Shattered Moon has been busy with “real life” (we really need a better term to use instead of that; these projects are every bit as real and every bit a part of our lives as anything else is) for the last couple of months, and so his progress on Classic Ultima Online has been slower than he had hoped for. In spite of this, however, he has managed to make improvements to scripting and audio, debug his engine’s logging mechanism, and add UI support for some commands and transactions in the style of Ultima 4.

Oh, and Ultima-style merchants work now:

Shattered explains that he is re-working much of the game with UI dialogs, in an effort to support both classic input as well as alternative, and perhaps more modern, methods.

As a bonus, he also posted the video below, showing off his son’s science project…a short game built using the CUO engine, with graphics from Ultima 6 and sounds from Ultima 8.

The goal is to save all of the patients within a single workday by taking a blood sample from each and identifying their problem under the microscope. The book shelf can be used for information and to see which of the three doctors are experts on the various cell subunits. The black book can be used to put the game into hard mode which changes the microscope images to realistic looking slides. Each doctor will recommend a vaccine for the problem, but only the expert for the current cell subunit being researched will recommend the correct one. Giving the wrong vaccine to a patient will kill the patient and the game will end.

With video!

Honestly, this comes as a total surprise. I had thought that Classic Ultima Online was just an “inspired-by-Ultima 4” tile-based game that supported online play; I didn’t think it featured its own custom, standalone engine. Nor was I aware that it was this…moddable.

Frankly, I’m impressed!

Also: I don’t remember if I mentioned his update from the beginning of September, but if not…it also appears that Shattered Moon has gotten Peer working properly.