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 to read some of them such as bitmaps and the terrain and object files.  These file format specifications enabled "Firstknight" to create his first modification for Ultima IX known as the Freedom Mod released in 2004. 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 Downloads section).

An interesting aspect of Ultima IX Ascension was the fact that its game world was originally intended to be much bigger than the final release's one. The worldmap was sized down during the development onto one map, but some unused maps were 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. Asylum, Trinsic and Valoria maps are also fairly detailed.

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 additional 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 beforehand) in 2006 when they formed "Team Forgotten World".  Shortly 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 took the mantle of co-leadership and continued his work with his instruction "to make Ascension a better Ultima".

In 2008 "Firstknight" rejoined the team to make sure that both his original plans, now called BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA, and the now grown up FORGOTTEN WORLD got a release someday.

Several important "Real Life" Events forced Firstknight to leave the Team again at the Beginning of 2010, and this time indefinitely. 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, such as those that "Forgotten World" will provide. When it's done, Firstknight plans to simply release "Beautiful Britannia" on Ultima:Aiera, but this will not be before 2015. In addition, real life events in the lives of other members of the original team had resulted in the loss of Nimdraug as an active member and reduced involvement by Hawkwind for the current time period. At this time, Iceblade took over full leadership of the Forgotten World and became the primary control of web development.

By October 2010, advancements in trigger research as well as understanding of Ultima IX file formats brought back several members to the project (notably Hawkwind and Splat).  In addition, Firstknight returned Beautiful Britannia under the Forgotten World umbrella upon releasing the benefits that a bug-free and decoded Ultima IX could have as a base for both FW and BB.  Forgotten World Team remains dedicated in their efforts to create a better and truer UIX.