I've been very low-energy on my ULT project for the past few months, but I finally started working on this again, with some tweaks which I hope should help get it out the door more quickly and make it easier to maintain.
The outline, which I gave in a private email at one point, is more or less as follows:
1. Release a PHP version. The main tweak from the last working trial version is that now it will take advantage of a third-party account/authentication system instead of leaning on my own. The first steps in that direction look promising, though there's still a lot more work to do before it's up and moving. I intend to provide more details on this soon.
2. Work on a desktop version. The first released edition will likely still connect to this server for online play, and just add offline/hotseat play to the feature list, so the functional experience won't be much different from the PHP version, but it's a step in the right direction.
3. Work on a more 'independent' version, which can connect to something besides the existing server. Ideally there would be the ability to connect directly to other clients, to host/join matches on an arbitrary tracker, and to choose arbitrary servers for situations where remote hosting is required. It would make sense for each of these to be somewhat discrete goals.
I don't claim that all of these goals will surely be accomplished. The seemingly endless, off-and-on development cycle to get it just to where it is would make that promise foolhardy. However, I do hope to get at least the first stage done, and each stage should be viable enough that if other things come up and I don't get to develop the next stage as I hoped, everyone would still be left with a viable program.
Feedback, as always, is appreciated.