Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Phew. A battle level? Looks like a bad single player level. (no offense meant)

Sorry, being offline for such a long time, I forgot my review rules. So, here we go anyway:

Layers:
I didn’t really make it through the level to see it. It’s really difficult to navigate. And that’s supposed to be battle? Battle levels have to be fast.
The backgrounds are bad, except for layer 8, which is textured. And the whole level is made of stomp-blocks, which makes it very difficult to run on those blocks because there are no slopes. I might be wrong, but this is what I see.

Weapons:
There are: Pepper Spray, Launchers (bouncers in JJ2-speak) and TNT. I didn’t see any other weapons. There are powerups for: Seekers (no ammo, just the powerup), and a Blaster powerup. Nothing more, I think. And the ammo is placed very oddly. When used with the stomp blocks, everything is horrible.

Pickups:
Ammo, nothing else. You don’t really expect anything else in a battle level. There are some coins, perhaps for some bonus warp, but I saw no carrots.

Eyecandy:
Very bad. As I said, the entire level is made out of stomp blocks, and there are so many that they block the background, which is practically the best thing in the level to see.

Gameplay:
No slopes, oddly placed ammo, some coins (not a bad idea, but where’s the warp?), warps (which is really annoying in a battle level) and no carrots. I’m afraid this level has bad gameplay as well as eyecandy.

Other:
The tileset is Carrotus, an Epic tileset (I prefer Epic tilesets over user-made ones, but I don’t have the time to explain). I didn’t hear the music, because my speakers don’t work. But the level itself isn’t really Carrotusy, because there are only stomp blocks, and nothing Carrotus-native (nothing that Carrotus has) like the grass and stuff. The name of the level is really un-creative, it shares the name with the tileset. Very bad.

Final Rating: If I could give one, then 2.5.
Download recommendation: The same as with the rating, if I could rate that, then it would be NO.
Final Comments: As long the author isn’t one of those who just register, upload something, then never come back again, then the author shouldn’t upload everything and try out new things, learn from other levels (I created a few good battle levels, try searching, that’s why we have the search engine for) and stuff like that. There are plenty of good articles on J2O about level making. You can also ask on the forum, there are many resources to help you out.

Wow, I have written quite a long review.

_~RedJazz SLO
(redjazz_slo@yahoo.com)_

Really nice program. It’s very easy to use.
Now I can make J2E easily. Thanks zapS!

I must agree with FS. These levels are way too small and easy and gameplay is just too boring and annoying. There are really poor foreground concept in level 4. I didn’t like it. Well the eyecandy is ok in some levels like in level 2 but it could be better and more improved. I must say that story is interesting: ‘‘Jazz descends into te abyss for one final romp before he dies’‘ Sounds cool. Concept is also good and theme is nice.

After all nice story but poor gameplay. I’m disappointed but you can do a lot more better levels right?

Download recommendation: No
Rating: 5.2

-TripleJ

I think this is a test. It’s (bad) don’t upload tests like this. It’s a wast of bandwith.

[Negativity edit. Also, as a site worker let me tell you that a 1.5KB file is not possibly wasting any bandwidth at all. ~cooba]

its a very good program…
but when i want standard CTF colors i just use carrotade thats :

1.better
2.more stuff
3.it does the same options (+stuff :p)

it is a good idea but your to late =

Carrotade is Rocking at the moment :/

this hotel isnt good :/
its stupid that when u go up u get a sunlight … its to strong all contrast settings are stupid then…. change it and work on the eyecandy

This is not a good level. The eyecandy is very poor. Only the “!” blocks have been used for a Layer 8 Background which looks messy.
If this is supposed to be a test level then there needs to be more than 3 tests as that’s all there was. The whole thing was just too short (about 1 minute).

I just felt bored, so I decided to review something, and I chose this, because it is heavily overrated imo.

The layout here is a real mess. It’s a bunch of random platforms and passageways that don’t really connect together well, and seemed to be placed without any proper thought. The level is mostly fairly cramped, and is very Spaz-biased. The flow is rather lacking, and there are dead ends too. In general, the gameplay is too chaoti and confusing and thus needs a lot of improvement.

The placement here is questionable, as there are no seekers, which would be the most useful here, and the 100-coin contains both of the PU’s, and has the only carrot – which is a Full Energy. It would take a long time to gather 100 coins; and you’re likely to get killed before you can get even close. The ammo flocks are also very large, which isn’t always a good thing. Also, this uses Gun Crates, which can cause lag in a server.

The eyecandy here, is very repetitive
and mostly looks very un-realistic and chaotic. It was considered really good back in 2000, but nowadays it’s fairly average. At least there aren’t very many tilebugs.

Overall, this was thought of as a great level 7 years ago, but now in 2007 it’s just another generic, average battle level with many questionable problems. As we all now know, Evilmike is an awesome level maker – one of the best imo, so this doesn’t really mean anything.

Did you liked it?

Wow. This is a pretty good CTF level. First thing I’d like to say is that there is lots of space, and the bases are far enough apart. Didn’t really like the inclusion of seekers, but I don’t think it damaged it too much. Excellent eyecandy, which made the level look very lush and similar to a greenhouse. Only odd thing were the floating things in the background. I’d say about… 8/10. Really good, definitely worth a download.

This program should be legend

This is strange, because before this program, thousands of players were serching program to create j2e like this one. But nobody from “elite” wanted to give the others; what’s more, now anybody would be able to use this fantastic program.

Program is very easy to use – it works also in TSF, so this is another benefit.
Also it’s very simply to use. I create first episod file after 5 minuts after downloading.

Now, we can create beautiful and great episodes, and we can also delete our old levels. Time for this program is now. This is brilant for JSC fans.
I hope, this simply c++ program gives us new motivations for creating realy good episodes…

Last formal thing, is 10.0. I think, ZapS, that I will be waiting for your other progams, because this one *was working*(this is rare), was simply and make me happy. I didn’t see any disatventages. In the other hand, readme file would be more “step by step” then “write something like this…” etc.

I know, that somebody else create this kind of program years ago, but You was first, who publicate this golden tool. Bless You!

Avesome program!
Thanks a lot!
Now I’ll be able to make a j2e for my heroes episode!
Thanks again, you rock!

Uh, guys, read the readme?

Anyway, the title image is the image that usually display the name of the episode. The lowtitle image is the same image usually with a darker color, which appears when it’s not selected.

And yes, the .dll files just go in the same folder you put the J2E Creator in. It doesn’t really matter where the J2E Creator is, but the .dll files are supposed to be in the same folder.

If you need any more help, just ask.

It would also help if there was information about what the title and lowtitle images are.
I tried making a J2E and it came out awful.

Janus: I think the DLL files just go in the JJ2 folder..

Thanks, Olsen! :D

It would be helpful if you provided information on WHERE to put the .dll files. Does this program manage the episode files so they won’t overcrowd the menu, or is this simply used to create the files? If so, I think there is another editor out there (somewhere).

I’m still not crashing after typing anything while using Carrotade, so for the moment I can’t make any fixes. And the last access violation mentioned in this thread isn’t of any immediate help. So it would really help me if anyone with the problem (such as Pisarz, masterrokusho, and Critz) would give me a lot more details of what happened before the crash, including what programs other than JJ2 and Carrotade were running, what operating system you are using, what version of JJ2 you are using, when you loaded Carrotade (such as on the menu screen or after the server started), and if the crash ALWAYS happens right after you type something.

I suggest making your reply in the JCF thread I just mentioned instead of here to ensure I read it as soon as possible, and it’ll make it easier for me to give a response.

Previous comments:

Thanks for the comments. I updated the description so that it can be a little more useful (I have a bad tendency to be vague with certain things). I would guess that if you put the dll and exe in your JJ2 folder and you have 1.23 or TSF and it still doesn’t work, it’s because your JJ2 is using some patch (like the “1.25” patch UNKNOWNFILE made) which is interfering with Carrotade. At the moment I have no plans to support older patches, but support for the patch Grytolle is working on is a different story. If Carrotade doesn’t work for some other reason, PM me here or on MSN and I’ll see what I can do.

The rest of what I have to say addresses Overlord’s comments:

1. Yeah, Neobeo did some of the best work this game has ever seen, to say the least.
2. If what you said is true that PC 4.1 shouldn’t interfere with Carrotade, then I find that particularly good news (I admit I still use PC 4.0 for certain functions).
3. I should probably change this behavior but I’m not in any particular rush. UPDATE: Apparently NeoAC has the same issue, so it’s probably not caused by something I added later on in development. I have an idea for how to fix it, but it seems all that is needed for the program to work (to some degree) is the dll in the same directory as a JJ2 exe.
4. Same issue as above. I originally made it work this way as an easy fix (curse my poor programming habits).
5. What level was that in? If you made the level, have you seen the Pit Level example yet? It has a few guidelines within text signs not mentioned in the readme. I would highly advise making levels where the lowest platform next to a pit is at least 8 tiles high. Sucker tubes can help. I’m still working on the functionality though.
6. Right now it’s just based off the names gip scripts use for joining servers. I would probably have to rewrite a few things to get your method to work (which would mean ditching the overcomplicated system I used where I modified existing hooks), so I’m not too eager to make the change. If I run into a lot of problems with the method I’m currently using, I’ll definitely have to try your method.
7. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I came up with that name, but I thought it had a nice ring to it.
8. That might be out of my scope at the moment, but I’ll see what I can do.

Edit: Hitch, you managed to read Overlord’s comments, but what about mine? I specifically mentioned the issue of pits in this post, and in addition to that, I specifically addressed the issue in the readme AND in a text string in the Pit Level example. As with the other “bug” (also mentioned in my comments), it’ll be fixed soon. But anyway, thanks for the review, I appreciate it.

Uh Jonathon these levels are ok and all but I would have continued to work on them before you uploaded them to j2o.

I have only lots of problems with this version of Carrotade. When i want to chat i have an Access Violation or Illegal Opcode error and i must reboot my computer.

Summary: Carrotade it is great program but this version haves lots of bugs. I dont recommend it!

The 1.2 version has a irritating bug.
Sometimes, my jj2 shuts off and i get the message that jj2 wanted to execute an ilegal code or something.

Shade wanted me to review this through exchange and it took me a while to get to it, and I’m still the first reviewer? ;o

This is a simple concept of exploring and falling deeper into a chasm…as does the level design quality.

Just kidding!

It’s actually not that bad and the design of Dark Passage looked promising, however as with all theese levels they are just too short and easy. A good concept and story but pooly executed, I’m sorry.

The bosses were obviously set up in ways the author intended to make difficult but no apparent thought into doing it creatively, not to mention the difficulty of the boss fights and the usual gameplay are so distant. The second layer (abyss4) had an incredibly annoying foreground concept that just wasn’t fun and I thought to myself “why do I have to play through this if I am not enjoying myself?” and just left.

I really like the theme but the gameplay wasn’t fun and the creativity ended at the overall concept. Don’t feel discouraged though, I am looking forward to the implied sequel and I hope my review didn’t kill the chance of it, but you better put a lot more effort into it, this was just a disappointment.

You probably already know this but if you notice other packs like EvilMike’s ‘The Rebirth of Evil’ you’ll notice how sp levels are supposed to be made and you should take that as an example.

-fs