Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

uploads like this make me cringe
1.1 since I guess it does have a purpose but really is there any skill in filling a premade level with no fire zones?

King, in your profile you can select your rating system. It is possible to select a box where you can type in the grade yourself.

Now my own review:

Eyecandy

I’m positively suprised by the eyecandy here. The level is dark overall, but still contains a lot of diverse eyecandy. The layer 5 background has been used very nice, many holes and bushes were added to give it a mithical atmosphere. I also like the lower part where the layer 5 ends and you can see the layer 6/7 again. Those mountains in the background aren’t really spectacular, but they suffice.

Gameplay

This level can be confusing for the first minutes you play it. Everything looks alike so you sometimes don’t know where you are. The warps are also hard to learn how to use and they don’t really seem to be an asset to this map. I also wasn’t really happy about the flow in this map, in many area’s I couldn’t run at high speed, but bumped against tiles instead.

Originality

I like the placement of the powerups and the carrots. One would say that putting the seeker powerup symitrically with the bouncer powerup would make the map biased, but I think bouncers are more useful in most parts of the map, so they even eachother out.
The layout of this level is also original, it combines battles in small and larger area’s, still it isn’t really a revolutionary shape.

Eyecandy: 8,2
Gameplay: 7,5
Originality: 8,3

Final Grade: 8

GJ and HF in XLM.

Yay, j2o deleted this upload when laro tried to edit something, and now i have to write the whole review all over again. Please fix this issue so this kind of problem doesen’t happen again. Kinda annoying…. Anyway, the review

Eyecandy
Amazing, simply amazing. The way laro used this tileset is very impressive, alltough tileset is rather original, it still looks awesome. Basic theme of the map is a cavern full of plants, pumpkins and carrots, and lets not forget few waterfalls with trees in walls which looks fantastic. Background looks very amazing. Also adding that rain in the foreground was an excellent idea. The only bad part of the eyecandy are those pumpkins at the bases which are hidden behind layer 3 plants. It wouldn’t actually look bad, but every single pumpkin is hidden by mostly the same plant tile, and it kinda looks a bit lame. You should have freed some of the pumpkins. Still, it looks very good, and the eyecandy is definetly the strongest point of the level. Good job.

Overall: 9.5/10

Pickups
Very nicely placed. I don’t have any much complains about pickups. The only complain is the fact that i think its a bit unfair to have given the left side Seeker power up and the right side has bouncy. In most cases Seekers are overpowering bouncy, but in this map that’s rather several anyways. However the most dominant ammo in this map is definetly the toaster, so that somewhat fixes the Seeker-Bouncy issue. Carrot placements are okay. It was a good idea to put a pit because of players shooting the Full NRG carrot down and burying it with toaster, making it fall down trough that grassy tile and unpickable by any player. This way it will now respawn if someone tries to do that. But i think it would have been a better idea to use full masked tiles and then cover them with those grass tiles in layer 3, because, what about players doesen’t have plus? The pit idea might not work for them (or is it just server that needs plus? I dont know, but to be sure, i think my idea would be better). Anyway, there are some fastfires and they are very well placed, not too much of them but not too several either, so thats a good thing.

Overall: 8.5/10

Gameplay
Now this was a bit of a downgrade to the level. It’s not really bad, but you might have a problem playing it if its one of your first times. There are a lot of areas that are rather simillar looking, and at some point you will get the feeling that you are lost. At some points i thought i was in the middle of the map when i was actually in 1/4 of the map. There were even few times when i didn’t know if i’m in upper path of cave or the downer one. But the toaster and blaster powerups might serve as a sign to where you are, alltough its still a problem if they haven’t spawned. The warps you made are very usefull but only once you have learnt the level. The use of the warp ill once again throw you in the land of confusion. It just gives you the feeling “okay where did i end up now?”. If you remember those pumpkins i mentioned above, the ones at bases hidden by layer 3, i find it a bit annoying not to be able to see my footing clearly. It is such a shame laro did this cuz those pumpkins are very very usefull for S/R/D-ing the base, expecially if you have bouncy, come to think of it, i think this is one of the places where bouncy completely overpowers Seeks. As i allready said, the main and most dominant ammo here is toaster, i would strongly reccommend to use it in most of the cases. When going trough cave best ammo to use are RF or toaster but using RF will make you bounce of the ground due to unlinear footing. Oh i cant belive im saying this, but blaster works here pretty well too, hehe. Anyway like i said at start, gameplay isn’t really bad, its just hard to play in the level if your playing for the first times, but after that you will find those warps rather usefull. Be patient, and it will work out.

Overall: 7/10

Music
Music file is still broken for me, and idk how to fix it. If i ever fix it il rate the frickin music too :l.

Overall: N/A

Total rating
Summary: (9.5+8.5+7+N/A) /3 = 25/3 = 8.333333

Rating 8.2 (It still doesen’t let me put 8.3 :l )
Fixed, 8.3 now.

Download Recommendation?
Yeah. It’s an amazing level with fantastic eyecandy, even tough gameplay might be confusing at start. But, after playing it a few more times, you will see that gameplay is also really good.

EDIT
Thanks MS, didnt know it works that way, it would be better if this was selected as default… Rating fixed now.

I was pretty suprised when I played this level, I really enjoyed it. The eyecandy in this level was in one word briljant! The lianas and such are pretty nice. The plants and the water effects are well done. The use of this tileset is good. The gameplay was in the start a bit hard and the boss is pretty hard too, compared to other levels. But you made a good job. The ‘Spaz only’ part was something I liked, no other characters, just Spaz. This level would be very easy if you used Jazz/Lori. Enemy placements is something what was bothering me, you don’t see them coming and such, that maked the level really hard. Music fits the level entirely and I have nothing to say about it.

If you like platform levels with a huge ammount of invisible enemy’s, then this is your map to download. Oh, and if you aren’t a pro, you need some patience.

Eyecandy

Well, I like the waterfalls in the top left corner of this level.
Too bad it has tilebugs at the top of the pillars on which the rocky thing is standing. Below it is also a tilebug in the grass. There are more tilebugs, especially at borders of the platforms. Try to spend more attention to that before uploading your level. The layer 8 background and the falling leaves look nice, but you’ll need more of that. Make some more background eyecandy in the other background layers and maybe some forground tiles which overlap a small part of the layer 4.

Gameplay

First of all, try to fix the spawning problem, players can spawn near their opposing team’s base. In JCS at the multiplayer spawn point event you can enter a team number, 0 or 1. Both are different teams. Also try to never have dead ends, always make a path lead somewhere. Try to find the right balance of tiles and empty space in your levels. In the middle of this level there is just too much empty space, which gives not very attractive gameplay. Try to make the bases a bit harder to reach if they are close to eachther. By the way, if you don’t want your level to have the CTF bug, which is taken care of by JJ2+, make a 3 tile thick layer at all borders of your level. Now this level is only CTF bug free in JJ2+. By the way, try to spread ammo more evenly over your level, also non PU ammo.

Originality

Well this level certainly has a nice shape, I bet if you continue to make progress with making levels, you’ll be able to make some very nice original work. And you’ll have many years to improve because you’re still young.
So my advice: Never give up, practise makes perfect!

Eyecandy: 5
Gameplay: 5
Originality: 5,5
Final Grade: 5.2

Reactive Factory:

Eyecandy

This level has got a fitting dark atmosphere. I think the eyecandy could have been made more exciting though, if more moving objects were added. The clouds are standing still, for example. The background is only moving at a slow pace. I think if you’d let it move faster it would have given a colder impression, fitting more in this level imo.

Gameplay

I like the shape of this level, though if I were playing with a team I would try to take the topside, because it has acces to the downside at the corners of the map. You can’t get to the upside from the downside corners, only from the middle, which makes capturing points easier for people on the topside. The tubes in the bottom middle of the level are a bit annoying, you can fall it in accidentally and then it transports you many tiles to the right. I like the placement of the capture points and also of the carrots. The powerups are placed a bit biased to the left though, drawing players to that side.

Originality

Well, the atomsphere of this map is unique, could have been a bit better as I explained before. There arent really unique ways to get somewhere, its mainly springs and especially tubes, which are a bit overrepresentated in this level imo.

Eyecandy: 7
Gameplay: 8
Originality: 7

Final Grade: 7.3

Download recommended, as this is a decent DOM level.

I suppose being a betatester doesn’t rule me out of reviewing?

Concept
The concept is good, as with Lava Fortress. A plaza, presumably among the mountains, made of shiny orange triangles and full of palm trees.

Score: 8/10

Masking
The masking never gets too complicated to use, though it’s disappointing that all the masking is pretty standard. There never is a half-masked tile through the center or something bumpy for us to sneakily put on the left of a warp target and then put a layer 3 tile over it to create the illusion of the bug being fixed. I had to resort to a diagonally masked tile for that, and we all know that doesn’t really work well.

Score:7.5/10

The tiles
Well drawn, nicely animated, and in general looks good. But the method used to draw upside-down diagonal tiles can get confusing, almost forcing you to check the masking to confirm what tile that is. But that isn’t really too bad in my opinion.

Score: 8.5/10

Usability
Mostly decent. But I find a few snags here and there:

1. A section of land must ALWAYS end in a corner tile, both on the ground and on the roof. It would have been great to be able to end it with a diagonal tile.
2. The floor must always be isometric ground, and that leads people to believe you’re meant to be able to get there. NICE.
3. It’s impossible to combine different EC tiles, which can get annoying sometimes.

Score: 8/10

Eye candy
Very good compared to quite a few tilesets I’ve seen. There are tiles for sections of triangles sticking out, tiles for triangles digging in, railings that can both end normally or be violently cut off, lamp posts that are on/off, pots of plants/trees (including the titular PALM TREE :D), sections of what I like to call the ‘cave’, tiles for ‘caves’ fading to black, rain, a translucent and an opaque lightning tile (you can see how it’s used in the Night version of the CTF level I made), and much, much, much more. My es-special favorite is the fully customizable building background. Lovely!

Score: 9/10

Extras
1. It is very unconventional. Kudos! (+1)
2. Lots of duplicate tiles. (-0.6)

Final score
8.6 and a download recommendation!

You’ve done well, young Padawan.

Hurray, I waited for this upload. It can be that I’l write a review, but it’s not 100%.

[Review changed to quick review. ~Violet]

hm yea now works the spawn positions
work perfectly now and ill try to make lvls better :)

Weird. Really. :)
But enemy placement is good. ;)

esgdrf

A good boss fighting level.

Starting is pretty, raining and storm effects is good. Music is slow but you needn’t music because we’re just fighting :p
Boss area is dangerous and really hard, but can be harder, anyway, cool.

Tileset is little creepy and good, tileset – theme’s harmony is good.

Monkeys? Not harmonic. You could use Tuf (hidden in the tiles) or someone else. But not problem, I love bananas :)

Anyway, hard, creepy, cool.

Well, now I have a new SP level and i want review it.

Actually, I want say some interesting points, there is really really more “ammoful”! (Whoa, what is this? :D)
Tileset is sweet, music is natural and soft. Enemies not bad, but some enemies is really unnecessary. Sometimes, I wanted say “what the ‘crab’?!” Because crab was really unnecessary.

Dragon Flies! I loved them. They were is good placed (my bad English!) and sweet (interesting, huh? :) ) and erm… That’s it.

But this is really complicated: Where is the exit?
So I didn’t finish, I couldn’t.

Anyway, sweet, but short, and no exit… So i’ll give 5.5 points.
Recommend? Okay, I don’t know. But one day, it will happen :)

Edit: Exit is hidden (really!) and i finished.
Exit is really really hidden :p
I’m giving 7 ;)

DR? Yes!

@jimbob: why don’t improve your level when you notice it has flaws? Are you actually saying you don’t want to ‘optimize’ the quality of your level?

@Zoro: I think by doing this, he means that 8.2 is overrating my level. Sure it’s a pretty good level, but it has some flaws (like too much ammo & campy bases, like everyone is saying), & I was only expecting a rating of around the 7.5 +/- range anyways.

@DarkSonic: I will take your advice in my future levels. Thank you :p

@FawFul: No, I never said that… I was thinking of updating the level earlier today/this week, in fact. I have been busy with other stuff, that is all.

@stijn
yea it looks a bit ugly though
its bit too much ms-painty| which is
not good the background hurts my eyes
the thing i like its a bit nice to be your
first tileset but there are new sets which are
best than ever :)
to be nice i give u a 4.7 good luck with new sets :D

What DarkSonic said.

While this is not one of Snooze’s best levels, it’s still pretty good. The eye candy is really good.. very good usage of the cave tiles. The layout is pretty simple but easy to learn. There is not that much ammo, but it respawns quickly so there will always be enough. Overall, just another good level by Snooze. Download recommended.

There is way too much ammo.. there are almost no places without ammo and there are too many Power-Ups. is too much. Also has too many carrots. One Full NRG and one +1 or 2 +1s would have been better. The layout is pretty simple and linear and one way to the base is never good. The eye candy is good but nothing amazing. Download not recommended.

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