The Wings of Dawn – General Guide (Playtest)

Guide to Basics

Please note: all credit goes to Shadzerios!

Welcome into the Wings of Dawn tech demo guide. From this small chapter you can find everything about the public tech demo, the controls, AI creatures, how to fly and find food. If you have any further questions about the tech demo do leave a question within the bottom of this guide.

What Is the “Tech Demo”?

The tech demo is a super duper early prototype version of the game and a proof of concept of what these developers are able to do without any funding. Currently the tech demo is currently planned to be live during the crowdfunding campaign and free for anyone interested to try and test out! The tech demo features bare bones survival mechanics so don’t expect super fancy things just yet.

You can play as two different species within the beginning of the tech demo: Vulgan dragon or William drone. We do have plans on very bare bone basic humans later into the demo, but they will not make an appearance until we are ready with human-related assets and mechanics.

Mechanics & Features

The current mechanics include hunger, thirst, stamina, health and recovery. Dragons have growth system which takes 45 minutes to grow a Vulgan hatchling to full adult. You can breathe fire at 0.5 growth and take to the skies at 0.6 growth. The growth cycle is capped at the moment to 1.0 which is full adult. Williams do not grow! Instead Williams spawn as full adults and allow you to explore the much smaller and hidden corners of the island.

Hostile and passive AI exists within the world. Within the single player (until we get our server hosting sorted) has wild spawning William hives. Within the multiplayer version we have William hives, Skaith and the antelopes. The hostile AI have their own unique behaviour, hunger and stamina pool which prevents them from overhunting the existing AI. If the predator AI runs out of stamina, it will stop the chase and sit down to rest. If the predator AI is not hungry,- you will see it roam with its pack. If the player is too large for the predator AI to hunt, it will ignore the player (example adult Vulgans). The passive/skittish AI will not react to small players unless attacked which it will proceed to run away.

Passive AI

  • Grassland Antelope

Hostile AI

  • Skaith
  • William hives

Survival Mechanics

Hunger & Thirst

The players will become slowly hungry and thirsty over time. The hunger (green bar) and the thirst (blue bar) will slowly deplete the more hungry/thirsty you become. The hatchling Vulgan’s hunger and thirst will deplete faster than the adult Vulgan. Player Williams have a bit longer depletion rate to balance with their smaller size and speed. All water sources except the ocean is drinkable so make sure to keep eyes out for rivers, ponds, lakes, swamp and marshland. At the moment the AI is the only thing that you can eat at this time and AI is spawns plentiful around the map. However, be careful as wild William hives do spawn with soldiers and warriors that will defend their smaller worker class. Be calculative and cunning or otherwise you might get swarmed by the hive!

Health

All creatures both players and AI have health; which lowers when attacked and recovers when resting. The dragon players health pool becomes larger naturally as they grow. The different AI species also have different amounts of HP. Larger AI tends to have more health than the smaller ones so bare that in mind before jumping into combat.

Combat

There are bare bones combat within the game featuring physical attacks and elemental attacks. Vulgan have two (2) physical attacks and one (1) elemental attack. Williams for now only have one (1) form of physical attack. We have also decided to introduce two (2) status effects via combat so that we can receive feedback for future balancing.

Game Modes

Due to few hiccups during the tech demo’s release we have made an option for people to play single player mode until server hosting has been figured out. Single player development will not be continued after tech demo. Single player sadly will not remain as part of our development pipeline and future game versions will not feature a single player option.

Multiplayer is currently out of service until we have made sure that the server hosting works as intended. We will look forward to having official servers on US and EU respectively. This will be a great chance of us to test the server networking, performance and more.

Game Controls

Here are the current basic controls for the tech demo:

Vocalization

  • 1 – Broadcast Call
  • 2 – Friendly Call
  • 3 – Aggressive Call
  • 4 – Submissive Call
  • 5 – Neutral Call

Movement

  • W – Forward
  • A – Left
  • S – Back
  • D – Right
  • Hold LShift – Sprint
  • LMB – Primary attack / Bite
  • Hold RMB – Secondary attack / Fire breath
  • C – Tertiary attack / Vulgan’s claw attack
  • Hold E – Eat and drink
  • H – Rest
  • Z – Toggle trot + walk
  • Hold Alt – To freelook in flight
  • K – Suicide/respawn
  • Enter – Open chat
  • Esc – Options

Flight – Contols

How to take off

You must build up the speed by sprinting, look up while holding the space bar. Once you are in the air release the spacebar.

Turning /banking

You can use AD keys to bank left and right respectively. Banking while turning your mouse to the direction you want to go will make you turn faster and help making sharp turns.

How to slow down

To slow down hold S and it will make you slow down over time. However, if you hold it too long, you will fall off from the sky. Vulgan has no ability to hover as it is too heavy.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8074 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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