JJ2: Highest Score
 

After watching someone's JJ2 gameplay on Youtube, I started wondering what's the highest score ever achieved by a person. Does anyone know? Also, is there a maximum score that everyone can achieve with a lot of patience? What is the highest score a player can achieve without killing any enemy? I'd find out that myself but I still don't know all the secrets and I don't have the patience to search them. Sorry if there is a thread about that already made. Waiting for your answers! :)

The problem is that the highest score is effectively infinite, as there are regenerating items that give you points. You can also find a spot where there's a checkpoint/level start near an extra live and just repeat the get items for points -> die -> get same items for points cycle forever.

Speedrunning would probably be more interesting, e.g. completing levels as fast as possible.

I don't remember seeing regenerating items in the main game. If you go through a checkpoint with the score, let's say, 80000, you collect some stuff, a 1 up and die with the score 83000 you keep the score of 83000 when going back to the checkpoint? Uhh, the developers should've really thinked about making this not happen in the game.

There is no one who bothered to actually aim for the highest score in the game, then post it somewhere?

I'm sure there's at least one spot with regenerating toaster ammo, because else you'd potentially get stuck as there's a frozen spring nearby. One item is all it takes to allow for potentially unlimited score...

There's a high score for you to beat here if you want to.

Regenerating enemies: many of the bats in Castle.

I'll attemp beating the high scores when I'll pass the final exams this year. Until that, study, study, study, post on JCF, study.

Didn't notice that :P

Don't forget the regenerating bees from diamondus! The bane of every players existence.

Some other enemies that in the main campaign you can kill multiple times for infinite score are crabs, Bubba, Tuf Boss and - in TSF - skeletons. The maximum score you can reach in the main campaign is 2'147'483'646, which is simply the maximum number the score variable can hold, except minus one, because there's nothing that could make it an odd number. To reach this value, you effectively have to score at least 105'226'698'750 points, because all objects present in the main campaign are worth some multiple of 50 points. Killing crabs is probably the fastest way to score unlimited points and yields roughly 100 points per second. This suggests that reaching the maximum score would take approximately 33 years.
And that is why we don't do it.

Points always come in multiples of 10 though, right? So that would make it 2'147'483'640 ;)

Multiples of 50, because official levels don't contain butterflies. And I mention that in my post and take it into account, which is where the 105'226'698'750 number comes from, because it's the smallest possible positive value of x that fulfills the following requirements:
x % 50 == 0
(x & 0xFFFFFFFF) == 2147483646

The high score system could have some meaning if taking respawning objects/killing respawning enemies didn't count. And automatically disqualifying you from the high scores list if you use cheat codes, of course.

Another thing to fix the point system, is that you should only get the score once, so if you purposely die to collect more points in the same place, you won't get them.
Or once you die, you should lose the points you gained, with the start of the level/checkpoints saving the score you had at that point of time.

To be a cheap person, you could always look up the levels in JCS to find all the secrets, though.

I thought they don't give points more than once anymore?
Perhaps, but I'd suggest something that's a bit more interesting to the player:

1. A 1up could only be collected once, so it doesn't respawn even when you die
2. Points could be given for clear time like in JJ1
3. All amassed lives could be exchanged for big points at the end of the game

While still cheatable to an extent by dying and collecting items again, this makes the player think twice over this strategy, as not only are the lives actually limited here, but also dying repeatedly to get the points over and over again could not actually pay off in the big picture

The best thing is I'm absolutely positive all of this could be done with some scripting

#1 is probably as simple as having the 1up object delete the 1up-spawning-event from its tile of origin on pickup, right?

Oh, I completely overlooked plus fixed point grinding from respawning enemies. My bad.

I've never liked the idea of dying to get more points. It's like grinding to an extent.

Too bad scripting the way point gaining works would be pretty redundant with a single scoreboard at the moment. When there are scoreboards for individual levels and packs, that's when I think the changes to gaining points and should come into action (and the original one should be phased out because it's a mess).

I don't think it's in 4.3 anyway.

Unless you ran an emulator for Windows 95+ that could speed up JJ2's internal clock by a factor of say, 1000x, 10,000x, 100,000x. Then maybe the amount of time to accumulate points would be greatly reduced, although the chance of bugs would greatly increase as well.

This is the answer I wanted. 33 years? Uhh, I need a time machine and a lot of patience.

It would be nice that JJ2+ would have fixed this, or would fix that in the future. The game would be more fair and there could be a easier to reach high score.

It's definately not in 4.3, I checked myself.

This could work by simply multiplying the endgame score by your remaining lives(Unless you have none left).

addition would be much better than multiplication... I typically have about 40 lives when I end the official campaign, just imagine multiplying your whole score by that...

Oh, yeah... Perhaps an extra 10% of your endgame score for every life you have left?

Do this if you will, and play. 33 years is a mere blink in the existence of a Borgia. I am patient, I can wait.

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I sincerely hope you all understood the reference. If not, go watch The Hobbit 2, now. Not tomorrow. Now.

Didn't understand the reference, and I still don't. Didn't watch the first The Hobbit, so I'll say pass. *off-topic*

... Now, you see, Primpy, that is exactly why Stijn deletes your posts; they're offtopic, unnecessary, and don't add anything to anything.

Back on topic, what if remaining health gave a small amount of extra points?

Back off topic, Borgia went off topic too, I'm pretty sure I saw cooba posting non-content and I don't remember who double posted and nothing happened to their posts.

Back on topic, I don't understand this thread anymore, uhh...

That one started at 'Formerly a Prince'. With TSF there are three extra episodes of three levels each. Someone should start at the very very beginning and play towards the end. If I take every item I easily get over one million points, but it takes the speed out of gameplay (instead of just rushing towards the win area as if it's a race).

Too bad you can't play the Christmas episodes in the same campaign, so you could add those scores to it as well. Or, you should consider it a seperate category and just add the score to the 'main' campaign.

Has anyone ever noticed that gems give an extra life? According to the Trainer, gems should do this if you have enough. I take them for points, but lives? No....

@Primpy:
At least I was more ontopic than you :p, I commented on the '33 year'-statement.

I agree. I never noticed such a useless item like gems! That's why my SP levels won't have em (except when the enemy drops them. Is there a way i can ajust this? :p)
Well before adding these functions, i'm actually curious if one level has 2 1up's and can you get to both of them from one checkpoint without cheating?
I'm saying my question is: How many extra lives can you collect in JJ2?

the training level in jazz2 is so rushed and obviously untested it's absurd. you can even see the unfinished walls easily when playing on 640x480

yeah, gems don't give lives in the finished game, so the end level screen that's summing them up is kind of pointless, but on the other hand, the official episodes are already abundant in lives and it's not so easy to run out of them, even without the extra lives gems could give. the game's just not hard enough
yes there is. look up "grantPickup" in the jj2+ angelscript readme
but that doesn't contradict my suggestion at all... I said make 1ups collectable only once, not limit getting lives to one per checkpoint

Oh, you got it kinda wrong. This ain't supposed to have anything to do with your suggestion. I'm just curious how many lives can you collect in the original game?

Double posting every now and then is okay if it's by accident, or if a thread has been dead for a few days.
As for non-content, again, it's situational. If you're like Cooba and you make a silly post every now and then, it's quite funny. But the problem is, if you frequently post nonsense, people aren't going to be happy.
I second the 1-Ups thing.
Additionally, I suggest that they are replaced with some kind of points pickup or fastfire or something instead of outright disappearing.
Or, if possible, they could be greyed out and just give you the raw points that a 1-Up normally gives you, but without the extra life.

Well, sometimes I don't really notice I already replied to a thread. Also, sometimes I do this and write a lot of content, but Captain Grumps comes and delete it as it's "double-post". Well at least tell me I double posted so I can put my second post in the first one! ._. Your profile picture is happy enough for me.

As some people say, JJ2 is really designed for children to be beaten. I really hope Violet will make the points collected once again upon death to be remove, so people can really attemp achieving for the highest score possible.

How to check if you already made a post:

1. Check the thread.

Well that wasn't so hard, was it? You do know about the edit button, right?

Regarding 100 gems giving a life, they don't. Either it's a bug, or an unfinished feature. I have a level where I'm trying to reach the score limit by collecting tonnes of gems, and my life count is still 3. I wish people would test if something was true instead of assuming it is, simply because "It says so in the manual!" and manuals can state features that don't exist. I don't think it'll be fixed since custom levels weren't made with it in mind, but it's very likely possible in AS. I want to make gems useful in a fun way with granting active abilities, so I'll likely not use them the way they were intended.

So Robo posted earlier about how double posting can be made because of a mistake, and now you say it's something completely unexcusable? Huh?

I'm confused. Collecting 100 gems gives you 1 extra life or it doesn't?

There's a difference between on occasions, and making a crapload of double posts. You fit the latter. Plus, it's really not hard to just check the thread for the posts you made.

Oh and;
I even gave proof that they don't give lives. How can you interpet that any other way?

That's because it was created before JJ2 supported resolutions higher than 320x200 :x

that's what I mean, they didn't even bother to check if it still looks good (or they did but just went along with how it looks; I can't decide which possibility is worse)

Well, I remember double posting only twice after I got warnings about that but no more. Both times were accidentally, and I'm still mad about one of them being deleted. since I wrote a lot (maybe not that much, but it took me some of my limited free time).

English is not that clear for me yet.

Yeah we get it reading is hard and moderation is stupid. Pretty please stop this boring meta-discussion now.

Well, Carrot1 suffers from the same problem, so I'm guessing they never bothered fixing anything. Even though they had "high" resolutions working as early as in 1996...

The bees are the worst...! I always hated the bees, I remember I was dying a lot from them.

Bees on Turbo mode are a huge pain! It's gonna take you a long time untill you pass the Diamondus 1/2 without saving.