Thorin’s Hall was a taste of what dwarves can do, given some pick-axes and a mountain. But Thorin’s Hall was a mere outpost compared to the city of Khazad-Dûm, an acorn compared to an oak. At the time we built it, Thorin’s Hall felt like we were making something really grand, but as time went on, we saw that Thorin’s Hall was just a beginning.

In preparation for Moria, Thorin’s Hall was good for some initial asset design: the dwarf cultural themes we developed laid the foundation for future work. But the tech we used for the space was, we found, already being stretched to its limits. Our dungeon technology allows us to create interesting environments, but not incredibly large spaces of the sort that we would need for Moria. We researched various options doing the dwarf housing neighbourhood, and Goblintown, and Sarnur, all with an eye towards learning how we could approach Moria. None of those solutions were optimal for what we wanted to achieve. We came to the conclusion that we needed the capabilities in our landscape engine to create a dungeon., and thus our dual heightmap technology was created.