Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

not bad…

[No joke reviews ~cooba]

A ridiculous amount of extra empty space, lacks a serious amount of useful tiles, and 1 minute worth of effort in MSpaint. Even if it’s a first, no attention has been paid to the standards.

Nice ;)

Administrative notes: I don’t know why this level is listed as TSF+; I played it in 1.23+ just fine. Also you need to include the tileset (Desolation7th.j2t) or a lot of people won’t be able to play it.

That aside, this is pretty cool. With all the power that JJ2+‘s angelscript implementation offers, Survival Mission 1 is a good reminder that you don’t need to use every single function and rewrite every last bit of JJ2 and pretend you’re writing an entirely new game just to make a playable level. SM1 uses angelscript to take certain actions just a little farther than they could be done in JCS alone—cutscene-like dialogues, flashing lights, announcements—without creating the impression it’s anything other than a JJ2 single player level. It’s very subtle, and we could definitely use more levels like it in that respect.

(Also there’s mouse aiming and several of the enemies have higher hit counts, but besides that it would be very easy not to realize the level is scripted at all, if you’re a casual player who isn’t incredibly familiar with every single thing JCS can or cannot accomplish.)

Of course, once scripting is involved at all it’s easy to think of places that could have been a bit more elaborate. At least one point in the level would feel more complete with an accompanying music change. And I found myself getting lost a whole lot while playing; text alerts would announce that some door had been opened but woudn’t tell me where that door was, and those would have been excellent use cases for moving the player’s camera to focus on the newly opened door for a few seconds. And some more lighting effects would have been nice.

Anyway, how’s the level? It’s all right. It’s a classic sort of level where there are various places with labels like “generator” or “engine room”, and you have to find various trigger crates/zones to progress. Some enemies are supposed to be guarding various rooms, as indicated by their sitting in giant chairs or stuff like that. You shut down a “core” and then find your way out again. We’ve seen this exact theme in Another Story, and maybe other levels even older than that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I have to say, though, the layout was too cramped for my tastes. It definitely made the mouse aiming feel incredibly useful at times, particularly when I was climbing up a tower and shooting the enemies walking around on the ledges above me, but it also meant that the seekers and RFs didn’t have very much to do. (And there wasn’t a lot of ammo at all, especially in a level where half the enemies had higher-than-usual hit counts.) And the level was also quite compact, forcing a lot of paths to be right above or below one another even if they weren’t necessarily close to each other in terms of semi-linear layout. This made things more confusing than they needed to be, and also reduced the possibility of making different areas of the map visually distinct from one another.

So there are definitely various improvements that the author can make here, but it’s a pretty playable experience provided you don’t get too lost. I think the level of scripting is just fine, and the visuals are plain but serviceable, so I’d suggest concentrating primarily on design in the immediate future. Don’t be afraid to make things bigger. Work on getting the layout to match the theme. Find ways of indicating what path needs to be followed. Compare the ammo you offer to the places they can be used.

Download recommended? Sure. It’s not spectacular, but it’s a solid foundation. For players, there are some decently attractive areas and reasonable challenges—float suckers put in several appearances in their classic role as buttstomp targets—and you’ll get a chance to kill some enemies and stomp some crates, so long as you don’t get too confused about where to go next. For level makers, it’s a reminder that the barrier of entry to angelscript is only as high as you want it to be, and you can make a level that only needs it for one specific purpose instead of worrying about the whole level being a backseat to showing off your scripting skills. It’s a traditional JJ2 SP experience with some mouse aim thrown into the mix, so if you’re into that sort of thing—and, well, you are on J2O—have at it?

Music is a 1:1 rip of T-Tracker’s “Firestorm” (http://modarchive.org/module.php?42288). Is it really that difficult to give credits to the original author of a well-known piece of music, Toni?
Changing “Play this in FT2 only” to “Play this in MPT only!” was the only remotely funny thing in this case.

Still like the previous upload, however I liked original version more.

Lol good find FS, that is bizarre. Looks like they only act like that for the player that froze them, so that can’t be manipulated to the disadvantage of others :P

Captivation: Awful
In most of the levels, you only go left or right. The episode is very short. The only bit of action is the boss battle, although it’s a boss used over and over. The shape of levels is monotonous.

Customization: Awful
You didn’t use AngelScript (your episode needs it more than other episodes). You used almost no event. You used the original Jazz 2 software.

Eyecandy: Bad
Most of the customized tileset drawings look ugly. The city background uses the wrong objects. The only good use of the available eyecandy, itself messy, is in cl12.j2l and cl15.j2l. The vehicles in motions are a good add-on. There’s almost no eyecandy all around the levels, just endless brick walls and monochrome skies.

Originality: Bad
The musics you chose have been used over and over in the making of levels. The tilesets you made or chose are mashups of existing tilesets and sprites (and they’re really scarce and messy)

Playability: Bad
Some important text strings are placed next to the exit, and you don’t know where they are. You fall into endless pits, forcing to restart the game. You have no clue where the level exit and the warps are.

In the end, I’m not going to wait for the next episode. Instead, I’m going to wait for the current one to be drastically improved.

Frozen batlevators will act like bats out of hell.

Awesome. Some players might find the EC bit too much but I think its just great. Layout seems to be good too, and with some practice its really easy to move around.

Nice map ;)

I like that test It is long and hard :) Good Job ;)

Holy fuck it’s a nultiplayer lvl over 50kb and it’s HUGE

Agreed with most of PT’s review. It’s too small and have a lot of gameplay issues it’s badly affecting the gameplay

I must say that this pack’ visual design as well as gameplay ideas inspired me A LOT. Its fucking brilliant. No more words to say.
Rating this for 9.9 only because you decided not to finish this episode and uploading it “as is”. :(
By the way JJ2+ solve most of memory errors happened in large lvls (see my temp. user comment :P)

I haven’t played this pack yet, (tbh right now I’m only downloading the 1st pack :P) but I have a question: why releasing this episode for 1.23 when the previous episode is released only for 1.24 clients?

Either release both episodes for 1.24 or do the 1st episode for 1.23 as you did here.

Players usually ignore reviewing poor quality levels, since they usually think the creator will disreguard the critique, or the level is simply too bad to improve on. But hey, since you asked for it, here’s a review.

Eyecandy

Really bland and generic. The level creator obviously doesn’t care for eyecandy, probably because he thinks gameplay will excuse for it all, or doesn’t care about decent looking levels

However, good eyecandy provides good first impressions, as it often shows the levelmaker cares about their level. Yeah, there’s no tilebugs, however, it’s really easy to not make tilebugs with this set.

Gameplay

Short summary: A generally cramped, linear level, with no ammo until you reach the campy PU room. It manages to succeed at being chaotic and campy at the same time.

Long summary:

For some reason, the levelmaker decides to add a stupid textstring saying you get kicked if you hurt/kill in the powerup room. So you know, instead of taking measures to not make the room campy, he lazily adds a kick threat. You really think you’re going to stop players from doing that by adding a textstring? And besides, not everyone has the time to moderate a server all the time (implying that admins are going to kick others for abusing poor level design). I also dislike such textstrings because those who are hosting the level (that aren’t you) may not have the same view as you, so it’s pointless.

Camping (staying in a hotspot to get more kills, which is what I think you mean) may be annoying, though it’s not cheating because everyone can do it. You can take measures against it by changing the level design or using a script, which is the best way.

What contributes to campy level design? Linearity, cramped passages, safe hotspots. This level has it all.

Also, the hurt zones are…what? How am I supposed to expect they are there? That’s not a good anti-camping measure. You can make coin warp targets not campy by putting a powerup above warp zone, then putting a ceiling spring above the powerup.

If you have no ammo, and the other player does, you’re pretty much screwed. However, if everyone has blaster, prepare for a lot of camping in the tiny passages. Who likes blasterfights?

What contributes to chaotic level design is a lot of strong/overpowered ammo, lots of green/blue springs (though this level has none of them, so disreguard this point) small layouts, no carrots and cramped passages (yep, it can be chaotic and campy, due to being hard to dodge incoming attacks).

At the top, there’s a row of tiny platforms. I’m not a big fan of tiny platforms, because they sometimes require pin-pointing (which is annoying in a very fast paced game such as JJ2), and also make it too easy to dodge incoming fire by just falling.

Also, there’s a lazy disreguard for Lori support, which could’ve easily been fixed by adding a red spring. (platform above the bottom floor). “But lori suckzz!” well of course she is if you don’t bother making her viable.

Music

Meh….somehow I feel this guy just picked the first module he found on the mod archive and went “This’ll do”. It sounds boring and doesn’t fit.

Overall, I don’t recommend this level for the reasons above.

It has received good reviews

I didn’t play either Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles, but I do know Spaztic’s excelent conversion of Marble Garden that was made years ago. But since this is single player and a new tileset conversion, I’ll rate the overall experience.

The first thing noticable about the tileset compared to Tik’s remake is the size of the graphics being x2, much like the Rayman 1 forest conversion. Other than that, it’s obviously more lacking as it doesn’t contain JJ2-like features such as poles, vines, tubes, destructable blocks, etc.

The levels are generally OK, especially for a first upload. Both levels make a big deal out of diagonal ramps, a feature that doesn’t work too well in JJ2 as you can’t run down from them without falling forward. Yet on paths going upward or forward I genuinely got a Sonic-vibe that kept me running without too much hassle from enemies or obstacles. Eyecandy is very little, all in the form of those plant-pillar things. The background is non-textured blue with moving clouds.

In terms of pickups, there are enough carrots scattered around, coins for the usual coin warps and savepoints. Ammo is restricted to Bouncers and the Toaster, which might be a bit lacking even though they can be upgraded (with PU’s) at some point. Enemies consist especially of Lizards and Fencers, but a commonly used hazard in these levels comes in the form of the Rolling Rock. It’s used in pretty much the same way as in the original JJ2 Jungle level, until at one point they’re used as still platforms, giving players the fear that they may fall down at some point by touching a Trigger Rock.

Another fun thing to point out is the bossfight. Something as simple as placing Bubba on rows of Collapsing Scenery is still pretty fun and works well to make the boss more interesting.

All said and done, I recommend trying this download only if you enjoy Sonic games or conversions in general. If you’re looking for a Marble Garden tileset you’re better off with Spaztic’s conversion. For better Sonic themed levels I recommend, of course, Sonic With a Gun! I’d give this 6.5 for the OK conversion and gameplay, but slightly raised it to 6.7 as it’s a solid job for a first upload! :D

You forgot to include the tileset TopSecret.j2t into the zip file. It’s mandatory to include it for downloaders who don’t have it yet.

And I consider myself a JJ2 veteran. But psst.. I can’t get past the starting area, I wonder if it’s possible.

Oh, and people can bypass level passwords using TECJCS or a hex editor. :P