Project: The Unofficial Holiday Hare 17
 

It's out!

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Hello Guys an Gals!

Let's celebrate the digital release of Jazz Jackrabbit on GoG with a community driven project! Woohoo!

It's pretty simple, we build a single player pack with the community and release it a day before christmas!

But this requires a little co-ordination and some specific tasks.

The idea is to release atleast 5 (to a maximum of 10) christmas specific levels, ranging from easy to harder levels.

Also if someone is willing to take up the task for some artwork (episode logo etc) is highly appreciated.

The schedule has hard deadlines, we cannot lean a day more or less on it.

Schedule:
30 nov till 3rd dec - planning
3 dec till 24th dec - building
24th of dec RELEASE!

Working on the project right now are;
. ShadowGPW (level)
. Primpy (level)
. Jelly Jam (Easy level)
. XxMoNsTeRXM (scripting)
. Slaz! (level)
. Cooba (easy level)
. Purple Jazz (hard level)
- snzspeed (level)
- Blackraptor (level)

Level 1 (easy) Cooba
Level 2 (easy) Jelly Jam
Level 3 (medium) Snzspeed
Level 4 (medium) Blackraptor
Level 5 (Hard) Purple Jazz
Level 6 (Hard) Slaz!
Level 7 (very hard/end boss) ShadowGPW

Weapon roadmap:
lvl 1 no power up! (a few fast fires?)
lvl 2 Bouncer power up
lvl 3 Pepper power up
lvl 4 ice power up
lvl 5 rocket 3way power up
lvl 6 seeker power up
lvl 7 electro blaster power up

other weapons/secrets and stuff.. feel free and go wild with it. But don't be so generous with 1 ups. :-)

I don't think you will manage to do this for this christmas. Such things needs to be developed a year or so in advance.

ehh.. not for a small pack with a few levels :-)

Yeah, but there are things like balancing, testing if levels aren't buggy or if you can't cheese the challenges (basically either taking into account abilities of all rabbits or just one and then forcing it via AngelScript). I think celebrating 1 year on GoG anniversary with fan-made HH '18 would be more reasonable timeframe. You could get this just perfect instead of making a rush job.

You should tell that to Jeh when he designed the original levels.

I can create scripts for the levels if you want.

Dang now I regret for my only SP levels ever not being Christmas themed levels

EDIT: Well I'm willing to make one easy level. Also is it a must to use Jazz Jackrabbit 2's Holiday Hare tileset or I can pretty much use any tileset that looks "christmasy"?

That would be great Jelly! Feel free to do an easy level! :)

Yes, costum christmas tilesets are fine ! :)

XxMoNsTeRXM that is amazing! Thank you, i will deffo poke you!

I'm willing to participate with one level, but can't decide on the difficulty and size until I actually work on it. Stay tuned! ;)

would be cool Slaz!

I think I might be in with some small level :)

How does everybody feel about some scripting in this? Nothing too major, but how about some small changes like making coins persist from level to level?

Just something to increase replayability!

i love that idea! I tend to forget that almost anything is possible with scripting :)

Are we doing any consistency regarding tileset usage or is it anything goes as long as it's somewhat winter/holiday themed?

I'm happy to make a medium/hard level :)

@Slaz yeah xmass themed (or something like Snow hell)

Awesome! Adding you to the list!

Very well. I wish you luck for the project. I hope you manage to make it in time.

Alright guys, here are some suggestions for this project:

Tilesets

Feel free to use any winter tileset. Here are some suggestions:
-"Holiday Hare Fix v2" by Feaw. It contains 5 different (and improved) versions of the official HH tileset and 2 variations.
-"Xmas Carrotus" by Bluespaz07. It's not exactly "Xmas" themed as the title states, however it's a fine winter recolor of Carrotus.
-"JJ1 Holidaius". It contains 3 variations of the Holidaius tileset from the original Jazz Jackrabbit.
-"CandionV". Some may consider it too hard to look at due to the bright colors but that could be easily solved with a color palette alteration. Except for that, it's a very good looking tileset.

These are the ones I feel like they would work the best. Feel free to find and suggest other tilesets.

Music

Luckily, both JJ and JJ2 have Christmas OSTs so this shouldn't be a problem. Probably most other video game winter/Christmas themed songs work as well. I suggest using Jaseke's remake of Winter Hare. Sounds sick!

Scripting shenanigans

XxMoNsTeR offered to help with scripting this level pack. However, ideas for what to implement are still needed. All of the ideas so far:

Monster's idea: Being able to disguise as a snowman. While under disguise, enemies can neither track nor hurt you.
My idea: Collecting presents instead of coins, which can be used to purchase all sorts of upgrades in mid-level. Upgrades can include weapon upgrades (and ammo), jump height, firing rate (if rapid fire drops are removed), health etc.
cooba's idea: Crates with random contents. Kind of like presents in real life: It's a mystery!

Please mention your thoughts about these ideas, whether you would like to see them happen or not, what could be improved/changed etc. along with your own ideas.

Other ideas & suggestions

-"Blizzard Peak" by PT32 has a good looking blizzard effect to it. This effect could look great in one of the HH17 levels.
-Water might work if it's "freezing water" that damages you.

I think that if you palette-shift Diamondus so that grass is white, it would make for one kickass winter tileset.

If we do decide on any scripting they should be very simple and easy to understand (or easy to tutorialise) additions.

Not against the presents idea, but that's not too different from just a slightly more robust coin warp? Kind of overcomplicating it for not enough effect.

I have an old script which turns Bomb Crates into empty crates with random contents, maybe we can somehow mix both ideas into some sort of lootbox parody??

I'm a little confused by this statement, because single player packs necessarily involve multiple levels. If somebody wants to have a moving platform or something in their individual level, how simple the script is has no impact on what anyone else is doing.

im in!

Great suggestion, I'll add it on the list :-)

It's not difficult to tutorialise presents if you add a present counter in, let's say, the top right corner (below health). I don't know how to script JJ2+ stuff but this doesn't sound that hard to do, the hard part would probably be conserving the upgrades for the next levels.

I like your Bomb Crates idea, I can't think of a proper usage right now but it could certainly come in handy! Added to the suggestions list.

Sorry, wrote that at 1 AM. Sure, anybody can include anything in their level and that's fine. I was talking about episode-wide changes and tutorialising them to the player, not the coder.

Nothing that few text boxes in the first level can't explain.

If it's not too late then I'd like to make a level, preferably medium difficulty :3

Throw in a text string every time that reads, "Free sense of pride and accomplishment!"

That is funny :D

Can you add me in? I'll do an easy level. :D

Not too late to call dibs on CandionV again? :3

Also you could perhaps replace the Gem counters which appear at the end of the level with coin counters or something? In any case the gem thing is just completely useless.

added!

About the present box idea, maybe we can use Cooba’s random bomb crates, change the crate’s sprites to a more festive looking box, and make a counter for them that keeps persisting throughout the levels. Then there could be an ending/credits level, like the Castle or Santa’s workshop or something, where the obtained presents are measured against the total available, and Eva/Santa will change message depending on that value.

All we need to do collectively beforehand is to place Bomb Crates in both secret places and easier to reach places, not too few like Coins usually are, but also not as many as Food. Maybe around 50 to 80 per level, depending on the level size. Just an idea.

Tell me if this is something that could work, or if there’s something to add to or change. (y)

We need someone to design the new sprites for the crates and other things we might add.
Another idea would be to show a nice credits screen after finishing the whole episode of HH17. That wouldn't improve the gameplay, but it would make the episode feel complete and nicely made.

I think it will take you one year. I can't wait to see screenshots and videos.

Thankfully you are here to help with HD models.

I like the idea but it's a bit unclear to me. cooba's crates are regular crates with random content (afaik) and not a collectible. Plus, as you said, a new sprite would be necessary. I was thinking about reusing the Xmas Flying Lizard bomb texture which looks just like a gift and make it a collectible like food and diamonds. But yeah, I agree with the counter idea and the end-game counter.

[IMG]https://canadiem.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Wheeze.jpg[/IMG]

Project: The Unofficial Holiday Hare 17
 

Basically, just make a custom .j2a containing a modified crate sprite, and make a script to swap only Bomb Crates with that sprite. Then script a counter that adds 1 for every ‘Present’ opened. The contents don’t matter and is random, it’s finding and opening (or smashing) the presents themselves that matters.

This may also lead to a loot crate parody at the end of the episode, to poke fun on all the bias around random paid ‘Loot Boxes’ in games on the internet lately.

It’s just an idea to add some conistency in a collectively made episode.

Here's a cool idea: Make a cutscene w/Angelscript at the end of the Episode to resemble the one from HH95.

I'm really into this idea. The problem is that the in-game present sprite is slightly tilted and wouldn't work as a crate sprite replacement. And Shadow should tell us what he thinks about it and tell us when to start the project...

If someone takes their time to do that, it would be cute.

Do you mean pixelart rendering of 3D models? This technology was used in for example Donkey Kong Country,Toy Story,Super Mario Revenge of Seven Stars,Sonic 3d blast flickies island, vectorman even on cancelled Sonic X-Treme.