Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

When playing this level, it’s important to take a look back at FawFul’s history as a JCSer. His J2O downloads page is like a cliched rags-to-riches story: starting with plain bad levels, slowly moving through the beginner phase, which then culminated in the largely hit-and-miss Planetary pack (my rating: 7.9); and finally moving onto his most recent work such as Wicked Wood, one of the most played levels on the jazzjackrabbit.net clan ladder, Faw’s evolution couldn’t be more obvious. And it doesn’t just end there, as Frontier Falls is at another tier of levels entirely.

While other level makers only theoretize about creating a perfect CTF level, Faw wastes no time and goes for it. CTF, being a gamemode treated more seriously than the others, has its own standards, and thus perfection, or being close to perfection, is very much possible. Is this level balanced? Yes, it’s nearly impeccably balanced. Does it flow well? No flow problems are to be found, everything falls in place. It’s neither too enclosed or too open, and neither too horizontal or vertical. Is it biased? All three characters have their own ways to shine here. Is it versatile? While intended for duels (the winner of the 2011 duel level contest), this holds very well in a 3on3 game, and will work in big games and also the bash.

Is it original? While it’s not anything groundbreaking on the first sight, there’s more to Frontier Falls than just the usual CTF level. The pit “concept” is as old as SILWI is, but seeing how Faw could have used a death pit instead (which would have killed this level), it’s quite refreshing. No Bouncer or Seeker powerups equals no silly spamming, and you’ll have to do your best with RFs and Toasters (which isn’t difficult, given the layout, but still some skill is required). There’s plenty of room for RF tricks, wall jumps, messing around with the carrots with TNT and Toaster, etc. You’d be hard pressed to find any sort of flaw here at all – this is as close to a perfect CTF level as possible.

Even if FawFul had to use an edit of an edit of the original Carrotus tileset, it’s still the very peak of its possibilites. Faw does the smart thing and instead of using every single tile he could, he sticks to the usual Carrotus eyecandy with some additions, such as the multi layered caves (the patches of black tiles giving more depth), the little holes in the ground with wood over them, etc. Instead of littering the level with carrots and pumpkins, Faw uses them sparingly to provide some small, reddish variation from the green and brown. The swirly, ropey pumpkin plants are replaced with the small grapevines lifted from Psych, to a great effect – this feels much more of a standalone world than another Carrotus level.

And of course, there are the titular frontier falls. While this idea has been done before many times (how often do you play JJ2 online PT32?), it has never been used with such effect before. It’s the key part of the visuals, yet it’s not overbearing or annoying (if you like, though, you can disable it with a JJ2+ trigger command). The waterfall theme makes sense with so much vertical gameplay and falling going on. Because of JJ2’s limitations, Faw had to settle for a less complicated backdrop for the top parts of the level. Some may dislike its simplicity but I love it, it feels very natural. Together with the excellently chosen music track, the eyecandy creates a compelling ambience that I immerse myself in every time I play. I’ve said this several times before and I’ll repeat it again: this is the ultimate Carrotus level. There will never be a Carrotus level looking as good as Frontier Falls again.

This is FawFul’s best level yet, this is XLM’s best release yet, this is the best CTF level of the year and one of the best period. It was worth enduring Faw’s comparatively sucky levels just to see him make this one. Congratulations and don’t stop JCSing!

Old review: Great layout, great level tbh, but questionable balance in terms of powerups and the campy carrot area stops it from getting any higher than a 9… Good job though. Love the theme. Re-rated due to changes made. Bon appetit. Re-rated once again after having played a match here; it was better than sex.

I tested this too ages ago, and pretty much agree with everything Laro said, some areas need minor reworks, such as the top right in general, and peppermint is pretty unecessary in this level.

The eyecandy didn’t really wow me as such, this set is very versatile; more coulda been done.

The level plays alright though. =)

I do like what you tried to do with the limiting of routes, etc. but perhaps its a tad overdone. There are pseudo-deadends and one-way paths that really don’t need to be as so with important items in them making it pretty campy.

The two carrots are maybe too close, but cool level anyway.

To all who thought it was too easy to obtain seeker powerup in my level; it was.

I apologize but we accidentally uploaded it with spawntime of 3s instead of 30s. Kinda stupid on my part. Sorry again!

Fixed now.

So are you going to include the tileset, right?

Trigger zones work in 1.23. They just aren’t listed in the JCS.ini that comes with most versions of it. Just add this line to your 1.23 JCS.ini: 246=Trigger Zone |+|Trigger |Trigger|Zone|TriggerID:5|on/off:1|switch:1
Or, heck, just use the converter; if it messes up the triggers, that is a bug in the converter and not an actual difference between the level formats’ or JJ2 versions’ capabilities.

Also, they only apply to the connection that triggers them, so unless the 2vs2 is in the form of four players splitscreening, touching one yourself does nothing for your teammate or your opponents. Test your levels!

(also you spelled claustrophobic wrong)

The tileset and the music? Really?

Nice lvl!

This was one of the bizarrest tilesets I’ve EVER seen!

The sprites worked fine and the colors weren’t too appalling, but I just wasn’t really drawn to this tileset. It was just a strange tileset.

Better luck next time, I say.

Meh. This is a wierd level. Not only do I not get the point of it, but I found it just plain strange.

Ostensible rating: 3.0

Don’t rate your own levels.

This level was really made by me and Xpeedo but he maked a something annoying and a camp zone, i telled him every moment but he won’t fix that . I was confused why he maked the flyboard and why he deleted the copter .. I tried to fix these and now look what’s it.

Anyway Xpeedo that was a pretty ideea. Maybe you will do this with another battle game but if you wanna do it cool just don’t make camp zones like the RF place it was a chaos .. And in the test you camped there ? Gj you must fix it , don’t leave it . It’s not funny for the rest of players … Anyway at least you choose the right way .

[What FawFul said. ~cooba]

I liked it.

It reminds me pitlevelex.j2l

i hosted this last evening and i thought it was entertaining :D

Decent on first look, problems on the second. It’s very campy. Dead ends with carrots and PUs are annoying. The full c can be camped too. Pits unnecessary, IMO. Standard Castle eyecandy, could have used more variation (or just another set). Wouldn’t duel here or host this often. Glad to see you had fun making it tho! DJazz > LMAL

Definitly one of the best CTFs in 2011 so far. Great layout.
Only objections are that an almost slopeless set can be chaotic at times with so many springs and that the music annoys me after a while but w/e.

Mad props to the ec, especially for this set. Eventhough I think some ec parts are a little overdone, it doesn’t matter. Download this now!

making level like a boss

played a very fun 3v3 there

balanced

nice trix

It’s an okay list for what it does, but the fact that a better list came out two days before it rather limits the incentive to use it. At the very least you should have combined it with Pyromanus’ long-existing list so that it would describe which sprites each sound activated. Finally, I’m not sure how much this really belongs in the downloads section as opposed to an article or ERE page.

EDIT: “Neobeo’s post doesn’t even list HALF of all the Ambient sounds, so I’m not sure why it was even mentioned in this discussion. His list serves a completely different purpose from mine.” <- This is totally false. I think you may be looking at blur’s list instead of Neobeo’s, which is later down the thread? Neobeo’s goes straight from 0 to 255 without gaps. Compare his 42-62 to yours, for instance.

Also, I didn’t say this should be an MCE list. However, as noted by Pyromanus, ambient sounds are linked to MCEs in that different ambient sounds will load sprites into memory. They don’t place events in the level; rather, they affect what will happen if one does place such an MCE somewhere. These sprites are directly tied to specific ambient sounds, and it doesn’t really make sense in 2011 to have an ambient sound list that only specifies one dimension of the ambient sound event.

Also, if this had been an ERE page, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because other people could simply make the requisite edits to bring yours up to date with Neobeo and Pyro’s findings.