Shot 2: Dusk in the Vale

Art in progress

The Vale, the last warm place before the ascent: Hollow Ghouls wading up the river at dusk into the last green valley, the Tide's fog creeping in at the edge. It proves the middle of the climb's curve (Romantic landscape, full value range, a warm world with one cold intruder) and the readability rules in daylight, which shot 1 cannot. The spec was written when the Vale was the journey's first beat; in the climb the party has come up to it from the deep, and the shot is the same.

• Camera and scene: the same game camera; a riverbank between hedgerows and a half-timbered barn, two fallen on the near bank, a pack of ghouls (one magic, one rare) coming out of the water, low golden sun from the upper left, a fog bank on the right edge.
• New tech: a directional sun with shadows, sky and act-tinted fog, an outdoor map (a generator for open terrain with a river, or a "surface" variant of the cave map), and daylight rim rules (rarity must still read against a bright ground).
• New assets: grass and dirt ground, river water, hedgerow, oak tree, standing stone, a barn or cottage (a few hundred vertices each, instanced), a dusk palette for the HUD vignette.
• Reused: the fallen's model, the ghoul, the rim material, the HUD, the scene system.

Alternatives, if the surface tech should wait

• Shot 1b: the same scene as shot 1 with the inventory, tooltip and crafting UI open (all UI; the scene would fill the inventory server-side).
• The Rose: the passive tree screen (pure UI, no 3D).