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?

• 3D effects - As objects get more distant, they are expected to appear smaller and move more slowly. The 2.4 version had some of this, but that's a penny to a salary compared to the 3.x version. Just one look at the ground says it all. Watch the videos on YouTube and see how the ground behaves. You almost can't tell if the ground is a texture on a 3D object, but it's actually nothing more than a 2D image drawn hundreds of times. It's drawing it hundreds of times (around 400 at 1024x768 resolution) that provides the supreme 3D effects. It's also the "scaling" as I call it and a very simple formula third graders could almost use: "Pixels*Scaling=CU". Scaling is essentially the distance. An object 5 pixels across with a scaling of 3 has the object being 15 CU across. Finding what each scaling unit is involves much more advanced math meant for a 9th grader, using the tangent function ("tan(FieldOfView/2)*ScreenPixelWidth=CUPerScalingUnit" to be exact). CU, coordinate units, is the game's fundamental units of measure (1.76 inches (4.4704 centimeters) makes exactly 1 CU). In my case, each scaling unit is 100 feet. The higher this is, the narrower the field of view is. Beyond the ground, check out the hills and mountains in the background. They are scaled and move much more realistically than the 2.4 version does. Look at the gas station once (at the western edge of town), particularly the support columns and the logo. It's almost too convincing that this is a 3D game rather than 2D. That's what the 3D effects feature is all about, and it's an important one that makes this game very unique. All editions have this, but the free edition restricts the quality.
• Antialiasing - You see this often in 3D games. Without it, you see jagged edges and more abrupt changes on the screen. With it, edges and motion are very smooth. Seeing the 16,384x antialiasing looks to be impossible considering that high-end video cards joined together (from SLI), you may only get to 64x antialiasing, but 16,384 is just way out there. That's the nice thing about 2D. By using pixel-blending in a special way, it's entirely possible and it doesn't use that much extra CPU or memory, even compared to 2X. This, however, requires DirectX (for hardware acceleration) in order to work. 2.4 didn't use this only because Gamestudio doesn't allow it.
  
  
• Fog color - Now this is something you don't see, except in a developer's version. Don't like the light blue-gray haze? Want to be funny and use pink fog? The 3.x version allows just this. While it serves no use and can only be used in exploration mode, it can be fun. You aren't just restricted to a few presets (except in the free edition), but you can choose any of these 16,777,216 colors! Yes, that image is huge in size, but it's a quick download, even for dial-up users. That's a million times more colors than a typical painter may have on his/her palette!
• Fog quality - The 2.4 version used a 54-channel fog system (18 for the free edition), which wasn't all that bad. 3.x makes this 54 seem like a drop in the ocean. 3.x's fog channel count is probably into the trillions (or even the quadrillions), thanks to an ingenious system. Change your height by 10,000 feet and the difference is very noticeable. By 100 feet and you don't really notice much. However, even with just 1/64 of an inch (that's less than a pixel!) of a height change, the effect is changing. Both editions in 3.x use this extreme quality. Unlike 2.4, the fog intensity can also be adjusted, keeping maximum realism.
• Ground quality - The 2.4 version didn't have this, but this feature is unique to 3.x. Ground quality is an adjustment on the number of draws needed that affects how the ground behaves. By default, 7 is used (for the full edition), which provides the best quality for the least CPU usage. The lower, the better, but below 7, a glittering effect occurs and there are many more draws. 20, the default and best for the free edition, still provides decent quality and you can't tell too much of a difference from 7.
• Urusu Valley quality - These are various settings to adjusting the quality of the objects in the Urusu Valley. These include the lakes and forests and it works almost the same as ground quality. The free edition's best setting is 20 while the full edition has 1 (with 7 as the default).
• Cirrostratus clouds quality - This is pretty much the same as ground quality, except with a much bigger range and the addition of transparency control. The same 20 and 7 are used for edition limits and defaults.
• Pathway quality - This is similar to ground quality, but it affects the pathway that the character runs on. The same case of 7 is used for optimal quality. However, the pathway is much more complicated than the ground is due to the slopes. The slopes cause the need for far, far more draws, but smaller numbers of pixels. There's also quality settings, for reducing memory usage and drawing, for enabling and disabling lighting, texture blending (where grass fades into sand as one heads toward a beach, or rock fades into snow as one heads up a mountain), and other specialties. The free edition still has the 20 quality minimum, and the texture fading is not available. You'll still see the snow, rock, grass, and sand textures, but the change is abrupt. There's also the option of having only the sand or rock texture only (one used regardless of height, to save on memory). The full edition allows smooth transistions between textures, but this increases the amount of drawing rather than the memory usage.
• City quality - The city has a lot of minor details that consume memory so there are many quality settings that can be used to help cut back on memory usage. Combining the objects into the building images, instead of leaving them separate allowing for wonderful 3D effects, can be done to save on memory. There's also controls to reuse images, boosting repetition, but saving on memory. For the roofs and building sides, the same system for the ground quality is used with the same free edition limitations.
• Water wave quality - This is different from the pathway quality, primarily because it involves the waves on the water from the lakes. For Lake Windias, of which has the largest, highest waves, the waves are clearly visible all the way into the background (right up to the Northern Mebna Hills where they are still 2 pixels high and 16 pixels for the wave length). For Quredda Lake, having the smallest, shortest waves (of the lakes), they don't extend very far, stopping at around 337.5 feet out where the basic lake texture is used. The further they extend, the more memory is needed, but the more realistic it appears. By reducing the quality, the smaller waves are not drawn and are freed from memory. There are 5 quality settings. The highest has the waves draw until the point where they blend into the main water texture very well. The lowest setting has none of the waves drawn, except those immediately where the character is at.
• Water color - Look down at that wavy liquid stuff below and tell me what color it is. You may often think of water as being bluish or maybe greenish, but that's not exactly what my observations are telling me. Water, from what I can tell, is a rather dark gray color and is highly transparent. However, unlike other games, you can change the water color to whatever you want, and there's an impressive 4,294,967,296 possible choices, which includes both any of these 16,777,216 colors and 256 possible transparency values for every one of those colors. Now that's one huge palette! Water color, however, can only be experimented with in exploration mode. The free edition only uses 3 preset colors and 2 preset opacity values and it affects all lakes, except the swamp which cannot be changed, if the swamp is included. The full edition allows colors to be set for each lake (and the swamp) individually (the swamp's opacity, however, cannot be set).
  
  
• Other customization - There's a bit more to customize that involves the scenery itself. The main involves visibility. For a low-end system, reducing visibility cuts down on the memory usage, but it also increases the fog intensity making it harder to see. By default, visibility is 52.5 miles (talk about clean air, big time), but it can be reduced to 10 miles leaving out all of the Urusu Mountains and Urusu Hills, freeing up lots of memory. The visibility of individual objects can also be set (but only in exploration mode). In addition, the speed and height each of the cloud groups can be set, but this, too, only works in exploration mode.
• Landscape - Slopes! Where's all the slopes!? The 2.4 version didn't have anything but a flat ground to run on, extending infinitely in all directions. This was only because of one main reason - Gamestudio's single variable type had too short of a range, far too short. A 10-foot light pole is all you would've needed in order to instantly land on the ground due to variable overflow, provided you knew how to get to the maximum height barely 500 feet below this special point. 3.x is far, far different. The landscape in 3.x is more varied than the whole scene in the 2.4 version. From plains, hills, and mountains, into lakes, forests, and swamps, and onward to deserts and cities, there's just so much variety. The landscape spans 90 miles, a distance that is hard to imagine. Get in your car and drive 90 miles to a city you've wanted to visit. It's a long journey I tell ya, taking around 80 to 120 minutes. Even in this game, it's fairly long, but with speeds getting to 700 mph and even higher, 90 miles doesn't seem that much until you realize it takes almost 7 3/4 minutes to cross it all. What's more, you have to realize how fast the landscape is whizzing by at even just 200 mph. From one end of the screen to the other at a modest 1024x768 resolution, it only takes 128 milliseconds to cross the entire screen at the far edge, essentially the blink of an eye, and that's just 200 mph. Now imagine going 700 mph and still taking over 7 2/3 minutes. The free edition's primary limitation is with the landscape. Instead of the full 90 miles, only about 10 miles or so is used, enough to cover what is needed for tutorials and a fair share of challenges (but no tournaments since tournaments often cover over 30 miles of area).
  
  As of Apr 24, 2008, you can get a look as to what the landscape looks like (accurate as of that day, of which is different on Oct 25, 2008. I've provided 3 different zoom levels of the landscape (version 5, a now-outdated one (version 6 uses a completely new method, to enhance the quality)). A 1:500 zoom means that, for every pixel on the map, it's a span of 500 pixels on the actual landscape at the distance the character is at. When considering that this is half of a screen's width at 1024x768 and that there are 17,280 of these, it's tough to comprehend the real size of the landscape. They also represent how it'll look on the minimap in the bottom right corner (default position and colors). When version 6 is done and the map is generated and processed, it will replace these older ones (of which leave out the cirrostratus clouds).
  
  1:1200 zoom (108.3 KB; 7200x400 pixels) - This zoom is a quick download and is compatible with practically any image-editing program or browser, though the text may be a bit difficult to read without zooming in, especially the ruler for markers not a multiple of 5. At this size, 80 pixels make up a mile (49.7 for a kilometer). 1 pixel is 66 feet (20.1 meters).
  1:500 zoom (254.9 KB; 17,280x960 pixels) - This is a decent zoom giving good detail and decent readability, though it's very long at 17,280 pixels and image-editing programs should be able to display it without problems. It is the best balance between detail, memory usage, and compatibility. If you can't view it in your browser, right-click on it and choose "save as" then open it in either MSPaint (if your version can open PNG images - XP's does), GIMP (I know for sure this does), or the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (click the "actual size" button; slow with scrolling). At this zoom setting, probably the default (undecided), 192 pixels make up a mile (119.3 for a kilometer). 1 pixel is 27.5 feet (8.38 meters).
  1:200 zoom (580.7 KB; 43,200x2400 pixels) - Because this image is so large, you may want to right-click the link and choose "save as" and view this image in a program other than your browser, especially if your browser cannot display images beyond 32,767 pixels (Firefox can). If you use MSPaint to view it, click on the scroll bar (or the arrows) rather than drag it to scroll beyond 32,767 pixels (a class 2 bug with MSPaint). At this zoom setting, 480 pixels make up a mile (298.3 for a kilometer). 1 pixel is 11 feet (3.35 meters).
  
  
• Decals and other objects - Imagine these scenarios. You're on a dock's diving board trying to figure out how to use it for a 1000-foot jump. Then, from the left, a colorful sailboat comes into the scene. With all the repeated jumping, you can get fairly good sense on how far it is. Here's another case. You're float-running up Mount Sky's eastern side watching the rock texture fade into pure snow with increasing altitude. Then, near the peak, you spot an airline airplane cruising at 600 mph a bit above and jump just as you reach the peak. You use the flash attack to head more straight and glide to follow alongside it. As you pick up speed, the airplane, initially, goes ahead of you, but then you soon whiz past it, going supersonic just as it goes off screen. Here's another case. You're in the city's eastern side and you see the colorful welcome sign. You jump onto it and watch the traffic whizzing by on the highway. You can see the individual grass blades as you walked toward the sign, of which you can tell that it's almost as tall as the character's knees. While on the sign, you soon spot three police cars in a row without the lights flashing or sirens whaling, among watching for other vehicles like semis and the typical family car. You charge up the speed blast just as you see the police cars, and blast off at 730 mph 2 2/3 seconds later, whizzing past them like they were speeding the other way. This is the kind of detail that the scenery goes into, very rich and detailed. However, if memory on your computer is quite limited, you can disable all of these and they stay disabled (unlike other settings) when playing tournaments. If you've got good eyes, you may spot more decals in Urusu Valley as well, not just the lakes and forests (and maybe the occasional city). The free edition is a bit limited in this aspect.
  
  Let's look at some of the game's special features next.
  
  Feature comparison chart < Previous page | Next page > Special features
  
  Learn more about the game with the following links:
  
  9.1.4 The Supernatural Olympics version 3.x - the highly enhanced full remake of my high-speed action game
  9.1.4-1 What is the game? - an introduction to the game and it's features
  9.1.4-2 Feature comparison chart - a quick overview comparing each editions' features
  9.1.4-3 Going 2.5D - the numerous advantages for taking a 2.5D approach instead of 2D only
  9.1.4-4 Scenery features - features related to the game's scenery
  9.1.4-5 Special features - the game's special features
  9.1.4-6 Special abilities - explains the various special abilities
  9.1.4-7 Special effects - explains what the various special effects are
  9.1.4-8 Tournaments and challenges - details about the tournaments, challenges, and ranks
  9.1.4-9 General features - various other features
  9.1.4-10 System requirements - what the minimum and recommended system requirements are
  9.1.4-11 End user license agreement - read this first before using the software or it's components
  9.1.4-12 Ten reasons to upgrade - the top ten reasons to upgrade to the full edition
  9.1.4-13 Buy, download, and install - how to buy the game, download it (including the manual and old versions), and install it
  9.1.4-14 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - some common questions that may be asked frequently
  9.1.4-15 Support, bug reports, and updates/upgrades - how to obtain support, file bug reports, and what updates/upgrades are
  9.1.4-16 Development progress checklist - an in-depth checklist for things I need to do before the next release becomes available
  9.1.4-17 Future plans and features - features planned for the future and the game's general future
  
  Footnotes:
  * What do the details in the debug panel mean? The left side has the common variables, much of which you'll see in the on-screen data. The top one is the diagonal speed. The second one is the horizontal speed and the one below it is the vertical speed. The acceleration rate (not shown on the onscreen data) is just that, how fast I'll accelerate. Height should be obvious - how high you are above the water level (this can be configured). Visibility is not shown in the on-screen data, but is in the "graphics" menu of the configuration settings. The lower, the fewer the draws and the higher the frame rate. Draws/fr is the number of draws made per frame. For 60 fps on my system, I need to keep this below 3600. I need to find a function that is faster than AlphaBlend as this 3600 doesn't seem high enough even though many things have been optimized. Time (sec) is how long the program has been running since the start. There'll be something similar in the on-screen data, but the low importance it has makes it, by default, not visible. Measurement units can be configured as well so you can also use meters and kilometers instead (along with coordinate units and at-character-position pixels). The right side of the debug panel is solely for testing things, variables reserved for this purpose. They are often used to hunt for bugs and things that only occasionally display. The top one is also the draws per frame value, but includes the debug panel and is from the previous frame. The others, at this time, are unused.