As depicted just above, there is now a hot-spot near the pyramid entrance, allowing the player to examine the darkness--and, in conjunction with a helpfully-placed rock, sound its depth and find out whether it's safe to jump.
In terms of cosmetic progress, perhaps the largest change is that I've added a first-pass at the treetops that surround the pyramid.
It took me a few attempts to find an approach that I liked: My first shot was simply an uneven "blob" model around the walled enclosure; this, however, looked rather too solid--it lacked the leafiness of trees. Going in the other direction, I tried layers of flat planes textured with leaves; while I'm not sure that I recall clearly what I disliked about this, I think for one thing that I found its flatness to be too apparent.
What I have now is more or less a hybrid of these two approaches: A single layer of flat planes backed by "blob" models, all using a shader that shifts their normals along the direction of the main light in order to give an impression of depth. Overall I'm pretty happy with the result. It's not quite done, however--there are some tweaks to be made, I believe, and further layers to add behind those in place.
Otherwise, I've:
- made a start to the vines that drape the outer walls
- repainted the ground-plain to add a layer of grass; this is intended to provide a backdrop to flat grass models, making them (hopefully) look less sparse
- made the ground-plane blend into the leaf-litter of the forest, especially at the gate, but also in a thin line around the perimeter
- and added a first-pass at the gate in the wall
(There are likely a few changes not included simply because I've either forgotten them, or deemed them not worth mentioning.)
That's everything that I have to report for this week! (Or rather, the latter half thereof.)