Goldenflame Dragon made a very big announcement a couple of days ago, concerning The Dark Unknown and the future of its development:

I have a big announcement to make! I am no longer just some dude making a game- I have filled out some paperwork, paid some money, did some chores, and am now:

TAPESTRY OF AGES GAMES

I’m working on a logo and a website, but I decided not to wait on this announcement until I had them. I’m excited! I wanted to do it so I could have continuity with any future project — any later games I make can also be a “part of the Tapestry of Ages”. It manages to be an Ultima reference without being one to something so central to the series that it will be stepping on toes, especially EA’s toes. Plus, I already had the domain name, as it was the name of my POL shard back in the day. So wish me luck with this new endeavor!

Which, I daresay, is awesome news. No doubt we’ll hear more about Tapestry of Ages Games in the near future.

Of course, Goldenflame has also been hard at work on The Dark Unknown; he has been working on persistent world features recently:

The current project involves memory in adventure sites and cities. You may remember how in U5 once you completely cleared out a room in a dungeon, the game remembered forever that that room was clear. I’m working on setting something similar up- I will have the option of putting a flag on any given chest so it only gives good loot once, so people can’t just farm some of the dungeons. (The chests will still be there on future runs, but their contents will just be a small handful of gold.) I will have to be careful about chests that contain quest items, as the flag will set when it’s opened, not when the stuff inside is taken, but otherwise it seems solid.

I can separately set flags to determine whether or not monsters should respawn, but I’m honestly more worried about loot. I initially thought of it for purposes of finding, say, a nice scroll on someone’s bookshelf in a town. No risk, so I wanted the reward to only exist the once. With this, I can.

After this I should probably make save/load so it can matter.

And he has squashed at least one significant bug, and also made some font choice changes to ensure that he isn’t using anything in The Dark Unknown that would be prohibited for his use thereof by licensing terms.