Improving the city. Part I: Greekness

Hi there, friends and foes of democracy!

About a month ago I finished and published the animation below, showing how the city in Socratic Democracy changes with the seasons. This version was good enough to share, but it is not the final product.

For a long time, I have been yearning to make the landscape look more like Greece, as well make the city look a bit more like an ancient Greek polis. This devlog is dedicated to describing my ideas in this regard. 

Rocks.

A Greek legend says that the gods distributed land in the world with a sieve and, in the end, when mostly just rocks were left, they build Greece. The ground of Greece is dotted with small stones, while twisted, rugged, eroded, broken rock formations can be seen in the scarps of its mountains. Or at least that is what Hollywood, and my own image search led me to believe.

I want to incorporate rocks into the image in three ways. First, I want to add many small rocks in plain surfaces.  Secondly, I plan on improving some of the large rocks that appear in the current image. They look too rounded, vertical and tringular, while the rocks I see in image like the one above are complex, broken, porous, and not very vertical. Lastly, I intend to add a small quarry in the city. 

Bushes

Being a somewhat dry and rocky place, mainland Greece vegetation tends to be drought adapted. In many places, this means mixed forests combining dryland bush and shrublands. 

I am a bit afraid of the work of making bushes, as they must change considerably through the seasons, as well as project shadows. I also feel like I should study a bit of Greek botany to get them right. So this could end up been a lot of work.

Urban furniture

I plan on adding a few statues in the city, as well as other types of furniture, such as benches, vases, and a well. I am a little unsure if I should add a fountain, as I don’t know how common these were at that time in Greece. 

Besides adding to the Greekness of the image, these additions would help improve the lore of the story and help further clarify the social disparities on the different neighborhoods, as most of these amenities will appear in the best neighborhoods. And if the statues are far away, I don’t have to think too much about what people or events they represent, living the task of developing the lore for a later time, when close up scenes are developed.

Mycenean elements

Mycenean Greece is the name given to the continental Greece civilization that prospered in the 2^nd millennium BC. They are known for their architecture, featuring thick walls and palaces, and using cyclopean masonry, that is, walls constructed with large and unequal rocks. By the time of the game (4^th century BC), the Mycenean civilization was long gone. Their ruins, however, were found everywhere, and sparked the curiosity of Classical Greeks.

Thus, I plan on adding a few ruins looking very old and cyclopean, like two or three. I may also adjust the small ruins that currently appear on the city. I also intend to substantially change the wall that currently separates the upper-class neighborhood from the rest, to make it look like a remnant from the Mycenean time. The final wall should be lower, without embattlements, darker in color, and displaying a clear cyclopean style.

Conclusion

I believe adding these 4 elements (rocks, bushes, urban furniture and Mycenaean walls and ruins) will make the image look more appropriate for the place and time where the game happens: a coastal Greek colony in the lands of Thrace, circa 380 BC. hope I can improve my art and research skills to make this happen in the next months.

I have never set foot on Greece, as I am a middle-class Brazilian currently working in Ecuador and have only crossed the Atlantic Ocean a few times. So, if you know better and have some ideas on how to improve the Greekness of my city image and animation, I would love to hear about it.