Tileset 5: Desert

I am paying a visit to my old computer and so I can now explain something about tileset five, Desert.

Pretty soon after finishing Glacier in early September 2000, I started to think about the next tileset. There is little information left what were the alternatives I thought about concentrating on, but making the decision didn't take long keeping in mind that the first released Desert version was done on 29 September 2000. I have notes that say that finishing this tileset took a long time. Heh, "hardly" says Blade in 2008. The initial inspiration to start making the tileset was once again influenced by Donald Duck comic artist Don Rosa with his series "The Three Caballeros Ride Again", published in Finland just at that time. What impressed me in that was the way all the Mexican cliffs and rocks were drawn. They were done a way I thought would look cool in a new tileset. Mostly I replicated Don Rosa's style in the background layer desert landscape. Many of you who can get your hands on the particular comic series will probably not recognise any similarities with what I did with Desert and what is in "The Three Caballeros Ride Again", but there they are, Don Rosa influences.

In many ways I consider Glacier and Desert brother tilesets. They are of the same size, contain same type of tiles (I've always had the feeling that Desert is Glacier turned hotter) and have similar eye candy content all the way to the lone flower. They were released between small intervals. From these two, Glacier has always been more pleasing to me and Desert is some kind of middle work with little progress in graphics compared to the previous release. Apart from all this bashing Desert still achieves a nice atmosphere and the tileset can be used to make a good basic desert level in your episode :) In my case, Energized Action. What was new in Desert was the tampering of the original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 palette color entries. For unknown reason I changed only the greens that affect barrels. Pretty surely it is accidential that the result made the tileset feel dryer as anything that would appear lush and lively (foods and carrots) now look like they have had lots of heat in the recent time and not so much water.

I released Desert in Jazz2Online for the first time in 29 September 2000. Since then there have been at least three new versions. All the versions are 1; the initial release, 2; Blade's Battle Pack update in late 2000, 3; Blade's Battle Pack 2 update in early 2001 and 4; Energized Action final version from 2003. The initial release in Jazz2Online was in fact named "Burning Desert" emphasizing the fact that I no longer released my tileset with useless example levels, but functioning battle levels. This was done for the first time in the later releases of Glacier. I started to do this because the fall 2000 was my "golden time" in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Internet multiplayer. Although never really becoming a formidable Jazz2 internet player and never joining any clans, I had lots of fun (e.g. Blade & Aiko tha iSDN Army (tm) :P). For the Internet reasons I started concentrating on battle levels and this later resulted in creation of the Blade's Battle Pack - well - battle packs.

Burning Desert did well in J2O. Today it has a average score of 8 with seven reviewers. Some remarks were made on the music choice and the eye candy content. As many of my early tilesets, Desert had many problems I left undealt. A major one was the broken warp background in 8 bit color modes. This was finally fixed with the Blade's Battle Pack update with the JJ2 community figure Iceman's aid. The next time Desert popped into general public in Blade's Battle Pack 2 with 20 more tiles. These are 100 per cent essential tiles that should have been in the first release. Like with rest of my tilesets, a final version of Desert was released with Energized Action single player episode in 2003. As I was starting to get better in planning my releases, not so much changes were made to Desert version 3. The new 4 updated the masking to flawless and added further 10 more essential tiles. Nothing mind blowing, but especially dealing with flawed masks is really important for comfortable use of any tileset. It appears that I had some plans on making a night version of Desert. A file named DesertNight.pcx on my computer indicates this, although the insides is identical with the day version.

The above screenshot of Burning Desert exhibits the first version charasteristics of Desert. Here the altered basic color entries are visible with the brown barrel and the first version warp background is less smooth than it would later be. Mostly, as I told before, the largest changes made in Desert over the years remain in the mask side of the tileset.

There is not much to say about the music choice of Desert, System 51. Is is an energetic rock release from Finnish musician Quasian. I have no clue how I came across this release, but one possibility is that I was browsing through Assembly computer event (held every year in Helsinki, Finland) music competitions, where Quasian had success in 1998 with this track. In today's point of view I feel System 51 is way too loud and restless. Today I'd choose something more smooth but oh well, seven and half years have passed. Quasian seems to be so different name, that Google finds him easily. There's a homepage left at quasian.modulaatio.com and a entry in Last.fm.

Dungeon development diary entry 27

27. 19 December 2007

No progress in the tileset in while, unfortunately. I've been working with the Suomipelit.com Christmas time calendar and certain real life events and parties took my concentration away from Dungeon pretty effectively. In addition a game named GTA: San Andreas was too good to be resisted. But now at the brink of my two week Christmas vacation I believe that there will be lots of progress in the tileset creation. At least I don't have much to do for the Christmas time calendar anymore.

A few weeks earlier invented the name for Dungeon. It just came to my mind in a far away place called Leppävaara. "Fortress of Forgotten Glory" was what I had in mind. Unfortunately I can't say really if that is the original idea, most probably is. I didn't write the original invention anywhere. Stupid me :) But now as I was writing this entry, I came up with "Dungeon of Forgotten Souls". This could be it, depending on how I plan to finish the tileset.

As I was accidentially listening to Rhapsody's "Heroes Of The Lost Valley" I started to think that would I here have the idea for the next tileset after Dungeon? It made me think of Don Rosa's Donald Duck adventure "
Escape from Forbidden Valley". A green valley with mountains around. Exotic animals, plants, trees and a colourful sky. Would be great to create.

A late addition: How about my old thoughts from the time when Dungeon was competing with these? I can't forget the idea of "Winter War". The cave tileset "Seven Depths" would be something different also (when I differentiate it from Damn tilesets)

The first corpse creation!

Hello world!

I couldn't resist from adding this second entry to the blog. Then I am going in for the studies (I wish...?)!

This picture here is the first Castle of Cadavers illustration there is, and the second JJ2 tileset illustration I have ever made. More about this later on. The most important part of this mess was already released in the JJ2 community forums, but here I present the thing in its full glory :P

Some interesting facts surround this creation. It was drawn in December 2006 in the Defense Forces of Finland (http://www.mil.fi/english/) during my nine-month military service (Blade is a military police man, stand aside!!). The Cadaver part (which, by the way looks much like I'd like to replicate it in digital manner) introduces several types of things you can expect to see in the future set. Chains, some more chains with skeletons, more or less broken bricks, vegetation everywhere to add ancient feel and dark background layers, that are in this drawing:

- Nightsky and moon in the layer 8 (warp background is probably not returning to this set)
- Far away cemetary hills with leafless trees and old tombstones in layer 7
- Dark fortress walls in layer 6
- I'd like to reserve layer 5 for layer-4 related tricks, but if not, we will see more tombstones and cranky trees

The tower you see in the "layer 4" area will be difficult for me to replicate with the computer. I would very much like to make it like the big trees in Agama's outstanding tileset classic Swamp of The Sleeping Jaguar (http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/user/profile.php?userID=294). This would allow level makers to build exactly as high towers as they wish to. To add variation, some of the bricks from the walls will be missing and have a dark spot in the place. A feel of decaying is achieved with this.

The intended atmosphere will be a mixture of grim and playful. This is, despite of everything, easily done: although the tileset palette will be dark and landscapes with all the tombs won't appear so cheerful, all the skeletons around will be cartoonish. To emphasize the style, there could also be something like the crazy gazes from the windows like in this Cadaver illustration you see here in this entry.

You could be wondering, why did Blade choose this rotten, decaying, disintegrating pile of brick dust to be his next project. There are many castle tilesets made before this, even the original 'Castle'. Does the JJ2 community really need another one? Many great -unique- tileset ideas remain unused. Do I waste my time? I would say that if I pick an idea for a tileset, I have something of my own to say. About the tileset idea thinking process: I simply come up with some nice ideas, and pick the most appealing idea. This doesn't mean I will not get back to my earlier ideas. In fact, right now I have so good ideas for tilesets, I KNOW I will be back for them. Let me list them for you:

• Seven Chasms of Abomination. It's a spectacular underground cave with subterranean lakes and stuff. Ground will be created a bit like in the original 'Hell' tileset.
• Tellus Rising. Moon tileset! No space stations, just like Buzz and Neil left it ;)
• Aztec Reprise. Aztec tileset lifted up to a new glory.
• Winter War. Snowy forest with destroyed military hardware everywhere...

Don't get too excited pals, Castle of Cadavers first :) The Cadaver tileset illustration gets its backbone from several different directions. These clues will be essential when making Cadaver tileset reality. The ideas in this illustration are taken from the original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 tilesets 'Castle' and the The Secret Files 'Haunted House'. The Donald Duck artist Don Rosa influences me as well, as it has been for many years. For example, the tileset Desert wouldn't have been created without one particular Don Rosa Donald Duck (Three Caballeros) series. Through some twisted way of fate, the tower in my illustration gets its base idea from the Moomin house! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomins). The TV-Show 'Muumit' was around for every single year of my childhood, and haunts me to this day :) Also a mention about Disguise's Corrupted Sanctuary. After seeing this great piece of work I though for the first time of doing a castle tileset of my own.

A word about the other stuff in the paper. The text "Tai R.I.C. = Rest In Chaos = Soukkari tykkäis = No rest for the wicked" (Translated "Or R.I.C. = Rest In Chaos = Soukkari would like it = ...) is a homage to my conscript friend. Soudunsaari was a hard cooked death metal listener and his playlist featured songs like "Dead Human Collection" by Cannibal Corpse and "Drilling For Brains" by Mortician. These were so grotesque names that I found them actually amusing. To pay homage to my friend, you might find texts like this in the tileset if searched properly...

As well, I drew the baby and the text to this paper. It says "Me before the military. The Defence Forces made me a man". That's a parodic observation about the days in the military. Even 20 year old men can be enormously childish under the circumstances in that organisation.

...And that's Soudunsaari who claims that Jose Barroso is evil :D