New Year’s celebrations notwithstanding, the Nuvie team have been hard at work making further improvements to the engine. Five separate updates have been posted to the project changelog since New Year’s Eve:

2015-01-01 Eric Fry r1992
* Pause script until conversation has finished when using Actor.talk() function
* Started work on MD avatar death sequence. The party is teleported back to
Dr Blood when the avatar’s hp goes to zero. Dead party members are also
revived.

2015-01-02 Malignant Manor r1993
* Move 242, 250, and 999 alt-codes to common.lua.
* Update nuvie.cpp, cfg files, and docs with recent cfg and alt-code changes

2015-01-02 Malignant Manor r1994
* Add background to wou conversation gump in original+ style.

This update is, I think, the result of a conversation on Facebook, in which some people suggested that the background colour of the conversation window shown in the image above might should more closely match the UI colours.

2015-01-02 Malignant Manor r1995
* Fix MD specific alt-250 code.

2015-01-02 Malignant Manor r1996
* Play the correct ending music for U6 instead of just end.m.

Now this is a welcome correction! The ending music for Ultima 6 — a brilliant harmonization of Rule, Britannia! and the Gargoyle theme — is among the most compelling pieces of music produced for the Ultima series.