Jazz2Online news for April 2016
Formerly a Prince - April 22nd 2016
Source: News websites everywhere
J2O mourns the passing of famous singer-songwriter Prince, whose 1984 “Purple Rain” album cover and name inspired JJ2’s first single player episode. The world has lost a great musician.
New JJ2+ release, new poll release as well - April 21st 2016
It’s been a while, but with Anniversary Bash 18 fresh behind us what’s better to keep the community occupied than a new release of JJ2+? Version 5.2 mainly focuses on fixing numerous glitches, though it contains a few new features you’ll certainly like as well.
Some assorted highlights from the changelog:- The AngelScript API now allows for the creation of new layers and the drawing of layers in arbitrary orders
- There is now an .ini setting for changing the text size of in-game announcements
- More precise control over the privileges of remote admins for multiplayer servers
- Tons of bugs were fixed, including some particularly infamous ones such as crashing on the Next Episode screen and a few anti-radar glitches.
As always, you can check the full changelog in the readme. Discussion and bug reports are welcome in the JCF thread.
This is also as good a time as any to have a new poll!
| Yes, of course |  16 votes (50%) |
| Mostly, but with one or two tweaks |  12 votes (37%) |
| No, I use the default player 2 controls (WASDHFGJ) |  0 vote (0%) |
| No, some radically different control scheme |  4 votes (12%) |
| Total votes: 32 | |
With the new release, the JJ2+ team would like to use this opportunity to gauge interest for one of the new features (more layers). How many do you actually need? Are you a minimalist or a mannerist level maker? Let us know through the poll in the sidebar →
JJ1 levels are no longer second-class citizens and can be previewed on downloads pages now, just like their JJ2 counterparts.
Anniversary Bash 18 - April 14th 2016
It’s that time of the year again! Anniversary Bash 18 kicks off today, celebrating the eighteenth birthday of Jazz Jackrabbit 2. This means the game can now drink hard alcohol in most jurisdictions that are not the USA.
As always, this occasion will be celebrated in the game in an event server that will host the finest multiplayer levels. It will be up for four days, from now until Sunday afternoon (and possibly longer!), and we expect to see many new and familiar faces in there.
Make sure to check out the level pack and to download it before playing. It is also recommended you get the latest version of JJ2+ to ensure compatibility with the various level scripts and custom game modes that may be played. This year’s level pack was compiled by TreyLina and Loon.
Enjoy the Bash, and see you in in the game!
Anniversary Bash 18 is next week! - April 7th 2016
Source: JCF Thread
A reminder: Anniversary Bash 18 is coming up soon! Next week, to be exact, on April 14th and lasting until presumably sometime that weekend, so be sure to set aside some quality Jazzing time. In the meantime, head over to the JCF to make some last-minute suggestions for the Battle and CTF level lists, or if you’ve got some partially finished level you’d like to submit for the bash, you’ve got until the 12th to finish it. Remember, clear those calendars!
If you’re new and don’t know what the Anniversary Bash is, stick around in the comments and someone will probably explain it to you, but it seemed worthwhile to get something a bit more serious on the front page.
Team Elite joins JJ2+ development force - April 1st 2016
Long thought departed from the community, Team Elite has returned to the game to implement its last few missing features into JJ2+! Anonymized Team Elite spokespeople Josh Freeman and SUPERABIT promised no delay in implementing “Additional Layers for JCS” and “Ability to use up to 3 Tilesets at once.” (A tech demo pictured above accidentally included far more than 3 tilesets, due to poor communication between screenshot production and news writing, but this will no doubt be remedied in the final release.)
As for the long-mysterious feature “New Continue and Game Over features,” Team Elite promises that soon JJ2+ will crash not only upon starting a new episode, but also upon continuing an old one, joining a server running an older version of Plus, sending mail to Nigeria, crying tears of blood, or really just any time at all without warning.
Epic Games on verge of breaking into pyramid where all sellable copies of Jazz 2 were hidden by ancient evil mummy - April 1st 2016
LATE-BREAKING NEWS: Epic Games has just posted to their exclusive Google Wave feed that they are just a few days away from opening the door into the cursed pyramid where they stored all the remaining copies of Jazz Jackrabbit 2. “I’m so excited!” said George Broussard, who probably was never an employee of Epic Games but who has a really cool last name and wanted to be interviewed anyway. “1998 was a big year for storing games in cursed pyramids, and I think we in the industry all learned some lessons from the experience, that maybe should have been obvious, but this is a great opportunity for us all to return to our dark, secret, forbidden past!”
“I agree,” said Cliff Bleszinski, who spoke with Jazz 2 Online on the condition it be made clear he has no remaining connection to Epic Games and moreover never did and anyway he thinks Jazz should have had antlers to assist in his pimping duties. “It’s fascinating looking back at how all video game companies used to think nothing of sealing their most beloved products away in the tombs of long-dead rulers with the propensity to inflict instant leprosy upon anyone who disturbed them. Nowadays we just use DRM for that.”
Epic Games official spokesman Sweeney Todd hastened to add that now that there was only maybe a 66% chance of interlopers turning to molten stone and being forced to watch their limbs slowly fall away one by one, copies of Jazz 2 would be available for sale on Steam, GOG, Desura, and the Windows Play Store as soon as the dark gods willed it so, or else Tuesday at the latest. “Really it’s a no-brainer at this point,” Todd concluded. “We were all very afraid of the ancient prophecies of worldwide plague and suffering, but now that that’s nearly taken care of, there’s literally no other reason in the world we wouldn’t want to provide a legal means for people in the 21st century to gain access to games that we all worked on together for years and are still played today.”
When an intrepid reporter pointed out that selling Jazz 2 on digital platforms does not actually require physical materials and in theory could have been done at any time over the last any number of years, Todd expressed doubt and confusion and blocked the reporter on Twitter.
Jazz 2 discovered to be source of graphics for every console game ever made - April 1st 2016
In a surprise discovery, a copy of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 for the SNES and Genesis has been discovered from 1986, the game’s original year of creation. Unfortunately, Epic Games was unable to find a publisher for it at that time, and it languished in a warehouse while every game ever released on either console directly stole level and item graphics from it.
“I’m honestly shocked,” said one habitual commentator who spoke with Jazz 2 Online on the condition of anonymity. “I think that I hate every game ever made now, except for Jazz Jackrabbit 2 of course.”
“Personally, I’m thrilled,” said another. “Now I can justify spending more time playing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 instead of slowly eating my enormous hat collection one hat a time.”
The original console prototype currently rests within the collection of a collector with no interest in dumping it to a playable ROM image, but he has agreed to part with the cartridge for a mere $25,000. Fortunately, if every Jazz 2 fan agrees to donate a mere one thousand dollars each, the cartridge should be ours in no time!
Magical Girl Miracle ★ Lori - April 1st 2016
A bit of news from the localization team on the smash hit Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair prior to the game’s Steam release in a couple weeks: for better cultural fluency among non-Japanese players, pivotal Dungeonromper 2 character “Usami” has been replaced with our own Lori Jackrabbit. Earlier reports from the Dingdongroomba 2 playtesters indicate that Lori is happier than ever in the Dandannoodle universe: she has wings now, which helps tremendously with her historic problems with jumping.
There are also rumors that all references to “murder,” “kill,” “slaughter,” etc. within the Dungenessrhubarb 2 script have been replaced with “roast,” but this detail remained unconfirmed at press time. Nonetheless, a change.org petition has already been started in protest of the possibility of the idea of localization altering a game’s content and has gained upward of 13,000 signatures.