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?
Last updated: Oct 26, 2008 (level 10 update, a complete rewrite)
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Practicaly every single game out there has some sort of challenges involved. The Supernatural Olympics is no exception. With 2.4, due to the flat ground, there were only 8 challenges and they were relatively simple in terms of complexity on making. All you had to do was simple stop, read the rules, then go when "go" appeared. In version 3.x, there's a vast landscape involved. Short of spending several minutes to get to the next starting line for the next challenge, since challenges behave differently if started at different locations spots, this seems to be a problem. However, insta-teleport is there to the rescue. Use that, and you're headed for that starting line going 2 1/2 miles a second, leaving you with an average of about 3 seconds between challenges, 18 seconds at the absolute maximum. The challenges in this game, both versions, involve things like reaching 200 mph within 10 seconds using only jumps, and the float run. It seems tough, but it can be done in barely 6 seconds. The 2.4 version only had 8 challenges (11 thought of), little variety. The 3.x version, officially as of Oct 26, 2008, has 48 challenges. There's a fair chance that it may have as many as 64. Version 2.4 only had 4 difficulty settings. 3.x has a unique difficulty system: ranks. The higher the rank, the harder it gets, but the bigger the scores get. The easy difficulty in 2.4 is about that of rank 1 or 2. Medium is rank 3 or 4, hard is rank 5, and master is 6 or 7. There are 9 ranks in all, from 0 to 8, and the higher, the more difficult it is. The challenge system involves 3 commonly used terms. A round is a particular challenge within a round. A tournament is a group of 8 rounds. Rank is essentially the difficulty.
- Challenges available - Version 2.4 had just 8 challenges, hardly anything in the way of variety. Version 3.x, officially as of Oct 26, 2008, has 48 challenges, a lot more. Yet, it has a very good chance of having 56 challenges and a fair chance of 64. This gives lots of variety. It takes 8 for a full tournament so the number of challenges available is always a multiple of 8. Because I don't know the exact locations of all of the challenges nor, especially, what area of the landscape I'm using for the free edition, I don't know how many are going to be in the free edition. The full edition, obviously, will have everything.
- Ranks - This is a feature brand new to version 3.x that 2.4 didn't have. Ranks are essentially the difficult setting, the higher, from 0 to 8, the more difficult a tournament becomes. With 2.4, you could play master first thing (not recommended, but you could). With 3.x, you must first complete rank 0, which is easier than easy and true beginners shouldn't have problems with. If you win all 8 challenges within rank 0, the rank will increase to 1. If you play rank 1 and win all 8 again, you go to rank 2. If you play rank 1 again and win all 8, you'll still only be rank 2 as rank-ups only occur when doing the highest available rank. The higher the rank gets, the bigger the scores get, and the more difficult the tournament becomes. You can be rank 6 on one tournament, but be unable to access rank 3 or 1 if you haven't played one of the other tournaments yet. Can you manage to complete all 8 challenges within any tournament at rank 8 without missing any? It's really hard and only a player who has played this game a lot or is a master at this type of game will be able to accomplish that. The free edition only has ranks 0, 1, and 2 available.
- Tournament mode - Tournament mode is the basic mode. You play through all 8 challenges of any of the available tournaments and attempt to improve on your tournament and round high scores or increase your rank. You must follow all of the rules within each round in order to succeed and you can only play at the highest rank you've accessed. Only the full edition has tournament mode available.
- Practice mode - If you're having difficulty with a particular round at a given rank, you can feel free to practice it as much as you want. You can attempt to improve on your round high score though, but you can't improve the tournament high score nor increase your rank. You still must follow the rules for the round you are practicing. You can, like tournament mode, only play at ranks you've reached. If you're on rank 0, you only choose rounds that you've reached. Practice mode is available in all editions.
- Exploration mode - Don't want to follow any rules or do you just want to explore those 90 miles of landscape to see how big that really is? Exploration mode is what you'd use. In addition, exploration mode is the only mode at which various settings like water and fog color, and certain other special effects or scenery customizability can take effect. Once practice mode or tournament mode is started, these settings get reverted to their defaults.
The next page covers the rest of the features and elements covered in the feature comparison chart.
Special effects < Previous page | Next page > General 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:
None.
