Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I just wanted to mention I finished this level as Spaz without much trouble and I didn’t even have to wall jump. The only impossible obstacle on my way was the stupid box you put Spaz start in – after removing it the level is perfectly possible though. I’m able to repeat and record it if there’s a need to, but I hope my word about whether a jj2 level is beatable or not became trustworthy enough by now.

Sorry for saying it so late, I actually did it a day after you uploaded this level but then I suddenly forgot about it.

Played this today and its quite nice.

Eyecandy:

I like it a lot, there’s been quite an effort put in eyecandy. The level looks rather beautiful. There were few tilebugs found but hardly noticeable and it doesent really look ugly either. Background really looks amazing. I think there was a lot of effort used for it. The enemies in walls looks rather good too, i liked it, but more on that below. Nothing much to say here actually, the level looks fantastic.

9/10

Gameplay:

Quite good. The trigger part at the start is quite nice. It did get me lost for some time but it was my fault for not looking at the arrows. However monsters were really easy to beat. Dragonflies and Fish were more or less the only ones that could hurt me. There were some spikes in the water that i thought could hurt me but when i fell on them it didnt. Nothing much to say here either.

8/10

Enemy placement:

Well as i said enemies were rather easy to beat for me. Perhaps the reason for it is because i was able to shoot most of the enemies standing 1 tile above instead of coming down, and the other part was cuz i have just recently played blacky’s map which was quite hard. Enemies here are placed okay just some were easy to pass due to 1 tile height advantage. Boss in the water was a very good idea, and few turtles placed along with him was really good too. But adding seekers AND a full carrot made it rather too easy for me, i didnt even need the carrot since i lost only 1h. Still i very much like the idea .

7.5/10

Pickups:

Very good. I didnt quite understand what do i need RF for, used it once to RF climb into a secret area with blue gems but later i found out that it was connected to the lower passage. You even added a RF pu. I like the idea of putting toaster boxes in a “cold” lvl. Seekers came rather handy against dragon flies and Fishes. i managed to get 1 sugar rush which was okay i guess, i didnt really need it thou. I found most of the secret areas and they are very well placed it really made shoot some walls and explore the whole lvl. there were some monsters in the walls which i thought were also secret areas and i spent so much time looking for secret passages, then i gave up and thought “il just check in jcs” when i saw it was just eyecandy the first thing that crossed my mind was “FUUUUU”. Anyways pickups are very well placed, secret areas were very well hidden, i think i found most of them.

8/10

Music:

It’s quite nice. I think i might use it for some lvls i create. It didnt have any boring parts and it can really set up the mood for the level.

8.5/10

Overall Rating: 8.2

Download recommendation?

Yes. The level doesn’t really have any kind of a story, but it is really fun to play. I would definitely recommend it.

@Blackraptor:

Hold that thought. “World of Jazz” will be coming out later this year.

Well what we have here is a pretty nice looking and polished level that’s in singleplayer mode, something I don’t see much nowadays. Cold Flash (i keep spelling it as cold lake :/) uses an edit of the diamondus set I’ve never seen before, a relaxing tune, and a custom boss music. It’s fairly sized, though pretty straightforward, and is good for a quick fix of singleplayer JJ2.

One of the reasons being, is the consistency of the level design throughout. The detailing on the eyecandy is good but not spectacular, although I really liked the look of both the background and the boss arena, however its done well throughout and without bugs or any ugliness. The only complaint I really have is that the rain in the foreground looks too mechanical or patterned. It results in looking kind of unnatural, but this didn’t bother me much.

The gameplay of the level is pretty solid as well. There’s nothing I found new in it or jaw dropping, but if you’re in the mood to play some good ol’ sidescrolling action this satisfies the craving. The whole level mostly consisted of traversing areas in a usually linear fashion or finding some crates. There we’re plenty of checkpoints placed throughout and although some of the enemy placement could be tough the number of them you face at a time is mostly restrained. This is quite a contrast from the SP I usually play, which includes my own levels :P I mostly breezed through this level, with a few occassions during when I fell to 1 health and had to be more careful. The boss was a nice touch, especially as this was a small(er) standalone level and so really needed one. The custom boss music was also a perfect fit and I really think more people should use this as an example and take advantage of this option to use custom music for boss fights. I also liked finding the secrets placed in this level. The horizontal green spring in the one at 143,28 shoots me into a wall though.

Item placement was also good. I felt it may have been scarce sometimes, but the ammo I thought was done well and fit the situations presented in the level.

Overall, as I’ve said already I think this is a polished and well done level. In my eyes I couldn’t find any single major weakness or significant problems that would impede my enjoyment playing it. It’s only ‘flaws’ is that it isn’t really outstanding in any way, that it could use more improvisation and bring something new to the table. Also, for a standalone it is quite short. I would’ve loved to see it in a pack of levels. My rating averages out to a 7.7. I think you should try making a single player campaign, and I hope your experience in level design encourages you to experiment more.

-br

Well, this is an interesting and different approach to a CTF map. DEATH STAR by PT32…

First, this isn’t your typical ctf layout. The entire level is based on a pretty cool theme and as a result the layout is more gimmicky and unorthodox.

The eyecandy is definitely the simplest to comment on. It’s not too outstanding, but it’s pretty solid and it works well aided with the theme of the level. However, you did use tiles that look solid in the background, and combined with the somewhat confusing and unintuitive layout I found myself running into walls occasionally throughout my playtest because I thought they were passages. Not too big of an issue, but it took a while to get used to and certainly didn’t help the layout look any less confusing. The elevator was a gimmicky but cool addition and a way to split the level into two nearly symmetrical halves.

…speaking of the layout, there is an interesting feature of an outside path that encircles the entire map. It’s basically a long, narrow winding passage that I would call something between a corridor and an almost vertical shaft. I actually really liked how this played out, because it was sort of the ‘hub’ of the level if you understand my meaning – its the most used passage because it connects to everything else in the map. The vertical gameplay was also a plus here, but it could’ve been capitalized on more (part of which I will get into further). I felt that it was too narrow, and some parts could have been less steep and used more slopes. I found myself getting “caught” in the walls of the passage while running at full speed a number of times and it really threw off the flow. This encircling passage and the elevator were my favorite layout designs, despite of the narrowness of the corridors. From here on however things start to fall apart…

The bases were placed in air vents in passages at the vertical center of the map, accessible through corridors from either opposite side (left/right). [REDACTED]

To explain what I mean, the carrots (both +1) are symmetrically placed at the end of two very long corridors on each side. The corridors end with a small room containing a +1 carrot. This is basically the worst death trap possible, because there is almost no chance that you will be able to heal without getting trapped there and having to fight your way out. To make it worse, this is one of the only areas the RF powerup can be unleashed to its full potential, and grabbing a +1 carrot only to be blasted to pieces by RFs from the guy(s) following you is NOT a good trade off. I played a duel in this map and I thought the big and elaborate layout would at least give me time to lose my pursuers and sneak away with the health, but even in this scenario I often found myself being trapped and killed often, and vice versa. The only chance someone had of escaping that carrot death trap was when one time by some miracle I ran out of RFs right before I was about to kill that guy who was hiding and praying for his life in the corner of the room. There seriously needs to be another way out of that room, probably into the elevator shaft or something. Otherwise, you can expect to be destroyed trying to regain that health and your opponent knows it. Basically it came down to people making a last stand and fighting to death instead of disengaging the battle and fleeing for health, cause it was such a death trap area.

The last thing I want to address about the layout is the large number of pointless dead end rooms. They slow the game down and make it more campy, most of them have no real purpose besides to trap you, and it makes the layout pretty confusing. It looks like a remnant of an SP map which doesnt belong in a multiplayer game – I think some of them should either have more worthwhile reasons to visit or just be removed completely.

The gameplay of the map was actually fun. Besides the annoying carrot death traps and the base areas (the dead ends weren’t too much of a problem since after a while people just instinctively avoided them) the level was fun and has the potential to play really well. It was enjoyable sniping people through the thin walls with EBs (and in the elevator :P), using the RFs as a super shotgun kind of weapon, and sidekicking people in the outer passage. Besides the RF I actually found the next best weapon to be the sidekick/buttstomp in this map. This gives a bit of an advantage to spaz here, but I really liked the tactics it brings. Often throughout my game here I would struggle for high ground, or find ways to cut my opponent off through other passages, or trap them in some room etc. It’s just too bad, because if it wasn’t for some of the inconveniences in the layout I would’ve had a blast with this.

The ammo placement is also the weaker focus of this map. I thought the free floating ammo was way too space here – it was barely enough just for a duel, and this is a pretty big level so I can’t imagine people would find it satisfactory for a team game. I think it could’ve used more bouncer and electroblasters. The powerup choice also did not fit the map. I liked the RF powerup, because it was only useful to it’s full potential in a few zones, and mainly serves as a close combat shotgun equivalent. Despite it’s limited power, its still the only weapon here that can deal 2h damage, which is a problem. The freezer powerup was completely useless, and it broke the balance of the game because the RF powerup it’s supposed to balance out with is the weapon of choice here. It should be replaced with a gun #2 powerup, which I felt was severely lacking in this map. In any case, having only one powerup capable of dealing max. damage severely breaks the balance of the game. Please replace the ice powerup :P

Next, the hardest part to do in my review was to actually find some people I can play this with online (nobody ever plays in my timezone lol). I did manage to have a duel here, although I think this level SHOULD be better suited for 2vs2/team games (once it gets more ammo and the camp scenarios are fixed). The issues I thought would affect the way the game played out did in fact do so (no surprise) – the carrot areas were death traps, the dead ends did make the layout confusing, and although I had no problem finding the bases (other people apparently did) I found it to be more of a problem to actually get INTO them. The gameplay was fun, as long as your opponents dont take advantage of cheap tactics like camping the base/carrot.

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

Some of the passages could benefit from being less narrow, specifically the outer circular shaft. Every part of the layout should serve at least some purpose. I’m not suggesting that every dead end needs to be removed, but at least more incentive should be given to visit those places or else they become pointless and bog down the map.

As it is now, I liked the concept behind this. I liked the unorthodox layout and the interesting gameplay. I liked not having to rely on seekers, but melee combat and sniping with electroblasters and using the RF as a shotgun. For the most part I liked the eyecandy as well. Generally when levels are revamped into other game modes from what they were originally purposed to be they don’t turn out quite as good or balanced as they should be. This one actually came close to breaking that rule, but some existing faults and remnants of zones that don’t look designed with MP in mind prevent it from realizing its potential.

[REDACTED]

EDIT: So I got a chance to play the updated version of this after I bullied some unsuspecting victim into hosting it. I’ll quickly go over what I noticed that’s been changed and then give a brief overview on what I think. So firstly, a lightning shield has been added into a fairly out of the way warp (that I didn’t even notice the first time I played…) which was kind of surprising the first time to see a bunch of people with shields running around. I was never a fan of 40 second shields that are easily obtainable in MP, especially when placed in an unneccessarily out of the way campable warp room, and my POV doesn’t change now. I think this kind of breaks the game here (evidently there was a pepper powerup pre-existing in that spot..). On a brighter note, the partially opening doors to the bases have been removed. An additional passage has been added to the base, with some slightly bad flow, and wind events have been added in the base shafts to force encourage you to take it. The freezer powerup has been replaced with the bouncer. For some reason some gun9 ammo has been exchanged with TNT, and shafted to the R&D room confining it to the top portion of the map. The former deathtrap of a carrot room has been much improved by the addition of the passage cutting through the base area and the access to the elevator. Also, 2 more +1 carrots have been added to the bottom warp area, as far as I can tell I don’t believe they were there before. Basically, while some of these updates were good (since they were responses to the biggest criticisms this map faced) they are intertwined with new stuff I don’t like, such as the lightning shield, somewhat annoying wind tunnels (tho conceding theyre not as bad as the doors), and doubling of health. The balance of this is questionable, and the flow still remains clunky and complicated. Also maybe noticing this because I played with a pretty large group of people this time, those text strings everywhere get pretty annoying. I don’t want to be told where I am all the time, the nth time around. Can’t really make my mind up on the adjusted rating of this, I don’t like a bunch of stuff but effort has been taken to fix a lot of the original criticisms I had about this. So until I change my mind I will keep it the same.

*I had to remove some chunks of my review because J2O has this annoying character limit of 10k :(. Its not my fault if I have a lot of things to say damn it.

-REDACTEDBlacky

@KRSplat:

Thanks for the review, but could you please be a little more specific?

P.S.-The flags are in the Airlocks, in response to your question. =)

For someone who doesn’t make CTF’s that often good job. The music is great and this level has great eye candy overall. The only thing I wish you would have used was the “Imperial March” or other Star Wars music for the level music.

Nice lvl. Playing with the frog was quite annoying but… It was fun :)

The wind events, while challenging, make the level more frustrating/unfair rather than fun (same reason why I stopped playing your Blizzard Peaks level). Also, it’s very easy to get stuck in this level but I would blame the tileset rather than faulting your level design. Eyecandy and open ended design are cool, but I’m not going to review this unless I can be bothered to do it properly at a later date.

Finally, please make sure to test your levels in 1.23 before listing them as compatible. Moonbeam Moore is also not compatible with 1.23.

Huh. Well, maybe.

I guess I’ll change the label, just to be on the safe side.

You may want to obtain a copy of 1.23 and test the levels in that before releasing levels under a 1.23 label. Most of your releases cause Jazz to ‘run out of animations’, and as such we can’t all play them. It might also be why you constantly get very few reviews.

That’s easy to fix, Ischa. Change filename xD

The second Pezrock level doesn’t start…

Keep in mind that this is a (relatively) older level, and that it’s been God only knows how long since I’ve made a decently memorable battle level.

Some good eyecandy ideas all around (I dig the waterfalls), shame that the level looks rather amateurish as a whole (very repetitive tile work on the bottom and in the indoor backgrounds). Why put a black tile on layer 7 and then a textured background on 8? Beats me. The ambient lighting is a tad bit too dark. The music wasn’t too bad but the sample quality was grating (and also loud).

The layout doesn’t look like a lot of effort went into it. I can imagine dueling here would be boring. I was hoping the Devan shrine (which I mistook for a well) would have some use, even as just another way down. With no powerups, little ammo, and no room for using special moves effectively, it’s going to be a slow game. I recommend studying Moonlit Harbor and Triton Armory to see how to make a duel level. Can’t quite pinpoint a rating.

Since duels are one of my favourite things when it comes to JJ2, I decided to rate this ’1-vs1 battle level’ by PT32.

Okay, the first notable thing of this level is the size. The playable area is about 70 × 20, which is pretty okay for a level designed for duels. The problem is that this level consists of only 2 large platform, which results in no gameplay at all – or at least very, very little (in the whole level, but especially in the upper half). A good thing about the design is how the area near the carrot is pretty cramped (which adds to the gameplay).

I however think the Seeker-ammo kinda ruins the carrot-area (it makes the area too easy to defend or to camp there) and the other ammo seems pretty randomly placed. Perhaps you could’ve put the Seeker-ammo where the Toaster-ammo is now, since it would be more risky to get it – and the Toaster-ammo near the +1 carrot. At least the ammount is okay (lots of Toaster and just 4 Seeker-ammo). Also – I think the carrot-area would’ve been better without the ‘rail’ above it, since this makes the area even more campable. Another thing to note is the fact that this level has no springs at all – which is a nice idea. It however does make the level very Spaz-biased, which obviously is a bad thing. Finally, there are no PU’s in this small level – which is a good thing.

About the eyecandy.. it’s pretty decent and definitely the best part of this level. I like how PT32 used the unmasked ground tiles (meant as background-EC) at layer 3 to give the level a darker cave-look. I also like the ‘crystal’ in combination with the Flick Light-events. I however don’t like the lava-falls behind the crystal (kinda ruins the effect. I would’ve liked an orange lava-fall in the level to ‘break’ all the white- and blueness. Finally, the background-eyecandy divides the level in areas, which is a positive thing.

So, to summarize the things above: some of the ideas are okay, the eyecandy is okay – but the level overall is just way too simplistic. I think especially event placement needs to be improved dramatically. Since there are lots of other better battle levels suitable for duels out there, I unfortunately don’t recommend this.

Rating: Size (70) + Eyecandy (60*3) + Gameplay (32,5*3) + Event placement (20*2) + Theme (75) = 462,5.

I can say that this map is very good, aldo a bit small. But I can see that (no matter the size) the map has been done very nicely with 7 layers used. The music also fits in perfectly. Also the weapons and the carrot placement was nice. Nice job.

Trigger zones work in 1.23. They just aren’t listed in the JCS.ini that comes with most versions of it. Just add this line to your 1.23 JCS.ini: 246=Trigger Zone |+|Trigger |Trigger|Zone|TriggerID:5|on/off:1|switch:1
Or, heck, just use the converter; if it messes up the triggers, that is a bug in the converter and not an actual difference between the level formats’ or JJ2 versions’ capabilities.

Also, they only apply to the connection that triggers them, so unless the 2vs2 is in the form of four players splitscreening, touching one yourself does nothing for your teammate or your opponents. Test your levels!

(also you spelled claustrophobic wrong)

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.

maybe there are still missing ones, but i think it’s an improved list of sounds. thanks for it.