Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Not bad, but still could be better. Eyecandy is good enough, but there are bugs around 51, 59. Gameplay is a bit messy, but still, good job on your first level!

Not bad for your first level. ;)

Give you levels to people to test them before you upload something like this…

Played this today and its quite nice.

Eyecandy:

I like it a lot, there’s been quite an effort put in eyecandy. The level looks rather beautiful. There were few tilebugs found but hardly noticeable and it doesent really look ugly either. Background really looks amazing. I think there was a lot of effort used for it. The enemies in walls looks rather good too, i liked it, but more on that below. Nothing much to say here actually, the level looks fantastic.

9/10

Gameplay:

Quite good. The trigger part at the start is quite nice. It did get me lost for some time but it was my fault for not looking at the arrows. However monsters were really easy to beat. Dragonflies and Fish were more or less the only ones that could hurt me. There were some spikes in the water that i thought could hurt me but when i fell on them it didnt. Nothing much to say here either.

8/10

Enemy placement:

Well as i said enemies were rather easy to beat for me. Perhaps the reason for it is because i was able to shoot most of the enemies standing 1 tile above instead of coming down, and the other part was cuz i have just recently played blacky’s map which was quite hard. Enemies here are placed okay just some were easy to pass due to 1 tile height advantage. Boss in the water was a very good idea, and few turtles placed along with him was really good too. But adding seekers AND a full carrot made it rather too easy for me, i didnt even need the carrot since i lost only 1h. Still i very much like the idea .

7.5/10

Pickups:

Very good. I didnt quite understand what do i need RF for, used it once to RF climb into a secret area with blue gems but later i found out that it was connected to the lower passage. You even added a RF pu. I like the idea of putting toaster boxes in a “cold” lvl. Seekers came rather handy against dragon flies and Fishes. i managed to get 1 sugar rush which was okay i guess, i didnt really need it thou. I found most of the secret areas and they are very well placed it really made shoot some walls and explore the whole lvl. there were some monsters in the walls which i thought were also secret areas and i spent so much time looking for secret passages, then i gave up and thought “il just check in jcs” when i saw it was just eyecandy the first thing that crossed my mind was “FUUUUU”. Anyways pickups are very well placed, secret areas were very well hidden, i think i found most of them.

8/10

Music:

It’s quite nice. I think i might use it for some lvls i create. It didnt have any boring parts and it can really set up the mood for the level.

8.5/10

Overall Rating: 8.2

Download recommendation?

Yes. The level doesn’t really have any kind of a story, but it is really fun to play. I would definitely recommend it.

Thanks, Blacky. Thanks so much. Makes it awful hard to write a decent review when you point out almost everything I was going to say… =(

Oh, well. Guess I’ll try and point out some unique things (If that’s even gonna be possible here), since my fellow reviewer’s already covered most of the basics.

Like Blackraptor said, there are some upsides and some downsides to Carrotus Lake. The layout is small, but not too much so. The level isn’t 100% symmetric, but there’s enough similarities between each half to avoid giving one player an unfair terrain advantage. Powerups did seem a bit excessive, but I think only one PU really needs to be taken out (The seeker powerup, obviously).

One thing that I DID notice that I don’t think Blacky pointed out was that two out of the three powerups were over on the right side of the map, which means that the Blue team can get them much quicker than the Red team. There’s a few tall platforms in the middle of the map (Particularly one with a one-tile hole in it) that might be better places to stash stuff, although the limited size of CL does make this pretty gnarly.

I liked how the base positions were inverted, with the Blue base on the far right side of the map where 9 out of 10 JCSers would put the red one. Changed things up a little.

I didn’t download the music, so I won’t include it in my rating.

Eyecandy was standardized, but decent enough. No real gripes here.

Ammo was distributed well, as were the carrots (although, as somebody else already pointed out, it’s pretty easy to camp the upper left zone).

In the end, I think this is a solid level that’s good for a 3-4 person match (Dang you, Blackraptor, for stealing my thunder once again!), and it’s worth a download.

This is a pretty nice looking map small enough to be used for duels or 2vs2 matches. I actually played it with more people than this map is probably built for, but the size would accommodate at least 3 other players before it starts getting too crowded. The eyecandy is pretty standard for this tileset, but looks nice, so no real complaints there. Maybe I would’ve connected some of the floating pumpkins to some vines. The background is what looks like some mountains behind a lake, which gives the level its name.

There’s not much to be said about the layout. The bases are on opposite diagonals from each other, and the blue base is considerably more open. The red base is tucked away in a corner below a long narrow drop. It’s possible to escape upwards by RF climbing, but its not reccomended because of the lenght of the drop and the size of the map. My opponent shot me in the face as soon as I managed to get up :( I don’t like the spot around 19,30 too much since I kept running into it when trying to reach the base and it would bounce me up over it. The center of the map is fairly open so expect lots of confrontations to take place there. There are 3 powerups used here, which is a bit excessive, and especially the seeker powerup makes things really chaotic. Personally I think this could’ve gotten away with only needing 1 powerup, its small and they arent far away from one another. The ammo is placed in basic patterns but its balanced out well and there’s enough of it.

There’s two carrots in this, one full energy at the center of the map and a +1 in the top left corner. I have no problems with this and its good that there is more than a full energy that people just camp. With the abundance of 2h-dealing weaponry the extra carrot doesnt seem excessive at all.

Overall, this is a pretty nice level. It reminds me of a shrunken version of Martins Carrotus Squash (I think I spelt that right? I dont remember :<) It’s good for small matches but doesn’t hold a large amount of people. There also isnt really any innovation in it, and this makes it hard for the map to stand out against dozens of other decent carrotus levels. However, it’s not a bad effort at all, and I had fun playing it. Download reccomended.

-br

Very nice level. Plenty of ammo, awesome layout and mechanics, bugs scrupulously taken care of. I had fun. Download today.

Heh. Got a good laugh outta this one.

Blackraptor’s Race For The Vodka race is a bit tricky to get the hang of, and it can be occasionally frustrating (i.e.-the Pinball bumpers), but it’s definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

RFtV uses the Dreempipes tileset, taking the player through what is apparently a giant vodka production plant (No worries, parents: Rabbits apparently can’t hold anything stronger than Epi-Cola, which Blacky has substituted for real vodka). There’s a few sequestered Ice powerups, a fancy shortcut or two and some straight-up gameplay traps no race would be complete without. Spring traps (especially used in conjuncture with Float events). A water/caterpillar pit. A vertical Spring trap. These and more are expertly executed, and greatly enhance the quality of Vodka.

On the converse, there were a few things I thought could’ve used improvement. The Freeze Enemy traps, while whimsical and fun, were downright annoying, and greatly disrupted the flow of the race. This consequently ruined the Seeker shortcut, although in my opinion it was already quicker just to take the normal route and bypass the Seeker shortcut altogether. The pinball section irritated me because it was just hard enough to stop me almost every time I came through it, but not quite hard enough for me to label it as unreasonable in its difficulty. The Freezer powerup at the beginning was way too well hidden, and I would probably never have found it if I hadn’t looked through the editor after playing the level, to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

On another note, the song was hilarious, and fit the level perfectly. Nice find there.

Is Race For The Vodka worth a download? Absolutely. This is a good, quality race by Blackraptor, and once you look past its small number of minorly bothersome flaws, it’s definitely worth playing. Download today.

Wow. Talk about a steal.

I was stunned when I stumbled onto Jgke’s Cave of Dreams CTF level. Here, I had found a functional, good-looking upload, and absolutely NO ONE ELSE has reviewed it yet!

Oh, yeah. This level’s good. Everything is painted in dark blue tones, except for the translucent aqua fog at the bottom that’s apparently supposed to be water. The map is symmetrical, but it’s open and well-designed enough that you hardly even notice.

How often does THAT happen with a symmetrical level?

I liked how the carrots were placed in RF-climb shafts that noobs can’t get at. Furthermore, in anticipation of said noobs’ unhappy reactions, Jgke placed a Full NRG in the middle for them to fight over. Classic.

Ammo was distributed well, although I did feel like there wasn’t very much for such a wide open level.

Bases were placed well, too.

I didn’t download the music, so I won’t include it in my rating. Judging by the file name in the Level Properties window, though, I’m sure it fit the level quite well.

On the other hand, I wasn’t very impressed with the aqua agua (That’s turquoise water, to all you uninitiated folks) at the bottom. While it DID contribute positively to the level in terms of functionality, I felt that the colors clashed in a bad way with the rest of the level. It’s too bad, because the rest of the level looked so pretty.

In the end, then, I was highly pleased with Cave of Dreams. It’s a quality, satisfaction guaranteed level, and it’s unbelievable just far beneath the radar this level has flown. Download this level. It’s awesome!

On the one hand, this was certainly an interesting level. Violet CLM’s Midigating Factor is one of the most gimmick-oriented CTFs I’ve seen in a while, utilizing fancy sucker tube and spring sequences to shluffle the player around the level and confuse them to no end. Eyecandy is interesting and cool, and makes the level fun to play.

On the other hand, MF also suffers from the Cramped Hallway Syndrome. It never feels very wide open, and it’s been a while since I’ve played a level that made me feel this enclosed and claustraphobic.

Music worked pretty well for the level. It was a sort of quiet and serene piece, accented every so often by a smooth-as-silk violin. Good choice.

In summary, I guess I’ll give this level a 7.0 on the Richter scale. Neutral DL rec, ‘cause I haven’t decided what I think of it all yet.

Sorry, no backgrounds. I’ll update it as soon as I can.

Quality is surprisingly easy to overlook, and no less so here. Sub-Terrestrial is a well-rounded level, with good eyecandy, smooth flow and a quaint, yet befitting music track. Worth a download.

Geez, people. You’ll probably kill me for saying this, but I honestly think this set is a wee bit overrated…

The Twilight Park is a city tileset, a genre of sets that often gets little to no attention. It’s too bad, since metropolis/town/city sets are among my very favorites.

Unfortunately, tilesets like Twilight Park, while very good and loads of fun to use, are the reason why city sets are so infrequently done (And done well, too).

TTP has the usual whimsical Blur eyecandy (Random items buried in the ground, a doghouse with accompanying dog bowl, silly posters slapped onto a junky old alley fence, etc.), plus some unexpected surprises (A swimming pool, gardening tools sticking out of the ground as “thorns”, a small background red brick wall). Well-trimmed trees provoke intriguing visual ideas, while a background dominated by grassy parkland and distant skyscrapers lend Twilight Park a very suburbian feel.

Unfortunately, things started to fizzle out at about this point.

While all of the pluses I mentioned are nice, they’re really all there is to work with in this tileset. I mean, there’s a few more tiles than what I mentioned, but the greater extent of the set is devoted to The Average Joe’s Backyard.

The dirt is the only real “ground” material available to work with (Although, in its defense, there are two or three different surfaces for the dirt that are perfectly usable). Despite being a suburb-esque pack, there’s not even any houses or apartment buildings. Only one fencing material is at the JCSer’s disposal (And wooden fences get very old after a while). There’s no black tiles. No “cave” wall tiles (unless you count the fence, which I don’t).

Parks and naturalistic scenery can only go so far, and I have some rather serious concerns about the limitations of this set.

Don’t get me wrong, Twilight Park’s a great set and all. It has bodaciously good eyecandy and truckloads of JCSing potential…but good is only so good these days. I felt a little let down by the limitations of the set.

Still, Twilight Park IS a sweet tileset, and it’s definitely worth a download.

Well, it’s a Letni conversion, and it’s a working Letni conversion. That much is good.

Beyond that, I was massively underwhelmed by CelL’s JJ1 conversion.

In his defense, Letni is a pain in the donkey to work with. The visuals are limited, the music bland and unappealing, the levels boring and unengaging, the tileset even more so. Letni is one-dimensional and uninspired, and it’s arguably the most unpopular JJ1 planet of ALL time (Matched only by Raneforus, Muckamok and Ceramicus).

However, if one is making a JJ1 conversion, one must gut through the pain and misery and do a good job.

While most if not all of the Jazz 1 tiles appear to be there, not all of them are the right color (Especially the yellow, blue and red pulze lights mounted on the dark blue background). There’s no clear background duplicates of the orange and light blue floor tiles, limiting the JCSer to one measly BG choice. Speaking of this, there’s no fancy backgrounds or anything. No fluff tiles (Which are extraneous tiles that weren’t present in the original set, but still add a positive element to the conversion. These are things like sucker tubes, blast’em blocks/buttstomp blocks, vines/hooks, et cetera) of any kind. Grouping was absentminded at best, sloppy at worst.

There’s extremely little present here in this tileset to work with.

In short, it looks like CelL just copied all of the tiles from Jazz Jackrabbit 1 over to the conversion and slapped everything together.

I wish he had done a better job with it, because J2O is STILL waiting for a decent true-blue Jazz 1 Letni conversion (Not remake, conversion) to be created.

Neutral DL rec, since it’s not a very good tileset, but it’s the closest thing to an adequate Letni conversion out there at present.

@Blackraptor:

Hold that thought. “World of Jazz” will be coming out later this year.

Well what we have here is a pretty nice looking and polished level that’s in singleplayer mode, something I don’t see much nowadays. Cold Flash (i keep spelling it as cold lake :/) uses an edit of the diamondus set I’ve never seen before, a relaxing tune, and a custom boss music. It’s fairly sized, though pretty straightforward, and is good for a quick fix of singleplayer JJ2.

One of the reasons being, is the consistency of the level design throughout. The detailing on the eyecandy is good but not spectacular, although I really liked the look of both the background and the boss arena, however its done well throughout and without bugs or any ugliness. The only complaint I really have is that the rain in the foreground looks too mechanical or patterned. It results in looking kind of unnatural, but this didn’t bother me much.

The gameplay of the level is pretty solid as well. There’s nothing I found new in it or jaw dropping, but if you’re in the mood to play some good ol’ sidescrolling action this satisfies the craving. The whole level mostly consisted of traversing areas in a usually linear fashion or finding some crates. There we’re plenty of checkpoints placed throughout and although some of the enemy placement could be tough the number of them you face at a time is mostly restrained. This is quite a contrast from the SP I usually play, which includes my own levels :P I mostly breezed through this level, with a few occassions during when I fell to 1 health and had to be more careful. The boss was a nice touch, especially as this was a small(er) standalone level and so really needed one. The custom boss music was also a perfect fit and I really think more people should use this as an example and take advantage of this option to use custom music for boss fights. I also liked finding the secrets placed in this level. The horizontal green spring in the one at 143,28 shoots me into a wall though.

Item placement was also good. I felt it may have been scarce sometimes, but the ammo I thought was done well and fit the situations presented in the level.

Overall, as I’ve said already I think this is a polished and well done level. In my eyes I couldn’t find any single major weakness or significant problems that would impede my enjoyment playing it. It’s only ‘flaws’ is that it isn’t really outstanding in any way, that it could use more improvisation and bring something new to the table. Also, for a standalone it is quite short. I would’ve loved to see it in a pack of levels. My rating averages out to a 7.7. I think you should try making a single player campaign, and I hope your experience in level design encourages you to experiment more.

-br

Well after so many retries and so many falls i have finally completed the lvl. Phew.

Eyecandy:

Eyecandy here is really good. I generally hate psych tileset, and i hate the looks of shrooms in general but br used this tileset rather well, the lvl actually looks nice. There were a few tilebugs i encountered but very few, since some flowers were “dancing” and they were near layer 3 tiles it looked is if they are punching their “heads” trough walls.Anyways not much to say here the tileset was more or less used up to its maximum

9.5/10

Enemy placement:

Theyr pretty well placed. They get alont with the tileset well except for the christmas enemies i dont think they quite match the tileset. Enemies are placed in a way that u cant quite just charge upward and shoot and do whatever u like, most are even hidden behind layer 3 but they can still be seen if you focus. The witch i beat quite too easy with the seekers (3 boxes) you’ve put, i just dodged the umm “yellow thingy” and just kept spamming all seekers i had. I’d say that most annoying enemies were definetly the bee’s as they always are for me. They were well placed in this lvl

9/10

Gameplay

Well its quite hard expecially those pit parts. After i fell the first 10 times i just did /r and tried again, since i knew where i was at i finally passed that part. Its not that hard, u just mustnt shoot those platforms otherwise they will swing like hell and it will really become troublesome. 2nd hard part was the other pit, the one with boulders, god i lost all my nerves with that one. Either jump wouldnt work, or i’d get hurt or i’d miss the boulder eh… after many retries i finally passed it. I think there should be atleast 2 checkpoints thou, its quite easy to die and it can get VERY frustrating to have to do everything all over again. All in all the gameplay was really nice it was rather fun to play this lvl. Just have to focus a lot and be carefull is all it takes.

8.5/10

Pickup placement

I will include secrets areas in this one aswell. The ammo,gems,coins and food placements are really good placed i like it a lot. I had 2 sugar rushes but surprisingly that wasnt much at all. I think i found most of the secret placements but one of the secret area i accidently discovered because a boulder rolled there and when i went there it was definetly the MOST HARDEST PART in this lvl. It contained spike balls which left u out of footing and some well placed bee’s which was just far too frustrating. i really stopped bothering trying to pass that one it was simply too hard for me. also there is that area placement im not sure how to get there, i just used RF climb, maybe i was suppost to push that crate with a blue spring there? but i cant push crates and i dont know what was that spring doing there in the first place. well the pickup placements are really good placed there were a lot of carrots which was just about enough for this lvl, no Full C’s thou (atleast i havent found any).

9/10

Music:

Umm… when i played this lvl i couldnt even hear my own blaster or any kind of sound except some messed up high piched noises or sth. Too bad thou :s

0/0

Overall Rating: 9/10

DL recommendation?

Definetly. The lvl is a bit hard and requres quite a lot of skills but its definetly fun to play.

Hey, better late than never.

- The flag direction shouldn’t actually matter.
- Added that MCE event (never bothered to actually fall in the pit during my own testing!)
- Can’t reproduce the JB4 bug.
- This scoring issue in BR2 only happened because someone managed to get a flag without returning it to a base. It was actually possible for this to happen due to me using an unmasked tile where I wanted a masked one (and not noticing); fixed now!

Nice tileset with awesome palette swaps and some…well, interesting, I suppose…black-tile eyecandy. Definitely worth a DL. Great for building a Credits level for your singleplayer pack (which I’ll be doing with World of Jazz). Download rec.

Wow. I can’t believe the things that slip through the cracks of J2O.

Great level, solid eyecandy (although the back layers were a little too standard for me), excellent music and layout. Events were nice, too.

Definitely worth a DL.