If someone's enough of a dick to do it, they get punished too, and the chances are, lag will tell them that the item may not be shot through the ground for the opposing player, if there's enough lag at least.

Reviving this thread.

I've just been wondering, what are people's opinions on CTF levels with only one carrot? From my experience, it just leads to annoying camping, especially in duels where in levels such as JE and Semi it's normally about getting the first hit and then a mad dash for the carrot, which is either followed by the damaged player running straight into doom or 5 minutes of camping. I personally hate having to rely on camping to win in levels, and would much rather move around dynamically, making swift assault on the player and wearing them down until I have a chance to kill them. It's why I like playing levels like BBlair in duels, despite being an unbalanced level. As long as there's at least two carrots, even if it's just two +1s, it still makes a huge difference in the gameplay in duels over levels with just one.

Anyone feel the same way?

Thing is that when there are multiple carrots and only one guy trying to keep you from collecting any of them, it takes a bad-as-hell mistake to get killed before you recover.

EDIT: Unless the carrots are very close to each other, in which case it defeats the whole purpose completely.

Also, never compare JE and semi. In JE the carrot is in the center of a wide, horizontal area and otherwise only accessible from below. This makes it easy as all hell to camp.
The carrot in semi, on the other hand, can be reached in a plethora of ways and the carrot is in a downhill area that can quite easily be attacked from the outside.

I agree completely. My favorite setup is probably one full NRG in the middle and a single health carrot per side. (For example, Medieval Skyscrapers, Destroyed Casiss Factory, or Gauntlet.) This allows someone to camp the middle and slow down the opponent's recovery, but camping alone won't work.

While yes, the carrot in Semi is placed in a rather awkward posistion, that doesn't change the fact that it's your only option for healing. Attacking a camper there can still be difficult because if you hit them, they'll just take it for themselves and make a quick escape and/or finish you off. A skilled camper there can pretty much defend all of the routes simultaneously anyway. There are few "effective tricks" yes, such as long range EB shots to shoot the carrot down and obtain from underneath, although those sort of tactics come with a high risk and unless your opponent gives you a large opening and/or you're extremely quick, you will probably get killed in the process.

What I'm trying to say is that levels with only one carrot tend to rely on hit-run-camp tactics which focuses all of the action around a single point and therefore less of the level is used during the gameplay. Levels with more than one carrot involve more hunting and quick reflexes, which, in my opinion, leads to more active duels where prediction is vital, more usage of the level and thus more fun.

Of course, these are only my personal views, some people prefer levels with only one carrot as it means it's easier to kill someone if you have skilled dodging and time your hit exactly right. However, levels with multiple carrots can still be easy to control too, just as Troglobite suggested, just with the difference that you don't have to rely off just one carrot to heal. All of this applies to duels only though, in team games having just one carrot doesn't seem to be an issue due to the fact there are more players to be hit by and thus being harder to successfully camp.

Basically, the carrot setup decides the gameplay in duels.

Only one carrot works great in 2v2 at least (if you don't wanna die, don't go to the camper and let your teammate get r)

I agree with grytolle, one carrot works well as long as it's a 2vs2 level, since it creates interesting tactical situations. 1 carrot in a duel is a bit dull though.

For duels, you want to have more carrots, even though there are fewer players. In CTF, 2 (of any combination) is a good number. 3 can work as well but it's harder to balance: 3 full nrg is usually too much for a 2vs2, 2 full nrgs and a +1 is also usually too much, and 1 full nrg and 2 +1's is the best 3-carrot setup, but if done wrong it lead to the same problems as having just 1 carrot in the level. More than 3 carrots and you are veering into crazy giant level territory (good for 8vs8, but way less tactical).

In battle mode, I'd say 3 carrots minimum, and never use full nrgs unless it's a coin warp. 1 carrot isn't enough, due to having 5 hearts. 2 carrots can be annoying in duels (takes forever to play, too much emphasis on hit-and-run tactics, basically all the problems of having 1 carrot in a CTF duel) and makes the level's routes way too "back and forth". 3 lets the level be a bit more dynamic. Keeping the respawn times shorter than CTF is a good idea too.

So there seems to be this paradox of really good eyecandy and really good gameplay. It seems most levelmakers philosophies on good eyecandy is to spam the level with stuff or make something really big with fancy platform structures. They may look nice and all, but simpler layouts are generally prefered. I couldn't care less to duel or play a game in them just because of the ec spam or the really fancy platforms (I am not refering to platform placement/organization). In fact, I think levels with simple ec can look equally amazing (for example snooze's cloud level). In fact, too much ec used the wrong way can hinder gameplay. There are levels which I consider to be a mess since the tileset usage is mostly random (and the layout suffers bad gameplay from this too), but since the 'overall look' is nice then it's fine :mad:.

I find that making levels with decent use of the tileset while having the freedom to make an interesting design is possible. So is ec spamming worth it or not?

A lot of level designers don't follow this idea, but eyecandy is absolutely nothing without theme. Theme is basically the subject of the level, and the eyecandy serves as the content. Writing a story without a title is meaningless - so why does some people think it doesn't matter in level creation? Simply put, your chosen theme should determine what kind of decorations your level will have.

There are some occaisions when using repetitive eyecandy can actually work out. For example, cooba and Ragnarok's Rainforest Revelry uses a complex eyecandy method which gives the feeling of density like you're actually in a jungle, which makes perfect sense as the use is justified by the theme. This type of eyecandy approach would not work in something like say a Castle level, as logically an "artifical" level would have more finesse in it's design - you don't see totally random house designs now, do you? The tiles you use also help create a theme. Sometimes it's not always a good idea to use all of the tiles in a set, and instead focus on certain aspects and making them stand out, if my level Condemned is an example of this.

Theme can also justify gameplay as well, for example an indoor level would likely have a more enclosed design built out of paths and corridors, whereas an outdoor theme would logically have more open spaces. It's not a general rule of thumb though, there are exceptions and it can be interesting to see the two styles mixed and/or reversed.

Reviving this topic, but it's better than starting a new one.

I recently thought up something concerning balance and the unified base system used in undulation and one spot: What do you all think of a ctf layout with an a-symmetrical/non-symmetrical layout containing a relatively small symmetrical portion with both bases? - Would this ensure balance if done a certain way? (warps?) - Would it make for an interestingly varied and balanced ctf level?

Ultimately, a level will be perfectly (and I should stress perfectly) balanced if and only if both teams are placed in the exact same situation. A perfectly symmetrical level is balanced because each team gets exactly the same things (the only difference is that one side is mirrored, which does not affect balance).

By this definition, a level like you just described cannot be absolutely balanced. Even if it contains a symmetrical portion, the teams will be placed in slightly different situations because (and perhaps only because) their spawns will be in different places. You could of course remedy this by spawning both teams in the same spots, but that would be highly unusual.

This is all theory, though. In practice, you can make a level that is balanced enough (not perfectly balanced, but enough for competitive play, which is the case of most levels) using the concept you just described. You would just need to design the non-symmetrical part of the level carefully, and pay attention to where the spawns are.

As for your question "would it make for an interestingly varied and balanced ctf level?", I don't think it's a matter of "would it?" but "does it?". After all, we already have two CTF levels (that you named) which fit this description, more or less. We need only to look at and play those levels to see if the concept works.

In my opinion it does work, although it could be implemented better in both of those levels. Undulation has multiple warps to the base area, which makes it harder to defend (although the bases are somewhat camp proof, which helps). This can lead to a feeling of luck when it comes to scoring a point. One spot does a bit better by only having a single entry point, but the base area is too small and cramped, and is campable (warp + small box + camping is usually a bad idea, especially when said box contains two bases).

Probably a "perfect" solution would be to use one spot's entry point into the base area, and combine that with undulation's anti-camping system (it is best to discourage people from hiding in a warp area).

Interestingly, I actually have a sketch of a level which I was planning to make this month, basically using this concept. I've been planning it for quite a while, but have been putting it off due to the strangeness of the concept.

Strangeness is actually the main problem here. This is a neat idea that can lead to neat gameplay, but it is vastly different from normal CTF (more than your average gimmick; it changes the gameplay in a way that it almost becomes a sub-type of CTF rather than standard CTF). Thus, not many people would play the level unless you got someone to host it.

Just curious, how should we deal with character biases in levels of any gametype?

Character biases are in all honesty, completely unimportant. This is because players who intentionally choose Lori or Jazz over Spaz will have to understand that this could make it more difficult for you to get around in many MP levels, in fact probably the vast majority. People who choose non-Spaz characters have no right to complain about character bias because it's a problem they have created themselves - for freak's sake why can't they just play as Spaz like everyone else? Simples.

Should leveldesigners even bother with that?

I mean, if you make a map lori friendly its likely to have very easy jumps which is gonna make the difference between very good spaz players and lori players a lot smaller.
I mean, spaz is mainly the rule for most levels.

But you could try to make a "jazz-only" level. A level where hovering would be so crucial u couldnt use spaz in it. We would get people using jazz/lori again, and you wouldnt have to worry about making the level fit 2 very different types of characters - Spaz on the one hand and Jazz and lori on the other.

If a Jazz player can't get around your level without uppercutting or having to pause just so he can precisely jump, you let everyone know that you're either a lazy jerk, or you can't make levels. How hard is it to put a spring or two?

I just tested several blur and EM levels (and all of mine) with Lori and not once there was a double jump only situation.

How about the RF climbs in EotM?

I didn't take RF climbs (optional routes) into account.

Well, people are going to hate me for this comment...

I remember back when I considered being a levelmaker, I just wanted to make levels that were good for Jazz/Lori and ignore spaz. But really, if you do that, people will whine, it won't encourage them to use different characters, because that's what they're used to. Players want to play with something they're used to, or some character they consider "better". So, why do I think it's more fun making a level character balanced, or at least making it functionable for other charas. Just imagine in fighting games, telling everyone to use the same character against another because people say he's the best. It wouldn't be as fun. That case probably happens though, but I don't like it. Okay I know they're two both completely different catagories, but for short, I enjoy diversity. Not for simply for the sake of being different, but I being aware of other advantages at, not the same stuff all the time. Should I make a Jazz biased level and tell them it's their fault for not choosing him at the start because they weren't used to using him and some problem they created themselves? No, I would be called an idiot. That to be said I did make some Jazz biased level before, but most still used Spaz. Yes I'm pretty aware about some disadvantages I get and all that stuff, but must I really change main character just because "everyone" else is?

Yay revival. Necroposting, ew.

PJ, is right, gameplay is very much centered around the carrot. Therefore, any 'good' map (let's put aside differences for a moment and say) such as Semi or JE has tricks to obtain the carrot. As already mentioned, a long-range EB shot (which I have to say has been almost perfected by Kenny) can be used to shoot the carrot down on Semi and then obtained from underneath. Similarly, if planning is done before you actually need the carrot, you can shoot the carrot on JE onto:

1. Left or right side
-Surprisingly good spot, lots of people don't notice it there. I once played a match where I shot the carrot off to the right and the guy kept complaining there was no carrot, allowing me to not die the entire duel.
2. Left or right spring
-Obtained by simply going through the springs from underneath, spamming seekers.
3. Slowly sliding down the tree trunk
-Annoying, especially for those who think its gone all the way down. A plus for this is you don't necessarily need to enter the trunk, it's just at the side.
4. All the way down
-Normally hidden, people will sometimes think there's no carrot. Just waltz right in and regain health.

EOTM has a very tactfully placed carrot, inside a tube and very, very risky to get. But you can still shoot it down and out to enrage your opponent. Same goes for my map Beach Fall (nope, not advertising). Distopia has a very campable but also attackable carrot. Wicked Wood has a carrot that can be shot down or up (EPIC WIN :D ). I can provide you with hundreds of examples.

Tricks around the carrot area do indeed contribute to making successful camping more difficult. In many of the popular dueling levels, despite preferring multiple carrots I haven't really found having just one carrot because it was still difficult for the opponent to completely freeze off all access to the carrot when I needed it.

There are of course a few exceptions, such as the box in DW. There is very little you can do about camping there, aside from hitting a camper with EB but even then they can still just get the carrot themselves, and escape with 3h which still means they're playing in the advantage, and they'll probably just hit with with their own EB and kill you anyway.

There is a somewhat situational tactic of shooting the carrot down to the lower right corner and burying it with Toaster, allowing you to get it from below, but that's only assuming you've already gone to the carrot and done this already before your opponent can hit you.

This is why I hate DW with a passion in duels. However, I don't mind the box at all in teamplay because blocking off the enemy team from the carrot is a much more legitimately viable strategy that isn't really considered "lame" or anything.

Forget about carrots for a second and think about the bases. I don't have much of an interest in creating battle levels because in those levels it's about running around randomly shooting in the hopes of killing anyone you see while in CTF levels the movement is actually centered around bases and carrots and not dying as opposed to getting the most kills. You have to consider the position of your bases carefully and situate it in a simultaneously campable and attackable position. You have to make it hard for people to capture the flag in team games but also provide many different methods to capture. In Distopia my preferred method of capturing the red flag is coming from the middle and raining bouncers onto the base, but red can counter this maneuver by spamming bouncers from the top of the sucker tube at the right of the base. Similarly if blue approaches from underneath, red can camp with seekers at the tubes below. If blue chooses to drop from above, seekers shot randomly everywhere will be guaranteed to hit blue. At the bases, it's about providing several options for defense and several counter-attacks for capturing.

I wouldn't consider distopia an example of a level with good bases, nor as a very good level for 3v3. If you want good base areas, take a look at Wicked Wood or epitome

DW, BBlair, Semi, JE, m'kay?????

Don't neg-rep plz:(

Wholeheartedly agree.

And in regards to making levels balanced for both characters I only test them using Jazz (unless its a race, then sorry I don't take you into account most the time). Chances are if it flows for Jazz, that it'll flow for Spaz.

I am concerned about how the latest exploits affect jj2 game-play in certain levels. Wall-jumping in particular, because it can be used to scale up walls in ways that rf jumping can't, that probably breaks some levels. The good news is that wall-jumping is relatively difficult, much more-so than rf climbing.

Another thing, how does everyone feel about loose 40 sec shields in mp levels? - I don't mind the bubble shield in battle1, since it's easy to fend off with camping and careful playing, though it can be quite annoying in open-ended levels. Also, the shield in DW makes more sense considering the design and concept, although I'm not encouraging playing DW!

40 second shields can work, although they do need to have a long spawn time or be very hard to obtain at least so someone can't camp at them with ease. The spawn time needs to be at least 80 or so since anything less than 40 would mean that a player could potentially camp at the shield and just get it over and over again as it respawns.

Unless some "coder" decides to "improve JJ2" and make walljumping easier, it's not much of a problem because of how time consuming it is.

I wanted to write that a typical walljumper as is me succeeds in about half of his attempts, but I decided to not post any data I didn't confirm before. So I went to battle1 and started to wall jump the most left wall.

Results after 50 attempts:
25 fails
12 single wall jumps
9 double wall jumps
2 triple wall jumps
2 quadruple wall jumps

Edit: Btw, I know no one asked for any random science data but I wanted to raise my self-esteem say it's not really that time consuming if 50% of the time it comes out successful. The above data means that on average, two attempts are needed to perform any of RF climbs in semi without RFs, and about 13 attempts to climb to the top of a medieval skyscraper.

Okay. Now try the same in a 3on3 game while you've got the flag.

Currently I suck at using any tricks in-game. Wall jump has only saved me from dying multiple times in ww, and once or twice let me recapture in semi.

Moment of truth: I don't actually know what walljumping means. :(

It leaked enough anyway so I probably won't change much by explaining it. "Wall jump" aka "wj", formerly also "4x jump" or "omg NF SE you only can cheat" is a simple technique based mainly on luck (unless your eyes can register single gameticks), allowing a player to use a flat vertical wall to jump on a height of a regular jump and regain the possibility of double jump. The move is performed by pressing down arrow key exactly at the moment of touching the wall. Jump key must be hold at the same moment. The higher horizontal speed the easier it is to succeed. Plus command "/wc" doesn't affect wall jump in any way (people often ask me about that), neither does the character of choice. With wall jump it's theoretically possible to climb a wall of any given height, in practice people can rarely perform it more than 5 times in a row. It happens though, I once climbed all the way up to the water shield in b1.

Oh, okay! I've had that happen to me on occasion over the years but never really thought much about it. Thanks! Carry on with discussion.

In levels where there already are RF's, walljumping gives a slight extra advantage to players who don't have ammo yet. Considering how much competitive JJ2 is currently focused on controlling ammo, walljumping could be considered a positive balancing factor. Whenever a player has ammo, they will prefer to use an RF-climb, because the success rate is a lot higher.

I just did the same thing at blue base in semi (climbing up to the left where the little "camp chamber" is), and I had roughly the same successrate as you. In general I would succeed like 5 times in a row, then fail about as much until I got into it again.

I've never managed to do a double walljump at all, by the way. It seems to me that that is a lot harder to learn

I didn't realize that you only needed one walljump to reach red base in semi. Nice O+ But anyway mimicking RF-jumps is a very small extra advantage in a level which has RFs. Everything past 2 walljumps is definitely not worth the risk in a stressed situation because it's simply to hard - that is, if you're really fucking good at jj2-trix. Mortals like myself would probably stick to single walljumps, and those won't get you higher than RF-climbing would.

As I said above, being able to do a little more without ammo is a good thing considering all the ammo-camping playing that's been going on lately. On the other hand, just like level makers can make it impossible to RF-climb in a certain area, it would be nice if the same option could be given for walljumping. In a patch, an option could of course be added to disable walljumping in your server, but I see no good reason to make that the default option, considering how it is more comparable to RF-climbing than to wallclimbing (ppl want to do the former in a 3v3, but they don't want to get stuck in a wall) - or to Lori kicking through thin walls for that matter (a bug which atleast slightly compensates for her being so disabled compared to spaz in general:+). I'm undecided whether walljumping should by default be added in levels that don't have RFs, but considering that all mappool levels have RF's it's not a very urgent issue to me personally.

Your conclusion regarding semi, SE, is probably flawed though: I can't seem to do the walljump blind at all (to the left of C in semi), and I need some 30 attempts to walljump out of blue base.

Climbing out of the level in MS is ofc not an issue:
1) you won't have time for so many attempts
2) people will get copter and hunt you down - and you would be better of waiting 4 seconds for the copter yourself anyway

I've taken C several times in WW, and killed some flag that was camping there by jumping up with blaster after I spawned, and I've managed to stay alive slightly longer at blue base in semi, and I think I've scored once or twice (in like 100 games) in that fashion

Edit: Oh yeah, I just remembered: Another advantage is that you can walljump when you're blinking (in which case you can't RF climb yet)

I'm glad you compare it to the other bugs in a similar way as I do. I agree it should be never disabled by default and making it possible to disable is probably a good idea. Designing a level so it's impossible to wall jump isn't that hard, ceiling slopes work rather well at that (they don't make it fully impossible but really discourage it). Making it so there are RF tricks but no wall jumps is harder, but still possible. Also I think arranging a good walljumper to test your level for unintended wall jumps is always a good idea. I know one such guy and he has too much free time.

<3 EMEF

No idea where is the first one you mentioned, the other one will be as easy as the rest if you find out how to do it. I can show it to you if you want, just ask.

I agree, I didn't mean to say it is, it was just the only one where I remembered how many wall jumps are necessary to perform. :p

1) Stand on blue base, jump out of it (up and right)
2) Stand on the ground below the C, walk left so you stand under the sucker tube, walk a little further to the left and jump up there


Ah, ok ;)

It's as I told there. If you know how to, it's not harder than the rest. You might need some additional knowledge about that place though.
I still didn't know what do you mean and I had to go to semi. And then "oh, that one"! I totally forgot it in every wall jump training. Right now when I tried it though, I had about the same success rate as in b1 (what is surprising, because I'm a type of walljumper who sucks at right walls; left walls good, right walls bad). You however have to wall jump, as I said, the right wall there, the part that's visible. Wall jumps in one tile of horizontal space are much harder, especially when you don't see your rabbit.

I've done it a few times... It's just harder because you need to jump half a tile higher than on the other side, else it will fail

2) you use the right wall?:D

Bouncers vs. Powered-up Bouncers

Recently I've been going over this one in my head, obviously the bouncer PU itself is probably the better option since it does 2 damage instead of 1. What I do wonder though, is does anyone prefer the way the original bouncer ammo bounces off walls and stuff, or do they prefer the powered up one?

I'm aware the powered up one is more versatile in terms of going through walls of 3.5 tiles and down steeper slopes; so better for defensive use too, and if I recall correctly moves faster too.

However the non-powered up one bounces off walls and bounces back in the opposite direction rather than going back at the wall it bounced off with some weird recoil. If I recall correctly, non-powered up bouncers can just about go through 2 tiles of mask (or maybe just a bit less).

I notice in levels like AYB and Frontier Falls, while they'd benefit or not benefit and they might also drastically change the level. However I've always noticed gameplay in levels without the two best powerups (Seeker and Bouncer imo), turn out to be easier to survive in and more fun - generally less chaotic, hence Frontier Falls being such a success...

So anyway, bouncer PU is used in most levels that are made, but minus the extra damage, does anyone prefer the mechanic of how the non-powered up bouncer bounces, or prefer the powered up ones?

Go thread revival!

As always, level design determines the best weapon assortment, and personally I think the different physics of both the powered up and the non powered versions are useful in different ways. Powered bouncers are more useful for tactical uses, but the non-powered ones are more for trick shots - and here I emphasize the trick part. It's easier to defend a base with the non-powered bouncer on some maps because the bouncing is reliable and you can count on it to consistently cover a section of the map. Back and forth. Back and forth. The one real definite use of the powered's recoil, though, is to shoot through that layer 3 passage nearby the carrot in Semi. I've hurt many people because of the powered bouncer's physics that way. Otherwise I tend to use the powered bouncer for its ability to go through more tiles. Have you tried shooting powered bouncers through the floor in the seeker ammo area near the carrot? Pretty damn useful.