Briefings
Many pictures (obviously not the ones depicting dinosaurs) are taken from Assyrian reliefs. This one, used in the first mission briefing, is from the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal. He hunted lions a lot.
The second mission, where focus switches to buildings, has a photo of a street in ruined Pompeii. Via Abbondanza, the Street of Abundance, to be exact:
The seventh mission, where the player must repel the attack of wild Dinosaurs, is adorned with a T-Rex head. It is the prop from the Jurassic Park, of course!
The eighth mission has this horse archer. It is, in fact, Ashurbanipal once more:
A medal was made to commemorate all the lions he hunted I guess…
Some info from the museum:
– Limestone relief from the N. palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, his capital.
– Ashurbanipal reigned from 668-626 BC.
– Ashurbanipal was the grandson of Sennacherib and son of Esarhaddon
– The detailed relief stands 63.5 cm (25 inches) tall.
– actual dimensions of the detail are w. 3 ft. 8 in. h. 1 ft. d. 8 3/4 in.
– The relief reveals a royal hunt for Gazelle, lions, and other animals
– The King of Assyria is on horseback with bow stretched
– The king’s servants are following behind with arrows and a spear
– The panel shows the King of Assyria with his attendants and horses
– From the Neo-Assyrian Period (1000-612 BC).
– Excavated at the site of ancient Nineveh (Kuyunjik) by H. Rassam about 1847.
– The royal hunt is seen throughout Assyrian history
– The theme of the hunt was very popular in Neo-Assyrian royal art.
– The Bible called Nimrod a mighty „hunter” before the LORD
– This stone panel was is currently at the British Museum.
– Nineveh (Kuyunjik) was Ashurbanipal’s capital city (Northern Iraq).
– Ashur-bani-pal was one of the most energetic and cruel of the Assyrian kings
The eleventh mission has this gate. You guessed it – lion hunt again:
Stone relief from the palace of Ashurbanipal, Spectators at a lion hunt climb a wooded hill surmounted by a stele. This scene has been regarded by some scholars as depicting the famous hanging gardens of Babylon.
Late Assyrian c 645 BC. Nineveh, Assyria, Ancient Iraq.
The other briefing images are either CGI from the game, or individual tribe reliefs.
And speaking of tribe reliefs, they are present in the outro screen:
The Koaka deity hand has been twisted by an artist, to better resemble a wing perhaps.
I spared him that fate the second time =)
Only the Romek image is missing, hiding in the shadows left of the Muspel ritual.
Or maybe they just teleported away.
The Masai and the Muspel have the same stone pattern in their interfaces, differing only in color… Suspicious!
The Radumba background stone texture is the Tribestone, but green!
Help Screen
The help screens combine a regular minimap sidebar with awesome 3D CGI.
This third page in particular has fearless Conan-type swordsmen, a T-Rex, and a daemonic warlock brandishing what could only be the Axe of Darkness while riding a huge raptor to battle.
In the background, a gigantic three-faced monument looms over the warriors, unfazed.
Is it a statue of a god, or perhaps fruit of the indomitable human spirit, a folly to defy the gods?
This is Jurassic War in its finest hour!
But where is this place? Which map sets the stage for this epic event? A diligent cartographer could find that the minimap doesn’t fit any of the campaign or multiplayer maps!
It is a main menu demonstration map, specifically map_d06!
If you hang around a bit in the main menu, you can witness what transpires in the lower right corner of the map, a complete mayhem of fighters, dinos, spellcasters and builders:
(It was also the only place where you could see Masai and Romek colors in the 1.03 demo)
Thanks for bringing this up, mako!
Names from the PWAR.EXE file
It seems there was an early heads-up message planned for encountering noxious weed and mushrooms.
There are warnings (or …warings?) coded in pwar.exe file, which you can find using notepad++ for example.
They look like this in the code:
WARING – Poison plant
WARING – Toadstool
These are the names of all units in the game:
Commoner Muscle-man Warrior Constructor Elf Wizard Warlock Ranger Velociraptor Carrnotaurous Rhamphorhynchus Triceratops Diloposaurus Tyrannosaurus Brachiosaurus Centrosaurus Stauricosaurus Daemon Mammoth Musso Tiger Leopard Cur Nexious Weed Poisonous Mushroom
Apart from obvious typos, the curious thing is Brachiosaurus here. It is a hidden unit, with a whopping amount of health. You can cheat it by clicking to train a capturer in your sanctuary, then quickly changing to a barracks with a designated ctrl-number. It has no sprites so it is invisible – like the camo mutant from the Jurassic World film 😀
And yeah, also no idea on the Daemon, as there is a „Warlock” already. Maybe the warlock was intended to be a different kind of wizard, as it is in the sequel.
The prompts and names of spells, taken from the .exe file, are:
Framing-Ball target ? Roaring-Sound target ? Lighting target ? Ice magic target ?
Poison-Gas locate ? Fire-Dance Earthquake Self-destruction
Patient ? Patient ? Who protect ? Who protect ? Who resuscitation ?
Small Mapping Magic Grand Mapping Magic Space Shift locate ?
Bugs
There are lots of bugs in Jurassic War. I covered most of them in other places.
- Sound options bug, found by my friends on the Discord channel:
To recreate this one, you should click around the start of the line of volume. Sometimes the pixels hiccup and flood the screen with yellow blocks.
SAVE YOUR HEARING AND HEADPHONES, TURN THE SOUND DOWN BEFORE ATTEMPTING!!!
Dave looked into this and produced some insight:
Music
00 – 3C (60)
Sound
00 – 0F (15)
When you do your bug, it goes to;
FF on sound (255)
FFFC on Music (65532)
Both sliders has a theoretical limit of FFFF, but the bug seems to stay consistently within these limits mentioned.
Radumba tribe is unique. Their DP button doesn’t go down when active. Just a small nitpick, not worthy of mention.
