Fregas Baratis has posted another development update for Omega, his Ultima-inspired project, in the Ultima Dragons Facebook group:

So I took a break from my little retro Ultima-ish game, “Omega”. But I’ve come back to it finally and now have an update.
– I have the beginnings of Player/NPC/Monster stats, such as strength, agility, weapon skills, etc.
– Monsters now “spawn” from dungeons on the overland map and different sets of monsters can spawn at different random ratios for each dungeon. This means dragons could theoretically spawn one a 1 in 5000 chance from one dungeon, or goblins and kobolds could spawn 1 in 100 chance from another dungeon. This is really amusing when you have the ratio really low, because the land gets filled up with critters very quickly.
– Monsters and NPCs (like guards) can chase the player around (sort of) on the overland map. There’s a bug where monsters can collide into each other and get stuck, because they are all moving at the same time. Hey orcs aren’t all that bright!

There’s also a new video showcasing some of these things; click on through to Facebook to check it out.