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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".
In 2008 "Firstknight" rejoined the team to make sure, that both the original plannings, now called BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA as well as the now grown up FORGOTTEN WORLD gets an release someday. Several important "Real Life" Events forces Firstknight to leave the Team again at the Beginning of 2010, and this time definitly. But he promises to slowly continue working on "Beautiful Britannia", which is only a simple upgrade to UIX, without story changes and other major improvements, as "Forgotten World" will provide. When it's done, Firstknight plan to simply release "Beautiful Britannia" on Ultima:Aiera, but this will not be before 2015. And "Team Forgotten World" continues in their effort to create the "true" UIX, and will not stop until it's done well. |
