8/9/2026 - Legacy Fork
By wrynvera
Echoing the first dev blog post here; It has been 6 years since we announced LTTA and frankly that hasn't been much development in it.
As of today, I have started a new official fork of LOTT: Lord of the Test: Legacy.
Legacy attempts to maybe try to mitigate the staleness of LTTA. A major hurdle of LTTA was the fact that we were starting from scratch (which to Amaz's defense, he didn't wanted to at first, but he did eventually agree with my proposed rewrite which became LTTA). (In hindsight; sorry Amaz :p)
The main reason LTTA was started was because LOTT's code base is a complete mess, it originated from a time where both me and Amaz were just hobbyist teens trying to make something inbetween our school breaks, that honestly became something way bigger than I expected. And by the time I've reached an understanding of code etiquette and perhaps, more of an ambition; it was really hard to add significant new features without breaking compatibility and end up rewriting something anyways. All of which, on paper makes a rewrite like LTTA sound like a good idea.
But that also makes LTTA a bad idea; it was a complete rewrite, all the years of established gameplay systems gone, there was zero gameplay and zero systems now that have to be rebuilt from scratch, and that was, to say the least, a very daunting task; which coupled with growing up, made LTTA a really near-impossible task.
Meanwhile after 7 years since the final feature release of LOTT, LOTT still receive an active audience, much more than I expected, for a broken, buggy mess cobbled together; and occasionally now and then the discord/irc still fires up with a newbie question on trying to get into LOTT. And in that way, I sorta feel guilty for making people waiting for something that while I do really hope will be completed one day - has just too many hurdles...
That being said, LTTA at its current stage isn't that far from basic gameplay either, thanks to Amaz's effort; it does have more than enough of a basic base and does mainly only depend on mobs to sorta add in some basic gameplay, if you are interested to check out Amaz's progress on LTTA; he has made a TODO list post a while ago.
But it doesn't really achieve a state that I'm satisfied with; it is mostly a barebones shell, heck, I would say even LOTT has more gameplay...
I've been procastinating less recently that I've been making attempts at bringing LTTA to the polished vision that I have in mind; namely helping further expanding the mapgen. Amongst my attempts though, those hurdles just kept coming in my way again, I need a flora system? Wait there isn't one yet, mobs? Nope. Buildings? Nope... This is why I've decided to just make a fork of LOTT.
An official fork??
What does that even mean? Why not just continue on LOTT directly?
Three reasons.
- LOTT provides a base, an very ugly base, yes, but a base that function very well as placeholders when needed when working/expanding on features. That makes it a lot easier than pausing midway while working on a feature to work on another that it depends on because that doesn't exist yet.
- One of the major things we promised for LOTT when it reached EOD was no compatibility breakage, that is very hard; A fork removes that pressure... This fork promise zero compatibility, and is just focused on advancing gameplay features/polish.
- Consider Legacy as an inbetween of LOTT & LTTA, what does that mean? I'll explain shortly...
What about LTTA?
"Lord of the Test: Third Age" is here to stay and will remain for the foreseeable future. So is my hope to eventually complete it.
Legacy exists as a bridge. It allows me to quickly iterate and test features for Third Age with LOTT current gameplay loop. But there still remains where Legacy can't really beat Third Age, it still contains the burden that LOTT's code rot comes with and buggy systems way too intertwined with each other to extract and patch.
That is when Third Age comes in, upon reaching such a hurdle - that's when I can bring the iterated features that has already been properly tested and built in Legacy to Third Age!
Ultimately, Third Age does still stay as the final goal, Legacy just makes that easier to reach. At the same time, provide maybe a bit more of a polished gameplay experience than old LOTT for people waiting.
Cool.. So erm.. legacy release date wen?
I've just made the first commit to Legacy where it adds the experimental mapgen that I was working for Third Age to it, it is simplified to fit LOTT base, but it's a good base, it adds quite a bit of base capability to manually construct the world such that it actually resembles Middle Earth, not just LOTT's biome soup... And I can already populate it with existing LOTT gameplay (yay).
Here's a (wip) preview (which btw you can already test with the commit made above! but don't expect it to be stable nor complete..):
Exiting lothlórien on the Anduin with the Misty Mountains in the background
I am excited to mess with Legacy, to be able to test and build partial systems that would be a drag for Third Age. This does leave me both hopeful and excited to see what I (and of course, anyone is welcome to contribute anything!); We will make for Legacy and Third Age. I hope the reader here feels the same too!
Thanks for reading! If all goes well, I hope to maybe release the first stable version of Legacy within a few months or less! ~wrynvera
