What is Forgotten World?
FORGOTTEN WORLD is a project for Ultima IX Ascension, a game created by Origin Systems (an Electronics Arts Division) in 1999. Ultima IX Ascension was an outstanding game for its time, featuring a game world in full 3D, and one of the first games ever released with an implemented physics engine.
Even though Ultima IX was a milestone in the history of computer games, it was rather unpopular among fans. Not only that the hardware requirements were too high for the time it was released at (not to mention the bugs in the initial release), some players also found that the story could not compete with the one of previous Ultimas. Some people do not even call it a real Ultima as many dialogues showed the lack of background knowledge of different new developers that had never worked on an Ultima before.
While some of the critics might be legitimate, it is also a true fact that the finally released game was not the one that was supposed to be released (from the developers’ view). Electronic Arts set the Ultima IX Ascension developer team a deadline that prevented the team from fulfilling its original plans.
Some parts of earlier game versions can still be found in the various Ultima IX files. For example, the bitmap files include gumps from older game versions and there are still map files for different locations that were not seen in the released game. Other parts – such as summaries of earlier story drafts or screens from cutscenes that had to been cut due to a story change, can be found on the internet.
Our intention is to use this knowledge (about “old stuff” in the game) and to improve Ultima IX Ascension to make it a “better” Ultima or a “real” one as some would say.
Of course it is a long way to go until we have gathered enough information to do that and we cannot promise anything concerning what is possible at the moment. But we have a dream that we keep working for!
What is Forgotten World’s History?
In 2002, John Larcombe (aka “TumbleWeed Dragon”) published his set of file format specifications for Ultima Ascension. He had found out the purpose of various different UIX files and described how read some of them, such as the one the bitmaps are stored or the terrain and item files.
These file format specifications enabled “Firstknight” to create his first modification for Ultima IX. He changed many parts of the original map to make the whole world accessable from the beginning. This patch can still be found at “Ultima:Aiera”, see our link section.
An interesting aspect of Ultima IX Ascension was the fact that its originally intended game world was much bigger than the final release’s one. The worldmap was sized down during the development, but some unused maps where released with the game, maybe to demonstrate the original plans. The biggest one of these unused maps was map5, which was supposed to be Cove. It was a very detailed overworld map, mainly a mountain area.
The quality of this remnant encouraged “Firstknight” to integrate map5 into the game. His intention was to replace the prison of LB Castle with map5 that he now called FORGOTTEN WORLD. Therefore, he wanted to fix the map, modify the terrain and add many objects (vegetation, animals, monsters, treasures) to the game world.
His second goal was to update the Britannia world map by adding many more objects (vegetation and animals) to it. He also wanted to crate a “freedom” version of the Britannia map (not the same as in the freedom mod) which enabled traveling around from the beginning.
“Firstknight” started his work in 2004 and was joined by Hawkwind, Iceblade and Nimdraug (who had been working on decoding the UIX file formats before) in 2006 when they formed “Team Forgotten World”.
Short after the formation of “Team Forgotten World”, “Firstknight” not only the team’s head, but also founder of the project, had to stop his work on the mod. The remaining part of the team continued his work with his instruction “to make Ascension a better Ultima”
Questions
How is Forgotten World being created?
FORGOTTEN WORLD in its original form – that means enriching the landscape with animals and vegetation, adding the “Forgotten World” to the game and creating the “Freedom” version of the Britannia map – is created using a hex editor and a self-written tool that automizes half of the work.
At the moment, however, we have paused the work on this part of our mod to put extra efforts in decoding the file formats. We hope that the knowledge gathered in our research will help us to improve our efficiency in creating the mod and to gain more possibilities in what we can do. More information about our progress will be available later this year.
What are the system requirements for FORGOTTEN WORLD?
First of all, you will need a legal copy of Ultima IX Ascension, patched to 1.18f, to be installed on your hard drive. The unofficial 1.19f Version and the economy & monster patch should work, too. FORGOTTEN WORLD is created and tested with the German version of Ultima IX Ascension, but should run on the English and any other localized version as well.
Regarding the system, I would recommend a 2 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro Card or higher, especially when using FSAA and antisothropic filtering, which is highly recommended for best image quality.
When will it be released?
The release is scheduled for late 2007.
Updated versions: Original FAQ (2007) Original FAQ (2008)
