Kevin Fishburne writes to inform us of the latest progress made on Sanctimonia, his Ultima-inspired “faux 3D” online RPG:

I’ve been working on it like I was going to hell if I didn’t, so I’ve made some significant progress and posted a few updates.

Work has progressed on the:

• Introductory title sequence
• Client-server network transactions (authentication, world information updates)
• Client rendering engine (3×3-cell grid of 16×16-foot cells at 128×128 pixels each)
• Client UI input (multi-axis/button input with button taps and holds for separate commands)

I know it’s not the most exciting of news, but these are fundamental improvements that are propelling the game toward open alpha playability.

I, for one, would disagree: project news is always exciting news, and these are some great improvements to hear of, and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing screenshots and videos of the game in action (not to mention actually playing it, of course).

Speaking of videos…here, by the way, is the aforementioned introductory sequence: