LTTA Blog

3/1/2026 - A new chapter?

By neinwhal

It has been 6 years since we announced LTTA and frankly that hasn't been much development in it.

Lot of things in my life have changed since then, but this remains a consistent hope to finish one day...

Here's to hoping this blog post marks the beginning of something new...

Todo List

By Amaz

A list of things that need to be done at some point, at some time, with no particular priority (if they're done at some point in the next ten years, that would be good...)

Todo List

Tools

This is pretty high on the list of things to be done.

Some basis needs to be added... Some format for how they're going to work, their levels, their crafting method, etc...

Basic progression idea:

Then there's the question of crafting.

Todo List

Mobs

The world needs to become alive - at the moment, there's a map - a good start, but it's dead. It needs some mobs adding to enliven it a little.

Some mobs (animals, certain monsters) can be added on a world-wide basis, but there are others that need to be done on a biome by biome basis (hobbits, elves...)

A base needs to be decided (mobs redo?).

Idea: Bandits in wild countries: screenshot_20260102_232037.png

Todo List

Mapgen

The mapgen is in a pretty good state, but needs to be finished off.

Structures need to be added. How? Schems? Lua code? tbd. For structures, we need to add more decorative blocks.

The sea coast needs to be finished. At the moment, it drops down too rapidly.

The patch for perfecting hight transitions needs to be pushed.

More plants (farming, athelas, etc.) need to be added to the mapgen.

The paths mod could easily be addapted (with the same equations as in the LOTRMC mod?) to add roads to the world - roads make exploring soo much easier!

5/5/2026 - Mapgen Generation Plans

By neinwhal

Background

The map generation of Lord of the Test has came a long way from its original beginnings. When I made Lord of the Test about 13 years ago, the only map generation features were just some ores, there were no biomes, no structures.

Then Amaz hopped on and with another developer working on other things, I was able to adapt paramat's paragenv7 mod into a messy LOTR-based non-positional biomes map generation, which is still pretty much in Lord of the Test today.

Later on of course, structures and various tiny enhancements were made to LOTT map generation from various contributions between myself, Amaz and other contributors, but it has mostly stayed using the paragenv7 base.

Third Age

When talks of a rework of LOTT came about 6 years ago, one of the major focus of it was to work on an accurate map of Middle Earth and of course while we had some clue how to do it, we still were mostly clueless.

Amaz made a major breakthrough around early 2022 that created our first accurate map of Middle Earth. This was further iterated along the next three years by him, along with making an async mapgen (which funny enough is the latest commit made to Third Age)

Current Status

I have had the opportunity to look at it as of the last few months and am able to iterate on Amaz's amazing base. The post also serve as a way for me to consolidate my plans and thoughts for future biomes.

Here's the new biome map I am working on:

Each unique color represents a unique territory/biome, there remains a lot of polish and details and some regions are definitely underdeveloped, but i think this will create a good base.

The map is primarily divided into 9 main regions:

East Region

Future Additions:

North Region

Future Additions:

Central Region

Future Additions:

Left of Misty Mountains

Future Additions:

Right of Misty Mountains

Future Additions

Dale Region

(mostly still WIP)

Rhun Region

(mostly still WIP)

Gondor Region

North Gondor
Central Gondor
East Gondor

Mordor Region

Harad region is the lowest priority so is not even considered for now. And obviously both the Gondor and Mordor region does have a lot more to be detailed...