Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I quite liked this episode but there were some annoying bugs.

EYECANDY

I know the tileset was made in MS Paint but I thought it looked pretty good. The backgrounds were not too bad either. I liked the way the player went through the dark areas, I thought that was pretty cool.

7.5 OUT OF 10

GAMEPLAY

The main objective of this episode was to find a hidden artifact in the Egypt Temple. The gameplay was pretty good, but it was annoying typing JJMORPH every 1 or 2 minutes. It would have been better to have a re-generating Morph pickup so that I could change to Jazz, Spaz or Lori. For example, if I come to a point where Spaz is needed for his Side Kick move, a re-genearating Morph would be best here. There were also some puzzles in each of the levels, some of them I couldn’t really understand but I did like the others, including that one where you had to take a note of the position of the Scarabs. I wrote it up in Notepad and I thought this was a nice puzzle.

7.5 OUT OF 10

ENEMIES/OBSTACLES

As I mentioned before, there are puzzles that have to be completed in order to proceed through the rest of each level. I found the custom Wolf enemies quite annoying as I thought they were moving too fast. I like the use of the spikes, very cool. I also liked the way the Ice Blocks melted when shot with the Flamethrower.

8 OUT OF 10

BUGS

There were some really annoying bugs in this episode. I’ll list them here:

1. The 2 Springs at 142,46 and 143,46 in Floor 3 of the first Pyramid didn’t bounce the player high enough.

2. The 2 Springs in the Platinum Sarcophagus (is that how you spell it?) at positions 61,23 & 62,23 on Floor 1 in the second Pyramid did not bounce the player high enough.

3. The second Rock puzzle in this episode did not work too well, I stacked all 6 Rocks on top of each other but when I used Spaz to kick down the blocks I couldn’t get through because the top Rock was too high for Spaz to go under the platform.

6 OUT OF 10

TOTAL

29 OUT OF 40 (7.25) Rounded to 7.2

DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION?

Yes

RANK: C = GREAT

Looking forward to Level 2! :D

Jazz-Les
Did you noticed your review was not only bad, but also rude. This is not a very good way of acting. Think more of what to say, watch other ( better ) revieuws for inspiration and don’t use such rude language. Reviews are for helping people.
I also allmost feel ashame for my country!

I just wanted to leave this comment as acknowledgement to Gus for the fine amount of work he put into this. Sure, the graphics may not be anything spectactular and the gameplay is mostly conventional. It seems heavily inspired by Tomb Rabbit however…

Just look at the amount of creativity and work shown by the author. There is even a developed style here. I would watch this guy for future relases, you don’t see many authors around here show this much passion for jcs.

Cool, orignal, fun,… but… a bit hard.

(Unsupported rating (8) removal. ~Violet)

Despite the first review i really liked the rhis episode. It was really fun.
The gameplay was very good. No boring stuff except some ordinary puzzles. There were very interesting ideas like the mirror, new food(!)…
The tileset was a huge mistake! You could use a much better tileset. This ms painty tileset destroyes all the excitement! The new bad guys were also bad. The animated tiles were not enough for it. They run and suddenly disappear. Except that, the levels were not bad. Good placement of goodies and baddies (except the wolfs and bears) There was a huge tilebug in the Cairo’s 8. layer backgorund. Except that, there’s no other, or i didn’t see.
The music choice is good, the standart egypt level musics.
Overall:
Gameplay- +1.8
Idea- +2.0
Tileset- +0.4
Music- +2.0
Bugs- +0.8
Rating- =7.0
I’m waiing for the second epsode! Hope it will be a better tileset!!:)

Please RATE THIS. You won’t regret it. and find the musics WRITTEN IN THE TEXT README. I hope thenext level will be a better level.

I will upgrade the tileset and make it more realistic.

Temple Terror serves to remind us (me) of an important detail… just because it’s JJ1, doesn’t mean the level is necessarily good or interesting. It’s very linear, has a lot of tile bugs, and offers no real challenge. Stonar is a relatively interesting set, but this level doesn’t take advantage of that and just has a bunch of different looking walls, none of which manage to look particularly good, and a bunch of big overly-open areas. JJ1’s resolution is too small to have such big areas. The most interesting the level design gets is a few pits with springs in them, a far cry from the various twists and turns of the original game. It feels kind of like the Holidaius secret level, except slower paced and much buggier. While the author is to be commended for understanding the basics of JJ1 level editing, with such features as secret passages, destructable walls and new items, the artistic talent unfortunately lags behind.
_{on the bright side, there are neither waterfalls nor psych mountains…}

EDIT: Sigh. Okay, I’ll try to redefend my points. Against yours, anyway.
First,stonar is a quite boring tileset: Opinion. I agree that it could be more exciting, but you could have got a lot more visual interest out of it… JJ1 certainly did.
I don’t understand what the heck you mean by ” A bunch of different looking walls”?!? Sure there is walls, what, should yoou just run straightforward without anything to stop you? now THAT’s what I call linear: Not at all. Sorry, this wasn’t clear. I meant to say that while the walls are different in visual appearance, their actual designs and shapes do not have much to do with the tiles composing them… there is no clear design reason why one sort of wall might triumph over another for a particular section.
Thirdly, I told you it’s a bug in the JCS’94 with those crazy background tiles, so I can’t fix it: You did say that, and I did not mention it in my review.
There was nothing wrong with my events or anything such.There’s no wrong with open areas either. good to have some space I think: Opinion, opinion, both of which I disagree with. Your events were uninteresting (though that derived from the level layout) and the open spaces were visually unappreciable, besides limiting design. I suggest spending more time looking at the designs of better-rated levels and see how they make use of space. More graphical variety can help a lot here too.

Is the best is cool!!!Is extra cool.

[Unsupported rating (10.0) clearance. Please provide support for your rating. For more information on writing a proper review, see the \Review Rules\. – Cooba]

Forest Chamber

Okay, lets see…this level was not one of the best levels I’ve played in. Although it seemd fun to play in the tileset I wasnt a big fan in.

Gameplay: Well, the gameplay was pretty even. Although it can get a bit comfusing in the beginning you get used to it real fast. The springs are placed well and evenly and they dont hit the ceiling or anything. May I make a note, At the seeks, jazz can get some of them but not all. Other than that its pretty good. Overall, it had a Good flow to it.
7.5/10

Eyecandy The level looks great. Layers used real well…And I like How you used layer 2. Layer 8…heh…YELLO. The level fits as of right now. Im not that strict on how the tileset fit but I might find some bugs later on. Overall It looks good..No bugs…Tiles fit well.
8/10

Weapon/Carrot placement Hm..well, I can tell you the carrot placement was excellent. One thing about the carrot placement..the +1 carrot’s(2) seemd a bit close the the bases, but thats somewhat okay. The full NRG carrot was placed in the middle as where it should be placed. Good job on that. On the other hand, the waepon placement wasnt as good. Well..the Pu’s where placed evenly and the seek Pu was placed in the middle which is good but the one weapon that threw me off was the Fastfire. Im not reallly a big fan of fastfire in CTF levels. They just seemd not right, there was also to many of them to close toghether.
7/10

Layout The layout is really the most important thing. The layout you choosed seems to be one of the most popular layouts. I even used this layout in one of my levels(not released). I’d like to ssee somethinga it more creative but it seems this layout is also one of my favorites so you got lucky.
8/10

Overall the Level was decent, it was not the best but it is good. This could be a level that you could say “WOW” and in other terms it would be “YUCK”. So it depends.

Score: +7.5/10+8/10+7/10+8/10=7.625=7.7

Edit Heh..He removed the fastfires. I’ve made another edit to my raiting. I’ve come to thought this doesnt rely diserver an 8. Sorry but i’ll have to take that +1 off. Sorry to ruin your perfect score…Look on the bright side, your improving;P

~HïTçH

This is a hoax? Prove it that this is a hoax then..

What else do u want? I have shown u everythinh I could, it is not my fault that they forgot to put some necessary stuff into this jj1 tileset:P

U guys made me cry because of this “not-believing” comments :’(

EDIT: In responce to VioletCLM: All your six “points” why Carrotus is impossible in JJ1 have no sense because you think, that JJ1 Carrouts was realised before JJ1 Game. Well you can’t be more wrong :P JJ1 Carrotus was finished in 96, after realising JJ1 game in 94 with all blocks and levels like Diamondus, after realising Jazz1CD version, Holiday hare and AFTER Holiday Hare 95! That mean that not Bloxinius and Candion are the last tileset which were realised for JJ1, the last set is CARROTUS. This started the idea for making a Carrotus in JJ2. JJ1 Carrotus existed in unofficial and unknown “junk-game” which was a bit different than all oficial JJ1 games. In this game there was only 1 (!!) level made out of Carrotus set and nothing more! After you choose option “new game” you start a level, you even don’t have any optins like easy, medium, hard or turbo mode. This game suppost to be unofficial and it isn’t evem known who really done it because there are no informations and this game looks pretty much different than all JJ1 games. After you finish the fisrt level (which is also the last one) automatucally appears a window with menu which is the same as in JJ1 (blue, floating background with yellow sign “JAZZ JACKRABBIT”). There are all options availible in this menu but when you choose any of them besides “NEW GAME”, the game just shuts down and I don’t know why.

I will consider sending the whole game (JJ1Carrotus, I don’t know how I can call it? Maybe JJ96 since it was realised in 96 and this is the only information about this game which I found) to those of you who really don’t believe me and who have some experience with JJ1 stuff like Violet.
Well, after someone will see this game and even play, he finally won’t say that this is a hoax or Carrotus didn’t exist in JJ1 or other stupid stuff… I just have to discuss showing this game to other people with “Super Secret and Anonymous JJ1-Carrotus Holder”. If I would show this game to anyone without his permission he would be really mad at me and I don’t want that beacuse he is the lucky JJ1Carrotus finder and keeper!

Before I opened this, I was expecting another pointless edit. BUT, it was far from pointless. I LIKE IT! I think this can be improved some more though, it could probably do with some extra scenery blocks. I’m talking about the blocks with the Keyhole, “?”, Weapons, and also the Blank ones. I like all the added features including the waterfalls, I know they are overused but I still like ‘em. I think the tiles on line 71 would be better on line 37 to go together with the Castle. I dunno if that can be done, but if not, then don’t worry about it. There are 6 different versions of the Carrotus set that can now be used. I do find Carrotus quite hard to use though because of the tiling and stuff. Now for the rating, I am going to give this an 8 because I like this set but it can be improved. There is now a new Diamondus version now available which looks great. I like the Diamonds and everything in this new version. I will now award an extra 0.2 points for the Diamondus version, making the rating an 8.2!

SUMMARY

GOOD POINTS

*New features including the waterfall.

*7 different versions including the new Diamondus one.

BAD POINTS

*Quite hard to use.

IMPROVEMENTS THAT COULD BE MADE

*Extra scenery blocks

*Move tiles on line 71 to line 37 to go together with the Castle.

RATING: 8.2

RANK: B = Very good

DOWNLOAD RECOMMENATION?

YEAH!

Thanks Violet, I’m sure zapS appreciate someone noticed the edit of the castle tiles.

Updated version with fixed stuff/filename and added Diamondus version avalible.

http://www.freewebs.com/mrolsen/CarrotusFixFix.rar

copy paste into adress field. or just click :P

“While the waterfalls look good in this set, they are becoming overused in tileset conversions, so they are becoming boring.”

The problem is, it’s you who made them overused and boring in your conversions, so downrating P4ul’s tileset for the mistakes you made is quite illogical :)

Jungle 2.0 is an improved version of Jungle, but it could still be better.
P4ul has given it a new layout, which was a very good move. (I couldn’t use Jungle very well until I downloaded this :P) However, the layout was made up by taking large areas of the tileset and moving them around. It would of been better if you made a layout of only 1 or 2 tiles at a time. I think the diagonals should of been closer to the top, and the textured BG should go at the bottom.
Some layout areas were very good, like the way he took all the wooden tree stuff and placed it all together to make it easier to use.

The addtions include Trees from the OEM Jungle (Yay :D), rain and lightning tiles, waterfalls,
bushes wierd white tiles at the top, a hook, and leaf tiles to be used as caves.
I like the trees from the OEM Jungle, but they should be a bit lighter. The Rain tile looks ok, but it could be better if it had a more rain drop like shape. The Lightning is not that good though, it needs to look more like lightning. The hook is a bit too small. I like the BG leaves but like the OEM trees they need to be a bit lighter. The grey/green destruct blocks are good, but maybe you should make blend with the rest of the set like in Diamondus Beta. Also, the arrow signs have been replaced with Inferno arrows. I personally think the old arrows look better in Jungle, but this won’t effect the rating.But the waterfalls and the bushes are just Blah. The bushes use less colours than they used to, which makes them look ugly. While the waterfalls look good in this set, they are becoming overused in tileset conversions, so they are becoming boring. Why not make your own waterfalls? If you aren’t bothered to make your own, either use them from a tileset other than Diamond Dust or edit them so they could be used on layer for by adding extra
connecting tiles.

Some of the old EC has been removed like the water reflection tiles but I can forgive you for that because size was an issue. Also the background foliage has been extended. I think you could of been more creative with the additions though, levels made with this won’t look much different to levels made with the standard Jungle. There are 3 palettes: The standard one plus 2 new ones. My favourite is the Evening version; the storm version is still a bit too dark for me. Also, the mask has been fixed.

While there is serveral stuff that could be improved on, it’s still a good conversion.

Download Reccomendation.

@Cooba: Lol…I know. :p I’m not going to use them in future tilesets. And you made a good point Cooba. His rating is now 8.2.

EDIT – I’ve decided it doesn’t deserve an 8.2 now. 90% of the aditions are ripped, and that example level really disguise the true quality of this set. (It makes the set look a lot better than it actually is, but this wont affect the rating.) Those background leaves that I thought were your’s were actually ripped from Omen Woods. Even if they were actually made by you, I still think you should make some new leaves not used before.
I don’t now why you people see this set as “an amazing conversion.” It’s still pretty decent though.

EDIT – Those OEM trees just look so cool, that I’m increasing the rating.
And please don’t complain Cooba, even I made all of these mistakes in my own conversions, it doesn’t mean I should rate this conversion any higher. 7.9 is my final rating, and I won’t change it.

If there was an award for the most overated upload of the front page,this would win.Honestly,8.7? Its worth a bit less than that.BTW,I’m not saying that this is a bad battle level,but I’m saying that it isn’t worth 8.7.

EYECANDY-This is a good point about the level. Well,if you don’t examine it properly. There are LOADS of problems about the eyecandy.At pos 34,39,there is an Inferno skeleton tunnel. You put it all on layer3,which makes it look unlike a tunnel. It also looks buggy. There are also small errors in layer4.They are dotted throughout the level. Other than those small errors,all is fine.7/10.

GAMEPLAY- This is not such a good point about the level. Mostly,the level consists of random platforms. Some of the diagonals are repeated on the slopes, which makes the slope look boring. There is one platform,where it is only diagonals put together to make a slope and underneath that,there is hardly anything. This is a great waste of space. At the top of the slope is a randomly placed power-up. You need to think a bit more about placement of power-ups,and really all the other random platforms.6/10.

AMMO PLACEMENT- This was an OK part of the level. There isn’t really much to say about the ammo placement,other than it was good and thought about.8/10.

BUGS- There were a few bugs in the level. At the start of the vines at the top of the level. I need to take off 0.1.

SCORE- Overall,this was an OK level. Not perfect,but OK. The score for MAGMA MINDSET is 6.9. I hope you will improve on your bad points.

DR- For now,N/A.

As far as I can tell, this is just a color change, and isn’t trying to be anything more complicated, so I’ll leave it unrated. It’s a nice color change… no real x-mas theme, just wintery, which I fully support. Most of the tileset looks great, but I think the carrots are too dark and the radish just looks weird. Aside from that it’s very nice to look at, though I’m not sure if anyone will actually use it.

I’m going to say it straightout… don’t bother downloading this. There’s no point. Carrotus Mountain fixes a few masks and adds two or three nice tiles, but everything it does, Carrotus Fix does better. Besides, Carrotus Mountain has a horrendous palette. Three of them. Carrotus Fix does not. Carrotus Mountain just throws in some ripped background stuff, leaves various stuff unfixed, and calls it a day. Please don’t download it.

(Waterfall: -.3 Psych Mountains: -.2)

Niiice. This is a really good edit, especially when compared to the horrible Carrotus Mountain. Not all that much is added – only twelve lines of tiles, not counting the waterfall (-.2) and Psych mountains (-.1, I think) – but almost everything that’s added is good and useful and obviously part of Carrotus. I don’t think the beehive is a good idea, but most is. For example, Carrotus Fix adds greater control over the edges of walls and caves (the cave part of which looks great… the walls could use some more work, though), extra vine stuff (from Psych, but it doesn’t clash), log bridges, and some increased cave compatibility. It also fixes the background castle and the giant carrot, improves a number of masks, allows you connect thin platforms to normal ground, and probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of. Included are six different palettes, including the original two (but not Easter), and somehow I manage to like them all. Quite an accomplishment.
If Carrotus Fix gets edited again, there are two main things to change: spend more time on the sloped and top tiles for the walls, as Carrotus uses more shading for its edges, and do something about those half-size tiles sprinkled through the set. The set can be improved, but it’s much better than most of what we’re getting these days.

Clearly there are two rather different reactions to this tileset, and I am sort of torn between them. Looking at in JCS alone, Beach+ is disappointing. You get through the new layout (which is definitely an improvement) and come to a bunch of tiles ripped from half the sets of JJ2 plus my Lagunicus conversion, with no real attempt made to connect them to Beach. Skeletons from Dam Nation and trees from Jungle are plopped verbatim into the set for use in background layers, depending on what sort of freaky level you are playing. It is a mishmosh. Not only that, but the tileset still suffers greatly from masking and art problems which remain unfixed by this conversion. Many of the floor tiles still do not line up well, the masking is sometimes iffy, and more time could have been spent on the layout for the wood stuff.
On the other hand, much like the “Mangroves” Jungle conversion, when put together the tileset somehow manages to look good. Beach has a new look in Beach+ which is not unpleasant, and while Beach+ does not really fix much, it does not break anything either. One could certainly just ignore the random new stuff and simply take advantage of the improved layout, even if the tiles themselves are not fixed. And one or two of the alternate palettes do/es look pretty.
I can’t give too high a rating to this, as it’s really a rather lazy piece of work and has so much to fix. But it doesn’t introduce any new problems.

(.1 point was subtracted for the waterfall. Each subsequent tileset I see using that waterfall is going to receive an additional -.1 point, so .2, .3, .4, etc.)

While I probably can’t absolutely disprove that this is a conversion, the presence of a JJ1 Carrotus in this form is so utterly disconnected from everything known about the JJ1 development that it is extremely unlikely. As can be seen from the screenshot (which is a hoax for reasons I hopefully do not have to explain), this is a quick edit of JJ1 Diamondus to have orange soil and a loose carrot theme. Besides that, many tiles are removed, such as the larger waterfalls and slopes without tall grass. The caves have been stripped of texture and are an illogical color, a large carrot has been added (indeed like the large palms in that it has questionable graphical quality), and a few extra tiles from NOKA like some poorly aligned blocks and some text stuff. Almost nothing is added to Diamondus and the end result is a low-functional, stripped-down hoax with no real merits unless you really want Diamondus with orange soil and no gems or walls. shrugs Even if this were a real conversion, its quality would be unacceptable.

EDIT in response to NOKA: First off, even if ‘they’ neglected to add some tiles (tiles that usually have gems in them), that in no way prevents you from adding them yourself. The fact that you didn’t is part of why I said this has unacceptable quality.
As for hoaxness… first, I find it unlikely that such a thing would exist, despite not being included in JJ1, and also unlikely that the Deserto lizard (supposedly drawn for JJCD) would have been around since the beginnings of JJ1.
Second, CliffyB has described making the first level of JJ1. Granted his exact words were that it “became” Diamondus, allowing for the possibility of it having been something else beforehand, but this was playable. It would have had wall tiles. And there are prototype screenshots of Diamondus in blue, though I’ll admit that doesn’t prove anything.
Third, nowhere else in JJ1 do the same graphics get reused, albeit recolored, unlike in games like Sonic and Mario. The closest JJ1 gets to this practice is the Exoticus-Lagunicus split.
Fourth, the claim that the original JJ1 Carrotus tileset was “almost” as small as Ceramicus is highly improbable. JJ1 sets came in a number of different sizes, of which Ceramicus numbered among the smallest, I think along with Letni, though I’m not sure offhand. Something “almost as small” would just have been the next highest standard size.
Fifth, why would the tile order be rearranged for this alleged Carrotus? Even prototype versions of Diamondus had essentially the same tile order, just with a few differences where tiles were added or removed.
Sixth, and perhaps most importantly, JJ1 has a function to put the color 0,0,0 behind all the transparent parts of a tile, for use by caves and mountains and things. That is not the color that this Carrotus employs for its mountains. It would not function as it is seen to in the posted screenshot.

EDIT #2: Umm, well, it is true that I can’t really disprove something if you say you don’t know who created it or why, and that it is a separate game and doesn’t follow any of JJ1’s rules. Especially as there exists very little in the way of records for development during 1996. :( But your story does sound highly unlikely, though I’m low on specific points to bring up.