I agree, I don't like it at higher resolutions because everything seems too small.

You don't get nearly enough advantage from the greater field of view to justify making all the elements smaller. As a result the experience seems much less immersive and looks a lot like some kind of bad Flash player game from 2007.

If they were going to make higher resolutions, they should have made the artwork itself double the resolution so it runs natively at 640x480 and the artwork is just twice as big.

Edit: grammar

Unfortunately this would be clumsy as all the sprites are generally larger and faster in the sequel. It's definitely meant for 400x300 at least. 320 width modes don't bring enough range.

leileilol wrote:

Unfortunately this would be clumsy as all the sprites are generally larger and faster in the sequel. It's definitely meant for 400x300 at least. 320 width modes don't bring enough range.

Yeah, I think what I'm saying is that I would have designed the game with 640x480 and doubled sprite sizes in mind from the beginning. That is, it would look proportionally the same as the original, but with twice the resolution.

I tried, but noticed pretty quickly that the game obviously was designed for 640x480.

So I go with a widescreen resolution that's closest to that, either 640x360 (less vertical view, which isn't so important and perfect integer scale factor to 1080p/1440p/4K) or 800x450 (highest widescreen resolution available to Jazz Jackrabbit 2).

i've always thought that the view field in JJ1 felt too small for that game's speed, so the high resolutions in JJ2 help a lot here.

however my one gripe with JJ2 is that the scrolling feels very jerky even at a locked 60fps, and oddly i can't find anyone else referencing this. it's as if the frametimes are way uneven. i did try things like capping in RTSS or running that JJ2+ mod, nothing ever helped.

edit: scrolling stutter confirmed by others: https://www.gog.com/forum/jazz_jackrabbit/jj2 … ttery_scrolling https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/916373-pc/72041016

the hardware mode lacks a few graphical features iirc, unfortunately.

I play it at 512x384 or 400x300 (using dgVoodoo to reescale it). 320x240 have "big sprites" but won't let you see too much around you, while at 640x480 I feel that Jazz is very small compared to the environment and it's like cheating (you see too much around you).

Some intermediate resolutions are just fine, detailed graphics and you can see the right amount of environment.

You know, looking back. I used to play Jazz2 at the maximum extent my CRT monitor had.

It's like Terraria and Starbound where the larger your screen, the more you "see". I'm only just now realizing that semblance too, heh.

Once I've read in an interview with one of the developers, that JJ2 was initially designed for 320x240, and only later it was decided to make it hi-res (it was 1998 after all...)
This may explain why it looks the way it does.