Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

PurpleJazz (formely Purplejazz7) is a member of Jazz2online, Xtreme Level Makers, and 8th Dimension. He joined the community in August 2006, yet he has been playing JJ2 since 2005. He best known for his work in JCS. He currently lives in the United Kingdom.

h3(#h-1). Early Days

Back in 2006, PurpleJazz was a usual newbie level maker, releasing files such as the Single Player level Easter Feasta, the Tilesets Blue Fortress, and Brazil, and the Capture the Flag levels Diamonds n Flags and Ancient Forest. All of these files were poorly recieved however, due to PurpleJazz’s lack of experience. He decided to create some Tileset conversions, after seeing some impressive ones such as Haunted House Lite and Diamondus Beta. His very first tileset conversion was called known as Damn 3, which was poorly made and recieved very low ratings (1.9 average), so he deleted it very soon afterwards. His 2nd attempt at a tileset conversion was Diamondus Storm, which was rated slightly higher than Damn 3 (4.8), but still relatively low. The main issue with PurpleJazz’ old conversions was that they did not fix any of the issues the Tilesets originally had; instead they simply changed the palette and edited some tiles that were either ripped and/or very ugly. He carried on the trend of making these conversions, creating Deadly Damn, Aquatic Castle, Jungle Paradise and Carrotus Mountain. While the same issues still applied to these tilesets as they did to previous ones, they were slowly improving in quality.

Impressive Creations

In November that year, Impressive Creations made a JCF thread calling out any potential JCSers willing to take part in their (now scrapped) project, Impressive Flashback, which at the time was secret to non-IC members. Seeing how they were looking for people interested in creating new tilesets, PurpleJazz accepted, and became a member of IC. While in the group, he made two new Battle levels, Mystical Forest and Moonlight Canyon, which were rated 6.0 and 7.0 accordingly. However, the leaders of Impressive Creations were not impressed with his work, as it was apparently bringing down the groups “impressive” image, and showed no effort towards the group’s project. He was told to work on IF or get kicked out. He attempted make a tileset for it, but the leaders were not impressed by it’s shabby quality and so PurpleJazz was thrown out of IC.

Xtreme Level Makers

PurpleJazz started talking to DarkSonic, Xtreme Level Makers‘ leader, a lot. He became close friends with him, exchanging JCS knowledge. He told DS that he recently had got kicked of out his old level group. DS then offered PJ to create a tryout level to get a place in XLM. Naturally, he couldn’t refuse. The result was Death Valley, made with his newest tileset conversion Damn +, by far his best conversion to date. This level got him into XLM under the rank Normal Member. Shortly afterwards he created Arctic Circle. PurpleJazz also started talking to Birdie, who helped him create his next tileset conversion, Beach +.

The Uprising

Snooze’s new level pack New Ages motivated PurpleJazz to make more CTF levels. He started to use JCS more and more and posted various screenshots on the JCF, getting more praise with each level. However, one level untentionally looked like one of P4ul’s old levels, Darker Insomnia. This made him extremely angry, which forced PurpleJazz to try and think more creatively with his future levels. Shortly after this ordeal, he created Forest Chamber, which didn’t have a good layout but the eyecandy was a massive improvement and was approved by many. PJ was then inspired to create a CTF pack as DS was creating one too, under the name Impressions. PJ decided to call his pack Legends. It was originally intended to be a 10 level pack, but he changed it to 5 levels since he thought that would take too long. His first level was Royal Rainforest, which had an overwhelmingly high amount of eyecandy. Many people enjoyed it at first, which encouraged PJ to upload it immediately rather than later. However, it recieved a lot of negativity shortly after it’s release. He then decided to restart Legends, and went on to make The Underworld and Doomed Citadel. Both had mixed responces. Evening Shades was next, which was PJ’s most liked level so far. His designs were improving fast and people started to comment on his speed of improvement. Various levels came and went for the 4th of the pack, but he didn’t make something he liked until Altitude Terrace, an experimental level inspired by some of Birdie’s creative concepts found in his Substracted Space pack. PurpleJazz now had 4 levels created for his pack, yet he was not happy with The Underworld, which was signifcantly lower quality than the rest of the pack, so he replaced it with Sunken Realm, a level that recieved very high critical reception by most people who played there. As well as creating levels for Legends, he created Sub-Terrestrial, which got into AB9, and Regicide Road with Birdie. As well as that, he worked on a 2 level Treasure Hunt pack with Birdie, which got barely any progress. Before creating a 5th level for Legends, PurpleJazz went on vacation for a week.

Period of Inactivity

After getting back from vacation and enjoying his first JDC season, PurpleJazz started work on a level known as Hall of Legends, which was supposed to be the main level of the pack. However, with the release of Pokemon Diamond, he slowly lost interest in JJ2 and moved on to that, until he had completely dissappeared by the end of September, missing JDC 14. He returned in February the following year, and decided to scrap Hall of Legends and released Legends as a 4 level pack, just for the sake of getting it out of the way so he could start again fresh.

Comeback

A few weeks after the release of Legends, PurpleJazz decided to use JCS again. He reused the name Hall of Legends in a battle level created for AB10, which he helped to compile the packs for alongside Stijn. He planned a sequel to Legends, which would become known as Legends ][: Reincarnation, in which Hall of Legends would be a part of. However, he decided to work on a Single Player pack instead which was called Carrotus Defense Force, and so released Hall of Legends as a seperate upload. Shortly after PurpleJazz also scrapped his SP pack due to lack of inspiration.

Codename: Alliance

After JDC 15, PurpleJazz started work on Legends ][ again, except this time reincluding Hall of Legends rather than restarting totally new. At the same time, DS and snz were working on the 4th volumes in the Impressions and New Ages series. The 3 of us would discuss our packs a lot and snz would host our levels in his server. One day PurpleJazz stated: “Hey, why don’t we combine our packs to create one MEGA pack? ;0” After a bit of discussion with DS and snz, they decided that was what they would do and thus Codename: Alliance was born (Formely known as New Impressive Legends, however they decided the name didn’t sound too great). PJ created what are arguably his most successful levels to date, Condemned and City of Sn00zE, a somewhat midly successful Domination level Hoven, and contributed to the level Secret Forest Shrine. The pack recieved good reviews when released, although some people complained about the lack of good CTF levels. In the following JCS awards, Codename: Alliance got 2nd place for Best Multiplayer Pack and Condemned got 2nd place for Best Battle Level.

2009 onwards

PurpleJazz has continued to work on JCS this year, making levels for plunK’s Small CTF Contests, with getting 2nd place with Desolate Outcrop for the first contest and also getting 2nd place with Gorda in the second contest. He is currently working on a Battle level called Cerulean Comet, and a Flag Run level called Squall. He has also contributed to the upcoming LMAT tileset.

Clans

PurpleJazz grew an interest in the concept of clans. He was very inexperienced in online play yet wanted to improve. He spent several days back in October 2006 searching and trying out for multiple clans, although all attempts were failures. However, he passed the tryout for one clan, Rabbit Roasters, where he fitted in quite well and made friends good with the people of the clan. He improved quickly and soon became one of RR’s top players, despite the lack of experience. He stayed loyal to the clan, until January 2007 when almost all of RR’s members abandoned the clan to join Menacing Force, a new clan formed by HateBreed. At first he did not want to leave, giving him Co-Leader status for a few weeks. However, the new MF members eventually convinced him to leave with them, and from then on PurpleJazz was a member of MF. He improved rapidly in the clan, helping it in clan-wars against clans such as semi-idle and Cracco Clan. In May 2007, he finally hung up his MF hat due to inactivity in the rest of the group, and left to join 8th Dimension, which he is still a member of to this day. He particpated in some of their wars and regularly attended 8D trainings.

Contests

Each year, PurpleJazz makes a contest which usually attract much attention from active JCSers. Here are the winners for his contests so far:

Tileset Contest (October 2006)
1st Place: Bluespaz7 – Route 101
2nd Place: FreeFull – set (by default!)
3rd Place: N/A – N/A

Battle Contest (April 2007)
1st Place: Past of Level Design – Foreign Country
2nd Place: cooba – The Warden Woods
3rd Place: Quickz – Sandstone Ruins

Christmas Contest (November 2008)
1st Place: Spazzer – A Generic Christmas CTF
2nd Place: Hitch/FawFuL – Aurora Citadel
3rd Place: Troglobite – Deck the Halls

Theme/Eyecandy Contest (August 2009)
1st Place:
2nd Place:
3rd Place: