O2Jam
02Jam
O2Jam is an online rhythm game developed in South Korea by O2Media. At present there are agencies in many countries and regions. All information in this page is based on the Malaysia version, published by e-Games. It is similar to Beatmania IIDX in its interface, and shares many similarities with another music game, VOS, an abbreviation from Virtual Orchestra Studio.
Gameplay
Playing the game is divided between finding a room to play in, selecting a song, and playing a song. There are 3 servers in the Korean version of O2Jam, technically called Music-Halls: Melpomin, Kalliope and Kleo. All 3 servers are named after the Muses in Greek mythology.
In the Malaysian version of O2Jam, there are also three servers: Kalliope, Kleo and Thalia. All three are free to use, although about half of the songs cost money to play. Each server works under song level restrictions. Before Thalia was introduced, in Kalliope, only songs level 15 and below could be played, while Kleo allowed all songs above level 13. As of 09/08/06, the Malaysian version of O2Jam has all three servers: Kalliope, which is now a level 1-13 song restriction, Thalia, a level 7-19 restriction, and Kleo, which remains the same.
In the Philippines Version, there are five Free-2-Play Forever servers. These are Euta, Thalo, Kalliope, Kleo and Philix. Euta and Kleo serve as the Philippine's main servers while Thalo, Kalliope, and Philix serve as temporary emergency servers, mostly used when Euta and Kleo are on stabilization and maintenance. Euta and Kleo covers almost 70% of the player population, while Thalo, Kalliope, and Philix cover 30%.
Finding a Room
After choosing a server on which to play, the player (commonly called an o2jammer among O2Jam community) is presented with a list of "channels," each which allow a maximum of 100 users at a time. Upon selecting a channel, the player is presented with a list of rooms. The player can either find a room in which to play manually, press the "Short Cut" button to take the user to a random available room, or press the "Create" button to allow the player to create a room of his own from the following list:
Single Rooms are rooms in which only the creator can play. These rooms are especially useful for practicing new or hard songs, for in versus mode, if a player loses on a song that is not on the Easy difficulty, he must wait for everybody else to lose without being able to play. The creator of the room can select any song, difficulty, speed modifier and ring modifiers available to him on the server.
VS Rooms are where the multiplayer portion of the game is played. Up to 7 other players can join a versus room, and the person in control of the room (initially the creator) selects each song, difficulty, speed modifier and ring modifiers. A minimum of two total players in the room is required to play. The winner of the match is the one with the highest score.
Album Rooms are rooms in which one or more players can choose a song course and play against each other. Song courses are preset lists of songs with preset difficulties that are played immediately after each other without stop. The person in control of the room (initially the creator) selects each course, speed modifier and ring modifiers. Although there are many from which to choose, ranging in difficulty from very easy to very hard, this mode is not very popular. The overall score for the match is the sum of the scores for each song, and the winner is the player with the highest overall score.
Couple Rooms are rooms where two people in the same physical room or over the internet can play against each other. Player one controls the first four notes with the keys S, D, F, and Space. Player two controls the last three notes the keys 4, 5, and 6 on the numpad. No other players are allowed to join. Cooperation is needed to successfully clear a song.
Jam Rooms were a conceptual room type which were never successfully implemented into O2Jam. This kind of room involved each of the players playing the notes of one or more instruments in the song. Each player would hear what the other was playing, allowing them to collaboratively play the complete song, similar to how a band would play a song. However, due to connection issues, this room type was never implemented.
Selecting a Song
Over 350 songs on the Korean server and 270 on the Malaysian server are currently available to play. Including all O2Jam versions, there are over 580 songs available for playing(~3.4GB in .ojn and .ojm files; 776 songs if you count unofficial ones, 4.3GB). While some of them come included with the game's full installer, many of them require a separate download and e-points after installation. Unfortunately, the downloads of the songs are very slow, sometimes reaching 15 minutes on a cable modem. To fix this, all of the songs are available through an official Bittorrent download.
The genres that the songs are part of run the gamut from piano pieces to techno versions of classical pieces to songs that are reminiscent of J-Pop, with an unusually large number of Christmas-themed songs. Most of the songs have 3 difficulty levels of play. The harder the difficulty, the more notes, drum beats, and other sounds need to be played by the player, as opposed to automatically being played in the background. On the hardest difficulty, many songs have a limited amount of music not being played by the user.
To be able to play a song in a VS Room, the song must either be free and each player have the song downloaded, or be payed for and downloaded by each player. To play in an Album Room, all songs in the album being played must have been downloaded before the album can be played.
A small optional step while selecting the song is selecting the background that all of the players will play on. This is mostly a cosmetic change, since all this does is determine what playing field the avatars will be standing on and what font the combo counter and note quality indicator (Cool/Good/etc.) will be in, as well as determining the visual effect that displays whenever a note is hit well. By default, however, the background is random.
Playing a Song
The song Bach Alive being played on Normal difficulty
Playing a song is similar to most rhythm games in general, and Beatmania specifically. Horizontal bars slide down a series of seven columns, each corresponding to a key on the keyboard. Just before the notes hit the bottom of the column, the player has to hit the key corresponding to that column. As in Beatmania, each keypress emits a note, vocal, or other instrument that creates a full-sounding song. A correct hit is also rewarded with a small 3D effect that is determined by the background on which the players are playing.
The grading scale used by the game is, from most accurate press to least, Cool (depending on the background this note class may also be referred to as Great), Good, Bad, and Miss. Consecutive Cool and Good notes add both to the player's combo and to their Jam meter. When the Jam meter fills up (if you get 25 Cools, 50 Goods, or a combination all in one streak), a large number flashes in front of the player's avatar indicating their current Jam Combo. The goal of the player is to get both a high individual note combo as well as a high Jam Combo. Because the Jam meter fills up faster when a player hits a Cool instead of a Good, two players can both get a full combo (hitting every note as a Cool or Good) but still have a different Jam Combo.
When the player gets fifteen Cools in a row, a blue pill appears near the upper right of the playing field, with a maximum of five pills. Each one of these pills will transform a Bad hit into a Cool, keeping the player's combo going, although losing a pill.
In a VS room, after all of the players are done playing the song, their individual scores are ranked against each other, and all players are awarded Gems (in-game currency, see below) based on how well they performed.
One way players challenge themselves is by increasing or decreasing the speed at which the notes descend. The multipliers from the "base speed" are x0.5, x1, x1.5, x2, x2.5, x3, x4, x5, x6, and x8. These modifiers are often points of contention in VS Rooms, as many players try to play a song at the fastest speed possible, while others prefer to have the notes a bit slower. With many harder songs, x1 is used to increase the challenge, as the notes end up closer together, making it harder to read. Speeding up the notes does not affect the music at all, but instead spreads out the notes, making them (in non-extreme cases) easier to read (imagine using a bigger font instead of a smaller one).
As of January 27, 2006, the x8 speed was replaced by the xR speed in the Malaysian version of O2Jam. This mode allocates a different speed to each note column when playing the song, making songs even more challenging, and difficult to memorize.
posted by bajongskie @ 7:13 AM
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