OpenJazz
 

As some of you know, I've been working on a re-implementation of the Jazz Jackrabbit 1 engine.

Development has been repeatedly put on hold because of university work. So I'm giving you a look at how it's going before I sink into the murky waters of academia again.

OpenJazz.exe
You'll also need SDL (Runtime Libraries -> Win32)

Bung the executable, along with sdl.dll, into your Jazz 1 directory, and run it from there. But first, there are four things I need to point out.
1. It needs quite a lot of love.
2. You can resize the window. If you think this feature is a cheat, then don't use it. the default size is 320x200.
3. Arrow keys to move, right alt to jump, spacebar to skip to the next level.
4. It crashes on Pezrox. Don't go to Pezrox. Stop at Dreempipes.

Soon I'll be cleaning up the code and releasing it open source - hence the name. Then anybody can work on it if I'm as overworked next semester. But chances are this will be sometime around Christmas.

Very interesting. I can't make too much in the way of suggestions as anything I say would be somewhat obvious, but collision detection for jumping started getting strange at larger window sizes.
Still, it's cool, and looks like more stuff is known than we're being told about.

I can't get it to run.. originally it said it couldn't find the DLL, now I have the DLL and nothing happens.

Did you put it in your JJ1 folder? It needs the levels and tilesets and stuff to work.

If for some reason you can't/won't put OpenJazz in your JJ1 folder, you can give the path to the folder as a command-line argument.

Collision detection for everything gets strange at large window sizes. This is because the physics were hastily put together, and consequently can't handle the low framerates that large windows entail.

As for people being told about stuff that I know, that's what open sourcing it is partly about. But to facilitate understanding, the code will need a considerable amount of commenting, which is why it probably won't be ready this side of Christmas.

Interesting. Looks like good work thus far.

Very neat.

Wow, it runs really smoothly. :D There is a lot of speed, and It's almost like playing JJ2. I guess you are aware of everything that needs to be done? (Like you can't jump out of suckertubes, because you get knocked back down to the bottom at the top).

I'm impressed. =D Too bad I can't get to Battleships because of Pezrox...

Ah, misread that and thought it was standalone.

I guess this means I have to dig JJ1 off my old computer.

Will this support JCS94 levels? :p
Collision detection isn't great for lower resolutions as well. Jazz just shudders around as if there was an earthquake, and the screen moves with him.

This is cool, but not really useful since it doesn't work right. =p

I think it is already very useful. It will run perfectly fine on Win XP, has higher resolution, has a nifty FPS counter, and also lets you to freely explore all normal levels up to Pezrock without fear of getting hurt.

I did find out how to get to the secret area in Tubelectric 2 without using Hocus =p

"Will"?

Shows amazing promise so far. Keep up the rux.

Very impressive.

wow. neat!

...it's been a while since I saw a game run at 450ish fps, though. (:

It's Paul! :O

WR: Of course OpenJazz can run JCS94 levels (if it won't because of some bug it will). By its name, by definition it mimics JJ1, so it can read its formats.

Is it works only with the 6 episode version, or with the jjcd version too? :confused:

It looks like some old members returned to see this thing. And I'm going to try this thing out today. It all sounds cool so far, hope that this will become so great as it looks!

This works with any version, but you still can't get past Pezrock.

help! i cant run it! i correctly putted the DLL and OpenJazz.exe in the JJ1 folder, opened it and woosh! it created a .txt file, named stderr.txt, what says:
Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed)
what can i do?

Put the DLL in Windows/System?

i putted the DLL in Windows, System and System32, and it still doesnt work

The same here, this is why I asked what version needs, to work with... :( (btw, I've got the cd version)

I have the CD version and it works. It just uses Jazz's tileset and level data, so any version works.

Once Toxicbunny completes this project, several things can be added to JCS 94' based on the new information that would be gathered as a result.

1) Editing animations, including placement of the animation in relation to the event.

2) We would also be able to make new behaviors. This is because, in order to get bees to move around, a certain section of the level format must be figured out. Once the pattern is discovered, JCS 94' will be able to allow you to make your own special behaviors so your objects can behave in any way you want.

The benefits of these two things are obvious. Event creation won't be limited to the pre-defined animation references that Epic made and you can make your Events move in any direction you want them to.

Maybe... that will be possible to add a Spaz character as an alternate selection, too? :)

So... What you are saying is that Open Jazz replaces the original JJ executable? So you are re-programming Jazz from scratch then?

It'd be funny if the future of Jazz turns out to be found in JJ1, instead of the JJ2 source code or 1.25 (which really aren't going to happen anyways). Not to forget the 3D homebrewed games comming out, btw. Those look promising too.

I've fixed the Pezrox problem. Feel free to journey through it and beyond.

In response to some of the questions and comments:
-Yes, I am aware of the bugs, all the work that needs to be done, and the shoddyness of the collision detection.
-Yes, it supports JCS94 levels. And eventually there will be a utility for renaming JCS94 levels.
-The FPS counter is just something I added to see what slowed down and what sped up the game. In the final version, FPS display will be optional. And not on top of the ammo box.
-It now "works" with any version. It works even worse with HH95, though. HH95 is a special case that will require a little more time.
-It would be possible to add Spaz. It would also be illegal, as it would require distribution of copyrighted Spaz sprites.
-Yes, OpenJazz replaces the original executable, and I'm re-programming Jazz from scratch. But why, I (don't) hear you ask?

Two reasons: JJ1 doesn't run on my computer without DOSBox, and it lacks any real support for new levels.

There's a lot more to be gained from this project, for example:
-Multiple OS support. OpenJazz can theoretically be compiled under any operating system supported by SDL, including MacOSX and Linux.
-Higher resolutions
-Multiplayer
-If you know C, anything else you can think of. It will be open source, after all

Spaz could be added if we made our own sprites.

Jazz1 seems to be way more manipulative than jj2. If we can create our own animation files and Iceman comes out with his JJ1 tileset compiler, then the sky is the limit. The JJ1 engine is very versatile.

Cool, the only thing that makes jj2 better than jj1 is multiplayer, JCS and spaz... This will be awesome^^

Then, no 1.25s or source codes are needed! Wohoo! The Future of Jazz came now! btw, OpenJazz still doesnt work for me, the same error occurs again, stderr.txt is still created.

What we need here is an openjazz2. :fm:

You don't sound convinced about this.

Ooops, today i played he normal jazz (thx DOSBox) and just discovered that i have the shareware version! :O

In light of this completely awesome project, I'm so going to do that tomorrow. *crosses fingers*

EDIT (after a while of codeing): For the people interested in makeing JJ1 tilesets, I'm too lazy to (completely) describe the format, learn by example: All JJ1 tilesets "decompiled" http://www.princeton.edu/~mspear/jj/

The compiler will be up tomorrow (er... later today) after I go to a computer lab so I can build it for x86 computers (I'm an apple guy these days..).. it already works well enough to recompile those sources to be identical to the original BLOCKS.### files (I tried every single one)..

And yes, you'll need 3 input files (although the 2 background ones can (and may as well be) the same)..

A few things: Main bitmap: 256 colors, 320pixels wide... MULTIPLE OF 60 tiles, I forget the palette limitations and what # is transparent..

remember the masking stuff is done in the level file.. Does JCS94 still allow injecting of masks? I could probably make a mask compiler as well so that you don't have to mask by hand..

background pictures are 32 pixels wide, but think that even matters.. I think I rip it right from the palette. (Some of the code I'm useing has been sitting around since before project *that*... plus it's uncommented and whatnot)

..sorry I'm incoherently rambling, but I'm very tired, after a day of not feeling well...

Okay, here's a funny question: there's the tileset, two sky addons... but where do the animations come from?