Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

EDIT:
I see you’ve fixed the hook platforms to have One Way events now. That makes navigation through the level a ton easier already. Maybe try replacing the Hooks with Vine events instead? Vines allow for quicker jumps the Hooks. Other annoyances are still present, such as the high amount of open space between jumps and the leaps of faith. The unnecessary hurt events are still there as well.

And is it just me or does the blaster fire in shorter distances than it used to? If that’s the case, then I suggest editing the script to make the distance like standard or even longer, as it’s still the only weapon this level depends on.

On a side note, here’s a place you can get stuck

My original rating was 6.5, and I’ve decided to crank it up to 6.7 for now. It needs more fixing before I can truly recommend it, but it’s moving towards the right path.

Original review:
Let’s review this level as a fellow contest attendee!

First and best thing noticable in this level is the use of pits and the script made to overcome it’s problems. Normally, players would lose their gems after falling into a pit breaking treasure hunt as a whole. But the script included here will cleverly save your gems before dying and load them afterwards.

There is, however, a huge downside to this idea in the sense that when players shoot each other near the pit, gems will likely fall into it and be stuck there unless someone decides to suicide in order to get them, which will get very tedious when the match is active for a while and everyone starts to shoot each other.

Other than that, the level is lacking in a lot of ways. There is, in my opinion, too much open space which at times makes it hard to see where you can jump to. At some point it almost gets to JJ1-style leaps of faith! The platforms with hooks below them don’t really serve a purpose since you can’t one-way through them, which also makes the level a pain to navigate with Jazz, and damn (lol) tedious as Lori.

Also, the lava trunk thingy has hurt events on them, which in treasure hunt only makes players blink without losing gems. That’s just unnecessarily slowing down the gameplay even further. The level relies on using your blaster, yet it’s very vertical-oriented making it tedious to get into shooting range with each other.

I would’ve given this level a 5.5 for the fun left VS it’s problems, but decided to give an extra point for the effort in the nice script idea. May I suggest adding to the script so that gems falling into the pit will somehow respawn? I’m no good scripter, so I feel a bit weird suggesting it. Anyway, until these big issues are fixed I can’t really recommend it. Feel free to edit your level and I’m sure it can become a fun experience!

Okay let’s review this level as a fellow contest attendee.

This is, as partly noted by the author’s description, a fast-paced level of average size with about half of it taking place underwater. There is plenty of open space to move around in on land, and mostly diagonal tunnels underwater leading to open spaces where gems, fallen from Super Reds, can splash into. Some highly visible warps are placed to increase the pace even further.

I love how there is an emphasis on pinball events in the ‘dry’ part of the level. Most gems are to be obtained by making high edge jumps on the paddles, which are sticked next to most of the vertical walls. Some bumpers are placed in line on the top, rewarding gems to those who can control bouncing off of them.

The choice of ammo is as usual for most treasure hunt levels, with some RF and a few seekers thrown in as a bonus. Eyecandy is not too exaggerated (I tend to go slightly too crazy on that myself) but good enough to make no place feel empty. The exit is in an accessible spot.

Though the author recommends 6-8 players, it’s also fun to play with 3-4 in my opinion. When everyone knows where the big gem scores are, fights will quickly appear at the underwater blue gem in the middle and the Super Reds on either sides at the top.

This is an excellent Treasure level that has pinball, and you know we love pinball :P! It has some fresh ideas, yet it’s not like a revolution in treasure hunt (but so isn’t my level). In the end, my judgment is all about fun, and fun is what you can have with this level. Here’s a solid 9 for a solid level, and download recommended!

This is Recommended!

This level is awesome!

Let me see… great tileset, incredibly good scripting, and great music and design!
However, I didn’t like the control set. In rest it was great!
10/10 would play again!

One of the few rare times – or even my first – time that a treasure hunt level absolutely amazed me. We have much fewer uploads recently to J2O, but those that are uploaded have a tendency to be good!

EDIT: You can get stuck at 48,66 under the platform near the sucker tube!

This level made me pretty happy

@Cooba: Haha, J2VF was a level group me and NOKA started late in 2003, but it didn’t last very long. You and DS used to be in as well, so I hope remembering it doesn’t hurt too much. :P

I silently revived it last year since I began some new attempts at JCS, as I thought it’d be fun to release my levels under that old tag. For now it’s just a one-man group though. xD

@ThunderWalker: Thanks again for reporting that bug. That and other masking errors should be fixed now.

@Treya: Wow, that’s lots of cons VS pros.. Anyway, the vault reward was designed with ‘mechanic knowledge’ in mind, and I’m fully aware that it was a risky choice to surround the entire level around it. For weapons, well, in my playtests (with 4 to 6 players) the bouncers and hidden seekers did the job quite well, while ice was pretty much ignored. However, I fully agree that the final level size far exceeds the intended ‘duel-style treasure level’ I was going for. At least some people liked playing it, and in the future it could be a great addition to event playlists instead. Thanks for the 7 though, it’s a fair and good score (compared to the overrating-nature that haunts J2O lately)!

Now that’s not a tag I expected to see ever again.

I included the music file just in case someone deletes it, so that he will have it. :)

Slaz: Yeah. I kinda rushed the level for the contest, and you know... rushing isn't good. I will update the level in the future. Slaz: Ok gonna fix that soon! #2
Slaz: Updated! #3 Stijn: Well… As I said I rushed the level, though I am working on a better TH level. I have some battle levels that I didn’t show, I even have some Domination levels, and for the big part, some Singleplayer Episodes that will take a while to make, they have some cool AS codes in them (Hunger, Stamina, Wall-Climbing, Armor, Potion Effects, Fall Damage, Drop Ammo on Death…) Stamina and Wall-Climbing was not made by me, just found it on the snippets page, hunger is some sort of copy from stamina just that it does a bit of something else. Armor, Potion Effects, Fall Damage, Drop Ammo on Death ———- I made them. Those will be cool singleplayer episodes, there will be like 3, because in each episode you’ll have to play with a certain character. (Jazz, Spaz, Lori).

By the way, you don’t need to include default music files, as everyone has them.

I will review this once the deadline is over.

EDIT: Chances are, if someone loses the default music files, they either didn’t want them or tried to get rid of JJ2 (the completely wrong way, as you’re supposed to use the uninstaller). You can’t really delete an individual music file “by accident” considering it appears in the recycle bin and it’s not worth the effort deleting them.

Mainly it’s a great game, however the war game doesn’t really match JJ franchise. Jazz it’s a cool hero, not a serious one. The idea of making a new JJ game is great.

10/10 because you’re trying to revive Jazz Jackrabbit :3

This conversion set is far inferior to IC-IF Medivo, which adds more useful tiles and rearranges them for much easier use. The original Medivo tileset layout is awful and keeping it is redundant thanks to J2T Rearranger. The altered palettes vary in quality but the vast majority are way too bright or colorful to look pleasant.

Very short and bland. The level contains 4 pickups, neither of which have generators. It’s possible to get permanently stuck at the float-up section. Eyecandy lacks contrast and it’s easy to become confused. Not really creative. Presumably fairly average for its time though.

Some positive features and a nice variety of challenges, but not much thought went into level design, often relying on fairly random block placement. Some areas cause bugs and others can be beaten in unintended ways. Overall pretty average for a test.

Time for a more to-the-point review system.

Description:

Dodge and don’t shoot the spike bolls, and don’t get hit too much by the enemies (you can shoot those, however). Moving right automatically at a fixed speed, you can’t slow down or speed up, only jump. Your health slowly regenerates when you aren’t getting hit. The level is pretty easy once you know where everything is. Relatively short.

The good:

Experimenting with a different way to play JJ2, looks decent. Music fits.

The bad:

This level suffers from a lot of unintuitive design issues such as:

Getting rid of the hurt sound and replacing it with the burn sound. Replacing the sound with something that is asscociated with killing an enemy is misleading. With the new health system, it can be easy to overlook if you have F9 on a lot out of habit (it overlaps, which could be remedied by moving the health where it usually is).

The trial and error nature of this level; This comes down to many things; failing to mention shooting/going into spike bolls kills you until you fail, the forced tiny resolution, making copter ears useless (everytime I used them I died into a spike boll because I couldn’t see what’s ahead) and shooting then suddenly discovering there’s a spike boll off-screen. Being mindful of shooting isn’t a bad thing, it’s that I can’t always prepare for it until I know what’s ahead.

The cutscene that barely suggests it’s one, because it looks no different from than what you are playing. Perhaps some black bar surrounding the bottom, with the character saying not to shoot the spike boll/s in some way? Maybe there could be some explosion sounds going on at the start and end.

Why am I walking away from an explosion? It looks odd, as wouldn’t you be running away from it? Plus it suggests that you can go faster, but apparently this level does not.

The annoying bug: Backspace doesn’t work. So you have to keep reopening the level everytime you fail. This is exactly what makes me discourage from recommending others to download it.

Could improve on

The level is rather short. It lasts 30 seconds. Though it appears to be intended, so I don’t imagine that changing.

Being able to control your horizontal speed would be more suspenseful and challenging. It would make the lab explosion itself a threat (like if you fell far too behind, you’d die).

Difficulty settings could affect the level.

The script writing. Too bad I’m a script noob, though I can say, there appears to be a lot of uneeded hardcoding, which results in a wall of text.

Once these issues get fixed (especially the backspace one), I’ll rate it higher. EDIT: Forgot to mention something else.

Wait no reviews for this? Even if the level itself is a complete gimmick, it has such creative coding, and all appears to work fine. Eyecandy is nothing special but more than sufficient, and pickup placement is alright too. Layout works well with the script – but is also very dependant on it.
Still a 9/10, purely for the creativity of the script. Download recommended!

Edit: Can’t post it as a quick review for some reason despite it originally having less than 350 characters. Raise that limit for fairies’ sake.

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Oh, wow! A recolor! You just gave my life a meaning!

Please, stop teasing me, admins! Just because Beelzebub persuaded you to believe I’m a pedophile, which I’M NOT, doesn’t mean whatever I say is wrong!

And this is DEFINITELY a waste of hard-disk that can be avoided by using AngelScript!

But since you admins feel gay love towards BloodyBody, I’m forced to give this recolor a 10 and a download recommendation.

I hope BloodyBody reciprocates your gay love, you intolerant communists!

[Nonsensical rating (10.0) removed. Also, what? ~Stijn]

greak, COOL

Nice to see another new level maker starting out. Hopefully you too will make new levels in the future and if you do so, here is some advice that you might find usefull:

First of all, this level seems very small since you can move around very quickly which makes it more suitable for duels.

One thing I kinda dislike is that the bases are right across each other which allows you to cap and recap too quickly. Ofcourse it can be a good thing since you have to think about where to kill your opponent and it will give very fast paced games but it’s perhaphs frustrating if they are this close.

Now something I both like and dislike: the c area. You can enter it from below with an rf climb and you are able to shoot it down which gives you more control over the level. However the placement is less good, right between the bases makes it extremely campy. Still, if the level was bigger it would be less campy so I think you are on a good track here.

As for the flow, there are a few minor issues: the springs at the bottom are annoying to use and the wind below the base is unnecessairy. Besides that it feels fine.

The ammo placement is nice, though maybe there is a bit too much at one spot. Three pu’s at the bottom is probably a bit too much (I have to admit, I made the same mistake once).

The eyecandy is nice and simple, thus good for a ctf level. Perhaphs you could vary it a bit more in the walls by changing some tiles to different wall tiles. One thing I’m not fond of is that you copied one half of the level and pasted it to the other half. This makes it less original, even if you make a symmetric level I usually like it if gameplay and eyecandy vary on each half like JE or FF.

One last thing: try to make your next levels more interesting by adding more diagonal passages, at the moment is a bit too straight. Hopefully you will keep on making levels and ofcourse have fun doing it :)