The Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary

Turbine’s official The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar website has been updated with a new developer diary penned by Matt “Scenario” Elliott. In it, Matt talks about creating the game’s first major update, The Shores of Evendim:

Developing Evendim (like all of our other areas) was a multi-stage process. In order to get what we wanted out of the landscape, we made multiple passes on each area.

Our first pass was our rough terrain and texture pass. During this stage, we laid out the high-level look and feel of the landscape. We got a rough sense of what was passable and what was not, called out primary bodies of water, and laid down the first coat of landscape textures.

The second pass was when we truly began to bring character to the landscape. Using our planning maps, Evendim was broken down into numerous smaller divisions and tasked out to the members of the World team to develop. This stage involved a more in-depth look at the terrain (further refining passability), terrain textures (painting the grass, dirt and cliff textures where they belong), introducing scenery assets to the landscape (such as trees, rocks and plant frills), and placing the numerous and varied points of interest on the landscape (ruins, towns, wild ravines, etc).