Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Nice lvl, but there are some bad stuff like: the maze war too much annoying, too much pickups and gems…..
But the eyecandy is nice, gameplay is challenging and i recommend to download it :D

I probably would not play this level again, but it has some good things about it.

The good:

- Nice and long
- Decent eyecandy, though very repetitive in some areas
- Enemy placement was OKAY, but not amazing. It takes more skill to use a few enemies to take down the player rather than big masses of them.

The bad:

- Lack of consistency – conveyor belts should always be conveyor belts. The first one I encountered didn’t even go in the direction the animation. Same thing applies to the hooks on the electrical wires. Either make them all hooks, or put them all in layer 5 so they don’t interfere with the player. The fans should have also been uniform. Some fans have float up events while others have hurt events. Jumping on a fan and having it damage you instead of float you is very unnerving…

- Sharp contrast with the eyecandy – part of this is due to the tileset you used, but it’s not very attractive to have eyecandy that just sticks out because you could put it there. Use color to make the eyecandy more subtle (example: use yellow and red electrical wires in areas that are predominantly red or yellow …kinda like moss on a tree).

- Too many pickups. It didn’t take much effort to find the pickups in the level and there was too much reward for the effort given. Make the player work for it a little and use pickups as eyecandy rather than just stuff to keep the player busy.

- Way too easy. I never died even though you advertised that I probably would die. The boss battle was also incredibly easy. As long as you stand on the sloped part of the platform with the robot boss he can’t shoot you but you can shoot him.

Nothing new here. No download recommendation, but I do recommend you keep making levels to improve your skill at JCS :)

Well, since this level has been updated since PurpleJazz reviewed it, I think I’ll give this a proper review of my own. Yeah, I do think I kind of overrated this level myself, mind you, I was half asleep when I had given it an 8.5.

Layout:
The layout is okay, however, the flow can feel a bit strange. Let’s take the bottom area for example. I just find it a bit blocky, sometimes accidently bumping into them, or maybe I just think it looks a bit ugly, wheras it could be better off as slopes, but not too steep though. As for the top area, it’s decent, I just can’t quite put my finger on how to describe it. Personally I don’t mind open maps that much myself as long as they don’t feel like some kind of big cave.

Placements:
They’re pretty decent, I don’t think I really have anything about to complain about here, except that red gets more of an advantage of being able to get the C’s more safely. There isn’t too much or too little ammo which is a pretty good thing. Though near blue base it kind of lacks a selection in ammo.

Eyecandy:
The eyecandy is pretty functional, it has foreground and background eyecandy that isn’t really distracting. However, there’s nothing really in particular which makes it stand out from other levels which uses this tileset. Also, there’s a tilebug I thought you would’ve fixed by now.

Gameplay:
I think this is one of the more balanced vertical CTF maps out there. However, aside from what I said about the C placements, red base does have a little more defence too. Generally, this level is pretty fast paced, it can get chaotic though. I personally think this level is fine for duels and 2v2s. 3v3s can be a bit too much sometimes. The right C can be annoying when shot down to the bottom right corner, I either have to buttstomp or use toaster. Still, I find this map pretty fun.

Music:
Although it’s been used before, it still fits the level well. It can get a bit boring after hearing it a lot though.

Functionality:
While Spaz seems to work best in this level with being able to get up some parts faster, but Lori and Jazz aren’t that bad either. As for sidekick (Spaz’s or Lori’s) and uppercut, it kind of depends on the situation you’re in.

Reguarding how this was judged in the duel map contest, I think Sterile CTF (another vertical CTF map which I personally find a bit overrated) was way more red biased than this, yet that was never complained about. Also, I found it odd how it was complained about possibly being “too big” for duels…yet the 1st 2 maps that won are a bit bigger than this. I somewhat understand why it didn’t win, I didn’t completely expect for this to win anyway. I think my taste in maps have kind of changed over the many months. I can understand why people can find this map a bit annoying, but you should at least still give it a try.

Overall rating: 7.7/10

OMG, this is such a great finalle for this great episode :D

EDIT: I thought, as a skilled SP player, that this episode is the most difficult SP episode. Then I saw Blackraptor’s “Dreamscape”…
(Not so related, but I’m here to chill the people here who died a lot here)

Nice eye candy, okay team balance (vertical/diagonal CTF levels are usually hard to balance), there’s no carrot camping, very interesting game play for both duels and 2v2s.
Download recommended.

[EDIT: Sorry for overrating…]

:D

I promised to review so here I am.

The layout is almost fully symmetrical and easy to learn. It can be splitted into 3 parts, which are the top, the path and the underground.

The top was made mainly for two reasons: obtaining an RF PU and attacking the bases, placed between the top and the path. After obtaining the PU once after every death, it starts to be quite useless, though. There’s not much of ammo there and capturing a flag is much faster with use of a single RF jump from the path. Otherwise (from the top) I’d need to jump on a green spring above an obstacle, and wait until my rabbit will be down there to take the flag, what consume too much of my precious time. The spring should at least be red, so the waiting time could be slower.

To each of the bases there’s one entrance and one exit, but as I said, it’s possible to enter through the exit and also, thanks to the springs added with one of the edits, it’s possible to get out through the entrance. Before the edit it was also possible though, again with use of RFs. Personally, I hate these springs. They take out the whole fun.

The path is an almost flat surface on which players can find RFs, Bouncers, Seekers and Electroblaster ammo – all the types off ammo which the level include, making it even more useless to visit the top or the underground. There is also a Full NRG Carrot in the middle of it and a single slowly-respawning Soft Drink, probably placed just as a decoration.

In the underground there are two small rooms not connected to each other, with thin vertical entrances (the file preview will tell you more). Entering any of them in game is rather rare and there’s no real reason to. The things that can be find here are Bouncer PUs and Seekers, and after collecting them there are two sucker tubes to get out. Because of only one entrance, these places can easily become campy, and this time there’s obviously no way to enter using an exit.

The flow of the whole level is okay. I didn’t find anything decreasing it radically, not counting that green spring in exchange of red. To obtain any of the seekers it’s necessary to slow down though, and I found it a great idea. The rest of weapons uses the same thing but in a less noticable way, making the whole level a choice between a fast or powerful attack. The only weapon which is not really needed is the Electroblaster. I tried using it in game in a few ways, and the only thing in which it helped a little was obtaining the RF PU. It requires some aiming though, and doesn’t really matter, because getting some of Gun 9 ammo (starting near one of the bases) takes a similar amount of time as getting the PU.

Layer 4 and 3 eyecandy looks fine. Unfortunately, while there’s much of great things above the floor, the ground itself looks rather boring. In the deeper part only rocky tiles are used, and Blade’s tileset offers some tiles without rocks as well. Also, some useless pipes could work well.

The background of the level is quite typical as for this tileset and looks really well as it is. I like using the same thing in layers 5 and 6 as it’s almost unnoticable while playing. The town in layer 7 does the job too. I only had a feeling that the textured background doesn’t fit the rest of that, but even if I’m right I guess it’s not your fault, but the tileset’s. Together with the playable part of level, well-used ambient lighting and good choice of music it creates a really great atmosphere, which lacks in so much of other JJ2 levels. This level is worth downloading even for the atmosphere itself, really.

Well, I don’t think you can win a contest with the atmosphere and placement only, though. Go and make it better in any way you want. And don’t listen to my hints, they suck.

*

Edit (due to the level edits #6 and #9001 – previous rating: 7.3):

After these edits, this is just another level, which is much better than the previous one. Lots of things changed. While the eyecandy could be yet more improven, it’s already much better now. I didn’t really expected that these pipes will look like this. They improve both, the outlook and the atmosphere, which now really rocks. This level is truly special in this aspect, and I still believe that even without any gameplay, this would be worth a download.

But the gameplay is better than before too. The Seeker ammo added at the top, as well as changing the spring color really made it pointful to go up there. Changing the underground also made it more visible and more often visited. Now players are finally running in the whole level, not only a little part of it.

So now, what I said should make this level perfect. Unluckily, it still isn’t. The fixes caused some new problems.

As I said, the Seekers were added at the top, making it a more useful place. They were added in a really wrong way, though. Their placement absolutely doesn’t fit the rest of the level. They’re not only on the way, so you can collect them “running like an idiot”, but they’re in really excessive amounts. Just going from left to right through the whole top a player is going to get 50 of them in no time.

The second thing is the fact that editing the underground didn’t really make it camp-proof. While it’s visible if someone’s camping there or not now, still there’s no chance a player will shoot a camper, and even if he wonderfully will, the camper can easily escape with a pipe, which will lead him almost exactly to the only carrot. The underground must be made better once more. And the Electroblaster is still lacking in use, what doesn’t take out any points, though. It’s rather a little hint from me for the previous point.

And, as I said before, the eyecandy can be yet better. It’s the hard part now, and making it “yet better” isn’t really funny anymore, but it can change the ratings a lot.

Oh, and a dog house disappeared with the 6th edit. It may look better, but the dog will be sad. I’m not telling you should make it back there. Just please don’t delete dog houses anymore, because they’re people too, anyway.

*

Edit (due to the level edits #9002 and #0 – previous rating: 8.6):

Everything changed once more. And again the changes are really seriously improving the level.

The first thing which is visible is of course the eyecandy. The first time when I saw the level before its 2nd edit it was repeatitive and boring, now it’s one of the best which can be done with this tileset. There’s a lot of varying stuff in and above the ground, the pipes are irregular and everything looks just damn great. It began to be a little confusing though, since impossible to get pickups, like gold coins, carrot or fire shield appeared there. Good that I was unable to shoot the fire shield or any of RF PUs which were stuck in the ground with Electroblaster or Bouncer. If it’d be possible it would suck. Also, the moving gold coins are a really cool idea.

Camping is absolutely impossible now and no tube leads to the carrot anymore.

Some more food was added. I don’t think it’s really possible to rush when playing a duel, but it looks quite well.

The RF spot still is there, making this level tricky in a good way.

It’s hard to say something more I didn’t say before. This level has just a great gameplay when playing, and a great climate when looking around and listening to the music, and so I feel forced to give it a 9+ rating. Good luck in the contest!

Thanks for the report on the stuck, and, how can this be a copy of Devres74.j2l? I titled as Oasis because of the tileset.

And you’re wrong about the red base has advantage, you just need to know the way.

Reply to Jgake:
Well I admit it, I make the eyecandy fimiliar to Devres74.j2l but still there are alot levels use the same eyecandy from the famous levels.

Please, stop saying shit like I copy from other levels, please? What’s next? Epitome?

I’ve decided to review every submit that is on the contest.

Eyecandy: 9
The eyecandy here goes quite well, there’s enough of it but still there’s not too much of it. The thing that made me take one point from my score is that the bases are flying in the air.

Pickups: 7
The thing that reduced most points is that one of the two full carrots is hidden behind some layer 3. This has massively deducted points.

Gameplay: 7
It is clearly easier to the red team to get to blue’s base. The level’s layout makes moving around quite hard (atleast I think so). Maybe this level works better as a 2v2, but I didn’t test that.

Summary: (9+7+7):3=7,6666666~7.7
Well, as this is slightly modified, I will remove “No download recommendation, and change the score to 7.7.
Edit: whoops, counted wrong
Edit2: Well, I quess I should now edit this.

Reply:
Well, it is titled as Oasis too, and the layers 7 and 6 are identical :P
Edit: Laro just renamed the level .

Nice. I would recommend it. GJ!

The tower of flow? Nah. More like the tower of hidden sucker tubes and springs. Really. There’s just too many of them. The level is way too open, and totally missing gameplay. There’s a easily creatable campspot if a player shoots the carrot down and camps it alongside the toaster pu. There should be more ammo. That ammo amount is a duel-sized, while the level itself should be hosted as something like with 10 players.
Then is the eyecandy. Ementaler used this tileset about as well it can be used, with his own style. Although it is a nice effect with the background blocks and the “light”, it is actually a bit annoying for newer players who think they’re jumping to a masked block and shortly afterwards find themselves at the bottom of the level.

Although I won’t give Download recommendation, I still will give a 7.5 for a nice try.

hi I made that conversion by the way. it’s not especially good, but it’s no more by Sal than Orbitus is by blur.

Well… for the first lvl i didn’t expect for a very very good lvl, but for the first lvl i’ve seen you done a good job.

Eyecandy:
Not bad at all, reminds me the classic EPIC Megagames’ castle lvls.
8/10

Gameplay and enemies
Playing the lvl was kinda fun, especially in the “big vine” near the end. Also, there was a lot of suprises using the hidden bats that atack you if you came too close to them.
The main problem with this lvl that is… too short. :(
(Narsist: the lizards could be good for any lvl, even for Beach lvls… what, reptiles can’t appear in castles? :D )
8/10

Pickups
Not bad, i noticed some hidden coins and pickups that i havn’t noticed on the first gameplay. It take me about 3 times to get all of the 20 coins… but the main problems: no food; the ammo with generators should not be appear in SP lvls. Carrots also placed well so I didn’t stay with 1 HP for a long time…
7.5/10

Music
Quite boring using the EPIC’s music, but it doesn’t matter for the first lvl.
6/10

Story
No story… but who cares? it’s your first lvl…
?/10

Overall: (8+8+7.5+6)/4 = 7.3(I added 0.2 more points but it’s doesn’t mater…)
D.R. : Yes, why not?

• Get some SP downloads from this site, play it and try to learn how they created them
• Download some new tileset, i suggest you use “Disguise’s tileset resource” (http://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets)
• Don’t make ur lvls so easy, but don’t make them too hard.

Good luck!

(Sorry if my english was too bad- I’m not a native english speaker :D)

Great gameplay,good eyecandy,nice ammo
placement and no words to do about this
nice level for ctf games and duels :P.
I’ll give an a DR for you.
GJ!

~StarLORD aka Starcraft

yay this new JCS.ini is good for new levels battle :D

The slopes are incredibly annoying – they disrupt the flow and are unnecessary. There’s some odd EC here, and it seems to have been slapped together pretty haphazardly. There’s a central-core design somewhat, but it’s too restrictive – there’s one route between the bases. To conclude, this has one of the worst carrot placements I have seen. C-

Nicely made level, I see an improvement in your level-making skill. I expect more levels from you in future.

OMG, I can’t believe that this awesome tileset can be done in MSPAINT…

Too much simple, gameplay based on one clear and boring path, not for my style. but i liked your idea- very fun lvl to waste your free time :)

Looks like a nice, fun level to play. You’re getting better ;)