This update is released to (roughly) coincide with the start of the 24th Season of Jazz Duelist's Challenge, the largest individual (rather than clan-based) competitive event in the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 online gaming year. You'll be able to earn points in dueling, 2vs2 games, or scheduled events with lots of players in a huge variety of gamemodes, so head on over to make (or log into) your account today!
To that end, this patch is centered around fixing bugs that affect JJ2's multiplayer, albeit mostly ones introduced in past JJ2+ releases. But even if that doesn't appeal to you, you're definitely going to want to download this to play JJ2 at an 800x600 resolution. External programs have attempted to allow this in the past with limited success, but for the first time the higher resolution is embedded directly in JJ2+ and all but free of crashes. (Don't worry, JJ2+'s long-standing /maxresolution command is still available for online servers who wish to restrict players to the old window size.)
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was originally released in 1998 by Epic Games, now better known for its Unreal Engine and the Gears of War series. Although the last official update, version 1.24x, was in early 2000, the Jazz 2 community has remained strong and creative to this very day, with thousands of custom levels, tilesets, remixes, and more all still available for download. Since 2008, the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Plus mod ("JJ2+" or "Plus" for short) has given Jazz 2's multiplayer and single player gameplay more depth than ever before, with a mind-numbingly-long list of features and bug fixes that put Jazz 2 on par with any of its modern 3D competitors.
Players can clash together across fifteen different multiplayer gamemodes (some team-based, most combat-based) with ten different major weapons (all but one of which can be powered up to deal more damage and use different graphics and/or movement), or else sit out a round in JJ2+'s exclusive spectator mode. Play for fun or in competitive ladders and scheduled events, on your own or in a clan. Use the traditional weapon system, or turn on Mouse Aim to take extra control of your gunplay and take down your opponents with perfect shots. Chat to everyone in the server, or team chat with people in your own team (blue, red, green, or yellow), or whisper a private message to a friend. Emulate IRC channels with /me text or highlights. Type console commands as the server's host (or as a logged-in remote administrator) to tweak countless game options. Expand your own homemade levels (designed in Jazz 2's easy-to-use level editor) with JJ2+'s scripting language, either by scripting an individual level or by writing your own mod to be run inside of JJ2+. Load graphics and sounds from external files to craft your own weapons, game modes, or entire new games.
A registered version of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 version 1.23 or 1.24 is required to play. JJ2+ runs on Windows XP or greater or in the WINE emulator. It may not run well in full screen on Windows 8 or 10, which have limited Direct Draw support, although some solutions are proposed here.
This is awesome. Thanks!