Success at Dolphin Olympics 2: The Ultimate Strategy Guide

If you are looking at this page, you have probably already played Dolphin Olympics 2. If not, this game created by Alex Rawkins, will soon become one of your favorite leisure activities while sitting at your computer. You can play the game by clicking on this link or if you have facebook by getting the Dolphin Olympics 2 application which keeps track of your high scores. Play around a little and once you get the hang of it, come back to learn how to get a truly high score.

Depending on your experience and skill level, you may not yet be ready to follow my instructions for a 230 million point run. If you find yourself having trouble following the instructions for a high score, familiarize yourself with and practice the techniques presented in this section. Load a game of Dolphin Olympics - read the game instructions, they are surprisingly helpful - and start playing around. Pay special attention to your landings. A nice method to ensure you enter the water properly is to align your dolphin with the bubbles trailing its tail. You want to enter the water at the same angle as the direction that you are moving. Not only will a good entry give you credit for the trick "Nice Entry," but also will continue your points accumulating within one combo. In Dolphin Olympics 2, the points you receive for a combo is determined by the product of the cumulative point value of all the tricks and a multiplier that increases with the number of tricks you complete. Your final score is the sum of all these combos. It is most advantageous to have large combos (a skilled player's round will consist of only one combo). A "Nice Entry" will continue your combo, unless you stay under water for too long. It is important to never delay under water. You should either be entering or exiting at all times; there is no benefit to spending extra time submerged. After you learn how to control the dolphin, practice completing the tricks listed below, although some like achieving the diner will take days of work.

• Nice Entry (50 Points)
• Corkscrew (150 Points)
• Schooled (150 Points)
• Extension (250 Points)
• Reversal (300 Points)
• Back Flip (500 Points)
• Front Flip (500 Points)
• Wraparound (600 Points)
• Backside Rewind (750 Points)
• Frontside Rewind (750 Points)
• Firecracker! (1,000 Points)
• Carnival (1,500 Points)
• Starslide
• Tailslide
• Apollo 18! (2,500 Points)
• Mission to Mars! (5,000 Points)
• Nebulous! (10,000 Points)
• School's Out! (15,000 Points)
• Wandering Star! (20,000 Points)
• Ringer! (50,000 Points)
• Passing Gas! (250,000 Points)
• Wizard's Eye! (500,000 Points)
• New Horizons! (750,000 Points)
• So long and thanks for all the flips! (1,000,000 Points)

The increase in your multiplier for a trick is equal to 1 divided by the number of times that trick has been done. For example, the first nice entry you do will increase your multiplier by 1 and the second will increase your multiplier by 0.5.

The next few sections go over the best techniques for getting a high score. This part will concentrate on game play early in the game, where building your multiplier is crucial. The video on the side shows a good combination of tricks to begin with. You want to do atleast two Carnivals, Wraparounds, and Reversals as these tricks are impossible when you have built up more speed. A good rule of thumb to guage your performance is that by 10 seconds into the game your multiplier should be 10 and by 30 seconds your multiplier should be 20. Many players (even good ones) fail to achieve a good early game multiplier losing them up to 20 million points.

Advanced Topics in Early Game Play:

If you desire to master the Carnival, you will have to learn to regulate your flipping speed with corkskews. When you corkskew and flip at the same time, the rate at which you are flipping decreases. With this in mind, while flipping in the air you can corkskrew to adjust your flipping speed to set up a Nice Entry and succesful corkskrew. Sometimes you try a Wraparound and halfway through realize you are too deep to surface. You abort and jump out of the water only to find that your combo has reset. To prevent your combo from resetting, you can press the down arrow, tailslide, jump out of it with only a slight loss of speed.

The mid game is all about gaining speed. Unlike during early game play, you will not be trying to get Carnivals, Wraparounds, and Reversals. Instead your tricks should consist of Schooled (don't go out of your way to school), Flips, Rewinds (not too many), Firecrackers! (it is better to stay low), and Extensions. Extensions are of critical importance because they increase your speed, multiplier, and game clock. By exiting the water at a shallow water and not going much higher than the clouds, you can maximize your probability of hitting extensions.

Video and explanation coming soon. My highscore is 273 million.

Q: The highscores on the Facebook application and DO2 website are in the 2.147 billions. How are scores like this possible? What is the real highscore?

A: The highest documented score is 233 million. Videos exist of 245 and 293 million point runs, but these videos do not rule out cheating. The technique these players use is the same (differ in whether you go to Pluto or try to get another jump in) technique that this website teaches. The consensus on most internet sites is that 2.147 billion scores are products of cheating; it is possible to freeze time and speed up the dolphin. Due to the way the game stores scores, the highest possible score is 2,147,483,647 (2^31 - 1). If you exceed this score, you will end up with a huge negative number for all your hard work.

Another explanation for the high scores is the endless starslide approach, however, cheating was likely involved in building up enough speed. One last explanation is explained (poorly) by the below post which appeared on a Facebook group. I have been unable to replicate this technique.

"Oh and if anybody wants to know the secret: start with 10ish schooled then do flips till you can star ride, then jump to where you just get high enough to star ride for maximum speed on the ride. just keep doing that for 1mil x multiplier per ride."

Q: In the sample videos posted on this site and on many videos on youtube, the gameclock is moving very slowly. Is this cheating?

A: No, this is not cheating. Although the gameclock is moving slower than realtime, the dolphin is also moving slower. The relative time it takes to complete a trick is still the same. Having a slower game clock can be beneficial to the player since, it makes it easier to control the dolphin, especially at high speeds. If you are descending from pluto and hope to get another jump in, it is almost impossible not to hit the bottom, unless your gameclock is running slowly. On this site, the videos have been slowed down, so the observer can catch all the tricks and methods that are being employed. The game tends to run slower on computers will less powerful processors. One trick to decrease the gamespeed is to set your computer to powersave mode, which in turn slows down the processor.

Q: Why is the gameclock increases by one second at wierd times? Is this cheating?

A: No this is not cheating. When you hit an extension the gameclock increases by one. This does not apply if you have zero seconds left.

Q: What is beyond the diner?

A: As far as anyone knows, there are no starslides or other landmarks beyond the diner.

Q: Is it possible to complete every trick in one round?

A: Yes. The difficultly lies in School's Out! Every other trick is naturally done in a good round. I have posted a video in which I did every trick. As far as I can tell, I am the only player to have occomplished this feat!

For those who like to freeze time, you can use this algorithm to make sure you don't go over the maximum score. First, you must download R. After installing, open up the GUI and follow the instructions below.

#Copy the whole function into R and hit return

do2<- function(score){

#Example: Type your score into the function and hit return