Hidden Jill of the Jungle level editor

[Malvineous]

Hi all,

Did anyone know that Jill of the Jungle contains a hidden level editor?



I was browsing around and discovered that Jill has a cheat code I never knew of, where you press X three times to get some items. As Xargon has a similar cheat (press F7 three times) I wondered what else they had in common. When I was looking through the Xargon source I noticed that you could press Z three times to see the amount of free memory. I tried this with Jill and it worked too!

Pressing some random keys I also discovered that Xargon's commented out code for the W key (press three times to print a keycode) was still active in Jill. Wondering what else was still active in Jill, I tried pressing Ctrl+E on the main menu. Much to my amazement, it switched into level-editing mode!

I had a look through the Xargon source code (the code for the level editor is still there) and used that to figure out what all the keys do. I did a quick writeup on the ModdingWiki if anyone is interested in trying it out.

Yet again, it's amazing when you can find new things in such old games

[MrFlibble]

Yeah, that's pretty cool I know that Dune II, Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert all have leftover code of built-in level editors, that can be activated either by hacking or through command line options. Neither of the editors is fully functional though, so it's just some legacy code.

Digging in the source (original or reverse-engineered) also helps sometimes to find stuff that got disabled (or working in a different way) by accident, not intention. Have you so far found anything of that kind?

[Malvineous]

Hmm, nothing yet, apart from pressing Z three times for the free memory count. I think both Jill and Xargon commented out the code that lets you press R while playing to record a macro and E to end recording (at least I assume so because a 'temp_mac' file is never created.)

There is the known issue where version 1.0 of Jill episode 1 displays news stories when you collect apples on the world map (about how Jill is so good all the other heroes like Commander Keen and Mario are retiring) and for some reason these were removed from later versions.

The only other games I'm aware of with built in editors are Fairy Godmother and Kiloblaster (sort of).

[MrFlibble]

There is the known issue where version 1.0 of Jill episode 1 displays news stories when you collect apples on the world map (about how Jill is so good all the other heroes like Commander Keen and Mario are retiring) and for some reason these were removed from later versions.

Perhaps copyright issues were the reason? Sometimes seemingly harmless references can get cut because of that.

The only other games I'm aware of with built in editors are Fairy Godmother and Kiloblaster (sort of).

I guess the developers moved on towards using inter-compatible level formats and multipurpose editors to edit them, like the TED editor that was used for some of the Commander Keen games and then, later, for Rise of the Triad.

[leilei]

Abuse had a built-in editor don't forget that.

[MrFlibble]

Right! There was a source port project for Abuse, wasn't there? I think some new levels (or even level packs) are/were available too.

BTW, am I right that even though the source code for Abuse was made public, the full game is still not licensed for free distribution? I remember being somewhat confused about that, because of said source port project with new levels.

[leilei]

Abuse's source is free

Abuse's SHAREWARE VERSION DATA is relicensed as public domain, the sounds are the exception to this.

Abuse's FULL VERSION DATA is still copyrighted

Abuse's SOUND EFFECTS FOR ALL DATA is copyrighted and unrelicensable, as it is a SoundIdeas library license, so it is impossible.

[Calvero]

There is the known issue where version 1.0 of Jill episode 1 displays news stories when you collect apples on the world map (about how Jill is so good all the other heroes like Commander Keen and Mario are retiring) and for some reason these were removed from later versions.

Get version 1.0 and version 1.2 from this site, copy MAP.JN1 from version 1.0 to the directory of version 1.2 and the apple-stories are back.