Slashing Dragon has posted a news update about the Britannian Underworld project, which has slowed down lately due to the lack of a pixel artist and the attending need for art. The team are still maintaining a list of art they need, if you’re interested in contributing.

The biggest news in the update, though, likely pertains to an improvement in the engine’s technology:

Exodus Destiny has completely remade the engine using WebGL instead of the hand made raycasting software rendering he was using on the first version of the engine (which was pretty impressive from the technical POV), in his mind he’s achieved what he wanted to do with it in, learning a lot in the process of making it and pushing it to its limits; however the game still ran a bit slow on low-end machines, and that was his main motivation to do the new one.

Along with improved performance, this will allow several new things like:

• Easily support different height terrain, as can be seen in the current demo
• We could eventually incorporate some 3D models (UW did it with the rocks :P)
• Rendering stuff is simplified, leveraging ED’s development power to work on more things directly related to the game

Of course, we are keeping with the initial idea of following the original Ultima Underworld style, so we won’t be using all the power put at our disposal with WebGL. The only drawback is that now you’ll need a browser that supports WebGL.

You can find the latest playable build online here, if you want to give it a try.

There are some other updates, especially concerning the music that will be featured in Britannian Underworld; hit up Slash’s news post for all the details.