I dug into my footage archive and grabbed something for you and everyone else here. It's a cut of a day we were behind the scenes with the dolphin trainers at the National Aquarium, doing binaural recording with the 3Dio free space mic. The guy who designed this mic also does audio for us, and these recordings form the basis of the dolphin sounds you hear in-game. For the absolute best quality, listen to this video in HD with a good pair of headphones. I think you'll enjoy it. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel For those of you who are interested, I used a Sony A77 camera with a 16-50 f/2.8 lens. I record audio externally; was using the 3dio into a Zoom H1 back then but I've moved to the TASCAM DR-05 mostly for better usability and build quality.
Wow. I'm a "process guy" (I work in DC so go figure ) and I'm loving these behind the scenes reveals. I strapped on some Bose headphones and the dolphin sounds you captured are incredibly sharp and pretty amazing. I appreciate the insightful developer perspectives posted in this forum.
I've tried your suggestions. My first attempt was a yellow card against 3 small fish! I turned and made a small boost towards them, all three zoomed behind me and all of them bit me to death so fast I wasn't able to react. I lasted less than 10 seconds. The second was another small fish that attacked me immediately and killed me. That's why I'm not getting it. I'm not suggesting you change your game to suit the small minority. You can't make it work for everyone. It's a great game, it just doesn't work for me. I'm still keeping it.
Binaural Audio we use a little bit of binaural audio in I Am Dolphin. What is that you ask? Get a pair of Headphones (required), and listen: In an update (probably on next gen iPad) we will implement some dynamic binaural Audio so you can hear the sharks whoosh behind you.
I wouldn't be so sure. You're on yellow - that's not that bad. That's the "intermediate" level. Green is easy, Yellow is intermediate, Blue is Hard, Red is Extreme. You're not supposed to win so easily. I designed it to compel you to replay until you win - or search for easy sharks. Get your confidence, then challenge yourself. Every single person who has come with a similar issue we've solved- so keep trying. If you lived anywhere near DC I'd come show you myself. From what you describe, you're playing pretty normal though. Its a question of how much time you're willing to replay etc., until the "flow" really connects.
Audio guy chiming in here... Hello all, I am Jeff of 3Dio, and I did all of the music and sound effects for I Am Dolphin. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments on the game! It was quite a pleasure writing music to accompany this ocean experience. The goal was to let the audio subtly immerse all of you into a cozy, underwater world where you can let go and explore! I hope you are all doing that...
That's really nice of you. But I'm a little out of your way. Scotland! To be exact. As for the game I'm the giving up type,when things get too hard I give up and move on. As I said the flaw is mine not yours. 30+ yrs gaming and I'm still striving for mediocrity.
Don't worry about it...I have a friend who is the same way, although she gave up on the game a lot earlier than you did. We appreciate the effort My friend at Nick also took a really long time to get into the game and he is GREAT at video games (I'm talking can win a Smash tourney with his eyes closed). But once he got over the initial training hump, he was totally hooked and showing everyone. You'll get there
http://m.tuaw.com/2014/10/12/this-weekend-in-the-app-store-the-best-free-apps-new-apps-a/ Nice rec from tuaw
Story in Baltimore Business Journal: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2014/10/13/a-hopkins-neuroscientist-created-a-dolphin-video.html
Found something cool when I was going through my archives. We actually studied the dolphin jumps extensively in building the game; for a while the game was about jumping, not battling and survival. There's a lot of cool jumps you can do, and the game actually has code to score them. I think I might have a video to post later from an early prototype where we were examining and testing the motions.
It would be nice to have a practice mode where you don't gain or lose pearls but you can select the specifications of the battle (ex opponents, health, etc)
Oh, sort of like a traditional fighter game. (I was a Tekken child ) It's an interesting thought, though... gotta think about it a little. Let's say we hooked it into Game Center challenges - you can design a battle, and then challenge your friends to beat it. Would that be something you'd want to do?
This is interesting - we've been tossing around a few ideas in an update. What about have a "card" of the week - where time in taking down the enemy is the metric ? The lowest time worldwide wins ?
Actually the swimming and jumping are some of the things I love about the game. I have Ecco on my old iPod and all I ever did was jumping and swimming cause I was rubbish at that game too. My brother might like this cause apparently he finished Ecco. What about tail walking can you do that? That would be cool! I took some screenshots of bandit jumping into the moonlight and sent them to my friends, they liked them.
I was having a lot of trouble with the Tiger shark --couldn't get more than 2 bites in before he killed me. Then all of a sudden I just got it, and had a flawless battle against him. Here's the awful battle right before that + the one I won. http://youtu.be/yiawmBFVjTo
tail walk The tail-walking is a very intriguing study. my lab picture shows the beginning of one - The dynamics are elegant and complex at the same time. In the high point of the cycle (the picture shows the lowest point) - they are so far out of the water, and so perfectly balanced, that it gives you the illusion that they are defying laws of physics. I played with different parameters in Bandits simulation and got him to do it but its very difficult to stabilize (so you can have control with Bandit). I will need a high speed slow motion camera to really understand the muscle dynamics to make it game-ready. I would like to tie it to the back-and-forth of the finger movement so you maintain motor control with it. If I add this, it will be an update 6 or more months down the road.
It does look lovely. I did imagine it would be difficult to do convincingly. But I new you'd try because you're creating -an amazing experience and this would be a great addition!
A new review from Pocket Gamer: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/I+Am+Dolphin/review.asp?c=62005&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PocketGamerLatestAdditions+%28Pocket+Gamer+-+Latest+additions%29
