There’s also a house for layer 4. There’s rain, and colored tiles that allow for lightning.
-> A good amount of eyecandy for such a small set. Well done.
8.7

Extras: There are blocks with letters, which can be useful sometimes. There’s also a nice trigger door, but this has a major downside: there’s no part for it in layer 3, causing you to go in front of the whole door when you’ve finally unlocked it, looking pretty stupid.
There’s also a “happy halloween!” tile, which cheered me up somehow.
-Not that much, but at least some.
+0.2

About the different versions: I probably liked the evening version best, it was the most Halloween-ish in my opinion. The night versions were a tiny bit too dark for my liking. Purplejazz7 has been smart enough to darken sprite colors too for them (actually the midnight version looks pretty neat if you make the texture BG fade into a bright color)

Overall: A good, slightly above average tileset. If this really is your third, you sure have potential. Keep up the good work. It could be improved on alot, but it still is nice (and probably better than anything I could manage)

(6.0+8.7+0.2)/2=7.55. +0.2 for the “feeling” in the set->7.75 rounded down to 7.7
D/L recommendation: Yes.

Ok, this tileset is probly one of the worst i have ever seen.

tiles: there is hardly a use full tile. but at least theres a Sign.
Rating: 1.2

Use fullness: the tile set is useless for allmost everything. Rating:1

Size: It’s way too small, next time make a way bigger one.Rating:1

Amination: there is NO GOOD amination tiles what so ever.Rating:1

Eyecandy: the tile set offers some Eye friendly stuff like mountains and vines and a not so bad background. Rating: 4.5

Over all rating: 1.64 rounded to 1.7

you should try harder next time and use up some empty spaces and make the tile set larger.

Uh, excuse me? If there would be an “Overrated Upload of the Week” this would be “deffinately” this. If you guys rate this a 9, would you rate BlurredD’s Diamond Dust conversion a 10? Sigh.

Visual Appeal – 2 out of 5

As the example level was loading, I honestly wasn’t expecting anything outstanding. And apparently, turns out I was right. What here is worth a 9, I thought? The palette change looks like it took less than an hour to make. Everything has turned green (not as bad as in Emeraldus though) the mushrooms and the Small Tree event got distorted, which is not quite how I would imagine a stormy Diamondus. As for the “additions”, they show no effort from the author’s part. These include a poorly drawn rain (always a bad idea to make one tile full of raindrops), a water tile (of similar quality) and a PJ7 “logo” which could have been fit into one tile instead of two. All in all, not the greatest quality here, and I would have liked if the cave spike tiles would have their backgrounds updated (they still use the ones from the old 1997 Diamondus).

Usability – 2 out of 5

No technical improvement over the original…. night version. That’s right, this is a conversion of the Diamondus 2 tileset, which has a few tiles placed differently (which messed up the Dopefish secret in the example level). The way tiles were placed in Diamondus 1 makes more sense (at least for me). Anyway, there are no added extras either (such as the ever-so-universal invisible masks), nor any improvements over the original’s mask, which wasn’t all that perfect anyways.

• Not as bad as the horrible Emeraldus tileset.
• The theme

• Badly drawn additional tiles
• Little bugs in the palette
• Wasted improvement opportunies

Overall
Certainly not the greatest Diamondus conversion in existance. Diamond Dust is much better than this, even though it lacks the storm elements (blur, if you’re reading this, consider making a dd03). Not really worth the download, imo. Try better next time, because you’ve got some potential.

Edit: And the different palettes added as I was writing my review (…) aren’t really better and don’t really do anything towards the tileset itself, sorry ;|

A very nice conversion of the popular Diamondus tileset.

EYECANDY: Changes to the tileset include: different coloured tiles and some really cool rain and lightning effects. It looks really good. 9/10

EASE OF USE: The set is easy to use. You can use it like the old Diamondus sets. Rain and lightning can also be used. 9/10

EXAMPLE LEVEL (NOT COUNTED IN RATING): The level here is exactly like the first Diamondus level in JJ2 except with an Uterus Boss thrown in at the end.

Note: This is my first time rating a tileset conversion so I’m not sure if I’ve done it right.

TOTAL: 18/20 (9.0)

DR: YES

This review was difficult to make.
EYECANDY- The eyecandy was relitivly the same.However, the lightning and rain was a good affect.The blue/green colour change was quite good.I think you could have the level different to the original.the boss at the end was a bit pointless.9/10.

The music gave it a very stormy theme.10/10.

The example level was very good aswell.

i am going to rate this 9.3

Deffinate download recamendation.

[Rating (9.3) clearance. There was not enough support given for the very high rating. Please expand your reviews. ~Cooba]

Diamonds n’ Flags is, in summary, quite a boring CTF level. The author shows some basic knowledge of properly designing the landscape and placement of eyecandy and items; however, the level is more or less linear. And surprise, it uses Diamondus.

There is a cavern twisting up and down to the northwest of the map with a lot of random items placed rather closely together. This would probably make blue’s defense advantaged compared to the red team, whose base is located in the southwest in a large expanse. There the only natural formation promoting defense is a small triangular knoll (wherein lies the coin warp’s target and an rf powerup). There is a also a single tree a bit to its right, with one very long stem and a perpendicular branch leading out from either side, springs leading you upwards towards the narrow blue base or left towards a large floating arrangement of gold coins. These coins do not regenerate, mind you, so good luck getting into the warp (which lies directly under this stash of coins) after the first time.

So the red side has a lot of coins that do not regenerate, weapon 9 and bouncers. The blue side has seekers, bouncers, and rf’s. The northeast corner has a fire shield and some more gold coins. There are at least two carrots. It’s obvious that /some/ thought went into things, such as the bouncer powerup directly by the blue base (which is above what becomes a pit), but you can only get it with weapon 9.

In summary, the level looks meh, about average or slightly below. But there is potential and you’re on the right track, so keep trying to improve and experiment and I think you will see some results.

This tileset was made in Photoshop, and I’m not very good at drawing on a computer.

EDIT – Now I’m working a much better, much bigger (1030 tiles) tileset. (1030 means TSF only!)

User Friendliness 1/1: It’s a very small tileset, so there’s not much you could miss when actually using it.

Overall look 1/6: It’s just another MS Paint tileset to me. Use a proper program next time like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop (or whatever the guides suggest). The colors used in the textured background need to be placed in the right rows of the tileset palette in order for them to not get the messy white color (see JCSref and the othersites to understand this).

Usefulness 0/1 It doesn’t have all the basic tiles needed in a tileset. There are a few eyecandy tiles, but not enough to give a level variety in scenery.

Size 0/1: Make it bigger in the future.

Originality 1/1: Yeah, it’s original. That’s about it.

Overall coolness 0/1: If this tileset was properly drawn and featured the sort of scenery you would see in the Andes (jungles, mountains, plains, etc), this would be a great tileset, but I think you need to put a LOT more work into your tilesets if you attempt to make another. Make a checklist and be thorough when you make a tileset. It should have:

Ground (all angles and corners that anyone could possibly need)
Tunnel (indoor areas where you use layer 5 scenery)
Vine
Hurt (spikes, etc)
V and H poles
Buttstomp and Destruct Scenery
Animations
Signs (exit, bonus, and text)
Directional Arrows
Hook
Collapsing Scenery
Teleport
Disappearing Ground (invisible tiles with a mask that allow people to make secret paths or drop enemies/items from above)
Extra Scenery (foreground abd background extras; any kind of eyecandy you can think of — add as much as possible).

Now go and make a better tileset :)

The things next to the door are sucker tubes, and I drew this Tileset in Photoshop.

Im sorry to say this but you get 2.7.
I do like the blocks,they look smart,also the inside wall is nice and blue,gives a very good castle fortress look good job on that,now comes the nasty part of the review,The flags just look well,unreal,and look very messy,the colors are just plain red,theres no texture,it looks like you drew it in ms paint,i think im right that its done by ms paint,the gold does not look good either,agin weres the texture,try putting in small bits of gold coins.makes it look more like gold,same with the door,I can’t tell really what the thing is next to the door is,and near the top left,what are they,im judgeing there supposed to be spikes,well make them sharper,even tho ripper only a few tiles isnt really a bad thing what lets down points,its always better to make custom blocks,or at least mod them up a bit.

This is very good for a new person of the community,you should be impressed
Good job,don’t give up tho,learn from your mistaks,don’t hate me as well for giveing you a bad review =)

keep it up
-ryderwct (the jamster)

Rating? OK, no problem…

[Unsupported (1.0) rating removal. Please give reasons for your rating. – FQuist]

I will fix these errors today and reupload it.

EDIT-The level has been re-uploaded now. Enjoy!

This level feels a bit like a try-out. There’s a lot of stuff in there, not all of it working correctly.

Gameplay:

Quite solid. You kill enemies, collect goodies, find some crates, and kill a boss at the end. Nothing outraging, nothing awful. The boss had a more interesting arena now, unfortunately it the stupid guy got stuck in the spikes quite often, making him easy to kill. There were some platforms in the air with some crates and a flying lizard, unfortunately I played as Lori and couldn’t reach them.

Rating: 6.0

Difficulty:

Very easy. Nothing really challenged my hyper-mega-jazz2-skills (or something). The lives in the bonus warp were tweaked, still too many. For some unknown reason I lacked four coins this time though. Hardly any ammo, but none was needed anyway. There was enough food to get a sugar rush. In some places even a little too much, I felt. Oh yes there were some crate puzzles, but those weren’t hard either. Some more difficulty would surely boost the fun.

Rating: 5.5

Creativity:

Nothing all too creative, but some good appendages. In the updated version, the arena was made more appealing, but then again, it’s buggy. The landscape has been fixed a little too.

Rating: 6.5

Eyecandy:

Still not very beautiful. The surroundings have improved, yes, but then again there’s not much eyecandy and still some tilebugs. And I hate the Easter tileset. =P Well, enough for 1 bonus point.

Rating: 5.5 (+1.0)

Story/Design:

Quoted from the readme: “Devan and his army want to destroy easter land!”
Aaaah, so, well, any reason for them doing so? No? Nevermind, who cares. This is one of those utterly creative stories only coming around once a year or so. Easter land doesn’t look like easter land too, more like land of random objects land. But I’m getting too sarcastic here. To the point, not much effort has gone into designing anything plausible or adding a plot.

Rating: 5.0

Overall:

I find the improvement done in the update quite minimal, most of the really prominent problems are still there. The new boss arena doesn’t work, the game’s still too easy, however, the level looks a bit better in most areas now.

Final Rating: 6.2 (+0.2)
Download Recommendation: Maybe

Have fun.

~LF

This was good for your first level.

EASTER FEASTA REVIEW:

EYECANDY: The Eyecandy was OK but there wasn’t much in the background or foreground. 6/10

GAMEPLAY: It was quite short. Finished it in about 5 minutes. It was quite confusing trying to find where I needed to go. 6/10

PICKUPS: There was lots of 1UPs in the Bonus Warp. The number of 1UPs have been reduced now, so I will increase the pickups score by 1. There’s not too many Gems which is good. There was some food. The pickups were placed quite well. 8/10

OBSTACLES/ENEMIES: Not too many or too less enemies. They were placed well. There was a Trigger Zone (TZ) used where the Trigger Crate was. I saw a message saying to use the crate if you don’t have TSF. You can do TZs in 1.23 as well. Just download the JCS.ini update from here: http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/downloads/info.php?levelID=105
7/10

TOTAL: 27/40 (6.75)

BONUSSES:

Since this is your first level and you spent 2 weeks on it. I’ll award an extra 0.2 for effort.

FINAL SCORE: 6.95
Rounded to 7.0
DR: Yes

This review probably isn’t good enough but I don’t feel like writing a huge review at the moment.