Review by PT32

Posted:
1 Nov 2011, 22:19
For: Strange New World
Level rating: 7.6
Rating
N/A

huh. That’s interesting, since it definitely works in 1.24 and I THOUGHT I had it working in 1.23…

Review by PT32

Posted:
9 Jun 2011, 19:31
For: Moonbeam Moore
Level rating: 8.3
Rating
N/A

that’s interesting, since I don’t have that problem on my editor. Then again, I predominately use TSF.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
3 Jun 2011, 21:59
For: Beach Fall
Level rating: 7.6
Rating
7.5

I am SO sorry it took me so long to post this review, but I’ve had a lot going on lately.
So without further ado, here it is.

I liked this level. It was smart, good-looking, well put together, and it was a lot of fun. There were some interesting eyecandy techniques, (The floating islands and structures in the background, the fancy tube section in the middle) some good events (Although it would be pretty easy to just camp on the Seeker powerup), and a pretty decent layout. The death pit is a nice touch, and everything seems to click.

The music track was fantastic, but since I wrote it, I suppose it really wouldn’t be fair to include it in my review…

In short (And NOT because this has my song), I think this is a good solid pack, and I give it my seal of approval. Download today.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
17 Apr 2011, 20:20
For: Psychedelic Experience
Level rating: 8.7
Rating
7

This is a very profound level. Profound not in the sense that it radically changes gameplay, or introduces a new concept to J2O. Profound in the just plain profound sense.

For one thing, the level is HUGE! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a multileveled stage, where you just keep going up and up and up…

Very tall, in other words.

Eyecandy was bizarre, but fit the level, in a strange way. I guess that’s just a side effect of building a level with the Psych tileset.

The background visuals were nothing short of groovy, jiving perfectly with the Psych set and concept (a funky land). I always wanted to do a layer 8 bg that could change colors, but never felt the particular itch to do it. Blacky did, providing a veritable movie of colors in the distance.

I also loved the “easy mode” deathpit. I don’t know how Blackraptor executed it (and since he passworded it, I never will), but it was a genius idea.

I was, however, very disappointed by the difficulty in mobility this level had. Sure, it may have been big, but it was VERY hard to move around in, having only one or two routes upwards and these being pretty hard to use properly. The righthand tunnel from the beginning is the end of a vertical shaft, making it a dead end. I was quite surprised that such a well-planned out level had that kind of an issue.

Nonetheless, the rest of the level was good, and I will join the clamour of the other reviewers and recommend a download. It’s a psychodelic experience, all right. Come find out for yourself.

Review by PT32

Posted:
17 Apr 2011, 20:12
For: Emerald Beach
Level rating: 7.2
Rating
N/A

@Sean,

There is a powerup. You just have to look for it.

As for size, it’s supposed to be a 1-on-1 duel level, not a melee brawl. I already explained this, so what the heck

The eyecandy may be a little ‘overpowering’, but it’s not oppressive. I thought I did an adequately good job, to be perfectly honest.

I expected my level to get this type of review, I really did. But please be accurate in your review.

Review by PT32

Posted:
4 Apr 2011, 23:32
For: DarkZone
Level rating: 7.3
Rating
N/A

this is just a comment, so please don’t downvote it.

Hordy, we weren’t being rude with our comments (At least, I wasn’t). In fact, I thought I gave you a pretty decent review. The level is what it is, so please be careful when you go venting on J2O. Take it from me, it doesn’t work.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
1 Apr 2011, 00:12 (edited 6 Jun 12, 12:45)
For: Pit of Necrosis
Level rating: 8.5
Rating
8.6

Inferno is not necessarily the first tileset I think of when I imagine a golden opportunity to make brilliant levels. Despite the fact that it was my second favorite planet in Jazz 2 (TSF’s Turtleville is still the best), let’s face it: The tileset is buggy, the eyecandy is just plain hard to use, and the tileset is incredibly monotonous.

Allow me to put your mind at ease when I say that while it may be a hair on the monotonous side, Purple Jazz’s Pit of Necrosis is certainly none of those other things.

For one thing, the level looks just plain awesome. PJ took a tileset that was originally supposed to be a frozen wasteland and turned it into a lonely, windy boneyard completely appropriate for a battle level. No piece of eyecandy is used the same way twice, as he made good use of the various images of skeletons and bones and musty old skulls in several different layers, putting one in the foreground here, while placing it in the background there. There were even a few random bones lying on the ground, which I thought was a cute (depending on how you look at it) little touch. I especially liked the “bone pile” in the lower left corner of the map, built up to look like a bunch of giant animals just fell on top of each other and died.

But he didn’t stop there, utilizing a trick that I myself am a big fan of (if it’s used right), which is creating side paths as eyecandy in the level. In random areas of Necrosis, PJ put a few little alternate roads under certain areas and behind certain walls, preventing you from accessing them, but ever increasing the visual size of the level.

Necrosis was a nice and wide open level, but not in the sense that it was empty and boring. Oh, no no no. There were a number of paths stuck on top of paths on top of paths, leaving a truckload of escape routes by which to avoid your attackers, which means it’s easy to get lost here. And in my book, if a level can do that successfully, it’s a good thing.

I wasn’t too crazy about some of the little scattered text strings PJ used, but let’s not drag personal views into a perfectly good review.

There was also very fine bug management control, and for a tileset like this, that’s terrific.

Remember all the anvil-shaped platforms? Well, Purple Jazz found a unique (although not original) way to deal with it, making the very edges one-way. In fact, I had a hard time finding anything wrong buggage-wise here.

Layer 8 and the surrounding background layers were a bit bland, in my opinion, but not intolerably so. I didn’t mind too much after a while.

I didn’t download the music track for this level (since the last time I tried something like that, I got a vicious spyware virus that knocked out my internet for nine months), but if PJ took as much care with that as with this level, I’m sure it works just fine.

I was disappointed, though, that some of the platforms were just out of the reach of normal jumping (and no springs were around), which meant that you either had to get a running start (if you even had enough room to do that), or else just uppercut/double jump, which can cost precious time in a battle.

In addition, I tried and I tried, but I could just not get into the Seeker warp at the top of the level. Unless there’s some newfangled gameplay trick out there that I don’t know about (And that’s entirely possible), it’s not accessible at all, except by using singleplayer cheats.

My biggest major problem with this level is, as I originally pointed out, it IS a bit on the monotonous side. I mean, you can only go so far with a black+gray+white color scheme (There was a little orange in the background, however). I would’ve maybe put a light dusting of dark red into the level (or the set, if you modified it yourself), and that would’ve made it so much better. But this is a small nuance, and it doesn’t irk me as badly as others might have.

In short, I think that Pit of Necrosis is a pretty darn good level, if I do say so myself. Perfect for a brawl between a large number of players, or a really long two-player contest. Download today, compliments of the reviewer.

Review by PT32

Posted:
26 Mar 2011, 16:21
For: Episode 3: Rabbit's Revenge
Level rating: N/A
Rating
N/A

@ThunderWalker: Could you be more specific? It seemed to work just fine on my computer.

Aww heck, I’ll just upload it again.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
22 Mar 2011, 20:23
For: DarkZone
Level rating: 7.3
Rating
7

This was an interesting level, in that it had good eyecandy, workable mechanics and decent eventage. It seemed a tad bit big (In my opinion), but oh well.

There were a few parts that seemed a little symmetrical (Which I don’t really like), but overall, quite notbaddish.

I would’ve liked to see a more futuristic “spacey” song, like maybe COSMIC2.xm or Intruder.xm, or heck, even INTRSPEC.s3m, but I suppose the one you used is adequate enough.

In short, I guess I would give this a DL rec, since it is playable, looks fun, and has excellent eyecandy. Take a shot at it. Or at your opponent, whichever you prefer…

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
14 Jun 2010, 22:12 (edited 10 Mar 12, 19:45)
For: RaneforusV
Level rating: 9.3
Rating
9.6

Stunning. That’s the one word I can think of when I see this conversion. Simply stunning.
Violet CLM has done it again, taking a (seemingly) boring and bland tileset like Raneforus and turning it into a bona fide work of art. From the standard JJ1 version with a new and fresh twist (which I’ll get to), to the “past” version (with a color scheme that could only be described as “sexy”), to the future, TechNoir-laced set, just about anything you could ask for is present and accounted for in this set.
So, let’s to Raneforus V.

V1

THINGS I LIKED:
I liked the fact that so much creativity could be found in such a drab set as Raneforus. It has all the tiles (that I know of) from JJ1 present, as well as tiles from other JJ1 and 2 sets. Take the bluish BG trees from the Jungle tileset. Take the expertly recolored blue rock BG from Scraparap (it’s actually green in this set). Take the leafy branches from Jungrock. Even the rain looks perfect. Violet doesn’t bother with any “Cool” tiles……At least, none that don’t look like they absolutely belong. See, that was the thing about the set: everything just belonged. And that’s hard to do in a set.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
These were very few. Perhaps one would be the textured background. I didn’t think it fit very well in the colors. Too light, perhaps. I always kind of thought of Rane as a rainy forest planet. But that’s pretty minor. Overall, V1 was a great success to me.

V2

THINGS I LIKED:
Ahh yeah, this was my favorite of the pack. It looks sort of like a sunset tileset palette, with the subtle orange and brown hints in the set. There was a very shrewd input of the Jungrock….rock tiles, in addition to some very neat rock graphics already present in the set from Stonar. Very pleasing to the eye. I could go on and on about the amazing color choices here. Did I mention that I loved the colors? I do. But enough of that. Very nice set.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
Hmmm… There honestly was nothing I could find after my initial run-through. I guess this is the first “perfect” tileset I’ve ever seen.

V3

THINGS I LIKED:
This was also a cool set, with enough TechNoir present to counterbalance the Raneforus there. Variety does indeed help, which lends the set a rather convincing impression of a rainforest being gradually overrun by the machines of industry. Neat concept. The colors once again meshed quite prettily. And the birdie tombstones? Man, I just about lost it when I saw ‘em! Priceless.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
However…..This was the set I liked least of all. For one thing, there seemed to be more space devoted to TechNoir background details than that of the set itself. There was a tree or two, but not much. Also, while I DID like it and it WAS cool, the color didn’t seem much different than that of the first V. I would have liked maybe a darker colored set. But there is none, leading me to believe that the sun always shines there (And it sets partway every night :D). I was disappointed by that.

So all in all, I really thought the sets were quite good. But that’s only the half of my review…

THE EXAMPLE LEVELS:

THINGS I LIKED:
The levels themselves (as Violet’s custom of sorts seems to keep perpetuating) were so good that I felt I just had to review ‘em. They have master level event placement. The level design is just as good, as is the buggage. The first one was exactly the length of a singleplayer level, which seemed quite a bit long, but showed off a LOT of the set. Which is always good.
Violet put as much work (it seemed) into the levels as the tilesets, which really pays off. I loved ‘em.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
But, as is almost always the case, there were a few minor issues I had. For one thing, the second example level had a small sprite of the Dreempipes Owl flying in the foreground. Which is nice, except that it can fly backwards as well as forwards and never seems to leave the screen, which gets kind of annoying after awhile. I’m not a big fan of foreground “creatures” like that, since they are so HARD to get right.
The music for Level 2 didn’t really catch me, either, whereas the songs for the other two were generic Jazz songs. Which is not bad, except that I would’ve expected something original from someone of Violet CLM’s stature. The use of the TechNoir song in Level 3 only added to my (weird) conception that the TechNoir elements in said level and set seemed to be conspiring to choke out the Raneforus elements. Fortunately, excellent eyecandy in that level helped ease my discomfort.
The first level seemed long, the second one was medium, and the third one was short. I mean, I did a catch-22 when I got to the end of 3, it was that short. Kind of surprised me. I think 2 was the best length.
I said this already but I will do so again: I was fairly disappointed that there was no dark tileset. I mean, there’s three different sets, and they’re all light colored. What’s with that? Why not make one, say number 3, a midnight or dusk color? It would’ve been the final knockout punch for the set, but instead is quite absent.
Masking was interesting too, but as Violet said, there is a reason for this, so I won’t take too much away for that.

SUMMARY

So, what should be said at the end of the day? Good job, nice digs and try again someday? Why goodness, no! This set deserves so much more than that. It’s not a perfect set, and it has its flaws, but that’s the beauty of it. Just like every remarkable diamond has a scratch or two, so every worthwhile upload on J2O has a tarnished spot. Don’t let it scare you away. Download today.

EDIT: (3/10/2012)

Now that Violet’s released a fourth version of the tileset (LOL, look how far behind the curve I am…), I thought it would be prudent to review the new(est) one as well, since it affects my final grade of this set.

V4

THINGS I LIKED:
I could keep this up all day, and I’m not kidding. Here at last, ladies and gents, is the Raneforus Night tileset we’ve all been waiting for, and for a tileset (and example level, for that matter) that was merely “thrown together”, it’s pretty good.

No, that’s a massive understatement. It’s absolutely stinking awesome.

Raneforus V #4 is painted in olive green and indigo blue/purple shades, almost as if the player were walking through a withered and dead forest. The “rocks” are colored perfectly. The torches were a stroke of genius. Every single leaf, branch and pebble jelled together like a Swiss watch, and I’d be hard pressed to put a finger on anything I didn’t like.

The example level was so good, it’s almost a crime. One of these days, I wish Violet would take all of his considerable levelbuilding talent and make a great singleplayer epic. That would be so much fun to play.

But I digress.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
Once again, nothing significant to point out. That makes two 10/10 tilesets in one upload, which I’m sure will never ever happen again…Until Violet CLM releases his next tileset conversion, that is.

The music track was not present, so I wasn’t too impressed by that. However, since this upload is a tileset conversion and not a singleplayer pack, I won’t count that against the upload (Although if this were a singleplayer pack, I would most certainly subtract points).

SUMMARY

In the end, Raneforus V #4 blows the previous three sets out of the water, including the Past version that I loved so much. My revised rating is 9.6, and I now recommend Raneforus V’s immediate and unconditional download.

Review by PT32

Posted:
11 Jun 2010, 21:12
For: High-K Dielectric
Level rating: 7.3
Rating
6.9

What the-
10.0?!
I don’t think so.
This level is good, but not that much. It has some nice eyecandy, tolerable gameplay and good colors.
However, it’s a really tiny level. Not oppressively so, but still pretty small. Music was alright.
Some of the eyecandy was nice, but there was too much going on in the level. I suppose this is a natural property of Tubelectric, but still. Actually, the Layer 4+surrounding layers eyecandy was pretty interesting. Just too much information going on in a small area.
I think Tubelectric in particular has been done almost (if not completely) to death, which deals somewhat unfairly with this level. The level itself is okay, although I can only see 1-on-1 CTF fights in its future. Nice, but certainly not worth a 10!

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
11 Jun 2010, 20:52 (edited 11 Jun 10, 20:55)
For: Mission Spaz: Foreseeable Future
Level rating: 8.8
Rating
8.7

To be perfectly honest, when I saw this in the level list for the first time, I would have never predicted this pack to be the next Upload of the Month.
After a week of curious pondering, I finally downloaded it and was hooked from Level 1.
First off, it has AMAZING graphics. The first [and it certainly won’t be the last] in the category of true “custom” JJ1 levels, it uses the tilesets of Carrotus, Castle and BlurredD’s Desolation. Get that. JJ1 uses JJ2 tilesets. Kind of a switch, huh?
But that’s not all.
Newspaz takes this yet another step further, adding his own baddies and events, even two custom BONUS levels, now made possible by his equally innovative new J1E modification. I was pretty miffed by the cannon baddie in Castle, but even that was a marvelous leap in Jazz history. Custom music is used too, but that’s sadly limited to JJ1 songs specifically. Too bad.
There were just a few small things to be desired, however. For one thing, the levels all seemed quite a bit harder than to be expected. If Evilmike’s Jazz2 levels were the standard for difficultyin that game, then Newspaz’s JJ1 levels are the second game’s counterpart. One or two sections in Carrotus seemed looped, particularly the part with the many waterfalls. I was equally disappointed by the utter lack of a custom end boss, even an end boss period. That would’ve been icing on the cake, although it hardly affects the grandeur of this pack.
Buggage was also surprisingly clean, although maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, since Jazz1 had far less glitches than its successor.
All in all, once I had finished playing through the whole pack, my doubts to the validity of Mission Spaz’s claim to DL of the Month were immediately wiped away. Nothing could be closer to the truth: That Newspaz’s rockin’ new release is quite possibly definitely the most revolutionary set of kilobytes posted yet on J2O. Download today, with my hearty recommendations.

Review by PT32

Posted:
23 May 2010, 00:43 (edited 23 May 10, 17:58)
For: Perditus
Level rating: 7.3
Rating
6.9

uh….no.
This does NOT deserve a 9 at all.

It’s not a bad level [it does have decent eyecandy and an okay song. It’s playable to an extent], but there’s a few things that perhaps could be fixed. First off, it’s pretty big. I don’t understand why whoever it was [I think it was Foly] that said this level is small said that. Ammo was few and far between.
I will give you a 6.9, since I’m a nice caring guy that hates taking out the trash on people. And because there WERE some decent elements to your level. N/A dl rec, since I can’t decide what to decide.

[Please don’t rate levels if you can’t play them properly (this level requires JJ2+). Original rating 5.0. ~cooba]

Yes, I understand, Cooba. But I couldn’t see the “jj2+” symbol when I wrote this review. My apologies. I will fix that part of the review.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
13 May 2010, 23:47 (edited 22 May 10, 16:52)
For: J1E - Jazz Jackrabbit1 level editor - version 1.2
Level rating: 9.1
Rating
7.9

Very, very nice editor. The new J1E has updated features, handy simplicity, a simple yet unprecedented bonus level editor (I hereby predict a surge of custom JJ1 bonus levels) and much more. Event customization. Quick performance. You can create a save game in JJ1 via the editor, allowing you to speedily test your level without skipping through the rest of the episode. Handy.
There were some things I didn’t like though, mostly in the convenience category. Unlike in the older and loosely similar J1CS, this prog does not let you scroll with the arrow keys, and you actually can only scroll up and down. Also missing is the inestimably valuable “B” multiselect key. I was very disappointed by that. The events were also stripped of their names, making it a long, boring and tedious process in hunting down and labeling each item.
So verdict? Nice and practical, and with only a handful of aesthetic detractors, the J1E is a very helpful tool that will redefine how JJ1 levels are made. Download today.

xSnooze: …what the heck…
Why is my rating too low? My rating is exactly what I think it deserves. IMHO, it’s not a bad one either, although perhaps an 8.0-8.2 might work too.

Review by PT32

Posted:
13 May 2010, 23:35 (edited 11 Jun 10, 20:31)
For: Episode 1: Turtle Terror
Level rating: 7.6
Rating
N/A

PLEASE DO LETNI FIRST!!!!!
A better tech would be great too, but there really isn’t a good version of Letni yet

@Violet CLM,
I went into far more detail in my private message to you, but I do appreciate what you have to say. It’s better that way.
I also forgot to mention this in my message, but my goal in making these levels was not to make it fun to play in JJ2 (although I am certainly willing to go fairly far out on that limb to do so), but to make levels as close as possible to the real thing in JJ1. If I have to sacrifice a bit of playability to do so, so be it. Some people aren’t as lucky as you or I to have JJ1, and some people are too lazy to go find the DOSbox progs for it. They are the ones I did this for, so they can see what JJ1 was like. If I radically changed the pack to suit the 2ers, that wouldn’t accomplish my objective. As long as they get my very best effort (and I’ll grant you that this one wasn’t entirely perfect), and as long as they get a quality product, I will never consider this a waste of time. Never.

@Fox,
Yes, there IS a version of Letni out. But it’s so unusable that I’m not sure it counts. I tried building with it once and never did so again.
As I have said before, the point of this pack is close-to-perfect JJ1 replication. There was a much larger ammo capacity in JJ1 than JJ2. Oh, and the non-TSF JJ2 can’t exceed 99 ammo, either.
Let this be the last time I have to explain it to anybody. It WILL stink gameplay-wise! I was more concerned with accuracy, a mistake I do not plan to repeat next time around.
Oh, and someone already made a JJ2 version of episode 1 with JJ2 tilesets. [admin please add link to it here] However, I won’t stop you if you’re planning to do it as well.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
26 Apr 2010, 21:35
For: JJ1 Fanolint v1.2
Level rating: 7.7
Rating
7.9

This is frankly a great tileset. Great and practical. A few minor issues but overall well done.

Palette colors were spotless, which is definitely a big plus when considering previous

renditions of Fano by various users. All the tiles were there, which is also good, and tile

masks too are accurate.
I was struck profoundly by the large amount of tiles that were duplicated in the set. Many of

them were placed twice in the set, leading me to believe that either 1= There was an

option to make some tiles translucent in the level, or 2 (Which is far more likely) = The

author forgot which tiles had been already added, and put ‘em in again just to be safe. This

also occurred in the older versions of Fanolint. In any case, it was slightly irritating.
Fortunately, Minmay made up for this by using an excellent tileset layout, putting [almost] all

of each group of tiles in the same location, sorting expertly. A few of the orange bricks were

displaced, but overall it was nicely done.
Music was the fanolint song.
The tileset was fairly clear buggage-wise. Textured bg was alright.
So, what can be said about this Fanolint conversion? Very nice tileset. Not-so-nice example

level. I guess I’ll just say 7.9 and a DL rec for the tileset [I don’t recommend playing the

example level, unless you need help figuring out how to use the set].

Keep Jazzing!
PT

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
21 Mar 2010, 16:00
For: Vanilla Shores
Level rating: 8
Rating
8.3

8.3 sounds redundant, but it really is a good number for this level. Faw has made use of the semi-boring Beach tileset to create a far-from-boring level. From eyecandy ranging from transparent coral to multilayer sand and seashells to tricky cool docks, the eyecandy strikes me as good. I was disappointed that the warp only has one exit point, meaning somebody can puppyguard the exit point (which I do to my brother when we play…it’s VERY annoying), and there wasn’t frankly a whole lot of bg eyecandy. You also forgot to change the name in-level from Shores of Happiness to Vanilla Shores. (If you don’t believe me, check the text strings.). Overall though, very good level, loads of fun to play and a definite DL rec.

RecommendedQuick Review by PT32

Posted:
4 Mar 2010, 17:40
For: Aftermath
Level rating: 9.1
Rating
8

not bad. I liked it.

Not recommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
4 Mar 2010, 17:32 (edited 12 Mar 10, 22:41)
For: My First LVL
Level rating: 1.8
Rating
2

I am going to hurry up and give you a helpful review before everybody jumps on the bandwagon and criticizes you for this. Which I’m afraid, they will.

First off, I’m giving you one point because this is your first level (As you said), and I usually give first levels a +1 point. But there are some serious flaws. Your level construction is almost okay, but I could find nothing preventing me from simply finding a high spot and helicoptring to the end. That’s poor design there. There’s no eyecandy. No music. Not even a name! There were some events, but these were very poorly placed. The tileset was also very underrused. The level, overall, looked massively unfinished.

I can help with some of this. First of all, fill in all the gaps. Unlike in some games, the edge of the JJ2 maps is not a death pit, you will simply float there and frustrate yourself in playing. Fill in the holes.

Next, deal with eventage. Most if not all the enemies are in small holes guarding events. What ones aren’t (and these are predominately aerial baddies) are strewn either randomnly or in clumps. Take a cue from EvilMike’s singleplayer beauties. Or some of Agama’s wondrous levels. There’s lots of good examples out there, and you will learn a lot from ‘em. Food and misc. is also clumped, somewhat few and a wee bit far between. Some ubercheap powerups [a.k.a. PU’s] like the seekers are placed right in plain sight, not providing much of a challenge to obtain. There’s plenty you can do to fix it.

Add a good song. Music is literally a little less than half the importance of any good pack. If you use a circus song on a spooky level, that won’t work. If you use a sad song on say, Discoland, that doesn’t do it either. And let’s not even go into disco music’s do’s and don’ts. I would recommend some kinda fast medieval songs for your level, or even just the plain Medivo song (Which if you have JJ2, just go to level properties and type “Medivo”. A tip: Any non-j2b format song will require you to add a file extension on the end. Some good ext’s include MOD, XM, S3M, IT, or even MP3 and WAV, what with the new JJ2+ progs)

A level name is good too, but I won’t launch into a long spiel about what to name it. You should be able to come up with something.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, add some good eyecandy eyecandy period, to your level! Ask anyone on J2O. You won’t find a single person who won’t say you need good eyecandy to make a good level. Do you know that there are 3 foreground layers and 4 background layers in the JCS? There are, so use them! Put a gargoyle in here and there. A column of rock in the foreground (though be careful how you place baddies around these). A flag rippling in the breeze. The unmasked rock bg. There’s any number of good and perfectly fine things to be done with eyecandy, so make sure you do at least some of them. And layer 8? If you look in the editor, you should see that there’s a background image for the level that’s 8×8 tiles. If you click “textured bg” in the layer 8 properties, you can make your bg twice as good. And certainly better than the one you have now.

I don’t think I need mention buggage. Always, always, ALWAYS go over and check your levelsfor bugs. I can’t stress that enough, as so many people (myself included) have fallen hard for not making sure they had a clean level. Make sure the masks are all good. That you can’t get stuck in any spots. That events and enemies aren’t placed so’s that they’ll kill you as soon as you get there. Check, check, and check again. Okay, I DID kinda mention it, but it is that important.

Finally, gameplay. Your level, I’m sad to say, didn’t have a whole lotta it. It was mostly back-and-forth-go-down-and-end. Add some warps to spice it up. Use trigger scenery (That’s a whole nother discussion—read the wiki entry here or ask one of the older sages of J2O to learn more.). Add some variety in the level, but don’t make it too long or too short. Eventually, you’ll find the right balance. Get some friends to test stuff out for you, to make sure you won’t make a colossal flop out of your dream project.

So, what can I say? This turned out quite a bit longer than I had intended, but I think that’s good. You’ll hopefully learn something from this, or I haven’t done my job. I’m so glad you put your stuff up here, but make sure it’s only your best efforts you add. Many many site members take a dim view to half-baked stuff, so do your best and don’t just churn levels out like a conveyor belt. You’ll get it eventually. I know you will.
2.0, but no dl rec. You just need a little more time. Hang in there, you’ll get your chance soon enough!

Keep Jazzing!
PT32

EDIT: I have this nagging feeling that I wrote this review kinda treating you like a newbie. My profuse apologies if you saw it that way too. :(

Note to Minmay: I heartily agree.

Review by PT32

Posted:
2 Mar 2010, 00:39
For: Textured BG's
Level rating: 6
Rating
6.4

hmm. First off, Nice and White/Kinda Techno are the same one. Second, they are pretty cool pictures, though I shudder at how anybody could fit them into a set without wrecking the colors. They seem to have the same beige/gray/electric blue/white color scheme. Well actually, a couple were different. But still, they are definitely interesting to look at, and while I don’t know how they would work in a set, you could dl it for the heckuvit.

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