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!
In short, this is Forgotten World, the one true Ultima IX mod.
Questions
When will it be released?
When its done….Yes, I’m serious…look what happened to U9 the last time a deadline was set.
What do I need to play Forgotten World?
Currently, we do not know what the system requirements will be beyond those required by Ultima 9, which you will definitely need the original game updated to 1.18f. So get the game while it is still available.
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 – was created using a hex editor and a self-written tool that automized half of the work.
After gaining more knowledge of the file formats, though, we found easier ways to add items to the world and eventually started creating our own world editor. This offers us lots of new possibilities, such as easier adding items at certain locations, changing the map while seeing the changes, and – once it’s finished – an, all in all, improved creation speed.
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 accessible 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”.
What will be done to improve U9’s story?
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). We also plan on adding a few ciematics.
The above is what is planned and most if not all should be completed by projects end barring any unforseeable issues with the engine.
