This new version includes new features! Improved Graphics, Multiple Grow Rooms, editing Growrooms, Vacation mode, mp3/midi music player, magnifying glass, Alarm Clock, new Web Site and Membership forums, and much more!  
 
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New Features Available in Version 4.20

So, what new features have been included with this version? Well, besides fixing all the known bugs that were ever reported to us in previous versions, we have also added a number of other new improvements...

Improved Graphics

The realism of the virtual growing experience has been radically improved in this new version!! Besides the fact that the new grow rooms are looking much better than in earlier versions, the plant leaves now also look a lot more realistic (more colours used). The crappy-looking shadowing effects have also been replace by a much more realistic looking shadow effect. We feel that this makes all the difference regarding the visual realism of the grow rooms.

You should immediately notice that the new grow rooms are very dark when all the lights are off, but as soon as one or more lights are turned on, the room lights up accordingly. If all three lights are on, you will notice that the room will be much brighter than if you only have one or two lights on. You will also notice that each different light reflector distributes light differently, and that some reflect the light in a concentrated downward direction, while others scatter the light at a wider angle.

This doesn't only affect the visual element of the grow room, but will also affect the intensity of the light that the growing tips receive. So, you should choose your reflectors very carefully if you require high intensity light. Unfortunately, all these visual improvements means that this version of HighGrow will no longer install on any computer where the display settings cannot handle more than 256 colours. So, if your computer system is one from a previous century, then we strongly suggest that you upgrade it now, or continue running HighGrow version 3.0 (which does support 256 colour displays).

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Multiple Grow Rooms

This is without a doubt, the "most requested" new feature included with this new version!! In fact, we have even noticed that someone has released a "butchered" version of HighGrow which supports nine grow rooms (although in a very clumsy form)! When approached by us, the guy who released this version immediately removed the link, but his determination to please active HighGrowers prompted us to start working on this new version 4.20. So, although we STRONGLY suggest that nobody tries to emulate his kind of exploits in the future, we do have Zimon to thank for something positive!

Although this Freeware version only includes three new rooms to grow your plants in, you can now download more room images from our web-site at www.HighGrow.us. While the first three rooms are fixed and cannot be changed in any way, you can now add a new grow room with each new image that you download. Although these room image files are in a special encrypted format, they can easily be created from picture files of any format (BMP, JPG, GIF, TIFF, etc). If you would like to add your own images to your game, you can simply upload them to our web-site, where they will be made available for downloading by yourself and others. In this way, we will build up a huge database of pictures which you can download and use in this Freeware version 4.20.

It is important to understand that each image file can only be used on the computer that downloaded the file. So, there is no point in sending these files to your friends for them to use in their own game, because they will simply not display on their computers. If your friends want to use your images, they should download them from our site (just like you did).

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Adding and Editing Grow Rooms

Now you can finally experiment with a whole range of different indoor growing techniques! In fact, you can change everything in each grow room, with each selection bringing with it a multitude of new influences to your plants.

After downloading one or more room images from our web-site at www.HighGrow.us, you can select them when you want to add a new grow room. Once you have added a new room, you will be able to change the type and strength of the lights, the type of light reflectors (shades) used, and the soil type and pot. You will also be able to select which gauges should be visible in the room, and whether or not you wish to enable the Vacation Mode setting.

Adding a New Grow Room

Although you will only be able to plant nine seeds in the three grow rooms included with this Freeware version, you will be able to plant a further three seeds with every grow room you add. How do you add a new room? Well, first you need to download a special format of image file from the HighGrow web-site (www.HighGrow.us). After you've downloaded one or more images and copied them into your HighGrow installation folder (probably called C:\Program Files\HighGrow), they will be available to import into your new room.

Importing an image and creating a new room is as simple as selecting the "Add Grow Room" item from the "Grow Rooms" menu, and choosing an image file that will be used in this room. You should note that you can only use one image file for one grow room, and although it is possible to select another image for this room at any stage, you can never re-use the same image in more than one room.

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Selecting Room Images

Although it is possible to use any valid .HGB image file when you add a new grow room, you will only be able to use this image in one room at any one time. Of course, we realize that you could easily copy the image file to a different name and then use the copied image to create a new room, but why not get creative instead? Why not take some pictures of your own room, or of some other place where you could imagine growing your own plants (like a shed, a green-house, an attic, etc), and use those as images in your game? And wouldn't it be great if your friends could use these images too, in their own games?

To add your own grow room images to your game, you will simply need to upload your JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF (etc) files onto our web-site for conversion into the special .HGB file format.

If these files are acceptable to us as suitable room images they will be made available for downloading from our web-site. We will notify you as soon as your image has been accepted and made available, and we will monitor the number of times your image is downloaded from our site. If your image is a popular download, it will be included in the "Most Popular Rooms" section of the site.

Although we will not be too strict with the quality of the images that we will accept, there are some important things that you should bear in mind when composing your own grow room images. We will never accept images that do not comply with the following rules...

All uploaded images must be exactly 640 pixels by 400 pixels in size. Although we do prefer pictures in the smaller JPG file format, we will accept images saved in most other formats (but NOT in other sizes).

All uploaded images must be of an indoor space that is generally big enough to hold three large pots containing three large plants, so don't bother sending us images of your ward-robe or closet (unless it's a huge walk-in type). All uploaded images must be of rooms with no other visible source of lighting. Your pictures should not include windows unless they are boarded up, nor may they include any lights that are switched on in the picture. Although you may use your flash to improve the lighting and detail of the room, it should not be too obvious that this is the source of the light. Although you may customize your photographs afterwards with logos and other graphic effects, we will not accept anything that is considered hate-speech or pornographic in any way. Please let's keep this clean?

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Selecting Lights and Reflectors

This is how you can make a real difference to the speed at which your plants will grow! While you should never try to rush a good thing, there is no point in using inferior quality lights when growing your marijuana plants. With this version of HighGrow, you will finally be able to choose the type and strength of the lights and which light reflectors to use in your grow rooms.

Selecting Light Reflectors

This version of HighGrow offers ten different light reflectors to choose from. Although they all look fairly similar in appearance, you will notice that each reflector scatters the light differently. Some will shine the light directly downwards towards the growing tips, while others will reflect the light at a wider angle, thereby reducing the intensity of the light that reaches the plants. It is fairly obvious to imagine that the more intense the light, the faster your plants will grow?

We should mention that with this (and every other) version of HighGrow, the light from one reflector will never influence the growth of the plant growing in the pot next to it. While this may not be a very realistic interpretation of a real growing experience, we feel that it will allow you to experiment with different growing cycles (i.e. with plants of different ages in the same grow room, some could be flowering with reduced light while others could be vegetating under full light).

Selecting Light Types

Although it is theoretically possible to grow indoor marijuana plants with any kind of lights, we strongly recommend that you only ever consider doing so with Metal Halide or High Pressure Sodium types. These bulbs emit much more light in the visible light spectrum than any other bulbs, and will be exactly what you need to simulate the plant's natural growing environment indoors.

Both the Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium types of light are available in this version of HighGrow, and each has it's own advantages. For full vegetative growth, we recommend that you use the Metal Halides, but when your plants are entering their flowering stage, we can recommend that you switch to the High Pressure Sodium lights.

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Selecting Light Strength

This one is rather obvious, and doesn't require much explanation. The stronger the lights, the faster and healthier your plants will grow! The only reason why you would want to use the weak 400 watt lights in any grow room is when your plants are growing so fast that they will soon hit the ceiling! Otherwise, we suggest that you definitely use the 1000 watt bulbs for maximum growth!

Selecting Pots and Soil

Selecting Pots This version of HighGrow now includes 30 different pots to choose from! There are a whole range of sizes and shapes to choose from, pictured at a variety of different viewing angles. Since the different grow room images may not all be taken at exactly the same angle, you will notice that some pots will look more realistic in certain grow rooms than in others. You should be careful to choose the pots that best suit each grow room for the most pleasing visual result.

Of course, each pot also contains a different amount of soil, and growing your plants in large pots will provide a completely different growing experience than when you grow them in small pots. To understand how they will be influenced, I can only suggest that you use your common sense. You could imagine that since big pots hold more soil, they will require more water at any one time, and they will not need to be watered as often as plants in small pots. Exactly how much water to use for which sized pot is not easy to recommend, since this would depend on a whole range of other variables (like the type and strength of your lights and the shape of your reflectors).

Once again, I can only suggest that you use your common sense here.

Selecting Soil This version of HighGrow now includes 5 different soil types to choose from! Marijuana plants grow by absorbing nutrients from the soil. Their ability to do this depends on the nature of the soil. Depending on its location, soil contains different combinations of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter.

This makeup of a soil influences it's texture and affects how well nutrients and water are retained in the soil.

Clays and organic soils hold nutrients and water much better than sandy soils. As water drains from sandy soils, it often carries nutrients along with it. This condition is called leaching. When nutrients leach from the soil, they are not available for plants to use. An ideal soil contains equivalent portions of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter. Soils across the world vary in their texture and nutrient content, which makes some soils more productive than others. Sometimes, the nutrients that plants need occur naturally in the soil. Other times, they must be added to the soil. Each soil type offered with this version of HighGrow has it's own unique advantages and disadvantages.

Loamy Soil

Advantages: This is the "perfect" soil for growing your marijuana plants in. It drains well, retains moisture, is full of nutrients, and it doesn't dry out too fast with lots of heat.
Disadvantages: There are no disadvantages to choosing this type of soil for your pots.
To Improve: Although you won't need to add nutrients while the plants are still young, you should fertilize vegetating plants well.

Chalky Soil

Advantages: This type of soil usually has good drainage, while being fairly moisture retentive. However, it is only moderately fertile.
Disadvantages: When using chalky soil in nature, it is usually shallow and stony.
To Improve: Chalky soil will inhibit the nutrients from reaching the roots, so you should use lots of fertilizer.

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Peaty Soil

Advantages: This type of soil usually has loads of organic matter.
Disadvantages: Because of all the organic matter, this soil type is often quite acidic. It can also become quite soggy.
To Improve: You should add lots of lime (or Calcium) with your regular nutrients to improve this soil type.

Clay/Silty Soil

Advantages: This type of soil is fairly moisture retentive and workable when wet.
Disadvantages: Compacts easily and can be incredibly hard when dry.
To Improve: Because the soil structure of this soil is weak, it may need lots of organic nutrients before it can be improved.

Sandy/Stony Soil

Advantages: This type of soil is usually easy to work with and easy to improve.
Disadvantages: It often drains too quickly and will require more frequent watering. This soil type is usually also fairly infertile.
To Improve: Nutrients may be easily washed through the soil and you may need to use lots of nutrients and organic matter.

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Vacation Mode

You can now finally go away on your vacation without worrying that your plants will be dead when you return! We would agree that it is rather silly to ask a friend to water and care for your virtual plants while you're away, and it's even sillier to take your computer with you on holiday for this purpose! Believe it or not, we know of some people who have actually taken their laptop with them into the wilderness, just to be able to care for their plants!?

So now, for each room, you can set the amount of water and nutrients and when to give them, and you can also set the lights to automatically adjust themselves as the plants grow taller. In fact, with this new feature, the really lazy people can now grow their own virtual plants from start to finish, without ever having to lift a virtual watering can again!

To access the Vacation Mode setup dialog, you should either click the "Vacation Mode" button in the Grow Room editor dialog box, or you could select the "Vacation Mode" item from the "Options" menu, or you could press the CTRL+V key combination.

Although most of the controls on these dialog boxes are fairly self-explanatory, there are some important things to bear in mind while using this new Vacation Mode setting.

  • When you enable the Vacation Mode option, you are doing this for ALL the plants in ALL the grow rooms.
  • You do NOT need to leave your computer switched on while you are away for the Vacation Mode to work (The Vacation Mode adjustments and growth calculations will be performed when you return from your vacation and start up the game for the first time again).
  • Small plants will need much less water and fertilizer (and less often) than big plants.
  • Enjoy your Holidays!!

Alarm Clock

This feature allows you to type a special message that will be displayed in your HighGrow game at any pre-determined time.

If you enter some text when you set the alarm clock, Rasta Robbie will whistle three times and then come walking onto the screen and speak your message. If you decide to blank out the text when you set the alarm clock, Robbie will whistle, but he won't bother to come onto the screen.

We realize that this may not be the most useful new feature in this version, but hey... you could have some fun with your friends with this new Alarm Clock feature. Set the time for a few minutes ahead, call one of your friends to show them your plants, and then have Robbie walk on and give them some or other chirp. Could be good for a laugh?

One important thing to bear in mind when setting this alarm clock, is that HighGrow MUST be running for the alarm to be able to activate and warn you in time!

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MP3 and MIDI Music Player

You can now copy all your favourite MP3 or MIDI music files to the HighGrow installation folder and have them play back in a random order when you enter any of the grow rooms!

I'm sure that everyone agrees that MP3 music files are MUCH better than MIDI files, and MANY people have sent us emails asking how they can play their favourite MP3s instead of the music files included with this game. Now, your dreams have come true!

This new version of HighGrow will install eleven MIDI music files into a folder that can be found within your game's installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\HighGrow). If you enable the HighGrow music player, you will notice that one of these music files will automatically start playing whenever you enter any of the grow rooms. To stop (or restart) the music, you should simply select the "Start/Stop Music Playback" item on the HighGrow "Start" menu.

When this new version installs, it also creates another folder inside the main folder called MP3, and this is where you should copy all the files that you would prefer to be playing instead of the standard MIDI files. To play back MP3 files instead of the MIDI format, you should select the "Grow Room Music" item from the HighGrow "Options" menu (or press the CTRL+S keys). This will display a dialog box which lists the names of all the music files that can be found in the relevant folders. This is also where you can select which type of music file to play, and where you can enable or disable the grow room music player.

Although we are sure that most of you HighGrowers will switch your game to play your own MP3s instead of the MIDI files included with this game, I would like to suggest that you take some time to listen to all the music provided here. I would also like to (once again) thank my good friend Vince (the Prince) for the countless hours he has spent creating these tunes! If anyone would like to communicate with Vince, and ask him anything regarding his music, you can do so through us at Slick Software (email: Slicker@mweb.co.za). Thanks Vince!!!

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Magnifying Glass

Although the main program window of this version of HighGrow cannot be enlarged to fill the entire screen, we have now included a special magnifying glass so that you can zoom into your plants in the grow room.

To use this magnifying glass, you first need to ensure that it has been selected to be included in the gauge panel (in the top left hand corner of the grow rooms). If you don't see a picture of a magnifying glass in this panel, you should switch it on in the Grow Room Editor dialog box. When you can see the magnifying glass icon in the gauge panel of a grow room, you simply click on it to make it zoom. When you press the mouse button down, the mouse pointer will move to the center of the grow room and directly into the center of a circular zoom window which will appear. This zoom window will remain visible on the screen for as long as you hold down the mouse button. As soon you release the mouse button again the circular window will disappear. Once you have clicked on the magnifying glass icon and notice the circular zoom window, you can drag it around the screen with the mouse pointer to zoom the various different parts of your plants.

Although this new feature will enable you to enlarge your plants for closer inspection, you should not think that it will show them in any greater detail than before. You may find that the leaves of your plants don't look as good as you would like them to look, but hey, if anyone would like to supply us with dozens of individual high quality leaf images, we'd be glad to use them in the next version of this game. Perhaps some aspiring graphic artist would accept this as a challenge? Please let us know at slicker@mweb.co.za if you would like to contribute in this way. We would be VERY happy to hear from you!!

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Other New Features in Version 4.20

This section covers some of the other improvements and new features in this version of HighGrow that have not been discussed in other sections of this help file.

  • You can now right-click on any plant in any grow room and select a growing activity from a popup menu that will appear. This may not seem like a major feature, but it will certainly save you lots of time when you are caring for ninety plants in thirty grow rooms.
  • You can now select exactly which pot you want to plant each seed into. With all previous versions of HighGrow, you could only plant the first seed in the left hand pot, the second seed in the center one, and the third seed in the right hand pot. With this version, you can finally plant any seed into any pot in any grow room.
  • Each plant's seed variety and current growth day are now displayed in the caption of the growing activities dialog box. This makes it much easier to keep track of which seeds are planted where.
  • Then, there are also a number of improvements in this version which will not be apparent to most people. Many of the growth calculations have been altered slightly to more accurately simulate the marijuana growing experience, and there are some other things too...

Bugs Fixed in Version 4.20

We believe that we have now successfully trapped and killed every bug that was ever reported to us with any previous version of HighGrow. Although there were one or two errors that were quite serious, most bugs were merely inconsistencies or inconveniences. Some of the more apparent errors that were found and fixed were the following...

The date and time routines are now finally fixed to accept the automatic time adjustment that is made when daylight savings time kicks in. This was a problem with all previous versions and we are confident that this will no longer trouble you. There were some problems with the harvesting routines, where sometimes the game would not start up after you harvested the oldest plant and left the others growing. This has now been fixed.

With HighGrow version 3.0 it was possible to bring dead plants back to life! If you discovered that a plant had died because you forgot to water it, and you found a leafless stem and branches when you entered the grow room, you could water your plants, exit the game, and everything would be fine when you re-started it. This was obviously a bug... dead plants could (and should) NEVER be brought back to life! We also discovered that many of the graphics did not draw correctly on certain Windows operating systems (particularly XP). We have repaired these problems and can assure you that everything should now work correctly on all operating systems.

Previous versions of HighGrow also refused to install on the latest versions of Windows XP. This has also been fixed. All the other bugs fixed were either much too technical, or too insignificant to mention here... but hey, we have NO DOUBT introduced a few new bugs with this new version.

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What and where is the HighGrow Easter Egg?

An Easter egg is a small hidden part of a software program that most people would never discover while they are using it for it's intended purpose. It's not usually visible to the naked eye, it never looks egg-shaped, and is often only activated by a special sequence of events, keystrokes, or mouse-clicks.

Why would someone want to hide something in a program, where most people would never find it?

Well, this is one way that programmers like to add their own "personal" touch to the software they write. Often it is no more than a special graphic or window that lists the names of the people that worked on the project, but often this Easter egg is something which actually adds enormous value to the program. This is definitely the case with this new version of HighGrow!!!

If you do manage to find the egg that we've hidden in this version, you will enable a very special feature that you would otherwise never see. Sadly, you'll have to find this Easter egg first, before you will be able to discover what it is... Otherwise it couldn't be called a hidden feature could it now?

So, how can you find this egg?

Well, the only clues to finding that elusive egg that we ever give anyone, are the following;

  • It is hidden in a grow room (it is not visible nor shaped like an egg).
  • You must click (or double-click) a mouse button on a special spot.
  • One (or more) keys on your keyboard must be held down.
  • Everything all at the same time!

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