is a free, open-source version of the classic Jazz Jackrabbit™ games.

OpenJazz can be compiled on a wide range of operating systems, including Windows 98/Me/XP, Mac OS X and Linux.

To play, you will need the files from one of the original games.

With the demise of DOS-based operating systems, it has become necessary to use emulators to play old DOS games. Jazz Jackrabbit™ deserves more - and would benefit greatly from new features.

is a PC platform game. Produced by Epic Games (then Epic MegaGames), it was first released in 1994. The fast-paced, colourful gameplay proved popular, and the game won PC Format's Arcade Game of the Year award. Many people still fondly recall the shareware versions.

OpenJazz was started on the 23rd of August, 2005, by Alister Thomson. Academic pressures put the project on hold until late December 2005. The source code was released on the 25th, and the first version with a degree of playability was released on the 15th of January. Since then, a variety of ports have been released by other people.

More academic pressures meant there were few updates over the following few years, but in 2009 a multiplayer version was released.

OpenJazz is available under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later, see licenses.txt for additional information.

Enter to choose a menu option, Escape to go back to the previous menu. F9 to view in-game statistics, P to pause. Alt + Enter switches between full-screen and windowed mode.

The other controls are configurable via the "setup options" menu. By default, the controls are as follows:

• Left and right arrow keys to move left and right.
• Under Windows, Alt Gr (right Alt) to jump and the Space bar to shoot.
• Under Linux, the Space bar to jump and left Alt to shoot.
• Right Ctrl to change weapon.

You will need the SDL 1.2.x library (https://libsdl.org/).

In ubuntu you may apt install libsdl1.2-dev

For network play, you need a platform which provides sockets or use the SDL_net library (https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net/), then either define USE_SOCKETS or USE_SDL_NET in the Makefile.

For music support, you need to define USE_MODPLUG in the Makefile and the Modplug library (http://modplug-xmms.sourceforge.net/). The Modplug library needs to be patched to support looping tracks, otherwise half of the level will be silent.

In ubuntu you may apt install libmodplug-dev

Further instructions are available at: http://www.alister.eu/jazz/oj/build.php

• DATAPATH - use a fixed path for data files
• HOMEDIR - use the user's home directory for data files
• SCALE - enable scaling of the video output (i.e. Scale2X...)
• FULLSCREEN_ONLY - disable window mode, useful for console ports
• LINUX_FHS - use Linux FHS paths

Please see the provided Makefiles for reference.

In ubuntu you will need to apt install build-essential cmake

There's currently work in progress support for CMake-based builds:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. && make -j4

Execute OpenJazz, depending on the platform and compile time options, the data files are expected to be under different paths (see above).

Alister Thomson (alister_j_t at yahoo dot com)

this software runs the original game files and does not do much useful without them. The original game files can be found wherever you might find dos games archived, including in GOG