It has been several months since I last reported on the progress Kevin Fishburne has been making with his Ultima/Ultima Online-inspired open source MMORPG, Sanctimonia. However, he has been busily working away on the game, and has made a substantial number of improvements and fixes in the last three months.

Graphically, the game has seen the addition of player “guts” in combat animations:

Player avatars now have an initial “faux 3D” skin — with shadows! — as well, which Kevin has worked on extensively to ensure that it is free from sudden, rapid texture changes:

Other graphical improvements include animation structures, improvements to the sub-layer textures in terrain, the addition of a vegetation sub-layer structure, vertical offset in object definitions, and the addition of “unconscious” and “deceased” frames to player avatars.

Gameplay has likewise seen numerous improvements, not the least of which is the implementation of “Zelda-style” play control, detaching the client orientation from camera orientation:

Collision detection and player healing have been implemented, as has a rudimentary NPC AI:

Vegetation tile maintenance is also in the works:

The game’s networking functions, meanwhile, have seen substantial improvement in transaction handling. Player cell traversal has been tweaked, player elevations are now tracked by the game server(s), and excavations that the player has performed are now persistent.

All very technical, of course, but it all points toward one simple fact: Sanctimonia is very much alive and well, is actively being worked on, and is looking pretty awesome.

Also: I have set up a project entry for Sanctimonia at the Inspired Works subdomain.