Laser Dolphin Released

I would like to say this is one of the best games I've seen released here! The last best one I really liked was called "Mega Brain Splashing 4". Now I just played the game for less than 5 minutes, but I really liked it,liked it enough that I will play it some more [grin]. It's like "Ecco The Dolphin" 21st centuraized [wink]. Right now I am really tired (2:30am) so I will PM you with my feedback later. But to anyone that reads this, this is a really cool looking game and well done and worth your while to take a look at. Great work Dingo Games!

- Drew Benton

That is a really cool game! I might even purchase it if I knew I only knew I had the time to play it. The game is definitely worth the money.

My sys specs:
Athlon 2400+
Radeon 9800 pro
512 mb ram
Win XP pro SP2

The controls were slightly difficult to learn, but it didn't take to long to learn and master.

Good luck, very nice game.

I have only 1 critique with the game: the place where your cross-hair is is not where the laser will shoot. But otherwise, it's an awesome game and one of the most original ideas I've seen (having a dolphin with a laser).

It is really well done. Congrats!

Thanks for the feedback. I am currently working on improving the controls. I am planning on doing a "swim towards the cursor" as well as the current arrow key controls. Swimming towards the cursor feels more natural but during intense fights you really need the arrow keys to maneuver in all directions.

I think I know what you mean link3333. Right now the laser gets shot in the direction that the dolphin faces. The dolphin tries to maneuver itself to face the cursor. So if you do fast mouse movements the laser will not hit the cursor. Also the laser usually fires slightly above the cursor because of the way that the laser is mounted onto the dolphin. I'm thinking about fixing this up a bit so that the laser feels more responsive to mouse controls. Basically by subtly angulating laser towards the mouse cursor. So that even though the dolphin is not quite facing towards the cursor, the laser will still shoot that direction. I'll try this out and see how it feels.

Thanks everyone, more feedback would be appreciated.

More weapons and enemies would be cool. Maybe some lighting...

Pretty cool game, man ;)

Here's some crits: I think it might be a *little* too easy (but I guess the difficulty can be upped in the Options screen anyway - maybe set the default difficulty to normal?). Occasionally, the missle fish get some cheap shots in - especially when they're head on.

First of all, I released an updated version. This version features improved controls, help screens, and better laser aiming. So check it out! (same download link as before)

Thanks for the feedback. One of the things that I want to add is more weapon upgrades. I'm not sure what to do about the difficulty. I was actually considering making it easier. I know that the game is much to easy for hardcore players (probably most of the people on Gamedev). Crank up the difficulty to 'Extreme' and it's pretty tough, trust me. The problem is that a lot of the people that buy the game are probably not going to be as good at games so I question what the default difficulty should be. I might have to do some testing. e.g. half the people that play the game get easy difficulty and half the people get hard difficulty. Then see which version sells more copies. Or maybe just force them to choose a difficulty when the game starts so that more casual gamers will choose 'Very Easy' and the rest would choose 'Medium'.

Thanks everyone. Please try the new version and let me know what you think!