To start of my project I first wanted to research briefly into the history and mythology surrounding Troy, as well as analyzing Creative Assembly and their Total War franchise, trying to understand the mechanics of the games.
History – Mythology
Located in what is now called Turkey is famous and mainly known for the great Trojan War that took place at an estimated time of 1300-1100 BCE.
The most common tale that is talked about often is the story of the Trojan Horse, in which the Greeks offered Troy a gift in the form of a large wooden horse. As the gift was accepted and the horse was brought inside the city walls, Greek soldiers who were placed inside the horse burst out and sacked the city, winning the Trojan War for the Greeks. However, the history of Troy is often up for speculation due to its time period being thousands of years ago. Meaning that there are limited sources of information to look upon when studying this period. With any actual sources being hard to prove whether it is fact or a myth to add to the Greek mythology.
The main source of information comes from a legendary ancient Greek author, Homer, the author of both Iliad and Odyssey. In Iliad it is portrayed that the Trojan War began as a result of the abduction of a Spartan Queen, Helen by the son of Troy’s King, Paris. What followed was the abducted Queen’s brother-in-law, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, raised his Greek armies and sieged Troy. The siege was to take 10 years before the Trojan Horse ended the conflict.
Iliad is supposed to be set in the 10th and final year of the Greeks siege of Troy, claiming that the long, drawn-out war had drained the sieging army, as well as those within the walls with the war effectively becoming a stalemate.
Over the 10-year period of the war, numerous key events were recorded in various forms of literature. One of these key events being a duel between the Prince Paris and Menelaus, the King of Sparta and husband of the captured Queen Helen. It was said that the duel was to decide who would win Helen, therefore ending the war. Yet it was said that before the duel could proclaim a winner, the ‘gods’ intervened and prevented this from happening. Again, as mentioned before this is entirely up for speculation. With another duel taking place between a Trojan warrior, Hektor, as he is no match for a Greek warrior, runs three laps around Troy before he is caught and inevitably killed.
History – Factual
The exact location of Troy is undetermined, as the entire history of Troy has very little proof and is heavily influenced by mythology, archaeologists have struggled to determine what may have been residue of the city of Troy. From what had been identified, finding houses that had been build and destroyed numerous times. Usually by fire or an earthquake. The walls of Troy were found to be made of cut limestone that were to around 15ft thick at the base, rising to 17ft high, the walls of which had multiple ramparts and watchtowers. The city was destroyed by multiple earthquakes but the quickly rebuilt, almost every house was provided with between 1-7 huge storage jars that were buried deep into the ground. As well as the houses were built close together, there were determined to be special measures made so that the city could withstand a siege.
I proceeded to create a proposal of what I am going to create, which can be viewed on this link.
Now knowing what my project was going to be I proceeded to open photoshop in order to create a city layout, which would come to be a key asset in my environment.
The grey squares indicate the towers, light pink indicating walls and the light grey rectangles representing entrances.
My next steps would be to start in Unreal Engine, creating a block out and beginning to create my quest mechanic.