Jazz2Online news for January 2006
Lori Central is back - January 30th 2006
Source: Haze's Hideout
Lori Central, one of the community’s oldest sites, has returned.
Lori Central is the Nº1 site for all things Lori, and much more besides. The site boasts a wide range of artwork, comics, classic stories and other goodies. For those already familiar with the site, there are few changes, such as a new news system and gallery.
Shower praise on DrJones in this JCF thread.
Updated reviews deletion policy - January 21st 2006
One charasteristic of the downloads section has, since some time, been that there is a lot of chit chat between reviewers, and posts that are complaints that do not add to understanding the quality of the upload.
From heretofore, we will have a no-nonsense policy on the following types of reviews, which will be deleted immediately:
1. “First to review!/comment!” reviews which do not contain any information besides that. You may want to have the first spot on the review page, but spamming the downloads section is not the way. Just write something that adds to the understanding of the level instead.
2. ‘Will review later’ posts. These are of no interest to anyone. Just don’t post them. Note that ‘initial reviews’, which some people have been posting, which give a quick review of the upload, or a quick explanation of what it is, and serve as a placeholder for a more detailed review later on, are totally fine. These add to an understanding of the upload. These are not useless messages containing nothing interesting, which is what this is about.
3. Complaints about an upload being Secret Files only. These are understandable for really good uploads for which it would be great to have them converted to version 1.23. Complaining for every TSF upload that it’s TSF is totally unacceptable however, and is not much different from trolling. These users generally only have 1.23, so your complaint will do nothing to aid it, either. It only aids cluttering up the downloads section more.
4. Replies to types 1, 2 or 3 contributing nothing to the site or understanding the upload and its quality.
Useless chit-chat of other types, and comments that have been outdated because problems with the upload have been fixed (“why is this download specified as being TSF?”) will be deleted at times, too. Altogether, there will be a stricter policy and useless reviews will be deleted faster.
There was recently a brief rash of complaints that you could no longer review without rating. This bug has now been fixed. So has the bug where you could rate uploads with ratings below 1.
Several things - January 7th 2006
Lori Central
Lori’s unofficial website LoriCentral is being worked on by DrJones and Haze again. They are planning to open the site again soon, and it would be nice if they had some new content to start with again. So if you have made any Lori fan art please get in touch with them by sending them a private message on the JCF or J2O.
Unofficial 1.25 patches
UNKNOWNFILE is making unofficial 1.25 patches in which he tries to fix a number of Jazz2 bugs. He has already addressed a number of problems like laser crashes, gem ring crashes and other small things. He started a thread about this on the JCF. Please do not bother him with feature requests. If you would like to help him you will need to have plenty of knowledge on x86 assembler and C++.
Downloads
Some really good downloads have been released recently and I would just like to give them a little bit of extra attention. The first one is Blade’s newest tileset: Twilight Park which really looks amazing, and the example level is a lot of fun too. The second download: Kansas is a tileset project on which more than 15 people worked. I’m sure they will appreciate a review. They can expect at least one because I will review both downloads for sure.
Podcast
And last but not least n00b had the idea of starting a Jazz Jackrabbit podcast. Him, Odin and CrimiClown are going to try to pull it of. Share your ideas in the JCF topic. In case you are not familiar with podcasts, you can read about them here.
Have fun with all of this.
Featured Download - January 1st 2006
Happy New Years!
Today will also have the featured download of december of 2005: Blackraptors’ Charnel Keep, also winner of my Remake Contest. The torch has been passed on to me, I am doing the featured downloads from now on. I hope you will all be satisfied with my work.
Charnel Keep is a Remake of Battle1 converted to CTF. Although none of the flaws that inhabit Battle1 are present in this version at all. The author used a creative method here to remake the level; instead of merely altering the layout by randomly changing and/or adding new stuff; he took significant areas, and switched them around, changing the gameplay yet having the level structure still resemble the original layout enough for anyone to recognize it.
Although the eyecandy did not appear to have any method or concept behind what was done: thanks to the tileset and the usage of it; the mixtures of various shades of blue makes it look like a cool, and dark place possibly containing moisture in certain areas, though none are present.
