We went on an Istanbul research trip!

Attention Fortuna Citizens!

It’s Alexandra here! Been a while since we’ve done a text post since we’ve been focusing on devlogs and showing off lots of in-progress stuff. You should definitely check them out if you haven’t! But we thought we post about a really exciting opportunity the team recently had to go to Istanbul for a research trip. We’ve talked a lot about how the city of Fortuna is inspired by Constantinople 500 A.D because we wanted to create a world where the player could be a criminal or religious leader or both. You can read our full explanation in our Steam post “Why Constantinople?” if you want more historical details. We started development working with academics with specialities in Byzantine history but you can only learn so much from looking at pictures and listening to lectures.

So last month, some of the team travelled to Istanbul to study the art, architecture and atmosphere of the city. They came back inspired and I asked them to share what they learned!

[h3]What is it like to go on a research trip and the general process for organising one?[/h3]

This was Kitfox’s first research trip ever, in our almost 12-year history! But research trips are considered a best practice in worldbuilding and creative process by creators we respect, including Pixar, Disney, and Funcom, so even though we couldn't afford making it a super-luxurious trip, we decided to prioritize trying it out, on a limited budget. Based on availability and interest, 6 Kitfoxes ended up attending, plus one of our scholars. Xin (our art director) took the lead in building an itinerary with the scholar, for visiting one required location almost every day, based on sites most relevant to Fortuna.

Every morning the team would get woken up by the call to prayer around 5AM, and then (after one day of jetlag recovery), they’d head off to the site of the day together. Many were taking photos, or stopping to pet cats, and the group would all spread out to enjoy the site at their own speed, with the scholar in the lead pointing out interesting details or explaining context.

[h3]What inspirations from the trip will we see in the game?[/h3]

There’s a lot we are taking from our trip to try and implement in the game, at least in spirit if not in detail. In terms of clothing, it’s been very difficult figuring out what kinds of clothing the average resident of Constantinople during this time period wore. Many Byzantine mosaics depict a fantastical imaging of Biblical scenes, these long robes and elaborate headgear represented in these images for example, wouldn’t be what the average citizen wore. But it does give us room for our own interpretation which is exciting for us! It was also really cool seeing the kinds of colours created from natural dyes. Vibrant reds, yellows and blues were prominent during this time. Indigo in particular was very interesting to see, even if its access and usage was very restricted.

A mosaic depicting a Biblical scene (Source: Photo by us at The Kariye Museum)

Indigo dye (Source: Photo by us at The Museum of Islamic Art)

In terms of environment, we learned a lot about the unique makeup of the city. Istanbul is very dense and there’s clutter and life everywhere in the street. There are winding roads, slopes, things that don’t align perfectly, etc. We’ve already showed off some of the city design in the devlog from Mehrdad, and for our initial offering the city is likely to still be quite grid-like. But we'd love to someday work towards topology that's more representative of Istanbul’s streets as we experienced them.

And of course we loved seeing all the wildlife and plants. The city has more animals than you might expect, from beautiful birds like the Laughing Dove and the Hooded Crow to cats, pigeons and seagulls (who are also beautiful birds in their own way, just less exciting). We photographed and documented over 32 unique cats during our trip and we’ve been posting all the pictures over on the Kitfox Bluesky and Twitter. Maybe you’ll get to meet some of them in the game!

A cat and laughing dove in Istanbul (Photos taken by us)

[h3]What's one fun fact you learned while is Istanbul?[/h3]

David: "The city’s original aqueduct is still standing there with a normal road going under/through it that people drive along every day. Türkiye has also perfected the 'a bunch of bread & cheese & jams & egg things' breakfast. Oh, and people used to think that shark teeth were effective at detecting poison, but only because they thought they were snake’s teeth at the time."

Xin: "Turkish tea (which I loved, I bought some for myself to take home) is brewed in a çaydanlık which is a set of two teapots one on top of the other. The top teapot is a highly concentrated tea brewed for a long time while the bottom contains boiling water to dilute the concentrate!"

Brent: "The Obelisk of Theodosius in the Hippodrome was moved from the Temple of Karnak in Egypt. But they had such a hard time moving it that it sat by the docks in Alexandria for thirty years. Then when another Emperor (Theodosius) finally got it to Constantinople they broke it while attempting to put it up and had to make a new base to raise it to its original height. (sad trombone)"

Quinn: "They used marble in such wildly (and ugly) ways, cutting it into thin slices and then lining walls with them so the pattern would mirror itself. The effect it creates is just pattern everywhere! The amount of reverence and respect for cats in the city is just.. incredibly heartwarming to see and fills me with hope and love."

We hope you learned something new! We hope to start showing off more of these inspirations after they are implemented in the game, but it might be some time, as we're currently in the midst of implementing dialogue and crime-detection systems. Stay tuned for our next update, where we plan on showing off the brand new female model we've been working on.

Till next time,

-Alexandra + the rest of the Fortuna team