Posted November 13, 2021
high rated
Hello everybody.
I was the sort of project lead for the JJ1 patch, so now that it's out for all of you to enjoy, I thought I'd say a few words about it.
In case you missed it: GOG pushed a patch for JJ1 yesterday, which was created by a small team including myself; huge thanks to GOG for giving us the opportunity to do this! Here are the patch notes:
• Fixed an issue that made it nearly impossible to finish Orbitus 2.
• Fixed areas that should force you to ditch your hoverboard in Medivo 1, Turtemple 2, and Pezrock 2.
• Fixed Jungrock leaves failing to detect the player.
• Fixed Battleships 2 cannons; they now actually fire.
• Fixed episodes 3 & 4 and A & B preview images being swapped.
• Amended the launcher Batch program to allow access to the Holiday Hare settings menu.
This patch has been in the works for several months, and was finished in late September. The initial goal was to fix the infamous Orbitus bug and the broken airboard ditches. I worked with a speedrunner called SimonNaar to fix these issues; we worked together on figuring out the best way to fix Orbitus in a way that restores the level to how it was originally supposed to function in 1994, and I'm pleased with what we ended up with.
The hoverboard ditches were a funny one; how it works in the game's engine is that it's essentially an item that doesn't contribute to 100% completion, and when you pick it up you drop the hoverboard.
The problem is, in some levels, the hoverboard ditch object has no sprite, and the game has a lot of trouble dealing with Jazz colliding with invisible objects (which is what originally caused the Orbitus issue), so in Medivo 1, Turtemple 2, and Pezrock 2, in version 1.3, you never lose the hoverboard despite the fact you're supposed to.
Turtemple 2 and Pezrock 2 actually had fully functional airboard ditches in the European 1.2 release of Jazz 1, so I reverted those two levels to their prior, functional versions for this patch (we did a lot of testing and as far as we're aware, this introduces no issues).
Medivo 1 was my own fix; I used a tool called J1E (Jazz 1 Editor) to change how the hoverboard ditch object works in Medivo 1; it's still invisible when you're on the right side of it (which is the only side you'll be on as you approach it), but when you're on the left side, it switches to a sprite that's approximately 1 pixel big. When this changeover happens, Jazz is standing in front of it, so you never actually see this. The effect this has is that, since the object then has a sprite which Jazz is on top of, the game registers that Jazz is touching it, so the airboard ditch works!
Interestingly, the Jungrock leaves bug is the same problem as the airboard ditch in Medivo 1, just about; the leaves are an item that has no sprite until you collide with it, at which point it has a destruction animation that spreads leaves everywhere. This broke at some point after the original floppy disk release, so the fix I applied was to give it a sprite, of a static leaf. Again, the object having a sprite allows Jazz to collide with it. The fix is pretty much seamless; I defy you to notice the difference between this patched version and the 1994 floppy disk release without comparing them side-by-side.
I have no idea what caused the Battleships 2 cannons bug. The JJ2 Discord user rsgdbfevx figured out (using information from a Jazz 2 Online upload from 2010, created by Doubble Dutch) that if you assign the cannons to a different event ID, it fixes it.
Jazz 1's engine is really weird.
Speaking of rsgdbfevx, they also noticed that in the first CD releases (version 1.2), the images for episodes 3 and 4 were swapped and no longer made sense, with the planet depicted in episode 3's art being swapped to episode 4, where no planet like it apears. Similarly, the 1.3 release swapped the images for episodes A and B, making those images also no longer make sense, episode A's art depicting an enemy and planet that only appeared in that episode, which makes no sense on episode B. We determined these swaps had to have been accidental, since they just don't make sense, so I swapped the images using either JJ1MOD or Jazz Graphics Pack (I forget which; both tools are very good, but JJ1MOD is very buggy, so I think I used JGP).
Finally, a fix specific to this GOG release; a tiny oversight on the part of whoever wrote the batch launcher program is that you can't open the setup program for Holiday Hare. I altered this batch program to allow you to do this.
Just so the credits in this post are complete, Violet CLM was also an important help in this patch; she was our liaison to GOG, and she helped out with a few fixes in various misc. ways, including pointing out the Jungrock problem, which I hadn't been aware of.
So, that's the patch. If you want even more information, I wrote an even longer version of what went into this patch back in September, for the version of the patch I uploaded to Jazz 2 Online for anyone who owns a CD copy (and as a version anyone could get before GOG pushed the update), here: https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/8222/jj1-version-13-fixes/
As I note there, there are several other, minor fixes that needed more testing (the vast majority of these fixes are to fix the 100% completion thresholds in several levels), so a second patch is in the works to fix these smaller issues. We decided it would be better to push this first fix for the more serious bugs as soon as those fixes were ready so the testing for these many smaller fixes don't push those more important fixes back, potentially by a factor of several months.
So, enjoy the patch everybody! :)
If you encounter any problems or know about any other bugs we may want to investigate for patch 2, please let me know.
I was the sort of project lead for the JJ1 patch, so now that it's out for all of you to enjoy, I thought I'd say a few words about it.
In case you missed it: GOG pushed a patch for JJ1 yesterday, which was created by a small team including myself; huge thanks to GOG for giving us the opportunity to do this! Here are the patch notes:
• Fixed an issue that made it nearly impossible to finish Orbitus 2.
• Fixed areas that should force you to ditch your hoverboard in Medivo 1, Turtemple 2, and Pezrock 2.
• Fixed Jungrock leaves failing to detect the player.
• Fixed Battleships 2 cannons; they now actually fire.
• Fixed episodes 3 & 4 and A & B preview images being swapped.
• Amended the launcher Batch program to allow access to the Holiday Hare settings menu.
This patch has been in the works for several months, and was finished in late September. The initial goal was to fix the infamous Orbitus bug and the broken airboard ditches. I worked with a speedrunner called SimonNaar to fix these issues; we worked together on figuring out the best way to fix Orbitus in a way that restores the level to how it was originally supposed to function in 1994, and I'm pleased with what we ended up with.
The hoverboard ditches were a funny one; how it works in the game's engine is that it's essentially an item that doesn't contribute to 100% completion, and when you pick it up you drop the hoverboard.
The problem is, in some levels, the hoverboard ditch object has no sprite, and the game has a lot of trouble dealing with Jazz colliding with invisible objects (which is what originally caused the Orbitus issue), so in Medivo 1, Turtemple 2, and Pezrock 2, in version 1.3, you never lose the hoverboard despite the fact you're supposed to.
Turtemple 2 and Pezrock 2 actually had fully functional airboard ditches in the European 1.2 release of Jazz 1, so I reverted those two levels to their prior, functional versions for this patch (we did a lot of testing and as far as we're aware, this introduces no issues).
Medivo 1 was my own fix; I used a tool called J1E (Jazz 1 Editor) to change how the hoverboard ditch object works in Medivo 1; it's still invisible when you're on the right side of it (which is the only side you'll be on as you approach it), but when you're on the left side, it switches to a sprite that's approximately 1 pixel big. When this changeover happens, Jazz is standing in front of it, so you never actually see this. The effect this has is that, since the object then has a sprite which Jazz is on top of, the game registers that Jazz is touching it, so the airboard ditch works!
Interestingly, the Jungrock leaves bug is the same problem as the airboard ditch in Medivo 1, just about; the leaves are an item that has no sprite until you collide with it, at which point it has a destruction animation that spreads leaves everywhere. This broke at some point after the original floppy disk release, so the fix I applied was to give it a sprite, of a static leaf. Again, the object having a sprite allows Jazz to collide with it. The fix is pretty much seamless; I defy you to notice the difference between this patched version and the 1994 floppy disk release without comparing them side-by-side.
I have no idea what caused the Battleships 2 cannons bug. The JJ2 Discord user rsgdbfevx figured out (using information from a Jazz 2 Online upload from 2010, created by Doubble Dutch) that if you assign the cannons to a different event ID, it fixes it.
Jazz 1's engine is really weird.
Speaking of rsgdbfevx, they also noticed that in the first CD releases (version 1.2), the images for episodes 3 and 4 were swapped and no longer made sense, with the planet depicted in episode 3's art being swapped to episode 4, where no planet like it apears. Similarly, the 1.3 release swapped the images for episodes A and B, making those images also no longer make sense, episode A's art depicting an enemy and planet that only appeared in that episode, which makes no sense on episode B. We determined these swaps had to have been accidental, since they just don't make sense, so I swapped the images using either JJ1MOD or Jazz Graphics Pack (I forget which; both tools are very good, but JJ1MOD is very buggy, so I think I used JGP).
Finally, a fix specific to this GOG release; a tiny oversight on the part of whoever wrote the batch launcher program is that you can't open the setup program for Holiday Hare. I altered this batch program to allow you to do this.
Just so the credits in this post are complete, Violet CLM was also an important help in this patch; she was our liaison to GOG, and she helped out with a few fixes in various misc. ways, including pointing out the Jungrock problem, which I hadn't been aware of.
So, that's the patch. If you want even more information, I wrote an even longer version of what went into this patch back in September, for the version of the patch I uploaded to Jazz 2 Online for anyone who owns a CD copy (and as a version anyone could get before GOG pushed the update), here: https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/8222/jj1-version-13-fixes/
As I note there, there are several other, minor fixes that needed more testing (the vast majority of these fixes are to fix the 100% completion thresholds in several levels), so a second patch is in the works to fix these smaller issues. We decided it would be better to push this first fix for the more serious bugs as soon as those fixes were ready so the testing for these many smaller fixes don't push those more important fixes back, potentially by a factor of several months.
So, enjoy the patch everybody! :)
If you encounter any problems or know about any other bugs we may want to investigate for patch 2, please let me know.
Post edited November 13, 2021 by Love & Thunder
