Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

You all probably noticed when you were playing in someone else’s server that the ammo suddenly stops respawning. You end up getting the server to pick up the ammo to get it respawning again. That must frustrate you, and it frustrates me, too. That’s why I’m writing my first actually useful article.

Those who’ve played Jazz for some while know that the server can get ammo to respawn again. That’s basically because online games are based upon whatever the server sees. And if the server sees ammo somewhere and a client doesn’t, and then he tries to get it, the client won’t get it. So when the server gets the ammo so it can respawn again, the ammo will respawn once and only once.

Fewer know that shooting the ammo to the ground could make it stop respawning. Sometimes when you shoot ammo, you see one thing and the server sees another. If you pick up fallen ammo from one place, and the server sees it in another, the server will think you didn’t pick up the ammo and thus it will never respawn again. This could explain why things like crates and power-ups tend to respawn more often than ammo. Lag also doesn’t always help in this situation.

But I bet no one knew that once you get 50 with your ammo amount, you shoot some ammo, and then you try to get more ammo, the server won’t see you picking up the ammo and thus it screws up everything and prevents the ammo from respawning. This happens probably because when the Epic people made the 1.23 patch, they got lazy and didn’t realize this problem. Because in the pre-patch versions of Jazz2, you could keep picking as much ammo as you like, even after you have 50 with your ammo amount; of course the number stayed at 50 when you collected more then enough ammo. But in the patched versions of JJ2, you can’t get more ammo after reaching the limit. I don’t know, I think that’s why. I also believe that when you reach 50, the server sees this. And when you go for more ammo after shooting some of it, the server will still think you have 50 and it won’t see you getting more ammo. After more testing, it even turns out that it’s the same thing even after you die. So if the client has 50 before he dies, and then he goes to get more ammo, the server will still think the client has 50 and as a result, the ammo won’t respawn after the client gets more ammo.

Based off of my testings, I’ve come up with 3 solutions.

1.) Rejoin the server. You all might have figured this one out already.
2.) Don’t shoot the ammo. Or at least try not to shoot it.
3.) Don’t get 50 with your ammo. Not even after you die. Never.

(Please note that once the ammo stops respawning, the only solution is to rejoin the server.)

(Also note that these are really inconvenient solutions and there isn’t much to do about this. Hopefully I (or someone like me) will find some better solutions for this problem.)

After even more testing, I accidentally saw what happens when the client sees ammo that’s still there after the server picks it up (I already knew about this, but I’ll tell you anyway). This results in the server making something respawn that’s already there. You see double of things and that tends to only happen in lag. This isn’t really a bad thing with ammo, but it could be bad with a carrot. If this happens with a carrot and if someone gets the carrot that respawnwed while another client tries to get the carrot that didn’t respawn, it will be like that client never got the carrot. Things like 3 hit kills or even 5 hit kills could happen because of this. There’s also this whole lag thing with the different pings between the server and each client, but I’m not going to get into that with this article.

And after all of that testing, I did some more testing and I think I also found something else. I think the number you have when you’re in a server (like the server has “1”, the second player to join has “2”, the third has “3”, etc…) ultimately determines whether or not the ammo can respawn for you. So if the 2 client gets 50 of some weapon and then leaves, the person who replaces that client won’t be able to have ammo respawn. If some joins, and no one was at that number spot already, they won’t have to worry about the ammo not respawning until they get 50. At least I think that’s true. Perhaps more testing is needed. I suppose the best solution to get ammo respawning again is to restart the server or change the level.

That’s all I know. I’ll probably have some more tests. I wrote this with haste after some quick testing so tell me if this doesn’t make any sense. And I’ll post more when I find out more things.