Produced by: Firstknight
Releases:
* Freedom Mod (3.1 MiB, 262 hits)
* 2009 Beautiful Britannia Demo (6.7 MiB, 482 hits)

Beautiful Britannia started as a ‘Freedom Mod‘ for Ascension, assembled by Michael Menapace in response to the rather absurdly linear feel to the plot of this last Ultima title. The mod didn’t do much to alter the order of events in the game, or to change at all the inconsistencies encountered in Ultima 9‘s plot. What it does do, however, is alter some aspects of the structure of Britannia, eliminating obstacles that previously prevented you from roaming the land of Britannia freely.

Eventually, the project grew into what became known as Forgotten World, and a team joined FIrstkniGHT. FIrstkniGHT himself left the team for a while, though the project moved on; it gained a website and grew more ambitious, evolving into an attempt to decode the Ascension game files with an eye toward building a world and game editor, in order to provide players with a better experience.

Firstknight (slight spelling change) then rejoined the team, and the project split into two separate projects as a result: Beautiful Britannia (a more “lush” version of the original Ultima 9) and its “Unlimited” spinoff (a more lush Ultima 9 with a few additions and revisions), and Forgotten World proper (the in-engine remake, which will feature many corrections and updates). Firstknight subsequently departed the team again, this time apparently for good; in the process, Beautiful Britannia became this standalone project.

Produced by: Titans of Ether
Website: Titans of Ether

Ultima IX: Redemption is being developed with the Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls engine, and will feature a totally original plot and original gameplay. This re-imagining of Ultima 9 aspires to live up to the Ultima greatness that the original game, in the opinion of the Titans of Ether, failed to achieve. It will feature total freedom in moral decision-making (which the original didn’t grant), as well as multiple endings.

Since Sept. 18, 2004, this project and The New King have been one unified effort under the direction of Corv. The New King will be the direct sequel to Redemption.

Produced by: Dorian Hawkmoon
Website: Ultima Ascension Traducción
Releases:
* Ultima Ascension Traducción (7.7 MiB, 22 hits)

This is a full translation of Ultima 9 into Spanish.

Produced by: Thepal
Website: Ethereal Software
Releases:
* Buccaneer's Den Demo (4.3 MiB, 39 hits)

This remake is the only Ultima remake, at present, that is being made with the Oblivion engine. Unlike Redemption, Infinity Eternal is being made to be more faithful to the plot of the original Ultima 9 while adjusting those things which irritated many Ultima fans. The most interesting thing about this remake seems to be that it will feature traveling to other worlds, including the Serpent Isle.

The above demo is from the days when the project was being built with the Morrowind engine, and so will not be reflective of the final product. It is being kept online for the moment pending the release of a new demo from the team.

Note: this module requires both Morrowind expansions, Bloodmoon and Tribunal.

Produced by: Hawkwind, Iceblade and Splat
Website: Forgotten World
Forum: Forgotten World @ Titans of Ether

Forgotten World started as a ‘Freedom Mod‘ for Ascension, assembled by Michael Menapace in response to the rather absurdly linear feel to the plot of this last Ultima title. The mod didn’t do much to alter the order of events in the game, or to change at all the inconsistencies encountered in Ultima 9‘s plot. What it does do, however, is alter some aspects of the structure of Britannia, eliminating obstacles that previously prevented you from roaming the land of Britannia freely.

Eventually, the project grew and a team joined FIrstkniGHT. FIrstkniGHT himself left the team for a while, though the project moved on; it gained a website and grew more ambitious, evolving into an attempt to decode the Ascension game files with an eye toward building a world and game editor, in order to provide players with a better experience.

Firstknight (slight spelling change) has since rejoined the team, and the project has been split into two separate projects: Beautiful Britannia (a more “lush” version of the original Ultima 9) and its “Unlimited” spinoff (a more lush Ultima 9 with a few additions and revisions), and Forgotten World proper (the in-engine remake, which will feature many corrections and updates). Firstknight subsequently departed the team again, this time apparently for good; in the process, Beautiful Britannia became a standalone project.

The project focus has also shifted in terms of the content the team is aiming to produce; Firstknight’s principal aim is to produce a series of well-crafted Ascension mods, rather than become lost chasing something which may not be deliverable in the first place.

The ultimate goal of Forgotten World hasn’t changed, however: they are still intent on turning Ultima 9 — using its original, promising engine (albeit with a little help from the OGRE 3D engine as well) — into a canonical, consistent-with-its-predecessors Ultima game.

Produced by: Xenerkes Dragon
Website: Ultimatrix Homepage
Releases:
* Extended Setup (494.4 KiB, 65 hits)

A powerful and complex utility, this program allows you to edit every aspect of Ultima 9‘s lengthy configuration without ever having to open the OPTIONS.INI file in a text editor.

Produced by: Edward Pinniger
Releases:
* Freeform Savegame (805.2 KiB, 130 hits)

An interesting savegame for Ultima 9. The creator has travelled through a fair bit of the map using the fly cheat and finished a number of the column quests (recovering the glyphs in the process) without speaking to NPCs along the way, thereby avoiding tripping plot triggers as much as possible. The Terfin/Bucanneer’s Den subplot has been completed so as to grant the player access to Raven’s ship.

Essentially, some of the game has already been completed (but the player starts on the Britain docks with little or no equipment) but the remainder of the game (a fair chunk) is now effectively non-linear, and Britannia is yours to explore!

Produced by: Meschiari Stefano
Releases:
* Power Tools (646.9 KiB, 47 hits)

A configuration package that puts to shame the limited configuration options that ship with Ultima 9. It includes three major components:

• Game Options & Tweaks – replaces the default options program and allows configuration of all game performance aspects, including those previously only modifiable in OPTIONS.INI
• UIX Keymap Editor – allows easy modification of all key settings in the game
• UIX Starter – reboots the computer and starts Ascension without first loading the Windows Explorer, thus reducing memory overhead and eliminating background processes.

Produced by: Aquamarine Dragon
Releases:
* Music Decoder (15.0 KiB, 21 hits)

This is a program to extract the music from Ultima 9 and encode it to the WAV format. It also includes the option to amplify the volume of the sound, as this is quite low in the native file format.

Produced by: Grandor Dragon, Novum Dragon
Releases:
* Monster & Economy Patch (79.8 KiB, 40 hits)
* Combined Patch (495.5 KiB, 52 hits)

Ultima 9 left a lot of disgruntled fans in its wake. Some of those who weren’t repulsed from the Ultima series as a whole by it decided to try and improve upon the last single-player Ultima title for themselves and others, and these two patches are the fruits of their efforts!

The Combined Patch offers three patches in total: the Dialogue Patches, the Monster Patch, and the Economy Patch. The Monster and Economy patches respectively tweak the monster stats and the economic system in Ultima 9, making it a little more realistic and true to how Ultima typically works.

The Dialogue patch puts you in a whole new version of Ascension. While it robs you of voiced dialogue (because so much of the game dialogue is changed in the patch), it re-works much of the game’s plot and dialogue to better take past Ultimas into consideration…and removes some of the inconsistencies as well.

If you don’t want the Dialogue patch, there is also a standalone Monster/Economy combination patch.

Releases:
* 1.19f Patch (1.9 MiB, 78 hits)

This patch, rumoured to have been written by one of the developers of Ultima 9 in an act of frustration, offers further improvements to the Direct3D support that the 1.18f patch touched on. It also adjusts the spell damages a little bit, removes the “too many items” bug, and removes the SafeDisc protection on the game.

Indeed, this patch is pretty much necessary if you intend to run Ascension on a modern system.

Note: this patch requires the official 1.18f patch to be installed, so get that one first.

Produced by: Origin Systems Inc.
Website: Origin Systems (redirects to UO site)
Releases:
* 1.18f Patch (6.2 MiB, 51 hits)

This was the last of the patches Origin released for Ultima 9. It corrects a lot of the bugs that plagued the game, removed many plot-stopping errors, and offered marginal improvement to the Direct3D graphics performance of the game.

It is highly recommended that you install this patch if you plan to play Ascension. Indeed, this patch should be considered the final step in an Ascension installation.