A GENERIC SINGLE PLAYER LEVEL
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By: Blackraptor of OLC
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i make things in notepad when i'm bored.
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Copyright (C)2005-2006
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Credits:
Level - Blackraptor of OLC
Tileset - Xargon (Converted by Spaztic)
Music -
Betatesters - Violet CLM
Spaztic
Cooba
EvilMike
Scizor CT (He just looked over the level quickly though ;P)
Gr33tz to whoever wants them \m/
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Important Notes/Tips/Purpose of Level
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This rather large level was actually made quite fast, mostly over a period
of a few days (over 3/4th of it was made in less than a week in july/august
(i forgot, it's been a while..). The inspiration for this level has been
that of old 2D sidescrolling games I grew up playing as a kid. Despite all
the games out now with beautiful 3D graphics I still play those gems every
now and then as a reminder of my childhood.
And thus, I present you this level. There is no story, really. There aren't
any gimmicks or weird eyecandy styles, no new concepts or anything (at
least nothing I consider new..). It's just a typical albeit large single
player level filled with lots of pickups, enemies, and secrets.
A lot more planning went into this level than meets the eye. Most people
won't notice new and harder enemies being introduced deeper into the level,
and old, feeble ones slowly decreasing in number until they dissapear
completely. Just like in most games, 2D sidescrollers included, you'll see
less of a particular enemy the further you progress and more of stronger
ones. Except instead of this happening over periods of several levels, all
this has been stuffed into one huge level for your enjoyment. Enemies and
enemy combinations also can appear based on locale, as the level is
generally divided into different environments which hold different
creatures. An obvious example of this is how fish and tube turtles only
appear in aquatic areas, although other examples include dragons, bats and
turtles in caves and forest areas (places with lots of annoying trees and
stuff =P) having a saturated amount of aerial creatures mixed with monkeys
and other landbased creatures (examples would be Dragonflies, Monkeys and
Hatters earlier on in the level, and further in the Dragonflies being
replaced with Ravens and Doggy Dogs added into the mix). Of course, most of
you probably won't care about this, but I just thought I should mention
this at least somewhere.
A lot of you would probably complain about this level being in TSF.
Honestly, I don't care. TSF is like an upgraded 1.23 meaning it should be
better by default as it has everything 1.23 has and more. Plus even if I
wanted to make this level 1.23 I couldn't. TSF handles large levels better
than 1.23 does, and this level would be unplayable in 1.23 even with all
the TSF stuff removed (I've tried it. Either it's very buggy to the point
of tiles and events randomly dissapearing, or it just wont run). I thought
since this level is forced to be in TSF I might as well take advantage of
TSFs features and use its new content.
Also, although this level is large, a lot of it is secrets and otherwise
out of the way areas. Back in the time when I played old 2D sidescrolling
games, I always tried to find every possible secret and was repeatedly
trying to reach that one ledge that I could see but was just above my
jumping height, or get to that area that I could partially see past a large
wall. I hope that when you play this level, you won't just rush through it
as if you just want to reach to the exit and get the level over with, but
instead take the time to navigate through as much of the level as you can
and discover its secrets. Some are right in the open and can easily be
gotten, while some take a lot of thinking (or luck) and you probably won't
find them unless you cheat or are just really good in single player. I put
some right out in the open too, but made them pretty impossible to get
unless you know how, because I've played games where that happend to me :).
I know most of you will probably cheat in this level. There are only two
savepoints, and if you take your time they're a good 30 minutes or so apart
(not that I've counted). Of course, dying and losing 30 minutes of progress
is far from pleasant, and when playing through the level I often find
myself having to use cheats to stay alive as well. I really don't care if
you cheat or not in this level; I won't lose sleep over it or anything if
you do, but for anyone who likes a challenge I dare you to pass through the
level without using a single cheat (unless i've overlooked a bug that
forced you to get stuck in a wall or something and you need to cheat to get
out, cause that's different =P).
Also, a few of you will probably find certain areas too hard to pass or
won't find the solution to get past an area. I'm guessing this will occur
especially around that platform challenge before the first savepoint and if
you mess up the chesire cat, or maybe the area in the ice cave at the start
of part 2. For the chesire cat I've already added enough clues what to do,
and for the earlier just keep trying. I'm not going to give any solutions
on passing any specific areas or something, but the level is beatable thus
meaning every area of it is beatable. If youre stumped, just keep trying.
I'm not even going to go into details of some games I've played where I've
been stuck in certain areas for forever.
There are probably lots of bugs in the level I've overlooked. Unless they
really damage the level in playability, I don't care about that either.
Games and levels have bugs, deal with it. There's a few big ones I know of
though, that unfortunately I can't fix. One of them is that the second your
level registers having water in it, any lighting outside of the water is
negated. That's the reason why in the final main area of the level (Ice
cave) I couldn't take advantage of the lighting feature in jj2 as I've
already introduced water into the level right before the first checkpoint.
This ruins the potential to make some cool things or create nice, dark
atmosphere (or even hide eyecandy bugs ;)) in the latter part of the level,
and I was rather angry that there was no solution to this bug (its a jj2
glitch, NOT a level glitch. I can't just edit the source code of jj2 and
fix it or something). I've also heard about certain crates to appear empty
when you break them open. Usually its either an enemy or a bunch of pickups
in them, and I've had this happen to me in the water area a lot. I'm not an
expert on these kind of things but I'm guessing this happens because
there's too many sprites in the level or something. I've already switched
this level to TSF so it can RUN, let alone prevent sprites and tiles from
dissapearing. Other than removing loads of enemies from the level, there's
nothing I can do. Personally, the less applications I had running with this
level open in jj2, the less I noticed this happen to the point where it
didnt happen at all. Hopefully that helps. Same goes for enemies sometimes
not appearing the first time you pass through an area. Sometimes the
trigger blocks blocking the cave right before the jungle temple wont
register being triggered by the crate in the cave/raven area until you go a
bit offscreen and then return back to the place.
Part 2 of the level was made in mostly two nights. The reason the level
required a part 2 was because it even got too buggy for TSF as I kept
introducing enemies in the latter areas and putting a strain on the game
with all the different sprites. The reason part 2 is bigger in size then
part 1 is because I used Find/Replace events and replaced all the enemies
no longer appearing with nothing. This basically fixed the problem. Also,
it enabled me to use lighting in the caves ;D. And I took a little
advantage of it being a whole seperate level and all by using the Gloaming
version of the tileset to make the caves look darker, among other small
things.
There's also some easter eggs in the level and stuff (a lot of the
references you might not get though, but whatever).
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Record Scores/Times
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Since this is a whopper of a level and takes forever to beat, I thought
it'd be interesting to have a mini scoreboard that you can compare your
results to when/if you beat the level. The times and top scores were all
acheived by either myself or the people who betatested the final version of
this level. Compare your results and see how you fare! You can also
send/message your results to me and if I ever update the level for whatever
reason (fix bugs or something, or if I just get loads of submissions which
I probably wont but =P) and I'll put in your name and your score/time as
long as you didn't cheat to acheive it. There's no way I can tell if you
cheated or not, so I have to depend on you being honest about your score.
If you lie and make up a score I won't really care though, but if I notice
its outrageously high or something obviously I won't post it. Who the hell
cares anyways, it's not like you win anything by cheating yourself a top
place on the scoreboard that nobody will read anyways, but there's always
people who do those things anyways.
Currently, my pathetic top score (which can definately be beaten as I
purposely/accidentally missed quite a few things in the level) is 445200.
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General Tips
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If you find most of the secrets in the first half, you should get a sugar
rush around the time where you're in the temple in the forest (one of the
more annoying areas of the game as there's loads of enemies and scenery for
them to hide in) and having a sugar rush in that area makes it so much
easier (lots of people die in that area, and the huge amount of enemies
discourages exploration and makes most people rush past it, which is a
shame because just for that reason I put in better secrets ;).
Piling up on all that fastfire really helps kill stuff, which encourages
not dying (which encourages cheating, but ;P). I've kept this in mind while
making the level, and if you depend on rapid blaster shots obliterating
everything in your path you'll be screwed near the end of the level..
Not all of those stopwatches underwater are just for eyecandy ;)
Don't be in such a hurry to lose your helicopter ears..
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BUGS IN CASE YOU DIDN'T READ ALL OF ABOVE
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Sprites dissapearing -
Can't fix, its cause of the level size. I've said above having less
applications running while playing this level might help, otherwise be
prepared for stuff like the "y" in chilly dissapearing, crates being empty,
or enemies not appearing in an area until the second time you go through
it. In the case of the latter with important stuff like springs
dissapearing, exiting and revisiting an area usually makes them reappear.
No lighting in ice cave at the end of part 1 -
Can't fix. When water's implemented, all lighting outside the water is
negated. I can't fix this unless I change around the entire structure of
the level which I certainly won't do.
This is more common sense and you should figure it out right when you see
how freaking huge the level is, but incase you somehow failed to do that,
DO NOT SAVE IN THE LEVEL BECAUSE IT'S TOO BIG AND WEIRD THINGS MIGHT
(WILL?) HAPPEN.
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This should've been released ages ago, but either I got lazy, kept adding
more to the level, or while waiting for people to finish testing it I
decided to do something I probably shouldnt've, add more testers to an
already behind the schedule release ;P (Mythical Man-Month comes to mind).
As a final note, thank you for wasting your time reading this useless
generic readme file.
~Blackraptor of OLC
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