My first level ready soon (maybe)
 

You guys may not remember, but I started posting here in the JCS forum almost exactly a year ago. Stuff happened happened, and I haven't been able to come back until now. Yay me! :+

Anyway, when I first finished the single player game in Jazz 2 back in '98, I wanted to make a nice little level pack. I went to college, and that became mostly impossible due to time. Now that I'm all done with all that, I've had a little more time to do what I want, and after working on it off and on for about four years, I just now finished laying out the terrain for my first level. With any luck, I'll have some enemies and pickup items populating it soon, and I'll be ready for anyone to try it out. However, even with school out of the way, I've still got to deal with moving to another state and planning my upcoming marriage, so I may be forced to take another (much shorter) break before that happens. I don't know. Anyway, I'll be here looking for players and comments at some point in the relatively near future, so I thought I should introduce myself again.

Oh, and please don't expect four years worth of actual work once I've got it ready. I worked on it maybe twice a year for a couple weeks at a time since starting college. ;)

Kudos for you! I don't know why, I just wanted to use that word...

Well, let's see. I will be sure to download it, because I too have been working on a level pack for a long time (5 years though) and it doesn't have that much actual work on it.

So, I will be sure to not criticize you as harshly as some people do...

Well I'm glad to hear someone's in a similar situation. :)
I'd be glad to try your levels too!

I've got the level even closer to completion now, with just a few minor adjustments to item and enemy placement, and one pinball sequence left to go. I'll warn anybody who bothers to read this, my design style (which reflects my playing style) is far from heavy on puzzles, which seem to be popular with other designers. Just so everyone knows, this is a preference not a "flaw". ;)

SSF
 

Honestly now, there's nothing wrong with criticism. I live on criticism, I strive on criticism, it's what makes you better. THE MORE THE MERRIER!

Seriously, everyone has flaws and make mistakes and the only people that can spot them are other people. This might sound weird, but critics are actually helping you ;)

The Tea of Wisdom should moderate the Art Forum. Really, at times they need someone to say that.

My philosophy exactly, Wisety. Why is it no one I know IRL shares it?

Believe me, I'll be glad to hear what I can do to make my levels better in the future. I may or may not take some of that advice... :-)

Oh, I'll be constructiong my own tilesets for all of my levels too. Should I post those separately, even if they're only designed for the one level and not for general use?

Depends on how good you think they are. (And there's always the "Multiple" upload type...)

But "multiple" means that you have to review them together, which is :(

EDIT: Clarification.

Well the tileset works really well for my level, but the animations are a huge pain to set up, the layout is not entirely intuitive, and a good deal of the graphics are borrowed, though modified, from other sources (including two of the sets that come with JJ2). I think the overall effect I've set up is new though, and some of the tiles are completely original. Does that affect its worth by a lot?

Screenie :D

Of the tileset in use during the game? I'll see what I can do. I don't have any web space right now...

I'll host a pic if you email it to a@foxmage.com.

If that's not what he wants, I wanted to see one.

Thanks Radium! I'll work on that right now. I still need to find my own space in the near future though. I'm looking around :)

I've sent some screenshots to Radium just now.

[IMG]http://www.foxmage.com/flamep/IF1.jpg[/IMG]
Indoor/outdoor with animated falling hazards

[IMG]http://www.foxmage.com/flamep/IF2.jpg[/IMG]
Hanging platforms, leaping fireball hazard, and a good view of the 3D eye candy

[IMG]http://www.foxmage.com/flamep/IF3.jpg[/IMG]
Stolen skeleton ramps. Yes, there's an error in the stone ground, and I've already fixed it.


[IMG]http://www.foxmage.com/flamep/IF4.jpg[/IMG]
More stolen goods.


The brown stone slabs are obviously from the castle tile set. The bones are all from the second heck stage. The red stone walls are stolen from early in Blaster Master 2 on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. I modified them to have an end instead of repeating until something covers them up. The animated hazards are both modified from Mega Man X4 on the Sony Playstation. The small dragon in the distance was taken from the intro sequence to Crystalis on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The grey slabs are modified from the brown stones used in the castle. The Sea of Flames graphics (2D foreground, 2D background, wandering columns, and 3D background) are all original from scratch, as are the flying cinders. The hanging stone cone platforms are mine mostly from scratch.

You can't tell it very well fromt he pictures, but the colums of flame wander across the screen in different directions and speeds, the 2D lava/fire rushes at two different speeds (foreground vs background), and the cinders fly a wavy pattern in three different directions at different speeds. The dragon flies across the screen periodically.

The background works in 8-bit color, though not as pretty. Low detail mode works, but causes the river of fire to stop animating. Turning off the 3D background is a huge graphical problem unless you also switch to low detail. I knew about these problems in advance, but I thought the effect was worth it. Hopefully, no one has to play this in those modes.

The palette is set up to work properly with pinball objects, snow (why??), etc.

Well, it looks nice, but if it's that ripped you should probably upload it just as a level.

That's why I asked. Future sets will be more original, but I needed this to jumpstart me.

Nice.

Cool looking pack.

My pack (Devan's Secret Weapon) is being made exactly the same way. Pretty much I'll work on it about a week every few months. Kinda sad, really.

I hope I'll finish it. Hopefully there will still be Jazz 2 players to play it by then! lol

Look forward to it

~AJ2f

Thanks for the comments. :)

For this pack, I don't have a story concept. Instead, I'm playing with aesthetic continuity. Each level will have its own tile set, but they will be set up so that the stages fit together almost seamlessly... at least that's the idea right now.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to your pack, AJ2F. I enjoyed Ocean of Acid quite a bit!

Wow... Even though it's ripped, for the most part it's amazing looking. I like those lava colums in the background. Original effect. Except the meteor things look wierd, though you would have no control over that.

That tileset would look so much better if half of it weren't ripped. Draw your own castle, it's not that hard.

Well ripping making it look bad is a mental thing. It happens only when you recognize what was ripped (or because I told you), unless the graphics were just plain ripped poorly. I may (or may not) replace the stone tiles later (it's not a castle anymore), since that's the most obvious and the easiest to replace. For now though, it works and I needed something there to build the level out of. The other stuff is staying.

Wow...
What Moonblaze said...
Those fire-tiles look like you're darn good enough to draw the others yourself.. this looks AMAZING! O_O

Thanks! Although if you're talking about the leaping arc of flame seen in screenshot 2, I didn't draw that. All of the stuff in the 3D background is mine though (sans the tiny dragon). The fiery stuff in the foreground and immediate background at the bottom of shots 2 and 4 is mine too, aside from the aforementioned arc.

Wow. That looks really good... I am awed.

Needless to say, I can't wait for it.

Unlike your pack, however, my pack is heavily story-driven, and yet at the same time, not as confusing as other story driven packs. You could almost ignore the plot and storm through the level, guns-a-blazin'.

If it is uploaded as a level, I will not include the origin of the tiles in my rating at all, so that wouldn't be a problem ;). What is shown on that screens looks quite cool, altough I wonder if you wouldn't get stuck in the fireballs when you touch them and have more than one heart (that is assuming they hurt).

I've tested the animated hazards fairly thoroughly. They're not perfect, but they really can't be. If you hit either one from the left, right, o above, the damage knocks you away from it. If they hit while you are standing, running, or in the air, they pass quickly enough that you don't really get stuck, although you can sorta "climb" the falling rocks a bit before getting thrown out. Accidental climbing isn't unusual, but players are almost never stuck longer than the invincibility period after the initial damage.

The only way to really get stuck is to be standing on the ground, and then jump right as they hit, so that you sink into the ground. The window for this to happen is very small, so you'd almost have to do it on purpose. None of my four play-testers have ever had this happen to them, and they haven't been told about it, so they weren't intentionally trying not to get stuck. I myself have had it happen very rarely, and only once was it not deliberate. Since the problem almost never shows itself and the effect is really cool, I think this is an acceptable flaw. :7 It isn't really much buggier than a lot of the things included by the original developers.

Good observation though.

UPDATE

I am currently drawing new tiles to replace the ones from the Castle. The new tiles work well, but they're nothing too elaborate. I like the set with and without the Castle graphics, but they both look very different. If Radium will host them, I will put up some comparison shots once I have the new tiles ready, and we can see what people like better.

Also, I'll be looking for people to test the level very soon, before I upload it. I didn't know until just recently about the layer 5 vs layer 8 problem. I've got layers 5 and 8 going in opposite directions and at different speeds, and I've never run into the problem of a jittery background. I need to see what results other people have.

That tileset really reminds mesa of Chelonia IV from Jazz Jackrabit Advance.

Really? I haven't been that far in the game. Oh well, it's not like that matters too much.

Rad will host.

Can I test it?

:D Please?

Rad: Thank you!

Mike: As soon as it's ready to be tested, there's a copy with your name on it. :)

This calls for a very big O_O.

O_O.

That is one sweet looking set, I can't wait to see what the final product will be like! :D

Flattery is appreciated but not necessary. You just made my day right there.

HOWEVER, it remains to be seen whether the players find the level itself as good as the eye candy. I'm afraid you'll have quite a wait for a full pack of levels too.


That reminds me though... since this will probably take quite awhile, I was wondering what people would think if I uploaded the set in chunks... say four levels at a time, maybe. You'd download an add-on to whatever levels I've put out first, and overwrite any files that have been updated - for instance the last level in each previous pack, so that it goes on to the first level of the next set. Would people be okay with this more than a demo upload and then a long wait until the set is done? Has this been done before?

I don't think demos are allowed in the downloads section. There was too much:
"Ubermegarace DEMO!!
Ubermegarace
Ubermegarace addon!
Ubermegarace special!
Ubermegarace 2"

*will test plzthx*

Oh and BTW, you could make the pack auto-update by making a HTML file that checks for updates everytime it's opened, and automatically starts downloading when it find a page updated. It may be a little complex, but it works, as long as the user has internet access.