Save vs. Dragon hasn’t posted many new updates to his Ultima Dad blog over the last few months, but he and his son recently found time to sit down and play Ultima 6 again for a little while:

Joshua is starting to get the hang of things, I still walk him through combat, but he can now find and input the commands very quickly. He is also reading more steadily. I feel this is a big thing as my first few tries playing this game were back when reading was magic my parents did for me.

To say our wanderings were random wasn’t very fair, Josh is also getting that hang of navigating the roads and recognising landmarks on the map. This lead us to running into and recruiting Jaana into our party.

I wish this was where I could input something funny and exciting, but to tell the truth, we haven’t had much in the way of hijinks. No random deaths by way of running into overwhelmingly powerful beasts. No misunderstandings between the two of us. And no randomly attacking NPCs for no reason…

He has also put a bit more work into his Minecraft-based re-creation of Britannia:

I cannot explain the depths of my frustrations with minecraft rivers. The way water in minecraft flows is very finicky and can become an all consuming obsession to get right.

Ultima 4 and 5 have rivers in somewhat random placement and in my quest to avoid the unrealistic flatlands and sea level streams, I’ve had to resort to very carefully planning out slopes, elevations, and waterfalls. To that end, Ultima 4 is coming along very nicely. As a special treat for my lack of updates, I created a more interesting view of the world created so far.

You can see that image above, by the way.

The map has already changed from this version, I’m attempting to raise the land and lower the amount of sheer cliffs. The map is great, but those mountains just look like the hard tastless cake decorations that-

So, that’s on the todo list.

You can — and should — follow Save vs. Dragon’s blog for up-to-the-whenever updates on whatever Ultima-related things he (and his son!) get up to.