Tutankhamun rebuilds Impressions' Pharaoh in C, with original saves and builds for Linux, macOS and Android

The Akhenaten developer released a second Pharaoh project on 6 November: a C re-implementation that keeps the original game logic, saves and even its bugs. You need your own copy of Pharaoh + Cleop...

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The developer behind Akhenaten, the long-running open-source engine for Impressions Games' Pharaoh, has put out a second project for the same game. Tutankhamun is a re-implementation of Pharaoh with its Cleopatra expansion, version 2.1, written in C. The first source release landed on GitHub on 6 November, and builds for Linux, Android and macOS followed on 7 November.

The two projects aim at different things. Akhenaten, a fork of the Julius and Augustus engines for Caesar III, is redesigning the engine and is still a work in progress. Tutankhamun is meant to be the original game written again as a program of its own, with the same look and feel and exactly the same game logic. According to the README, that means saved games are compatible with the original, and any gameplay bugs from 2000 are kept on purpose. The README also calls it a readable reference for how the game behaves, mainly there to support Akhenaten.

Bring your own copy

No game assets come with it. Tutankhamun runs on the data files of an installed Pharaoh + Cleopatra 2.1, and the README points to the GOG and Steam releases or an original CD-ROM patched to 2.1. It looks for the game in the Steam and GOG folders by itself, then asks for the folder if it cannot find one. Like the original, it writes players and saves into the game folder in the original format.

The unstable builds, made from the latest code on every change, cover:

A few things go past the 2000 release. A free play button on the main menu lists every Pharaoh and Cleopatra mission, and finishing one there leaves campaign progress and high scores alone. The window can be any size from 640x480 up to your display's, and on desktop the game shows your current mission in your Discord status unless you switch it off.

Preservation, not a playground

Do not expect a modding base. The README says the project is not meant for further development, that it exists to preserve the original game and port it to other platforms, and that pull requests are accepted only for minimal fixes. The project's own code is MIT licensed, but because it borrows files from Julius and Akhenaten, every build is distributed under AGPL-3.0 as a whole. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of Pharaoh.

The release also turned up on r/retrogamedev on 6 November.

Sources

Image: Tutankhamun project

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