The Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.)

The Setting of the game is the Northwest Palace of the city of Nimrud. This location was chosen because several of the Walters artifacts are from this palace and it provided a good opportunity for a rich environment to explore. We based our model of the Palace off of proposed floorplans from the Excavation Site, which were based off of the unearthed wall foundations.

The model of the Palace used in the game was simplified from the original floorplan in order to keep the experience within our 5 minute time limit. We blocked off several areas of the palace and focused the experience around the Throne Room and the courtyards and rooms that flank it.

The game has an in-game overhead map that will tell you what room you are currently in. You can rollover the different rooms in the example below to learn what they are.

The Palace was modelled using Alias' Maya 6.0 and the textures were made with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The decor of the Palace is based of off research from the Excavation Site and similar Sites of the same time period. Unfortunately not much of the Palace remains and so a lot of the visuals in the game represent educated guesses and speculation.

The Northwest Palace at Nimrud incorporates traditional construction and decorative motifs of Assyria and adds to them a new dimension of monumentality and permanence. Much of the decoration was rendered in massive stone bas-relief and sculpted stone collosi of protective winged bulls and lions. The bas-reliefs show a variety of royal activities: religious scenes, scenes showing collection of tribute from conquered subjects, battle scenes, and images of more tranquil activities adorn the walls of the palace. The furnishings within the Northwest Palace were often inlayed with intricately carved ivory panels.