JCS94 Survey
 

Well, the new version of JCS94 has been out for quite a while now, and I was wondering how many people have actually been using it. I'm asking this because, since the new release, only two new levels have been made. I know that the downloads section is dead, but that's not stopping everybody, is it? Is there something else that needs to be added to JCS94? Give me your thoughts on the matter.

I like the idea of JCS94, but i'm too lazy to learn it and I don't feel like loading JJ1.

The learning curve has been practically removed. Many of the shortcuts are similar to JCS and making new levels doesn't involve any "injecting."

Nonetheless, I don't really feel like installing JJ1 right now.

What I dislike is that there are separate windows for editing and placing events. There's no real need for the second one as you could just always use the editing window, which is what people are most likely used to after J1CS's old version.

Well, from a programming point of view, making those both into one window is bad coding. Editing events and placing events are two very different functions... but I see where you are coming from. However, I think having them both in one window was part of what lead to the confusion of how to use the program in the first place. Should it really be reimplemented?

Certainly not, for the reasons you said. The old way fools you into thinking events work the same way as JJ2, which could lead to people editing an event and thinking it would only affect one instance of it. Not all of us read the documentation ;)

I've been playing with it, but I haven't actually made anything worth uploading yet. Although it is entertaining making Diamondus level 1 into a death trap.
By the way, I wish it was possible to name custom events. Or is it? Maybe it is possible and I'm just an idiot and haven't found out how yet. I don't know.

As of now it isn't possible. I had something that saved event descriptions in the previous version, but that option was removed. It could be added in the next version if people want... but I'll only consider this if this program is more widely used.

Can't you name your events by editing the .eve files or whatever? I don't have my JJ1 folder open to check.

I'm not using JCS'94 right now, but that's partially because I'm trying to limit myself to only working on so many things at one time. When I do pick it up again, I'd probably be more likely to tell other people how to use it than to use it myself, because it could use a lot of documentation.

I'd use it for more than just poking around the levels if it didn't involve replacing levels that actually came with the game. Maybe you could add a tool that lets you backup and replace levels, or something.

I also like being able to save and run levels right away, but I know that can't be helped.

Sonyk: Well, there's Jazzswapper... or the Ctrl+C keys in Windows Explorer.

As mentioned above, I dislkie not being able to rename custom events, and I'm wondering why you made the noncustom events uneditable in this version. A bit more documentation would also be quite useful; I've managed to record a lot of what the various events and values do.

I'd like to use JCS more but I just don't have the time anymore, what with work and other commitments.

It's quite simple, we don't want you to screw up your original file.

I don't use Windows Explorer ;)

But I don't want to use another tool, since I'm lazy and such. I just thought that it would be a good idea if JCS'94 would manage levels on its own, like moving the level aready in the JAZZ folder and moving the new one to it's proper location or vice versa, preferribly automatically. That's probably what Jazzswapper does... but like I said, I'm just lazy.

If you could give me some documentation, I could add it to the help file. Also, the reason why we didn't allow editing named events was because of the fact we didn't allow you to name events in the first place. Naming events has it's own problems, because if you decided to make a new level from scratch, you would need to have the original .eve file to work with. Since this isn't practical, we didn't allow editing event names. Since we didn't allow editing event names, we didn't allow changing the values of the event because then the event name wouldn't go with the properties of the event.

Been messing around, I'm more of a concepts person than a "lets make a full level" person, so if I make up enough new concepts, I'll string them together in a level and upload it.

I've been toying a little with it, but it's nothing worth showing since I'm too busy with other stuff.