Hey, it's me!

[ShakerNL]

Hi, ShakerNL here. I come here from Jazz Jackrabbit 2. I've been browsing Digiex once in a while somewhere in the 2010s when it still offered a download to the full JJ2 game (linked through JJnet). I just found out that I have never registered here, so better late than never.

Who am I?
I am an IT enthousiast from The Netherlands. I was born and raised here, but I have Turkish roots. I like to play the keyboard and I have a black cat.

My personal history with Jazz Jackrabbit 2
I am a huge fan of Jazz Jackrabbit 2. My first time playing this game was somewhere in '99. I got version 1.00h from a friend (still have the CD). A few years later, I had versions 1.20, 1.24 and 1.24x (Christmas Chronicles) from friends and cousins and we would often play split screen battles and races.

I never really played JJ2 online in the early days. I reinstalled the game in 2006 and played online for the first time in the same year. I was fascinated from all the custom tilesets and levels that were available. I started making some tilesets myself, because why not? The possibility of turning your drawings in a somewhat playable Jazz2 level was a very cool thing to do.

I started hosting dedicated servers on JJ2 since the summer of 2013 (after DanZeal retired his servers before he came back in 2018) using an old Pentium 4 PC with Windows XP and a crappy DSL connection with 11 Mbps down and 0.8 Mbps upload bandwidth. It managed well, since I only hosted tests back then and that PC was just collecting dust anyway. Now it had a purpose at least. Actually two, hosting a server and keeping my socks warm. It was a closet computer.Tests were very popular at that time and I'd often get a full server with 32/32 players.

Later, I upgraded the server hardware and internet connection and started hosting more servers from home. I renamed the server to Puke Nukem (from the Queen of Board level). I did have to switch to a VPS host between 2019 and 2024 due to ongoing DDoS attacks. But I'm back at hosting from home. If you are a JJ2 fan and you have played in the recent Anniversary Bash or JDC events, then you have probably been playing in my server.

Oh, and I am also hosting one of the JJ2's list servers and have regularly contact with Nimrod about it.

I might have forgotten some stuff, because I am writing this while I am supposed to be working.

Cheers,

~ShakerNL

 

[InsaneNutter]

Welcome to Digiex @ShakerNL, thanks for taking the time to post such a great introduction.

You probably started playing JJ2 around the time I'd stopped playing. I was very active in the late 90s / early 2000s playing on dial-up internet. Even a DSL connection with 0.8 Mbps upload would be pretty good for a JJ2 server I imagine. I remember once you got to hosting for 16+ players on dial-up it was not a great experience, we didn't really know much better back then though!

Getting a 0.5Mbps cable internet connection in late 2001 was amazing back then, I used to host FTP servers and all sorts. Granted this was on the shared family computer that still had Windows Me back then, so crashed a lot lol.

I have actually randomly seen the Puke Nukem server when messing about with JJ2 again more recently, nice to know who hosts it!

I got version 1.00h from a friend (still have the CD).

Is that the original CD with the installer? it would be nice if we could archive an ISO that here, instead of the random installed copy that has been shared about in the JJ2 community over the years.