A screenshot of the scenery (as of Mar 23, 2008) viewed from about 6500 feet above ground in very early development.

What is version 3.x of The Supernatural Olympics like?

• Logos - These are essentially splash screens that show up each time upon starting the game up. All editions have the logos display, but only the full edition has 1 instead of 2. There are two that are involved. The first is my logo, the one with the city in space, colorful 3D text, and stars in the background. The second, not present in the full edition, is that of an advertisement for the full edition itself. The free edition has both logos display for 5 seconds each giving a 10-second delay before playing the game. The full edition only has the single logo display for just one second, getting you started in one second upon the game fully loading.
• Watermark - A watermark is basically a transparent image or piece of text that covers the image. The full edition does not have this, but the free edition does. The watermark is the text "The Supernatural Olympics Version 3.0 Free" and is placed at the top center below the on-screen data spread across 2 lines.
• Easy-to-use menus - The 3.x version is not all that much different from the 2.4 version for it's menus. The use of icons to represent various things and the somewhat improved organization are the primary differences. Icons are various things like a keyboard for textual input, a calculator for numerical input, a traffic light with a green light for when action starts, and various other icons. The menu help section, the menu location, and use of current values and settings are still the same. The font is different though, now that I can use variable-width fonts and dynamically change the font size. By using variable-width fonts, the text can be made slightly bigger, but take up almost the same amount of space, improving readability. You can choose between 3 different font sizes, micro, small, and normal. If you run full screen at a low resolution on a large monitor, you might prefer the micro size since the text would be quite big, unlike running at 1920x1440 on a 19-inch monitor where the pixels are very small and even the "small" size may not be big enough. "Small" is the default. Although bigger sizes are used, they are reserved for other special cases.
• Auto save - Almost every game today now has it. Upon completing a level or changing options, the settings and progress are automatically saved. This game, too, has auto save, but it can be disabled. In 2.4, you had to manually save and if you forgot, you weren't warned about it. Even if you disable auto save and forget to save upon closing, you'll get a warning stating of an unsaved game. Autosave kicks in whenever you leave the options menu, if any changes were made, or upon completing a tournament or round. Upon saving, a backup file is created. There's another option to be able to save a backup manually, independent of autosave's backup.
• Updates - Updates are an assortment of small new additions, enhancements and most commonly as bug fixes within the 3.x series. Updates for all editions are free though the free edition, outside fixing high-class bugs (5 and up, occasionally 4's), has them delayed. Updates for the full edition come quickly, even for a class 0 bug, the kind that have no effect on gameplay. All updates for the free edition are provided here directly. All updates for the full edition require a valid license key in order to install. Public betas are an exception in that, regardless of the edition, they are released early, even earlier than an official release. The downside to public betas is that you're more likely to run into bugs (including class 7 bugs and other major crashes) making these releases not recommended for beginners at computers who don't know how to handle or work with these kinds of bugs. If you do take the public beta route and encounter any of these crashes, please let me know about them so I can get them fixed and release another public beta.
• Upgrades - Upgrades are major updates that contain many new features, major design changes, new worlds, and several new challenges, along with the usual bug fixes. Upgrades are when the first number in the firstion increases, such as 4.x from 3.x and 5.x from 4.x. Free edition users will get upgrades for free, but they can only upgrade to that version's free edition. There's also a delay as well, the same for that of a standard update. Full edition users of 3.x will have to pay for upgrades, but instead of paying full price, they get a discount of 50% off. A valid 3.x license is required in order to get this discount. That is, if the 4.x version was $11.95, you'll pay $5.98 (rounds to the nearest) instead. In the event version 5 is released (I don't like skipping version numbers so if 5 is released, there's going to be a 4 and a 3 beforehand.) and you still have version 3, you'll get a 25% discount. Thus, if version 5 was $14.95, you'll pay 75% of that or $11.21. If you had version 4, it's $7.48 instead. Public betas upon an upgrade are only available for the free edition.
• Game manual - The game's interactive tutorials are the best way to learn, but sometimes, there are cases where the game won't even run (usually due to some problem or limitation on your computer, but sometimes a high-class bug (6 and up)). The tutorials wouldn't cover this anyway, but the game's manual does. Although it covers the same material as the tutorials, in a somewhat different way, it covers troubleshooting cases like infinite loop warnings (these are due to class 7 bugs (sometimes 6), and need urgent attention), faulty game saves (typically class 5), image not found errors (typically class 5), having to send an error report to Microsoft (typically class 6, sometimes 5, rarely 7) and other critical errors that appear with the warning level set to only show critical errors and warnings.
• Free tech support - In the event that the game manual doesn't help (such as an invalid license key upon just purchasing the game) or you need to report a bug, tech support is available for all editions. I'm available at otherwise random hours (whether 2:00 AM or 10:00 AM, or 6 PM, it varies from day to day (though it is somewhat predictable), but 7 days a week otherwise and I check my E-mail daily so you can expect fast replies, unless I get bogged down with dozens and dozens of E-mails.
• Download size - This is how big the download will be, in Mebibytes (1,048,576 bytes). The free edition, due to leaving out the city, some of the special effects, and challenges, is expected to be much smaller than the full edition, which includes essentially everything. Until the game is released, these values are only estimates, based on my plans and roughly 60% compression.
• Price - This is what you need to pay, in US dollars, in order to get the edition. The "maximum allowed" is indicated followed by the actual price. If the actual does exceed the maximum, however, you get the full edition for free upon sending me an E-mail about this. This price guarantee only applies to only the 3.x version, not to the 4.x version or that beyond. 3.x means 3.0, 3.1, 3.0.0.4b, anything that starts with a "3" (not 30 though, if I do get that many versions). The price won't exactly be known until the actual release, but no matter what happens, it will not exceed the maximum. The price of $5.95 has been strongly on my mind for about a year by now along with an early release $1 off making it $4.95 instead, but the exact price won't be known until the game is in the final testing phases. Earlier, due to mounting frustrations Gamestudio's limitations posed on my 2.4 version, I kept raising the price from the original $2.95 to $4.95, $8.95, then finally landing at $12.95. I also had a case where, at the time, the 3.x version would be half the price. Trouble is, today's 3.x version is completely incompatible with the old 2.4 version so to counter this, I came up with the $6.95 maximum.