Several years ago (8-ish, maybe?) I stumbled across an LSystem tree/bush generator for Blender that I really liked, from a site that no longer exists. Luckily, I've kept a backup copy of it.

Today, I was working on some new ground splats when I thought to myself, "Self, those trees are just kind of 'meh'. You should totes see if you can find that LSystem thingy and generate some better ones, like you did with the old Golem project."

"Self," I replied, "I remember that thing was kind of tetchy. Weren't, like, a few things messed up with it?"

"Certainly, self, but it was just the leaf UVs on some of the leaf objects. Maybe you could fix that; after all, you are now 8 years wiser and more experienced."

So I did. I first headed over to Blender to download the latest version of Blender that would still work with that script, fired it up and munged around. The system comes with a handful of pre-built definition files, and it provides a bunch of buttons and sliders for fiddling about with the LSystem. Above lie the fruits of tonight's labors. I did have to go in and fix UVs on the leaf objects. The generator builds leaves that snip leaf maps out of an internal texture, but all of my small number of leaf textures are full images, so I just tweaked the leaf samples to suit and did a render. I didn't use the official Goblinson Crusoe Lighting and Staging(TM) Blender file, so the lighting is wonky and somewhat dim, but still I think the sample willow looks a bit better than my poor hand-modeling efforts of before. I'm glad I found the script and figured out how to fix the UVs; I can start populating my islands with some better foliage.

All of this I did in lieu of further work on the rogue-like combat state. However, I suspended work on that (and tweak-work on the party-oriented turn-based combat state) in order to "officialize" the definition of spells, skills and items. I hate doing a whole lot of prototype work on shaky foundations, and right now the combat and action system is one heckuva shaky thing to build upon. So tomorrow at work, barring any annoyances (like, you know, actually having to work) I'm going to work more on the skills/actions system. It's going to be fun, a whole barrel-full of laughs. Non-stop excitement, edge-of-your-seat stuff. You know, the usual.