Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

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.

Hehe. Nice discovery. I like this tileset, I’m using this to make an SP level right now.

EDIT: It’s a hoax. I’ll cancel that level I was making with this set. Besides, it’s missing a lot of the tiles from JJ1 Diamondus.

EDIT 2: I decided to carry on making the level after all. I know it’s missing some of the tiles but I thought I’d make a level to see what it would look like.

EYECANDY

The backgrounds look OK but they are not the best I have ever seen. It’s good that you used your own tileset to make this but I wasn’t really that impressed with the eyecandy. Some of the tiles looked a bit grainy to me.

6 OUT OF 10

GAMEPLAY

The main objective in this episode is to rescue at least 50 Rabbits from Cramp Farms. Sorta like Abe’s Oddysee on the PS1 where you rescue slaves. There is 3 TNT right next to 3 of the Rabbits you rescue which is used in the end level. If you fail to rescue enough Rabbits then the episode is over and you end up in a room saying that you didn’t rescue enough rabbits.
It did get a bit repetitive in this episode though, some of the levels were EXACTLY the same and this did get a bit boring. I thought that there wasn’t enough Save Points in some of the levels. I spent about 10 minutes in LV 2 and then died and I was right back at the beginning.

6 OUT OF 10

PICKUPS

There are some Gems and food. There are also some Carrots to be found but there wasn’t really that many to be found. TNT could also be picked up for use in the end level as I mentioned in Gameplay. The items were placed OK but I didn’t think there were enough Carrots to find, I was at 1 Heart health most of the time.

5 OUT OF 10

ENEMIES/OBSTACLES

I liked the idea of the custom-made enemies (the robots and spiders), it adds more originality than just using the standard enemies. There were some obstacles that you had to get through by finding a lever/switch. No trigger crates. However, there wasn’t really that many to get me stuck.

7 OUT OF 10

TOTAL = 24/40 (6.0)

RANK: D = OK

DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION

Maybe.

Not only Lori Croft is bpring, I think youre boring too, although thats what I see in your levels, they are all the same (almost), and that tileset you made; why do almost all your tilesets look the same, huhm???

Well, there are quite some good ideas and puzzles, like those mirrors and that scarab grid thingie and a little more, but thats it then….

All those love scenes……
But thats not the only thing, your level making style is always the same too, always those zigzag things full with enemies…….now THAT is boring!!!!!

The musics were one of the good points though, but thats not gonna help you, hear???????

I dont make a worthy review cuz Im not in the hood for it, but if I would rate it Ill gave it a….eehhhhh………i think some kind of eehhh….a 4.8 maybe….
Its not that bad but its far from good, oh what do I say, its as far from good as the heaven to the hell, no, eh its far…………………………….
sorry im gone idiotic, well I HOPE you will make GOOD or DECENT or GREAT levels in future, and Im not even interested in the next levels, and that odyssey thing you released with this one…….

[Mild flame tag clearance. ~Cooba]

Good job (and game) Birdie!

This a very nice level given that it’s made with a set mixing d*mn and beach.

The gameplay of the level is excellent, the layout is original, the music fits the level, the eyecandy is decent.

Very nice level.

I give the eyecandy of the level about a 8.5, because it’s decently made, though tilebuggy here and there (the tileset is to blame) and it’s been spread all over the level, there are no completely eyecandyless areas.

Gameplay is a 8.8, ‘cause the placement is thoughtful, the flow is good and there are only a few places where you need to jump.

I give the layout 8.2, since there’s some originality (as forementioned) here and there, for example the red base is somewhat original.
Though quite simple, the level is fun to play.

Placement: 8.5, the red base is original, which affects the rating.
Ammo is easy to collect and exists in necessary locations.
The power-up system (rf and bounce) isn’t badly designed either.

Music is very good. I give it a 9, since it fits the level.

Finally, the tileset isn’t easy to make decent levels with. Therefore “tileset used” is a 9.

Overall: I give the level a 8.7

Definate download recommendation.

How does this get rated higher then virtually every tileset (read: TILESET, meaning something actually DRAWN by the author instead of ripped tiles/palette changes) when the author hardly drew anything at all here?

Anyways, the tiles have been reorganized here quite a bit. I never really had too much of a problem with the original layout of damn, but a lot of things (such as slopes) are grouped together for convenience. Others, like the dead tree thing and the bridge are scrambled up and were easier to use in the original :/. There’s also a lot of free tiles left in various places, which could’ve been filled in with something. You also removed some tiles (a version of the sideways spikes), which you shouldn’t be doing when you’re making improved versions of tilesets unless you’re low on room or something, which you’re not.

A noticable amount of tiles were added (such as a warpable backround, gargoyles, and the inferno bg tree), however pretty much all of them were ripped from one place or another (some from even non-custom sets like the cave tiles p4ul made for inferno2.0). Useful tiles such as a larger variety of destructable blocks, upside down poles, hooks and rain were also copied in from one place or another.

Masking in the set was also improved, which is nice. Vines are now usable in damn and a few things are smoother. I don’t know why you kept the backround (both the original and the warpable) completely masked though, but whatever.

There’s quite a bit of palette versions here. They look good for the most part, but the Dark edit might be a bit too dark and the forest version hurts my eyes a bit (why do you need a forest version for damn nation…?). The hot version looks awesome, though.

Overall, this is an improvement on the original. However, a 9.5? The author hardly drew anything in this set, just copied and moved around some tiles, and this is rated around the same as things like Swamps and Egypt? I do like this, and I am planning on eventually using it, but I do think it’s horribly overrated.

Nevertheless, it’s still a good edit, and I’ve seen some nice levels with it already. Download reccomended.

~Blacky

i knew this ages ago maybe we know the same guy.

AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Is slavering out of his mouth *
*Is punching himself on his ass *
*Is headbutting the wall *
*Is rolling his eyeballs out of their socket *
*Is typing crazy things *

meh no good levels……
yeh nice music……….

Unfortunately I have to agree with P4ul here, your conversions are almost 100% ripped from all tilesets all over the J2O. Converting isn’t just pasting some stuff from one set, then from the other and so on, like you do, especially when added stuff don’t really fit to the set you are converting.

I don’t like the fact that you don’t even mention whose work is in your conversions. Those people probably were working hard to make something usable, like Violet CLM who made poles, hook and who placed a coral from jj1 to his conversion of Lagunicus, P4ul who made inferno-caves by himself (this is kind of conversion of tiles which means that you are actually modifing existing tiles, but to do this you have to spend some time working on it too). I believe that those blocks are mine, only recolored.

My review may follow later.

Eyecandy

hmm.. I dunno why do some people get so excited over this set maybe because there’s several added tiles? it’s kind of cheap (coughinferno2.0) and it’s not really a reason to raise ratings.

Most of these tiles have been “borrowed” from other tilesets. the only thing he drew himself is the elongated diamondus bush, which is, um, ugly. The whole rest is taken from other tilesets like the textured background from other PJ’s conversions (which he took from diamondus beta) why use this background instead of making a new one instead? (Filter -> Render -> Clouds, PJ). We will also find more (questionable) things, such as the coral from Violet’s conversion of Lagunicus, inferno 2.0 caves, which are slowly getting overused in sets (make them from scratch at least, PJ, because the one you stole has bugs) and background layer stuff from jungle and diamondus.

As for the palettes, there are five of them, two of which are the original ones. For me, the worst one must be the midnight one, which would be decent but the %{color: #FF8000;}ORANGE% wood which look ugly and don’t fit at all. As for sunset, its problem is the background layers. The sand under the shipwreck is also %{color: #FF8000;}ORANGE%. To end with an actually positive accent, I’ll say that the tropical palette is the best one out of all five, the sand and the foliage look great.

Usability

Here the situation is a bit better than in how this looks, but there’s also this one problem that there’s a lot of spare place where you could add more tiles. As for the layout, it’s rather friendly, there should be no problems when finding the right tiles. The mask also has been fixed, but there are still places where it doesn’t fit to itself correctly.

Summary

• Tropical version
• Fixed mask

• Few self-made tiles
• Lots of free space

Overall
It hurts me to see that people overrate such conversions heavily. Dont forget that there are better conversions than this (DiamB, NOKA’s pack) which have an equal or lower rating. People, think twice before rating so highly

Edit: I saw a level made from this set (not Birdie’s) and know what? The mask is just as bad as in the original one. The soil barely even tiles, mask-wise :/

Doesn’t work with my Animes.j2a file and so i can’t try out carrotade. :-(

[Unsupported rating (1.0) clearance. This rating is just inacceptable. For more information on writing a proper review, see the \Review Rules\. – Cooba]

wow….that’s all I can say.Apart from a review,of course.

PALLETTE-There were a few good points about the pallettes.There were 5 different pallettes including the 2 original versions.
1.Day 2.Night 3.Midnight
4.Sunset 5.Tropical
The additional pallettes had a lot of quality and the texture was the same to the original pallettes.This is the sort of thing that I like.The next bit of text won’t affect the rating at all, but it’s something that I should mention.The Sunset and Tropical didn’t really live up to their names.What I mean is that the Sunset didn’t look like a sunset and the Tropical didn’t look tropical,really. However,these points do no affect the rating.8/10.

ADDITIONS- There were loads of additions.I had trouble listing them and I might have missed a few out,but most of them are there(if not,all of them)

1.Vines,Poles and Hooks PJ7
2.Caves from Inferno
3. Bubbles and Rain PJ7
4.Dense jungle and trees from Jungle
5.Forground leaves from Carrotus
6.Bushes from Diamondus & PJ7
7.Single pieces of coral PJ7
8.Glowing skeleton eyes from D*** & PJ7
9.Backround mountains from Psych
10.Waterfalls from DiamondDust
11.D*** skeletons
12.All neccesary destruct blocks unknown
13.New textured backround
That is a LOT of additions and you should be proud of that,PJ7. Im not sure if they were all needed,but it gives a lot of choice of which tiles to use.This is a great point about this conversion.9/10.

USEABILITY- This is where the rating is improved amazingly. You have fixed ALL the mask bugs! This,therefor,has made Beach an easier tileset to use,without all the annoying mask bugs. I don’t know why I will not give you 10 for this conversion.10/10.

LAYOUT- This is also a good point about the conversion. The Layer4 tiles are around the top and the backround tiles are around the bottom. The forground tiles are in the middle,stretching into the top and bottom. This form of layout appeales to me. However, i don’t think that the layout is perfect.9/10.

GOOD POINTS-
Great pallettes
Loads of additions
Perfect useability
Very good layout

BAD POINTS- I hope that I didn’t have to say this. There are STILL quite a few tiling bugs. You didn’t really make an effort to fix them.

FINAL SCORE- This is truly a great conversion. All the mask bugs have been fixed. The rating for Beach+ is 8.9. I took 0.1 off because of the bad points. I hope you are happy with this rating.

DR-Yes!

Ice Cream Island

I heard Birdie a few days ago talking about this level. It was supposed to be called “Waffle Wetlands” but I guess he changed his mind and went with Ice Cream Island. Yesterday, Ds hosted the level. It was very unique and had some good ideas in it. Today we played a 3v3 with the level and it was pertty fun to play in.

Gameplay:

Well the game play was actully very nice, it had a good flow to it. Teams where pretty even except sometimes you find one team having an advantage. If your the read team you almost have complete acess to the Seek powerup, but if your on the blue team you can shoot seeks into the red team with out getting pwnd as much.
8/10

Eyecandy:

Eyecandy was indeed very good. There where lots of tilebugs but what can I say, thats not Birdies fault, its the tileset. The Backround was perfect. It makes it look more like a Jungly beach. Layer 5 Was used good with all the cabins inside the sand.(Or whatever) The icecream made the level have alot more eyecandy and it fits the level. Overall, the tiles fit, It looks nice, and Im happy.
9/10

Layout:

Before Birdie made the tileset he showed me the layout. It seemd confusing untill I actully step foot into the level. N/A

Weapon/Carrot placement:

Weapon placement was very good. There are enough of seeks and rf’s. Same with bouncers. This level doesnt use annoying weapins such as Freeze and TNT. Carrot placement seemed like it was though out a bit. 1 Full NRG and 1 +1 carrot.
9/10

Music choice:

All I have to say is this music fits and it sounds good.
N/A

Overall:

Overall I have to say this is one of Birdies best creations. Id like to see you make more levels like this. And the text string is also very nice. “Made with SNZSPPED”. With a TM.

Score

8+9+9=8.6777777= 8.7

Download Recommendation?

Well, Ya.

~HïTçH