Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I am going to hurry up and give you a helpful review before everybody jumps on the bandwagon and criticizes you for this. Which I’m afraid, they will.

First off, I’m giving you one point because this is your first level (As you said), and I usually give first levels a +1 point. But there are some serious flaws. Your level construction is almost okay, but I could find nothing preventing me from simply finding a high spot and helicoptring to the end. That’s poor design there. There’s no eyecandy. No music. Not even a name! There were some events, but these were very poorly placed. The tileset was also very underrused. The level, overall, looked massively unfinished.

I can help with some of this. First of all, fill in all the gaps. Unlike in some games, the edge of the JJ2 maps is not a death pit, you will simply float there and frustrate yourself in playing. Fill in the holes.

Next, deal with eventage. Most if not all the enemies are in small holes guarding events. What ones aren’t (and these are predominately aerial baddies) are strewn either randomnly or in clumps. Take a cue from EvilMike’s singleplayer beauties. Or some of Agama’s wondrous levels. There’s lots of good examples out there, and you will learn a lot from ‘em. Food and misc. is also clumped, somewhat few and a wee bit far between. Some ubercheap powerups [a.k.a. PU’s] like the seekers are placed right in plain sight, not providing much of a challenge to obtain. There’s plenty you can do to fix it.

Add a good song. Music is literally a little less than half the importance of any good pack. If you use a circus song on a spooky level, that won’t work. If you use a sad song on say, Discoland, that doesn’t do it either. And let’s not even go into disco music’s do’s and don’ts. I would recommend some kinda fast medieval songs for your level, or even just the plain Medivo song (Which if you have JJ2, just go to level properties and type “Medivo”. A tip: Any non-j2b format song will require you to add a file extension on the end. Some good ext’s include MOD, XM, S3M, IT, or even MP3 and WAV, what with the new JJ2+ progs)

A level name is good too, but I won’t launch into a long spiel about what to name it. You should be able to come up with something.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, add some good eyecandy eyecandy period, to your level! Ask anyone on J2O. You won’t find a single person who won’t say you need good eyecandy to make a good level. Do you know that there are 3 foreground layers and 4 background layers in the JCS? There are, so use them! Put a gargoyle in here and there. A column of rock in the foreground (though be careful how you place baddies around these). A flag rippling in the breeze. The unmasked rock bg. There’s any number of good and perfectly fine things to be done with eyecandy, so make sure you do at least some of them. And layer 8? If you look in the editor, you should see that there’s a background image for the level that’s 8×8 tiles. If you click “textured bg” in the layer 8 properties, you can make your bg twice as good. And certainly better than the one you have now.

I don’t think I need mention buggage. Always, always, ALWAYS go over and check your levelsfor bugs. I can’t stress that enough, as so many people (myself included) have fallen hard for not making sure they had a clean level. Make sure the masks are all good. That you can’t get stuck in any spots. That events and enemies aren’t placed so’s that they’ll kill you as soon as you get there. Check, check, and check again. Okay, I DID kinda mention it, but it is that important.

Finally, gameplay. Your level, I’m sad to say, didn’t have a whole lotta it. It was mostly back-and-forth-go-down-and-end. Add some warps to spice it up. Use trigger scenery (That’s a whole nother discussion—read the wiki entry here or ask one of the older sages of J2O to learn more.). Add some variety in the level, but don’t make it too long or too short. Eventually, you’ll find the right balance. Get some friends to test stuff out for you, to make sure you won’t make a colossal flop out of your dream project.

So, what can I say? This turned out quite a bit longer than I had intended, but I think that’s good. You’ll hopefully learn something from this, or I haven’t done my job. I’m so glad you put your stuff up here, but make sure it’s only your best efforts you add. Many many site members take a dim view to half-baked stuff, so do your best and don’t just churn levels out like a conveyor belt. You’ll get it eventually. I know you will.
2.0, but no dl rec. You just need a little more time. Hang in there, you’ll get your chance soon enough!

Keep Jazzing!
PT32

EDIT: I have this nagging feeling that I wrote this review kinda treating you like a newbie. My profuse apologies if you saw it that way too. :(

Note to Minmay: I heartily agree.

Sounds like a christmas remix. If someone ever made a Crysilis Xmas version, this would be the perfect soundtrack.

Doesn’t sound bad at all, but then again, it’s hard to go wrong with Crysilis’ instantly recognizable theme melody. The drums sound kind of lo-fi, apart from that it’s a pretty decent song.

Nice

WTF NO FILE?

Soul:
1. RF thing is too big. Its not hard, its just stupid. You need more luck than skills to win it.
2. For me not only BG is annoying. This edited set looks bad. Ah, and big pink bg is annoying, for me it just look really bad. On some levels you can get epilepsy.

And what can I say about level? Well, eyecandy is bad(it doesn’t really exist) and all of the set is annoying. At one of the levels I get stuck in wall. Anyway, at that level i dont have got any idea how to win it, maybe event dissapeared or something, but it’s a bug. At next level i cant see morphs, one more bug. Ah, and without this test i could never imagine that 5+4=9… Really big thanks for math in level, but could you tell me, why did you put that into level? That’s stupid.

Its bad level in my opinion, maybe it could be better, but its not. You didn’t show anything special here(except math), eyecandy is bad, gameplay is bad… Some of events dissapeared. So i give you 1, not recommended to download it.

Edit:Only one thing which i found that is fixed was that dissapearing airboard. Anyway, for me this level is still not good enough to give it more than 1.

Why can’t people stop with biased ratings? Riper,Skele’s brother gives a 8.7 and Kimo who does not like Archer gives 4.0. Stop it people.

Kimo: I don’t take sides in this one. It’s still a biased rating.

Nice level, but a little small.
(Rating (5.5) clearance. Upload is a tileset, not a level. ~Violet)

It’s hard, but it’s still a test.

Yeah, only 10 bricks to use,but even if you can, build a four
brick tileset and an example level.

It’s so stupid.
I will not download it.

Hahah sorry i was drunk :D

I’ll try to traduce it in Romanian, as how another user did. Nice job, you made everything so easy.

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

hmm. First off, Nice and White/Kinda Techno are the same one. Second, they are pretty cool pictures, though I shudder at how anybody could fit them into a set without wrecking the colors. They seem to have the same beige/gray/electric blue/white color scheme. Well actually, a couple were different. But still, they are definitely interesting to look at, and while I don’t know how they would work in a set, you could dl it for the heckuvit.

ok so…BG SUX.ANNOYING,WERID,NON-SENCE 1.0

Eyecandy non-sence and almost no eyecandy D: (1.2)

Game play not original and not fun.(1.0)

ok i wont give more pain so finall score! 1.0!

Dont download.
And soul spend more time with ya’r lvls :P.

This is a fairly interesting battle level.

Eyecandy: 7/10
The eyecandy is relatively good, but doesn’t really stand out to me. As with most levels using this tileset, it’s fairly bright and clean looking. There’s some nice layering with the background throughout the level, and I like the part just above the “sparkly pumpkin,” with a waterfall that appears to fall between two layers of background. I don’t really like the layer 2 rain much, because it seems to move too fast and if anything gives the impression of a powerful storm with wild winds, which don’t really fit with the blue sky and rest of the background. Events like moths and food, (although the food at least can also effect gameplay to some extent) give the level a pleasant, natural look.

Gameplay: 6/10
The gameplay of this level has some interesting ideas, and could lead to fun games, but doesn’t really feel polished all the way. The most unique part of the level I noticed was two coin warps. One requires 20 coins, the other requires 50. The 20 coin warp can send a player to either a bouncy or pepper-spray power-up, while the 50 coin warp can send the player to either an empty room or a room with a shield and a blaster power-up. The empty room is three times more likely than the room with the power-up and shield. (I know for single player warps with multiple targets aren’t actually random, but I forget if this is true for multiplayer games. If it is, then a smart player can always get their money’s worth for the 50 coins if they use the 20 coin warp the right number of times in before using the 50.) I feel this is a bit unbalanced. A shield is nice, and the blaster could be useful because of the relatively sparse ammo on the level, but without any fast-fires on the level, a bouncy power-up is far superior in the long run, if one can collect ammo fast enough. Which actually could be rather difficult, because every generator on this level seems to have a delay of 30 seconds, and there isn’t a particularly large amount of ammo on the level to begin with. If there are many players, collecting 50 coins would be nearly impossible, and getting the reward doesn’t seem worth the effort, especially if one ends up getting dumped into an empty room 75% of the time. Ammo is also difficult to collect enough of. This is especially true because there is only one power-up that does real damage and requires ammo. I believe there are six +3 bouncy ammo events to collect, each with a respawn time of 30. Of course, limiting people’s ability to use power-ups may also work ok, because there is only one +1 carrot that players are supposed to be able to get. It is possible to get a full NRG with a somewhat tricky rf jump (No, i did not use any cheat codes to get up there). The bouncy power-up and pepper-spray can also be got by some possibly unintentional means. The pepper-spray can be shot through the walls of its room by running into the wall and shooting some bouncies just before colliding. The bouncy power-up requires either the warp or a rather difficult rf jump that would be even more difficult during an actual battle, so this probably doesn’t have to be worried about.

6+7=13/20=6.5/10
Overall, this level is fairly good, but because it’s rather difficult to collect ammo, I don’t find the gameplay as great as it could be, and don’t believe the level really stands out much.

Good good good, It’s very good.

It is the best!

That’s good, but there are better Candion tileset than it.
(Sorry my english, I’m Turkish)

All of it SHOULD be fixed.

First of all,the levels dont have sign where and what to use.
Second,the test is way to easy.
Third The backgroud is weird,lame,confusing,annoying.
Fourth i give it a 2.
Good job! I dont give download reccomend!!
Oh and the math thing it’s lame…What’s it for anyway?to study while playing test?D:…And The RF thing is too big.(Edited to 1.5)

GG.