Well, it took me a very long time to get around to it, but after a month of watching the Lord of The Rings extended edition DVDs for inspiration, designing new weapons, Elf friends and variations of Goblins such as Goblins that blow themselves up and Uruk-Hai with white hands painted on them, I finally felt I was ready to construct a rough version of Helm’s Deep.

It’s pretty good so far. I’ve set up main tents that sprout Uruk-Hai in the distance, with spots closer to the Deeping Wall where the enemy AI can set up more tents. I’ve got the doors and the wall’s weakspot that can be broken away. I’ve got it set to slowly turn from night to dawn with the arrival of the Rohirrim at daybreak. Playing through it I can get a sense of the hecticness that I should be feeling in that battle.

It could definitely do with some tweaking though. Once the doors and walls have been breached the Uruk-Hai don’t seem to have much incentive to come inside. Well, admittedly, I didn’t design their AI to be all that complex, but I definitely need to come up with a “getting overrun with orcs” mechanic so that losing the wall is actually a problem rather than just a minor sign of sucking that can for the most part be ignored.

Having been sufficiently inspired, I also finally constructed a Balrog boss for my Barbarian game.

What’s that? Not nerdy enough?

As I was watching the documentaries on the bonus discs of Lord of The Rings I came across the info that Peter Jackson had intended early on to include a scene featuring the “Slime Balrog” – the form that the Balrog takes after hitting the water at the bottom of Moria – but the concept was eventually abandoned due to time or budget issues.

Looking up the concept art on the disc for reference, I constructed my Balrog in Little Big Planet 2 to switch from a flaming state to a slimey state after taking a certain amount of damage, with his extinquished wings sticking out like long, skeletal hands.

I just need to make the Kraken from Clash of the Titans and then I can watch the battle of the century!