Dawn of the Tyrant [It's back!]

Community Showcases
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Hello Unity people,

Dawn of the Tyrant is a game project we have been working on for a while. We now have a fully functional demo and we thought it would be a great time to share some of our work and progress with the community here on the forums.

Thanks for dropping by to take a look at what we’re working busily on. We’ll be sure to keep this thread regularly updated with more videos, screenshots, information about the project and updates on what we’re working on as the game progresses.

Any comments and feedback would be great to hear! :slight_smile:

– The team at Six Times Nothing

About the project

Genre: RPG – Single player, but some social features
Platform: Windows + Mac OS

Dawn of the Tyrant is a socially connected role playing game where the actions of players affect the flow of the storyline and gameplay. The game is based in a dark, primeval and brutal world where the advanced technologies of a once ancient and powerful race have fallen into ruin. The style of play fuses elements of traditional RPGs with faster paced survival-horror gameplay. The game world and artwork is inspired by a combination of gothic fantasy and horror and Babylonian, Egyptian and ancient Middle Eastern history and mythology.

Gameplay video

Here is a gameplay video, which shows the functionality and art as it currently stands. This video shows around 11 minutes of unedited gameplay, although for the impatient – you can skip to 04:50 to see some combat! :slight_smile:

(Also – looks better on YouTube in HD!)

Please note that this a demo, not the complete game and some artwork, UI and content may not be final.

As to be expected, there are a lot of things to still be ironed out – loads of little bugs and glitches. However, the truly gargantuan task that still sits ahead of us is content – levels, missions, environment art, lots more characters, tons more weapon and armour options, and so the list goes on. We are currently looking into various options to give ourselves the necessary financial backing to take this game to the place that where we really want it to go!

Screenshots

The story

The planet of Vónekh VII is a stark and brutal world. Drenched in blood and dread, those unlucky enough to be trapped on its surface fight a never ending war for survival. With eyes cast skyward, many dream of going to a home that they have never been to and have only heard tales of. On the horizon they see the rising darkness, and the infinite terror stirring within.

An ancient and powerful race who once ruled the stars, now known only as the Aëdr, were rent asunder by a war long since passed. Yet their descendants – the proud and powerfully winged Lánaraï still fight their fallen kin, the dark and brutal Kheïtanni, in a bloody and seemingly perpetual stalemate. Neither faction will rest until the extermination of the other is complete.

Unknown to these vying factions, a growing darkness and malevolence has taken seed in the depths of the Void. In the utter blackness of this sinister nether realm, one who was thought destroyed rises once more. Rhïarrh, The Fire in Heaven, whom the fallen call the Tyrant-God.

It was His infernal desire to create and control life itself that once set in motion the war that still reverberates though generations of warriors that follow. A war that pitted brother against brother, and turned a galaxy-spanning empire to ash.

For now, Rhïarrh remains trapped in the eternal darkness of the Void. In fury, He strains against the chains that bind him and His infinite anger and seething hatred burns like a new star in the firmament. A terrible fire whose searing blaze reaches out into the material universe. It is prophesised that should He return, all are doomed to perish.

As the sky blackens with the threat of a coming storm, a new hope springs from the darkness. Ancient technologies of the Aëdr, thought to have been forever lost, have been unearthed. Now over shattered relics and the skeletal remains of once mighty starships, the battles between the Kheïtanni and the Lánaraï increase in ferocity. Rhïarrh’s hateful gaze turns northwards and where it falls, unspeakable horrors begin to stir in the darkness and in the ground below. The dark and wild places of the world fill with vile things born of the Void. These Lán-Faën, the nightmares of men made real, now plague the lands of mortals. The end of all things is truly at hand.

For the long lost stars or for blood and vengeance, the time is now. Stand your ground, rise to the challenge and fight. Before the raging fire consumes us all.

About us

Dawn of the Tyrant is being developed by Six Times Nothing. You might have seen our name around before – Chris, though he no longer works with us, was behind the popular UniSky system on the Unity Asset Store. We’ve also released some free assets to the community in the past, including the Terrain Toolkit, which was part of the Unity Summer of Code, way back in 2009. There’s actually just two of us now, though we’ve had the honour of getting to work with quite a few fairly awesomely talented people on this project, who’ve freelanced with us to help bring the game to life. Really, making this game was what we initially formed Six Times Nothing to create, but it’s been a very long and winding road to get to this point!

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This looks amazing!

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I like your project ! We see your work :slight_smile:

please Can you tell me the software used by your team ?

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Hey, I sent you a pm about the most likely WIP voice acting, I made a better (IMO) “What Do You Want?”
Also, your project looks great, look forward to seeing more!

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Thanks for the positive feedback, much appreciated!

@frysket – We have used Unity Pro for the client, Photon for networking and the SilverStripe CMS for web integration (also used for user authentication). Though there’s probably some other server side software for databases, security, etc. that I’m not familiar with. Other than that we have used Photoshop, After Effects, Cheetah3D and Garageband for some of the 3D, 2D design, visual effects and music. Some of our contractors use zBrush, 3DS Max, Photoshop, etc. as well – most of the higher end 3D artwork has been done by them.

I should also note that we’ve used a couple of packs off the Asset Store – the ones by Michael O. deserve special mention! We will be creating a lot of our own environment assets moving forward as well though to help give the world a unique look.

@mightymike5321 – Hey, I got your PM. Thanks for that! Yeah, the VO is placeholder and is just me recording my own voice in Garageband. I’ll drop your sample in when I can and see how it sounds in the game. We are also considering trialling VoiceBunny (Get a professional | Bunny Studio) as a solution for voice acting. It looks like a great service.

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Wow, the aesthetics there look really, really, REALLY good. Usually, though, Unity games that are all decked out have relatively horrible performance on the average machine, compared to games made with other engines. I’d bed really interested in seeing if that game’s gorgeousness could actually be achieved on a wide range of machines.

That being said, I LOVE RPGs and I would certainly be interested in trying that game out.some day.

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Wow. No words really. Looks astonishing! Hats off sir.

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Gee that animation looks good :stuck_out_tongue:

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Wow, looking really great so far!

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I’m in love with your UI. So clean especially inventory…

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Love the game and cant wait to play it! Good luck

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It’s beautiful. I hope the game play is as good.

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Ha. Glad you think so. :stuck_out_tongue:

@Aspiring_Failure – I’ll check again tonight to be sure, but from memory the demo as per the video was running consistently at between 60-70 fps at 1920 x 1080 on a 2 year old iMac. I also have a 5 year old MacBook Pro, on which the game admittedly isn’t playable at all.

There are a lot of optimisations that need to be made to the game as it stands, and probably some graphic options to dial up and down the amount of effects, etc. Generally it will be our aim for the game to be playable on a reasonable range of machines, but there will have to be a cut off point somewhere I guess!

Thanks to everyone else for the kind words, again very much appreciated!

I’ll be posting another update soon. This week we’ll be giving access to the game to a small group of testers to review the gameplay and provide feedback on how we can improve the experience.

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Update

This week we’ve started sending out the first builds to our testing group. An exciting step for us, and very useful to start hearing some feedback from people who’ve never played the game before. It’s quite true that after playtesting every step of the way throughout development, you tend to end up being a bit too close to the game. The quirks of the controls become second nature to you, and what the player is supposed to do in each situation seems obvious. Sometimes, of course, that isn’t quite the case! Either way, it’s very helpful to have some fresh eyes with a new perspective.

Next up on the agenda, I’ll be adding a simple mini-map to the UI. Then the focus will be back on mission and level design. The missions shown in the gameplay video here a bit light-on, and we’ll definitely need a more substantial piece of narrative and content for our testing team to play.

I’ve recently added some new mechanics including the ability to commandeer other characters to join you on quests – which should open up some interesting options for future missions. Another new feature allows the player to use special mêlée and ranged attacks – including a deadly sniper ability that will also feature in an upcoming mission. Some of these will be shown in the next video, as well as a first look at the hated arch-enemies of the Kheïtanni – and our second playable race – the winged Lánaraï.

Concept art

Here is some of the concept artwork created by our talented team to create and visualise the world of Vónekh VII and its grim inhabitants. This is just a taste, and we’ll be sure to share even more soon!

Kheïtanni race promo artwork (playable race)

Lánaraï, male, light armour concept (playable race)

Kheïtanni, female, heavy armour concept (playable race)t

Lán-Faën ‘Horror’ concept (enemy NPC)

The Pillars of Heaven, the home of the Lánaraï

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The game looks really good graphics-wise!
The combat does seem slightly dull, but hey, it’s a WIP!
Thoroughly impressed! :slight_smile:

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Hello there - I see no reason why your Creation is not playable on an old mac…But I have been using Unity for some time and Optimization Is what I am really good at…that and finding bugs…well they come to me haha…

If you need help optimizing let me know I will check it out and give you pointers on the adjustments needed.
If you are willing to pay I can transform your whole game to a run on even single core machines.
It always seems strange to me some of the Unity games I see running really slow when they shouldn’t.
And if I can’t optimize your game…you don’t pay :). Let me know what you think.

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Very good work, keep in this way!! :smile:

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@Justei – Yeah, fair call on the combat. Having more variation in the animation will make a big difference – that’s just a big cost, so hopefully something we can improve on later. We’ve made a few tweaks since and combat feels a bit quicker already.

@SilverStorm – Thanks for the offer of help. I’ll keep that in mind and will be in touch via PM. Right now we don’t really have the budget for something like this, but hopefully the opportunity will present itself a bit later. We would really like the game to work on a broad range of machines, so it’s a good thing to be considering.

A few things I’m already conscious of that will help performance…

This is in Unity 3.x – I’ve heard that GUI is significantly optimised in 4.x, so I’m hoping that will help a little. Failing that, we might look at rebuilding the UI in one of the systems on the Assets Store. That would just be a massive pain though!

The ‘volumetric’ fog effect makes a significant hit on performance. However, this is a big part of the gameplay mechanic, especially the ability for objects to attract or repel the fog (you can see this in the video when the character is carrying the glowing crystal through the fog). We could create varying resolutions and drawing distances for the fog which would help on less powerful machines though.

Terrain is always a huge performance hit in the Unity engine. I’m thinking of subdividing the terrain into smaller tiles and having them shown and hidden with the Umbra occlusion culling system. Also using Umbra for all GameObjects would probably help somewhat.

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This game looks beyond beautiful. And when you said socially connected, does that mean it’s an MMO? Please make it an MMO! Pleeassseeeee? C’mon…don’t make me beg. You can start a kickstarter for a budget! C’mon!

I haven’t seen an MMO where the story is seriously affected by the player’s actions and decisions. So this would be beyond wonderful if you can play with other players in an interactive world.

Pweas? :3

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Visually stunning, and all around great looking game. Fantastic job on this! I’ll be following this.

Best of luck,

SubZeroGaming