Nice! I think they were pretty spot on. (I like the goofy swallowing of sharks, though. ) Edit: I don't know about a depth counter, though. I think the color shading does a good job of showing depth, and the less clutter the better.
Against some of the smaller fish you might win by skill, watching the videos it does look like a case of who bites who first with a lot of thrashing about in between! A depth gauge would serve no purpose. You don't need to know the exact depth your at. The darkening colours let you know enough.
perfectly executed kill at 1:16 I want to do a deeper analysis, because there are many intriguing parts of this battle, so I will edit - but if you can, look at the Orca bite on 1:16 - that, is a perfectly executed maneuver. You turn-in to the trajectory and utilize the non linear trajectory to where the shark cannot escape. This is true in the wild (although an orca can easily take down a shark without even a struggle) - namely, there is a very large hydrodynamic drag orthogonal to the longitudinal axis of the beast - so curving around is a sure kill.
I have something new to share with you guys, by which I mean something old. It's an early prototype we used to explore some how to simulate some of the dolphin's more expressive motions. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel We're calling this guy Bandit's older brother, Bruno. He's the strong and silent type. This was based off our interactions with the dolphins at the front window of the tank, and shows us simply testing how a dolphin might move to look at a point of interest. You might notice that the fins, mouth, and eyes are not animated/articulated at all. At this point, we were still looking at what kind of emotions and intelligence could be conveyed strictly through body language. Getting that right was critical, before we got to the bells and whistles stuff. This was also a PC based demo, and you can tell that I was using a much more complex skin shader at the time than what you have now (although I needed to fix how the highlights roll off). I'd hoped to bring this shader to the iPad but most of the devices just didn't have enough horsepower. I think I might still be able to port it onto the Air, though I'm not making any promises.
movements This was an extremely interesting time with the actual dolphins - and I've written about this before. Dolphins aren't "trained" behaviorally to follow someone's hand like that. When you look at Foster doing it at the Aquarium, he is very clearly doing it, assuming I want him to do it, rather than like a curious seal or cat that would just follow the hand out of instinct. It was really like Foster wanted to do something that I wanted him to do. He kept keeping his motion in sync with my movement and hand, but mixing it up a bit to "show off" when he could. Even the trainers admitted he had never done this before.
The Excitement of Jumping During our study of dolphins, their jumping and aerial acrobatics first stood out as the most amazing "physics" of the animals. They can dive deep, turn up, and accelerate hard to generate incredible speed and launch like a missile out of the water. They can also casually swim a few feet under the surface, suddenly jerk their neck upwards and leap out with seemingly gravity-defying physics (like where did they get that speed from). They can twist, flip, spin - casually, and just "ride" out the action. Alternatively, they can be very deliberate, and achieve pinpoint accuracy. So this experience is actually coded into I Am Dolphin. It is in the free jump. You can actually do a lot of things there. You can control the jump. You can induce spins, lateral twists, and bows. Its a very complex "jump simulation". There is also, behind the scenes, a very complex score being calculated which measures your beauty (poise, smoothness, landing), and complexity/entropy. In an update - we will tie these acrobatics to pearls you can earn. I will be posting more but here is a first animated gif example of a good jump: To Achieve these cool jumps: 1. Don't boost out of the water. You don't need to. If you are close enough to the surface and about to breach - Bandit detects this, flaps his tailfin down, and generates forward momentum to jump fairly high. If you boost - the camera will not be able to track as there is way too much speed. 2. The key is to move in that split second where Bandit is half-in and half-out of water. Just as in real life - this is the point at which a differential in force can induce all sorts of really cool torques which cause the acrobatics.
Nice gif. I finally got Zoey! Isn't it true that orcas are a species of dolphin too rather than a whale?
Yes it is . The species classification is intriguing - porpoises, whales, etc., all have subtle variations. We're going to add a ton of information (real facts) soon on our website and add more actual information throughout the game in updates.
Wait a minute here--- getting Zoey means it seems you're finally getting motor-connected. This is amazing if you are
curiosity One of the things we really took to heart in our study is that Dolphins are just as curious about us as we are about them. When we are "playing" with them - it is often they who are playing with us. This video captures that:
Wow I didn't know they could stay out of the water for so long. Also, part of me is really jealous of all this playtime you got with the dolphins. And part of me feels bad for them that they're not in the ocean. Are these the dolphins some of your profits will go to help?
This is a complicated issue. First, most of these dolphins were born in captivity. If you put them in the ocean they would die within days if not hours from the shock in a new environment, disease, etc. The Dolphins in captivity are very well looked after by a team of vets, trainers, who deeply care about them. The middle ground is an ocean-side sanctuary. Where its "fenced off", much bigger, and allow for the care they deserve. But there are still many disease/environment change risks. They could get psychologically very stressed by the change. Studying them was no doubt a privilege. But its absurd to keep these animals in tanks - and the more I personally studied their motion - the more that was felt. The CEO of the National Aquarium has publically announced his plan to move the dolphins at the NA to an ocean-side sanctuary. And yes - we intend (if everything gets squared away legally etc. and I Am Dolphin is very successful) to donate to help build this sanctuary. It premature to really be even thinking about that though as first we have to grow I Am Dolphin, have a large, devoted, base - update the game regularly, etc. In the meanwhile - write to John Racanelli, the CEO of the Baltimore Aquarium, urging him to follow through with his wonderful direction and actually build this sanctuary and move the dolphins there.
New Baltimore Sun Article http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-dolphin-video-game-hopkins-20141015-story.html
2.5x GPU performance on the new iPad Air 2. I am going to pull some gorgeous new shaders out of the tricks bag for you guys in an update!
