Filename(s): bbcity.j2l
Title: Dirty Laundry
Tileset: Colon 2
Dimensions: 78x68
Music: boss1
Type: Capture the Flag
Author: BloodBunny of Ninjin & ELM
Email: Edward Kmett <harmless@bloodshed.com>
URL: http://www.bloodshed.com/~harmless
ICQ: 1985432
Comments:
This was my first attempt to work with a tileset which I actively disliked.
I started this map to try to build a Colonius map that I would actually
enjoy
playing, unlike the "Colonius Wars" map included with the jazz2 full
version.
Many factors contributed to my dislike of "Colonius Wars", primarily the
overabundance of small 1 health carrots (which in my experience seem to be
more appropriate to Battle than to CTF), the lack of one-way events on
window sills and several places where you can see an obvious line between
foreground and background. All in all, these factors and others led to a
frustrating time when playing on that level, making it the first 'Standard'
level which I removed from the loop on my server.
I dislike several things about this tileset as well, primarily regarding
the
inability to move much of it into the foreground properly because of the
lack of a no-background version of many of the vertical walls. That and/or
having the sewer wall tiles come all the way to the tile boundary would
have
settled the issue, but instead some tiles in the sewer are in the
foreground
and drop a green line of 'background wall' which can occlude the flag or
jazz and just in general bothers me ;) In many places I was forced to use
the foreground layer anyways, for tunnels or to composite a fore and
background tile to make a reasonable replacement for some nonexistant tile.
One tile sorely missed is a nice 'stairtop' tile for use at coordinate
[23,29]) This kept me from using stairs afterwards because placing a
building
atop the area reached by the steps requires that poorly fit tile to be
used.
This is the approach used in the 'official' jazz levels with this tileset
as
well.
I attempted to condense the map into a connected whole, unlike "Colonius
Wars" which has many free floating platforms and I find difficult to orient
myself in. At the same time I tried to differentiate elevations by placing
different things at different heights along the map. I.e. sewers, streets,
rooftops, clotheslines. I also attempted to reduce the arbitrariness of
what
portions of the map worked and didnt. If there is a window in a wall, it
works as a tube. If there is a manhole, you can stomp it. Consistency
encourages exploration. (Another sorely missed tile is a 'foreground' half
to the wall inset windows, like at [5,20]. As it is, whenever used as a way
to walk through you appear in front of the near side of the window. I tried
to cover this by using a lot of sucker tubes inside the windows so one
would not stand around trying to discover inconsistencies.
I started 2 maps using this tileset and eventually merged them into one.
One was going to be an all-sewer map. This didnt pan out because there is
no good place to sit a CTF base in the sewer, (it doesnt stand on the floor
right) so I gradually added more area above the sewer to accomodate the
bases and eventually most of the capture routes. (One of my pet peeves
is that I wish there was an Adjust Y value in the CTF base object) In the
end I pulled my second map entirely into another layer and carved pieces
off of buildings to create the level I wanted. One thing to watch out for
when using sucker tubes is they do not appear to work on the extreme right
edge of the map. Caveat emptor.
Other peeves include the fact that the sewer manholes have masks which lip
inwards slightly relative to the holes you have to drop the player into,
this makes it so that the player can only exit from the top if he is in
the center of the vertical passageway. Since these are 2 tiles wide, I
can only provide a spring which will launch the player out of the manhole
when approached from one direction. This is why all of the springs leading
up and out of the sewer are againt a wall on one side.
Another ugly trait of this tileset is that it appears to use up too much of
the palette for the 'Warp Horizon' effect to attenuate at all in 8bit mode.
This leads to the trippy psychedelic horizon as seen in Jon McClellan's
bchbrawl when played in 8bit color. Since I can't stand this effect, I had
to
rummage around in the tileset until I found a black tile. This allowed me
to
black out the sky, and by using Warp Horizon anyways, I was able to place
a starfield in the backgroud, and a slight fade for highcolor users to
liven
up the sky a little. (Peeve: why do some stars in the starfield move FASTER
than Jazz?) The inability to fade the Warp Horizon is why I have not done
a Beech tileset based level as well, which has the same problem. (Peeve
#345: Why is it that the relative scroll speed of the Warp Horizon
controlled by the tileset used, somehow, rather than any of the
relative x, y speed parameters in JCS?)
Despite all of my negative comments in this section, I do like the way
things
turned out overall. I religiously avoided warps on this level to keep from
disorienting the player. The proliferation of sucker tubes and manhole
routes
which were added over time allow for some daring escapes and limit the
effectiveness of the seeker missiles.
The sewers were my first time using echo and light events. I found doubling
"flick light" events works well, singular flickering lights dont emit
enough light for my tastes. The echo also helps to distinguish the sewer
from above ground. I used "Set Light" events heavily in the sucker tubes
and the sewers. Aside from disliking the lack of an instant light level
set, and/or the ability to control the rate of light level change. I
like the lighting effects available. I do wish that one could control the
lighting on a per-tile rather than screenwide basis, but thats something
for Jazz3 I guess.
-BB/N/ELM
