Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I’m guessing the name of Dark Adventures is cribbing from the rather fun “Dark Forest Adventure” pack. Mostly because theres no adventure and its hardly ever dark! Whats the deal? as Seinfeld would inquire.

In fact continuing on with my one note all text Seinfeld impression, whats the deal with these levels? They’re short, bland, and pretty awful. Except for Mission Impossible which not only was out of place, but was semi-decent at the start making me think some thievery Limbo of the Lost style was at work here (it goes back to being awful halfway through so my fears were put to rest).

How awful are these levels. Lets take a quiz. You are playing a level where you hold right and shoot things, ocassionally having to hit a spring or stomp something.
Do you
A) Like it
B) Dislike it
If you chose B, you can be rest assure that the first two levels hold nothing for you (despite the second starting to show some deviation from this, its a lie). Also, do you like awful boss arenas? No? Well then the two boss fights (one is Uterus in a tiny cramped box like area, the other is Devan in an arena where he’s more likely to jump through walls than actually attack you) will do nothing for you either.

Level 3 offers a different variation in which you occasionally go left to shoot enemies and hold down the directional button. Awesome. For the record, Level 4 is just the Devan boss fight.

I cannot recommend downloading this, but to Esteban I say keep trying, the first part of Level 2 showed some promise.

thanks for the advice. this was mostly a test to see if the concept was good. When i made it i just used the first 10 minigames ideas i had, although i have about 25-30 to pick from for a final version. I will most likely do like 3 versions of the final product and get testers to pick out the best.

A minigame compilation pretty much lives or dies by its minigames. The concept of having to complete games to win a race is very cool, but many of the minigames here are pretty awful. Im not sure I completed mutation lab correctly (and it also felt quite slow), vault doesn’t seem to work right (and is impossible to return to the top to change the combination), the warp/spring one, the frog game, and moneybags are frustrating, dull, and far too time consuming, and the maze is kind of confusing (why are there two exits if only one works?).

Some people here will be like “focus on the eyecandy!” and I’m here to tell you “NO.” Do not listen to those people. They are bad. For two reasons: 1- This is an in progress proof of concept. 2- Even if they looked pretty, most of these games woukd still suck. I liked the signpost one although the final stage was a bit too complex (there was about 4 different ways those arrows could be interpreted) and I liked the water leveling one.

I think for a race-minigame hybrid to work, the minigames need to be challenging, but at the same time fast-paced. Adding some freeze events into the Signpost game would add some challenge and still keep the speed intact provided the player minded to avoid the hourglasses.

Axe everything but the signpost, water rise, and cat minigames (since those would work well, however at the same time all need some degree of fixing), and try coming up with some speedier concepts for minigames.

I have a seperate idea on how to change the minigame select mechanic although its not really necessary at this point and I doubt you’d want to hear me ramble about it anyways.

Yea-yea….VERY low QUALITY of this level…And why this level has DEATH-HOLES?

The level“s just too SIMPLE.

SHOULD YOU DOWNLOAD?-I dont tthink so…or NEVER.

I’m not sure but think 1.5 suits good.

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

Radio GaGa is a rather odd level in the sense that its not as different as the description would lead you to believe. It is however a rather solid first showing. Despite being rather linear and keeping the player confined, Radio GaGa is a fun and quick diversion. That and some original ideas sprinkled in earns Radio Ga Ga a download recommendation.

Is very cool, but this test is easy xD

[Quick review. ~cooba]

This is very cool battle. I now host on my server :D

Good things are:
-Excelent JJ1 animations
-Good pallette
-Nothing missed JJ1 stuffs.
-Moving platforms!
-Lot of JJ2 thibgs:vines,h nad v-poles,JJ2 blocks,3D background,very good.

Bad thing are:
-Not orginal JJ1 Industrius background and this is only that ;)

The final rating of this tileset is:
9.2

That is a low quality level, with almost no playing value.

Eyecandy-it doesn’t really have eyecandy, everything is too plain. I think you should spend more time on your levels, this one was probably done in 15 minutes. It looks unfinished.

Gameplay-it’s hard to play in a level that has dead-ends, to win you can just camp at the seeker area, the level’s just too simple. It has 2-3 warps, several PUs which are all easy to camp at.

Should you download-No, you’ll most likely just lose your time.

Overall-I think a 2 suits it well.

This is actually a pretty good pack, that does have some weaker points which fortunately don’t distract from the things that make it fun.

The story in a nutshell: Devan kidnaps Eva, you travel to Devan’s castle, meanwhile Devan conquers Carrotus Castle, you return there to save the day. There’s an interesting plot twist at the end I won’t reveal here, but all in all it was a nice variation on the generic “Devan attacks world you save it”.

The pack starts with an introduction level, using still frames from the JJ2 cutscenes to introduce the story. It’s a nice idea and works well enough, but sadly the pictures suffer from colour reduction and rather MSPaint-like fuzzy edges, so it doesn’t look all that great.

The other levels all use the same tileset, presumable made by Troglobite himself. While serving its purpose of creating a world of castles and gardens, the tileset is mediocre at best and doesn’t allow for much interesting eyecandy. Still, I’m reviewing the levels here, not the tilesets, so that’s not really relevant. A disadvantage of using this one set though is that the whole pack looks rather dark and plain, and that every level looks the same. Some variety would be an improvement here.

As for the gameplay, this is obviously influenced by EvilMike’s episodes, even copying one of the puzzles (the spike bolls in Devan’s Castle) almost tile-for-tile. Most elements however are either standard stock-puzzles (exploding trigger crates with TNT, for example) or self-invented. I was particularly surprised by the “timed shot” in the Saving the Day level, which I found really clever and fun. There are a couple more such puzzles and constructs that make the levels fun to play, though sometimes they can be a bit too hard. Luckily there are plenty of carrots and extra lives, so this balances out quite well.

The level design is usually fine, though I think it is a bit “platformy” at times. Lots of small platforms just floating in the air, without much sense of an overall structure. It would be a good idea to try to design the level as a whole, and to make it really look like a castle structure-wise, instead of bit by bit.

I don’t want to spoil too much, since a great deal of the fun factor in this pack is in the surprise of yet another fun gameplay element’s introduction.

All in all this is a fairly good pack, with mediocre eyecandy and average to great leveldesign, that will certainly be enjoyable to play through. Though the levels may get boring after a while, there’s enough fun stuff in here to warrant a download recommendation.

The program works nicely. It wasn’t entirely clear to me how exactly it was supposed to be used, but the big question mark button quickly guided me to the “How to use?” explanation, which explained it.

Essentially, though, this is a more difficult way of editing the files than with the old-fashioned notepad or any other text editor. For files such as these being able to move or delete large blocks of text at once, instead of line-for-line, is just more convenient, and notepad excels at just that. This would only really be useful if it did more than just text file editing; for example, importing IPs from JJ2+ logs or something.

As it is now, this is a useless tool that, though easy to use, is worse than the pre-existing tools. Therefore I can not recommend downloading this.

By the way, please make the window bigger by default, and allow me to make it full-screen. There’s no reason not to do so.

n00b,

the reason for the delay was that I had already used up my upload limit for june.
Use the TSF editor, if you don’t want to play them in order [surely you had the sets before this?!]. If I can figure out a way to make save-and-run work for jp, I will notify you and update the file.

EDIT-Well, I guess I’ll just do that then. I don’t know why I created a separate directory, maybe cause my homecookedlevels list takes 2 minutes to load because there’s so much on it, and I wanted to make it go quicker, but yeah. I will definitely update the concept I had.

EDIT-Faw, I am currently working on an updated version of the level. Better set, it should be a dramatic improvement. This level does need work. But I am very busy now that school is going, so don’t anybody get mad at a late arrival time for levels. I am also currently working on Turtemple, the up-and-coming release, helping OLOELO bigtime on his project, working on the new Fanolint, and trying to squeeze a battlepack in the spare time. So don’t get all huffy.

Considering that this tileset is pure garbage, you did a good job. It looks like it did in Jazz 1. I say give it a download if you want to see a decent level made out of a bad tileset. I’ll say N/A for now as I’m not sure what to think.

EDIT- In that case PT32, I’m expecting a good amount of updates in a short amount of time. Also, and this may sound crazy, but theres a menu in the jazz2.exe that most people tend to choose levels from. It’s more userfriendly to just let people select levels from the menu instead of making them open passworded levels in JCS (which doesn’t give players the benefit of difficulty or character choice)

After spending the 10-20 minutes it takes to download and properly install Jackpack, you’d think that I’d be able to play the levels released for the friggin’ Jack Pack. Its been two releases so far and this still is not the case.

Considering these levels are intended for Jackpack, its more than a little frustrating that its impossible to play these levels in Jackpack without dragging over the Homecooked Levels episode and modifying the first level in each release’s properties. This is made more frustrating by the slowness of releases, meager level selection in said releases and the random level choice in each release. Odds are that theres a 1:16 chance the next release will be something playable (I.E. Diamondus levels), add on a release date of about a month between releases and we’re looking the prospect of having to go over a year before levels in Jackpack are actually playable. For watered down versions of JJ1 levels, this honestly just doesn’t feel worth it.

Since these levels cannot work in Jackpack as intended, I feel that this pack cannot garner more than a 1.

If I wanted to play a JJ1 level, I’d go play JJ1 instead of downloading a “Jackpack”, spending an hour trying to figure out what the hell is it and what am I supposed to do with it, only to find out I have to look for the tileset myself in order to play a carbon copy of a JJ1 level. Most of people here have played JJ1 at some point or another, they’ve seen how do the enemies look like, and they’ve heard the Fanolint theme themselves, so tell me: what is the point of this?

Yes this is true. I tested this level and I didn’t find other way,how miss this bug!
Levels are very good(in Poland we say:“Zajebiste” ;D)

I given PT32 8.2 earlier when I tested this,but for wav. format of music I’ll give him 8.5.

I could give him the higher rate but some animations are to slow. In JJ1 they animations were faster.

And one thing yet,which I said earlier about passowrds. Without passowrd other users will see,how hard you worked on this level.

I’ll rate U 4.7
Only for fun.

Lol this is a cute tileset.

Tiles
There is no animations but I won’t rate that down. there’s spikes, hook and vine, background that can go textured,basic slope and a basic block. This is so tiny, yet everything tiles good and it looks correct. You can actually make something out of this.
7/10
Masking
100% perfect. But still I won’t because of how small it is.
pallet events
Almost all of them work thanks to the few colors that are in the tileset. Great job there
8/10

Final Score: 15/20
Score: 8.5
Rank: A
DR? I know my rating may seem silly. But this is a great tileset considering it’s size and it’s basically the novelty that keeps it up. download just for the lols right now.

This is a copy and paste of the my last review for your download.

If this is you’re first time making levels let me say good job! This is above average by far. I also played this in medium.

Eyecandey:
Great. You used a background similar to the official levels so it has tilebugs in them. But other then that no tilebugs! Everything fits together. The background looks good and you even used the foreground. (Which looks very good)The bricks look good and I like the tileset usage. The eyecandey can look repetitive in some areas but considering you don’t have much to chose in castle, it looks good. I liked it, good tileset usage, low tilebugs. Great eyecandey. I’d give it a higher rating if you used windows in the floor. (The bar ones)
7/10

Gameplay:
I don’t know why but I got hooked. I had fun with the level. I have no clue why but I got hooked. There were some nice puzzles but they were to easy to solve. Enough enemies to make me die, and interesting concepts like invisible poles. (I like the idea as it looks good.)I’d give the gameplay a 8 if there wasn’t for one thing. The warp. If you haven’t collected 100 coins by the time you get to the warp your have to restart the entire level and with the re-generating enemies,, the lack of carrots becuase you used 70% of them alreaty and because it takes another 4 minutes to reach the warp again makes it very annoying. You should have placed it closer. The level is about 7-8 minutes long. So I’ll give you an 8 for puzzle usage, the fact I got hooked and because I love the text strings.
7/10

Enemy placement:
Great. Enough to kill me even with all the carrots. Half of them re-generate with can get annoying but it adds a challenge if you don’t get all the coins. A wide variety was used and they all fit in. (Except the bees) So I’ll give you a 8 just because there are to many re-generating enemies which can get annoying.
8/10
pickup placement:
Good. The coins were well hidden, good ammo placement, extra lives were to easy to get. Also there is this one area that has 3 power ups and you have to go though there. Don’t do that! There’s also way to much food. I got 2 sugar rushes! Nice us bombs though. Considering all the enemies I think the carrot placement was great.
7/10

*Final Score:28/40 *
Total:7.7
Rank: b good
D/R? Yes. The gameplay is just fun and addicting. even if this pack is short lived while it does, it’s fun! Download this one right away

On my computer it doesn’t run too…
Every time the same error.
But I think it’s because of windows vista which propably is too new.