Burial Tombs for the Pharaoh

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Tony Leier in the Design Insights from October 7:

My immortality and afterlife

Even a god-king will die and leave the realm of mortals. To properly enter the afterlife, Pharaoh must have a tomb prepared- the bigger the better of course. A brick mastaba will do alright for a tomb. A big limestone pyramid is obviously superior. Building a Great Pyramid in time for your burial is a tremendous achievement, something certain to make your greatness known to the world for eternity.

Woe to the Pharaoh that passes away without a tomb. Without a proper burial, there is no passage to the afterlife. The people believe that a god-king without immortality is clearly not much of a god-king. The prestige that a failed Pharaoh attained while alive is mostly lost when this happens. The heir, the new Pharaoh, will have a lot of hard work to do to make up for that failure.

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Building a pyramid

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

A first question by a forum member at Tilted Mill, neferamon:

Will a pyramid be built stone for stone?

Tony Leier's reply was "Still balancing that". In response to this, EmperorJay posted the following:

I think what Tony Leier means is that it's uncertain if it will be literally block by block or if it will be built 4 blocks at a time or 10 or 200.

You can't make the labourers run faster (that would look silly) or carry more (that would look silly too) so the only solution is to speed up the monument construction by increasing the number of blocks that are added graphically with each load.

Tony's response to that:

Yes, that's it. There is a steady, everyday stream of people and stone going to the pyramid. But showing a few million individual blocks move might take a few weeks, hence the block multiplication.

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Monument construction and function

Monday, March 29, 2004

From the GameStar interview:

GameStar:

As I understand, there will be monuments the player can build. How long will this take ;-) ?

Chris Beatrice:

Well that depends on the size of the monument you want to build! The great pyramid at Giza took around 18 years, which is remarkably short, though probably still too long for the attention span of most players today. I don't know, maybe German players...

But seriously, the bigger the monument, the better it is, and the more time and resources it will take to construct. In fact, each and every building in the game is built right before your eyes via a detailed construction animation system customized individually for every building. This is something that, to my knowledge, no one has done before, and it's pretty amazing to see.

For monuments specifically, well, any building large and grand enough to inspire awe is considered a monument. The construction of monuments is at the heart of all the player's efforts, that is, they are the ultimate expression of his prosperous and well-organized society, and his personal tomb is of course the most spectacular monument he will try to build.

In addition to inspiring awe, each monument has a very real and distinct function in the game, whether it be a tomb for the player or the nobility, a cult temple, a propaganda item such as an obelisk or stele, (which magnify and prolong the effects of the player's real achievements), and so on.

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Kinds of monuments

Sunday, March 21, 2004

From the GameSpy interview:

GameSpy:

What kinds of monuments can you build and (like Pharaoh) does it require resources, workers and time to build?

Chris Beatrice:

In Children of the Nile, any structure that is extraordinarily large, or otherwise costly to build is deemed a "monument." Monuments are basically divided into three types: tombs, propaganda items, and functional structures, such as temples and cult centers. In keeping with how we've handled every detail of the game, each monument gives you clear and obvious direct benefits rather than just being a scenario completion goal. Obviously, the bigger and more valuable the monument, the more time and effort it takes to complete.

I guess we all know by now that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and the afterlife. So here you do spend a fair amount of time building tombs for yourself and the nobility. And since people are always dying, this process never really ends. The whole quarrying and construction process is depicted in great detail.

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