Goldenflame Dragon posed an interesting question to the Ultima Dragons Facebook group recently:

All right, I have another Dark Unknown question.

The way I have things implemented at the moment, it is possible for monsters on the world map to get turns while you are in a dungeon, town, or a combat map. (Each turn takes less time on the zoomed in maps, but it is currently only a 200-to-1 ratio.) Most of the time, this scarcely makes a difference- if you fight for 200 turns, you won’t notice that the other world monsters took their turns during the fight rather than going after it like happens in U4.

What gets interesting is if you are fighting but there was another monster adjacent to you. On its turn it would attack you, but you’re already in a fight. I have two options here:

(1) Put it in a queue and have it takes its turn automatically as soon as you leave combat (assuming you survive). This will make it act like Ultima IV, more or less.

(2) Have the monsters enter the battlefield you’re already in! That would be exciting but a lot more code for a circumstance that wouldn’t come up very often.

Any thoughts?

If you’d like to chime in, head on over and speak your piece!

Also, Goldenflame finished working on traps yesterday (and fixed a combat bug along the way), and also fixed a number of bugs within the last day or so.

Oh, and he added a “Quickness” spell to the game…specifically to the Eigth Circle of its magical system.