Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

It’s Blade. And he has another tileset. Only this time, it’s different… the name is way too long. Let’s just call it “Islands” from now on. Blade does!

GRAPHIC QUALITY:
Blade retains a very consistant graphic style throughout the set, which is a good thing. The cannons and gold coins are going to look like they were drawn by the same person as the bridges and pirate flags. It’s all generally drawn in the fashion of a generic flash animation, but with a little more detail, and obviously somewhat smaller. Some stuff, like the treasure chest, and the pirate flag, ends up looking really awesome.
Unfortunately, that’s not always true. The cartoony flash animation look has one major side effect, and that side effect is a lack of shading. Textures in Islands are essentially two colors, one light and one dark. Of course, this only works in the case of fixed-size objects, a category the ground does not fit inside of. So the walls are one color with no texture at all. A gray color. And it looks bad. The sand on top of the walls is a lighter gray color, made better by the variety created by various small objects and pathways, but still a textureless fill tool. It generally looks annoying.
To improve the quality of the platforms, there are small pathways added, doubtless inspired by such impressive tilesets as HH98 and Townsville 1. They are the same color as the walls, and do not always manage to look 3D against the textureless sand, but are still a nice touch which more tilesets could use.
I want to clarify that for the most part, the shading does work. On smaller things like the fence posts, you don’t notice the hideous deficiency, and they look great. The barrels look fine with the three shades of brown. The hanging plants are iffy. But the wall sucks, and the sand is annoying, and the caves aren’t too good, and the background makes me want to hide my eyes or at least stand inside of a cave area. Not a very good sign.
Pros: A lot of stuff looks great.
Cons: But on the bigger stuff, the lack of shading strikes back, and is the cause of great ugly. Especially with the background layers.
Rating: 7.2

MASKING:
Masking gets top marks, especially because this is such a complicated tileset. Everything comes in multiple variations when required, and all the slopes are well aligned with their connecting tiles. No jags anywhere. The only downside is the automasked background, which can cause annoyance for those who want to be inventive with the tileset.
Pros: Everything is perfect.
Cons: Automasked background.
Rating: 9.2

COLORS:
Unacceptable. This is the modern age of tilesets, and Blade seems not to have even a rudimentary grasp of tileset palettes. Nothing works. Poles don’t work, snow doesn’t work (it’s brown, which could be imagined as falling sand, but the shading is wrong), pinball doesn’t work, it’s a beach tileset and the water doesn’t work! And there’s no textured background!
Fortunately, the colors actually used by the tiles of the tileset are better. Everything is more or less about the same level of saturation, so your eyes are unlikely to hurt, unless you’re looking at layer 8. There is a definite color scheme – gray is ground, green and blue are background, brown is decoration – which is maintained all through the tileset and limits confusion. The gray is a bit boring, unfortunately.
Pros: Working color scheme, no glaring inconsistencies, stuff works together.
Cons: Boring ground, tileset seems to have used the Remap Tileset Palette button.
Rating: 7.0

VARIETY:
If your favorite subject is variety, this tileset is your dream. There are scads of bits and pieces of eyecandy strewn throughout the tileset. Grass, pathways, barrels, bridges, distant islands, pirate ships, flags, poles, netting, rocks, plants, treasure… I could go on. There is tons of stuff to be found here. The tileset may be slightly less pleasing to those who enjoy making new and different unintended environments, but there are a number of interesting looking things (the netting looks quite promising), so I won’t rule out that possibility. As mentioned in masking, there are variations of tiles to fulfill different purposes, and lots of objects can appear with all sorts of backgrounds. Even the caves, I’m pleased to report, don’t need to be placed in layer 5. But the animations are slightly lacking (the pirate flag is the only one you’ll notice without looking closely), so levels may look somewhat dead.
Pros: Lots and lots of stuff!
Cons: No actual pirate ship to roam around in, but I guess the tileset is pretty big already. Maybe a TSF edition. Only one main type of platform (the sand).
Rating: 8.8

TILE PLACEMENT:
Um. Well. He, uh, tried.
Don’t get me wrong. A lot of the tileset is arranged fairly intuitively. Most of the cool eyecandy tiles to place on the ground are all in the same place, the tileset is recognizably divided into, uh, divisions, and things generally connect well. The background eyecandy area is a little iffy, but it should be possible to piece together.
Unfortunately, all the careful order comes apart where it matters the most, in the formation of the ground. It would take a long time of staring morbidly at the tileset before I’d attempt to piece something together, and it still might be using reference from the example level. Various pieces of wall are thrown together with no connecting tiles nearby, leaving little more than a jumble of tiles which use approximately three colors total (four with transparency). If a few eyecandy tiles could have been sacrificed to make the layout more intuitive, that might have been a good thing.
Pros: Most things are put together well, logical division.
Cons: The wall fails my inspection. Or maybe my inspection fails. I’m not sure which.
Rating: 7.0

OVERALL: I want to like Islands. Its a Blade tileset. It uses ideas I’ve had for a while and puts them to good effect. But something went wrong with the shading, and the tileset needs to be blindly fumbled together, to the point where I don’t think I’d ever use the set. (Before anyone complains, I have used Blade tilesets before. I used Forest. Twice. And Aztec!)
I would indeed suggest that you download it. It’s a great example of what tilesets can be if people put some work into them. It’s a great tileset to LOOK at. It’s the sort of thing you might find in a game. I can’t imagine putting this much effort into a tileset. It just didn’t all work out perfectly in the end, that’s all.
Pros: Very good underlying idea, enormous amount of effort seems to have been spent, uncommon theme, lots of variety in eyecandy, excellent masking, generally a well thought out and produced tileset.
Cons: Not my graphics style, too many unshaded surfaces, complicated theme leads to complicated tileset.
Rating: 8.1

Introduction : YAY! It’s finally uploaded! This is a CTF pack by ChippieBW and I beta tested the levels and gave some suggestions about them. I’m glad to see it uploaded. I hope this will be the XLM release of the year, or at least one of the best XLM projects. Let’s see if it’s really true.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

This level uses Swamps of the Sleeping Jaguar, and this is one of the best tilesets around, although I find it hard to make no bugs with it. D=. The eye candy in this level is good enough for the tileset. There is enough in all places, and there is good use of layers. Making EC in a small level ain’t that hard.

The gameplay of this level is pretty basic ; the layout is a bit closed, but it has good spring placement and flow. The layout is not squared-off at least, and the level is 100 × 50 (which isn’t very big, but ok) I don’t see any Spaz-biasing or other bad things in the layout, so I guess this is good. There are some obstacles between the bases.

The level has 2 Power-Ups, and good ammo placement. 1 Full Energy is good enough for this level, and both Power-Ups are in walls (D=) There are some nice shapes of ammo and there is enough ammo in the air and on the ground. There are some fast fires in the level too – no problem.

Rating : 8.

Tigris Caves

This level uses the Oasis tileset by Blade(who uploaded a new tileset fyi) and Chippie used this tileset well. He wanted people to modify the eye candy of a level before and I was going to do this one, but he decided that he cancels the project. The most amount of EC is in layer 5, and layer 3 and 2 have some as well. The backgrounds are good enough, and I don’t think the eye candy in the level is too unoriginal.

This level is quite big, and it’s almost symmetrical. This is a good 2v2/3v3 level, but the border might be incomplete and cause a flag bug. There are some small dead ends in the level, but I won’t take a point of the level’s rating off or so(yay) The flow in the level is again good, and the copter is quite useful. The tubes might be too long, though, and they cause a lotta camping under it or people try something else to camp. This level is more open than the first one.

The level has 3 Power-Ups. The ammo placement is again quite good and it has some good shapes of ammo again. The Power-Ups are in walls again, but this time the Power-Ups of choice were different. A Blaster, Bouncer and RF were chosen this time. The level has 3 Carrot Energy +1’s, and one of them is invisible. This ain’t a real problem, because you would notice fast. The readme about this pack lied, because I read that this level was supposed to have 1 full energy and 2 +1’s. =P. But I don’t think there are major flaws in the placement.

Rating : 7.9.

EFIL CASTEL WIT WATER LOL!!!111

This level uses the Castle 2 Eclipse tileset, but it was the Night version before. This was a good move by Chip, but now, let’s see how the eye candy in this level is. The eye candy in this level is again good enough, layer 5 has pretty basic stuff and layer 3 has some stuff I saw more times in levels with this tileset. It’s not that the EC is that unoriginal, though. The lightnings and the rain looks quite good. This tileset is used for a lotta levels already(about 4 are made by me) so that’s why I can’t say there is a lotta original eye candy in the level.

This level is 100 × 70, and the layout of it is a bit closed. The middle of the level is open, and you can fall from quite high. There aren’t many ways in the level, but it’s good enough. The level again has good spring placement, and the flow is again quite good. This level is more squared-off than the previous levels, but this tileset is more squared as well. The sucker tubes are quite useful, and there are again some good obstacles between the bases. The level is not symmetrical, but it’s balanced enough.

This level has 3 Power-Ups. These Power-Ups are unoriginal placed, and the PU’s chosen are also quite unoriginal. All Power-Ups are in walls, and the PU’s used are Bouncer, Seeker and RF. These are the 3 best PU’s in JJ2, imo. The level only has some lines as ammo shapes, but some of them are diagonal, others are horizontal, and even other groups are vertical. The level has 1 carrot, and that one is a Full Energy. There was a problem with this first, but Chip solved this quite easy. There is enough ammo on the ground and in the air.

Rating : 7.7

Quasar Quandary

ChippieBW used Odyssey 01 for this level, which is quite overused(he could pick another version of Odyssey), but this level’s eye candy is very splendour. I was surprised about the filesize when Chip sent this for the first time, and that is already a good sign. The animations are very good, and the eye candy in the other layers is just fantastic, outstanding, marvellous or however you would call it. Chip even made something original out of this tileset, although it was used alot already(like for Galactic Warfare) There is even eye candy on places you can’t come. Chip spent a long time on the EC of this level, and he also said that the EC is almost as good as E.Prime. And Chip wasn’t wrong ; the EC in the level is one of the best I ever saw.

This level is the only level of the pack that’s completely symmetrical. The layout is quite closed, and it’s pretty much one way. However, there are 2 ways to each base(one by tube and one by running) There are warps at the very left and right side, and this layout is not what you expect from Chip. There are some other tubes in the level, and some of them are hard to reach. There might be some small dead ends in the level, but that’s not really a big problem. The spring placement is quite good, but the flow ain’t the best.

This level has 3 Power-Ups(again). This time, the PU’s are NOT in walls. The Bouncer and Toaster are both at a side, and the Seeker in the top-middle. There are fast fires in the level, and some good shapes of ammo. There aren’t many big shapes of ammo. The level has 1 Full Energy. This time, it’s on the bottom-middle of the level. This level won’t bring too much camping, but it’s quite frustrating to have no ammo while playing it in a 2v2 or 3v3. You’ll get killed continously most of the time.

Rating : 8.2

Ending comments : This was a great levelpack with some interesting things in it, like the puzzle. I really liked the textstrings in the levels, you are as funny as me! =D. You didn’t mention every name in it, but if you did, it would be quite irritating =P

Bonus points :
0.2 for this being a pack.
0.1 for the puzzle I managed to solve.

Final rating : 8 + 7.9 + 7.7 + 8.2 : 4 + 0.3 = 8.25 = 8.3.

Download : Definitely.
Host : Yes, this pack consists of some good CTF levels, especially QQ.

Hehe, I was already expecting this tileset to come at the next days as I had seen a picture of this already at the finnish gamesite; Suomipelit.com. Actually Snooze discovered that first, but whatever. Unfortunately I don’t have much time, so I’m not going to write so close review but I’ll give it a small essay anyways.

Blade did excellent work again and this is so far the best of his eleven tilesets in my opinion. It seems to have the most eyecandy also. And this is kind of an original tileset also. A few beach-tileset have been done and there’s one in the jj2 itself already, but I haven’t seen a pirate-themed tileset yet.
There is much you can put into the background layers, 6-8, but also much you can put into the sprite layers, 3-5. And if you are very careful about eyecandy, you can even add some stuff you like to the foreground, 1-2. So, overall every layer could use much kind of stuff. Barrels, boxes, treasures, cannons, skulls, rocks, swords and much much more of fun stuff.

Making several edits of one tile for creating animated tiles in jcs later wasn’t either forgotten. Like Chateau, this tileset also has much 3D-looks in it and looks quite nice. Spikes and other stuff usually meant for single-player was also added. ++

Now to the negative things. Well, I was really surprised and there wasn’t even really much of negative in this tileset…But same as with Chateau especially which is quite important in my opinion; No textured background available. You know, any jcs-user should be able to make his/her own choice of what kind of background is he/she going to make for his/her level. The usual, textured one or just the blue color where the sun fits the sky better.
Another thing were the clouds. I don’t know what you could exactly do for them to make them look better, but probably do something for the rough bottoms. I know this tileset uses cartoon-style much, but the clouds make it look a bit too…ok, just try to edit them somehow.
Another nice extra would be a night-version of this as well. Would look extreme.

This tileset really impressed me. Blade had put much effort on that tileset as well, did not just rush it up and make it have bad quality. About 8 months were spent for just one tileset. Imagine. Seems you’re really good and careful at arts, Blade. Good luck with your later tilesets/levels. Nice example level, by the way. This is a must-download.
Hehe, even expect a level from me which will be using this tileset soon.

-Superjazz

This review is just as rare as an upload by Blade ;)

Let me give you a first impression. “Islands in the sapphire sea”, which I will call “island” from now on, is a very detailed tileset with as main theme a carribean pirate island, it seems. The “feeling” of the tileset is exactly like it should be: Piratey! It has all that stuff you always used while playing pirate in your youth, plus more. Barrels full of fruits, rum (or some other liquid), and treasure, cannons, skulls, and SWORDS. Everything looks like it has some kind of cell shading, which gives a very “relaxed” feel to the tileset, especially in combination with the blue background.

As you can see in the beginning of the example level, it’s possible to create some “depth” in the level, as if it’s semi-3D. As Blade mentioned, you have to know the tricks of JCS to create those great effects in the example level, but it’s certainly possible.
Unlike in many other isometric tilesets, the objects in “Island” actually cast a shadow on the ground. This looks so leet that I hereby decalre this my new standard for 8+ ratings >8)
So the main feature of the tileset is the absoultely breathtaking 3D-like graphical quality. The drawings itself are nothing revolutionary, but combined with the perpsective Blade put into the tileset the tileset becomes a masterpiece.

So is it really worth a 10, you may ask? No, as you may know if you read my other reviews, I always keep my critics for the last part. While the tileset contains a great deal of objects like treasure or guns, the most important part of a genuine pirate island is missing: the pirates and the buildings they live in. If Blade combined the buildings of Oasis (redawn, ofcourse) and the amount of objects and detail in Island, this would certainly be worth a 10*. Another set of tiles that’s missing are the water tiles. Ofcourse, there are water tiles for the background and you can create small ponds. But there are no tiles to create the coast of an island, or tiles for underwater enviroments. Surely you can use the water level event to create underwater level parts, but it always looks sort of artificial if you use land tiles to create underwater stuff.
There’s no textured background either. The background provided in the set looks really nice, with clouds, a sun, a ship and island in the background, but some level creators will undoubtly want to use a textured background. Always try to please the masses if you want a good rating ;)

Alright, time for a verdict. I really like this set, but it misses some parts that would make the tileset so much better. The provided tiles offer a really really really one of the best-drawn JJ2 game enviroments ever (did I mention I like the anti-aliasing? Well, I do) and you can create a really versatile and detailed level with it, but this certainly needs a sequel. Grab it now!

^{(*) Yes, a 10. I never rate downloads or games like school work, where perfection exists. You’ll probably agree with me that creating the perfect tileset is impossible: yet there’s a “10” rating. When I consider a tileset really really great and one of the best tilesets ever, I won’t hesitate to give it a 10.}

I’m still waiting for ThunderPX’s upload to be removed. A fair amount of bugfixes were made after his/her upload. (And at least then, any changes I’ll add to this zip, save me time scrambling around for seperate MIDI’s)

Danyjel: No actually, this project was started 12 months ago from now. You probably don’t like MIDI’s in general and I can understand that. They’re an underestimated music format, and many people have to put up with the terrible soft-synthesizer most computers have called the Microsft® GS Wavetable Synth™.

Let’s review it…

It has nice melody. That’s everything.

It uses one stupid piano sample, no rhythm. 43 seconds long. Maybe it could be good, at least listenable, if author used more than one sample, gave rhythm, etc. Now, it’s the worst tune at whole J2O, and that’s unfair. Cause that should be good, after big improvements.

(+) Nice melody
(-) which can’t be well heard because of stupid sample
(-) One sample used
(-) 43 second long
(-) No rhythm

So, if someone is looking for something to remix, this should be good. Else not.

What’s so cool on converting music to midi format? What’s better on MIDI than any module? Is there any fun on doing that? Or what is reason to do that?

Actually, it would have been better to upload just the Castle MIDIs alone, because the rest has already been uploaded once. We’re very sensitive about double uploads because we want to keep our bandwidth usage to a minimum. Hope you understand.

- JelZe GoldRabbit =:3

They have been build by somebody called: MATT

What. The. Hell.

Whatever you may think, Battlea is NOT a secret level. Moreso, Battle4 is a level which came with v1.00g. However, the edit itself is awful enough to blissfully ignore that Battle4 has been done. Hurt events. Lighting Shield. Ultimate Weapon of Doom accessible via a coin warp. Invincibility carrot kept. And many more poorly overlooked flaws.

Far Out has been edited so badly that I just can’t explain how badly is that done. Zapper apparently has no clue how to make foreground layers move, so he puts there various loads of junk hoping that someone (maybe Jarno?) could find it nice. The way to access the level itself is also bad. Crash a crate and get a secret!!1

Anyway, as Zapper has informed me, I shouldnt rate it because it’s not a level pack, but a patch (tisk tisk). gg.

Yo Zapper for Battle4 please update the tileset of it please thnx

a really nice level i allready fell in love with it
(Unsupported rating removal. ~Violet)

Reupload the old file..

Wow, Blast, You have been busy! :) Tilesets IMO are somwhat hard to create (Artistic side of me has low power)

I would not recommend doing anything with the pallettes until you know what you are doing. most do not like color changes.

Starting Comments:

We’ll see.

Played with: Lori
On difficulty: Medium
Playing time: 1 minute

Playability:

The level consists of finding some random crates, kill a bunch of ravens and find the exit. It took me 1 minute to complete, which is definately too short. There were no pickups at all.

Score: 1.5

Balance:

Very easy. Finding the crates is not all that hard, and the clumped together ravens can be easily killed. Needs improvement.

Score: 1.5

Creativity:

At least it was not a simple “find the exit” level, but it was just too short to call it creative. Maybe some obstacles which prevent you from getting the crates or something would’ve made this a lot better.

Score: 2.0

Eyecandy:

Sux. Lots of tilebugs, and no proper use of the tileset. There were some ladders which looked not bad though.

Score: 1.5

Fun Factor:

As it’s too short and too easy I did not find this fun to play at all.

Score: 1.5

Overall:

A very short and easy level. The eyecandy sucks, and it is not really worth the download.

Overall Score: 1.5

Fragile Existance – By Fawriel
Time Started to play level: 3:14 pm (15:14) – Time Finished Level: 3:50pm (15:50).

Over half an hour it took me to beat it O.o.

To start the review:

Firstly, I’ve enjoyed this level from the point where I betatested and gave suggestions upon it during the active times of Project Alpha, and I still enjoy it now. This is undoubtedly one of the hardest levels I’ve played – not only in the fact that I’ve died/been near death so many times I’ve lost count, but also the mind-boggling puzzles. This level not only testes your quick reactions and awareness, but also your ability to solve puzzles and think.

The eyecandy in this level is for the most part, beautiful. The atmosphere is good (it does look like a deep cave). There is eyecandy everywhere. There are a bunch of eyecandy bugs, but they’re barely noticable unless you go hunting for them. The level is fairly long and difficult, but also fun. Lots of pickups and secrets nearly everywhere. The only annoyances where that bees and dragons got too annoying and hard to kill with the bumpy terrain, as with the bats hidden behind or near layer 3 that you can barely spot. Music choice was great. Overall, this is a really awesome single player level. You’ll definately have to spend effort and time beating it. It’s too bad that Faw doesn’t make many other levels, though =\. Lots of original and fun effects in this level too, so its definately worth a check!

Rating:
Layout/Gameplay: 8.2 (long and challenging, but often confusing and prone to get you stuck in the ceiling sometimes)
Eyecandy: 8.5 (some places could’ve used more, but it was generally good).
Placement: 8 (enemies got annoying when they were placed in unavoidable areas)
Originality: 8.5 (lots of cool stuff, despite the level being several years old)
Overall (not average): 8.5 (Imho this is a really good and challenging level. Needs some things to get fixed though).

Final Rating: 8.34 ~ 8.3 (would be 8.2 if it weren’t for textbox ratings).

This is a great level Faw, too bad you don’t make much more levels anymore. This gets a download reccomendation and a pat on the back from me =P.

Bass and lead could be better… Other is good, I like main background sample.
Weirdly, it has all minuses of MIDI files…

If this is an update, please use the re-upload button.

You should read the upload rules.

Cool
(Unsupported rating (10) removal. ~Violet)

Introduction : A CTF level by Snooze. I’m glad to see a level he made. This is a XLM level, using a JJ1 tileset.

Starting with the eye candy, Snooze used a JJ1 tileset for this level. Most JJ1 tilesets don’t have alot of eye candy in it, but this one has enough. The level has nice animations, and I like the background as well. When I played this level in SJ’s server, it had flying moons in layer 6. This looked weird. So Snooze removed them. =P I like the stuff in layer 3, especially the things that are for example at 17,43. Snooze also made some original eye candy in this level ; like the animating tiles on the slopes. The sprite layer eye candy is the best part of the eye candy in the level. Some good light effects were used. Nice job.

The layout of this level is quite open. The level is 160 × 47, but it ain’t using alot of tiles of it. This is no big problem, though. I prefer that a level is bigger in width than in height. The level is not symmetrical, but it’s balanced enough. A 2v2 in this level won’t be a very bad idea. The level has some good spring placement and float ups. The level has some good obstacles, but it’s easy to move in the level with jumping. If you run left or right, you can’t get the flag without jumping or braking from running. The platform that ends at 84,31 should be one tile longer, so I can get on it after taking the tube at the right side. The level has some Spaz biasing in it, but it’s not a big problem. There are 2 ways to each base.

The placement is quite good. There are 3 PU’s in the level. The Seek PU is the main PU and is placed in the middle. The Toasty PU is placed at 40,33 and is in a wall. The Bouncy PU is placed at 121,33 and is also in a wall. The level has some fast fires, that’s a good thing. There are 2 carrots in the level. Both are +1. The left carrot didn’t respawn in the match I played, but I have that problem multiple times. The carrots are placed before a tube, and that’s fine. Some good shapes of ammo are in the level. Some ammo is on the ground, other ammo is in the air. You need to get Gun9 to get the Toasty and Bouncy PU’s. It’s slightly harder to get them this time compared with other levels(not all)

This level isn’t very unoriginal. I needed to download this to get the music for this level. The music fits the level fine. The level has some original eye candy, and I never saw this version of Scraparap. The gun9 idea is old, but I’m not someone that cares that much about it. Oh, you made a spelling error in the textstring. (Expect instead of except)=P. This ain’t a real Snooze layout level, and Snooze told me that he was trying to do another style of layout. I can say that he succeeded with this, so gj.

Ratings :
Eye candy : 8
Gameplay : 7.5
Placement : 7.5
Originality : 7.5

Final rating : 8 + 7.5 + 7.5 + 7.5 : 4 = 7.625 = 7.6. Good job. If I were Chip, I would give you a higher rating in XLM. =P

Download : Yes, this is some new Snooze level you have to check out.

Host : Sometimes.

-DarkSonic[si]