The Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary

Turbine’s official The Lord of the Rings Online website has been updated with a new developer diary penned by team lead Chris “NobOrBob” Foster. In it, Chris provides us with an example of one of the game’s quests and talks about the tool they use to create such quests. Here we go:

One challenge with having one file define every aspect of a quest is that it becomes an extremely complicated file. Having taken a look at our sister project’s toolset, we used a scripting language to create a quest editor. The Editor gives us a visual representation of the structure of a quest, and lets us build and edit them through drop-down menus and dialog boxes. Every time the quest technology changes, the tool has to change with it. A scripting language was chosen because its scripts are easier to change, ensuring that updating the tool would not itself become an obstacle.