Features and Changes to Ultima IX:
- Based on the features and changes of BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA UNLIMITED
- Unused maps will be smoothly included into the worldmap
- New and completely nonlinear main-quest
- Greatly improved storyline
- …more features and changes to come, as soon as they 3D Editor is available…
Overview
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!
In short, this is Forgotten World, the one true Ultima IX mod.
Details
First of all, the following is what we hope to do, but not everything may be accomplished with this engine nor in a reasonable amount of time.
The linearity of the game will be cut back allowing the player the ability to travel to most every town after doing a few things first in Britain. The dialogue will be greatly improved and hopefully expanded considerably to take into account previous Ultimas including U8. The plot and background will also be fixed, so that it makes a lot more sense than the original, yet the general story will remain the same except for a few rather glaringly inaccuracies (eg. you are not the Guardian’s good twin but you still have to ‘cleanse’ shrines).
Many events and characters will be added on top of side stories and locations. There are more towns from the original as well. Plus, the map size will be significantly larger than the original and based more on the U7 map, yet the landscape will still have some considerable changes (no stupid impassable barriers though). This will be made both by including modified versions of unused maps smoothly (not with teleporters) into the Britannia worldmap, but also by adding completely new locations.
The creation of FORGOTTEN WORLD will be based on the self-developed, FANTASTIC world editor (mainly developed by Hawkwind, with support of all the other team members). The editor (when it’s done) will support fully 3D worldbuilding for terrain and all available objects, also story changes and the adding of more NPCs.
The above is what is planned and most if not all should be completed by projects end barring any unforseeable issues with the engine. Also, the finishing of our self-written 3D editor is a necessary prerequisite for this all.
