Tileset conversion, by 
Time to review!
In very early versions of JJ2, even before v1.00, Diamondus looked much different. Only two screenshots of the old Diamondus have been released, as well as a portion of it left in the current version of Diamondus. Pyromanus took what little resources he had and turned them into a fully usable tileset.
This tileset includes everything the original Diamondus had to offer, and more. Some of the new stuff includes ground without grass, slopes with varying angles, easier-to-work-with cave tiles, a good amount of blocks, waterfalls, and animated gems. If that wasn’t enough, Pyro went above and beyond what most tileset makers do and made event compatibility great. (This calls for a checklist!)
Textured background in 16bit – Yes! Pyromanus created a new textured background rather than using the old one. It works flawlessly.
Textured background in 8bit – Yes! Something you don’t often see these days.
Carrotus pole – Yes! Although I probably wouldn’t want to use it. It’s dark brown colored with tannish moss.
Diamondus pole – Yes! Looks great.
Jungle pole – Yes! It’s a fairly light green color, and looks better than most jungle poles you see do.
Psych pole – Yes! Looks great.
Small tree – Yes! Looks perfect.
8bit water – Yes! Looks perfect. Pyromanus even took the extra step and made the water red in the Hell version, so it looks like lava.
Snow – No… but I suppose it gets the job done. As it was in the default Diamondus sets, the snow here is green.
500 bump – Yes! Looks great, but the 500 is kind of hard to read in the night version.
Pinball paddles – Yes! They look great.
Carrot bump – Yes! I don’t like the colors all that much, but it still works.
Moving on to the masking, it is fairly flawless. The masking on the background trees is a bit jagged at parts, but I really doubt anybody’s going to use those trees in layer four anyway, so I won’t take off any points for it. Besides, the thin parts of the trees, which were the ones I thought looked a bit jagged, are meant to be one wayed anyway, so getting stuck shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
The two most major things added are animated gem stones and waterfalls. The waterfalls look magnificent, but if I were making a level with this (which I probably will), I’d probably leave the gemstones unanimated, unless the feel of the level was cartoony, or something. Naturally, a gem stone would look much more realistic if it were not moving. Nevertheless, the extra step of adding all these animated gems can only improve your rating from me.
The example levels look good, and the tile placement is very user-friendly. Pyromanus also included several palette edits, including Gardens, Night, Midnight, and Lava. The Gardens gives the set a… well… “gardenny” feeling. (if the word gardenny didn’t exist before, it does now.) The lava edit gives the tileset a Hellish feeling, a lot like the Thermal K1 edit of Carrotus. The midnight set gargantually darkens everything including sprites, while the night version takes after the classic green-on-purple night version included in the newer version of Diamondus. Rumor has it there will be another edit released in the future, too. ;-)
I suppose that should be enough. You really ought to be downloading this tileset and making a level with it, not reading my review. But thanks for reading my review anyway, even if you just skipped everything and looked at the bottom part.
-LAbRaTkiD
