Unseen Origin Documents found!

Hey Previtera get on AIM · Tue Dec 23, 2008 4:15 am

You guys may be interested in this:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08 ... -that-one/

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Gaming archaeology: now therefs an idea. It can only be better than Bonekickers, anyway.

Upon hearing that EA Mythic had received several crateloads full of Origin Systems (the long-dead studio behind the Wing Commander and Ultima games, plus System Shock, and once home to the power duo of Warren Spector and Richard Garriot) archive materials, a group of fans arranged to catalogue the treasure trove. It turned out that EA seems to have hung onto an incredible amount of stuff, making this find perhaps the PC game equivalent of discovering all those fossilised folk in Pompeii. Best of all, therefs a good chance all these historical goodies will be released to the public.

The total trove so far is, apparently:

CD Images: 708
SyQuest Images: 25
Photographs: 3,390
3.5 Disks: 274
Optical Discs: 2
DAT Tapes: 36
8mm Tape Images: 8
Scans: 8,225
VHS Tapes: 101

As well as a ton of design documents, concept art, tchotkes and interviews for at least two of the PCfs most respected series, theyfve discovered what may be code for several unreleased games: Bioforge Plus, Technosaur, Ultima IX (Ifm presuming that means a different draft of U9). Technosaurfs the one to really get excited about, a lost project that Harvey Smith, later Lead Designer on Deus Ex, was working on shortly before Origin dissolved.

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:06 am

(I wonder why whoever posted this had to mock my name)

AIM · Post by **AIM** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:36 am

ACtually it was the only way I could think of to get a message to you, get on AIM sometime so we's can chat again.

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:43 am

Did we ever chat?

My msn anyway is resle77 AT hotmail DOT com
Add me anytime if you need something.

TDI · Post by **TDI** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 5:52 pm

I hope that the "group of fans" consists of people with integrity and will eventually make everything available to the public, as opposed to stuff starting to show up on ebay.

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:13 pm

I have all sorts of hope for this... There wasn't any mention of Ultima 7 though. I would really like it if they could find the working multi-level Moonshade that had to be cut because of space in SI. Plus the infamous Ratman portrait. There's so much that SI could benefit from if they found the right data.

Mageguru · Post by **Mageguru** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:52 am

Actually the guys over at the Wing Commander CIC website, made a trip to Mythic back in July and proceeded to copy all the media and scan all the material they could get there hands on...

"Readers already know the story of how we came to be given access to Electronic Arts' archive of Wing Commander and Origin data at EA Mythic -- now we're proud to show you some of what we saw. This is just a tiny sample - our team took over 4,000 pictures, 8,000 scans, transferred three-dozen tapes and 25 SyQuests, digitized 100 VHS tapes and imaged 700 CD-ROMs. "

Just head over to WC CIC website and do a search for "Mythic"

http://www.wcnews.com/articles/mythicar ... ndex.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/WingCommanderCIC

They stayed with Joe Garrity over at the Origin Museum, So Joe most likely got a lot of Ultima material in the process. And its going to take some time to sift through all that material and then present it to the public. (They had 5 days to do this, so they just copied everything they could, without review.)

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:24 pm

(still waiting to know who's searching for me.... sorry to have to deal with this on the board, given there's no private messaging system

)

Tsetra · Post by **Tsetra** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:35 am

So far? Cross your fingers for the Lost Vale. And expect disappointment. :p

Kensu · Post by **Kensu** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:01 am

Tserta: You're exactly right. As I accidentally posted to the SE thread, that white stuff in the screenshots isn't snow: it's clouds. So in one of the screenshots the Avatar is indeed jumping from one cloud to another.

The whole "Super Avatar Brothers" label was a joke back in the day, but apparently that's what Origin was really going for...

??? · Post by **???** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:46 am

Oh really? Check these screenshot:

http://dino.shiftedphase.com/ultima/u8/ ... reen13.gif
http://dino.shiftedphase.com/ultima/u8/ ... reen12.gif

You can see that there seems to be a wooden floor hidden inside the clouds. Maybe the avatar is actually walking on a floating wooden floor, which was covered by clouds in order to keep the place hidden?

Kensu · Post by **Kensu** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 6:01 pm

Are you sure that wooden floor isn't the ground beneath him? I'm pretty sure that's what it is in the first picture.

MV · Post by MV » Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:43 pm

I think the stone ground is supposed to be "far down", and the clouds high in the air. You just have to imagine it from the perspective.

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:09 am

According to product descriptions, there would have been a city in the clouds to explore, with the Zealan gods being trapped there, and needing to be freed (the box cover and a screenshot seem to indicate this as well, with the three gods having a force field around them). So I believe that those are in fact "clouds". As silly as the clouds seem, I would still love to see what they had in mind. They found an item labeled "Ultima 8 project". I'm sure I had posted this before, but one of my calls to Origin back in the day was a complaint about the lack of interactivity, and a dumbing down of the Ultima experience. The person that I talked to (I want to say that his name is Marshall) claimed that Origin was planning a SVGA cd-rom version with full interactivity and full speech. Oh how I wish that Origin completed that!

I truly hope that everything is made public, especially anything Ultima related. I can only imagine what they archived...

Kensu · Post by **Kensu** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:20 am

Another thing about those screenshots... I'm sure other people have noticed, but look at those statues trapped in amber... Those are not the three Gods the Avatar met in the temple. They're the other three, mentioned briefly in the book that Mythran wrote, and their postures align perfectly with fear, joy, and grief.

T. J. Brumfield · Post by **T. J. Brumfield** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:07 am

What about Worlds of Ultima: Arthurian Legends? I thought that game was all but finished, and that devs had put three years of work into it. It was also supposed to use the U7 engine, unlike the previous two U6 games. With work, I bet it could play in Exult.

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:35 am

I am very interested in that Arthurian Legends as well. Waiting ever so patiently for word on the documents at WCNews...

- · Post by - » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:40 am

T. J. Brumfield: Where did you read that AL was finished?

T. J. Brumfield · Post by **T. J. Brumfield** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:50 am

I apparently was mistaken. I thought I read that it was mostly finished, but I just Googled for it, and apparently it only had 9 months of development. It looks like the design phase was completed.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 7:02 am

There are some incidental files from AL kicking around. Odd sprites. Faces. Some screenshots. A few design documents. But nothing more concrete, that I or anyone I've talked to has seen.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca

HeyHEYHey · Post by **HeyHEYHey** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:11 pm

Any news about those documents ???

efry · Post by **efry** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 9:21 pm

I don't think these documents will ever see the light of day. They went straight into the hands of private collectors who in my experience aren't too interested in sharing with the ultima community.

Regards,
Eric

Oblivious · Post by **Oblivious** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 12:31 am

robbo007 · Post by **robbo007** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:18 am

Does anyone know anything more about this? I'm really interested to know if The Lost Vale was found? I heard it was mostly finished before it was canned??

Thanks,
Rob

Gileathane · Post by **Gileathane** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:10 pm

'Private collectors' ? Certain members of CIC ?

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:03 pm

It has been a while, and the main page over at wcnews has yet to mention anything more significant concerning the retrieval of the Origin material. It is rather sad...

I remember reading that the intention was for the material to get out to Origin fans.

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:11 pm

Ok I just found this post made by ChrisReid on 6/15/09 after searching the CIC forums...

Quote:

This story is one that originally fell behind the desk last year. NinjaLA drew this picture to commemorate the completion of our Mythic Archiving Project. It's a super nice representation of a Scimitar. Additional distribution of the Origin archive data is currently on hold, but check out the photo gallery from the event here if you missed it earlier.

Warder · Post by **Warder** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:15 pm

There's another post there that explains more - apparently they were told by the bigwigs at EA not to release anything more to the public. Heh.

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:15 pm

I found the post. Now I feel depressed, because I am losing hope that EA will ever allow it to be released, for who knows what reason...

Tsetra · Post by **Tsetra** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:50 pm

And EA claims to no longer be the Evil Company that ruins games and legacies. Yeah, right. They're probably worried more Ultima goodies will be uncovered and get fans even angrier at them over screwing up what could have been, losing Ultima Online profits to the few boycotters who've had enough of EA's crap.

Person · Post by **Person** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 6:34 pm

"
And EA claims to no longer be the Evil Company that ruins games and legacies. Yeah, right. They're probably worried more Ultima goodies will be uncovered and get fans even angrier at them over screwing up what could have been, losing Ultima Online profits to the few boycotters who've had enough of EA's crap."

o man, you say true things.

monotremata · Post by **monotremata** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 6:39 pm

People still play UO after all these years??
I figured with WoW it wouldve suffered its final demise years ago...

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 1:34 am

Ehh, I'm kind of disappointed with the CIC guys. They released enough stuff of the Wing Commander data, but none of the Ultima stuff. While I can entirely believe that EA told them not to release stuff, it certainly didn't seem to stop them from releasing what they wanted to.

Ah well, no amount of complaining is going to change it, so no point to it. I'm just disappointed is all.

There were some SI documents that surfaced on the UDIC newsgroup and probably other places some time ago. Did anyone have those, or a link?

Wizardry dragon

monotremata · Post by **monotremata** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:38 pm

Gotta agree. Wing Commander was neat and all (I never played it myself) but Ultima is what Origin was all about.. Ultima was probably the ONE thing anyone cared about seeing in that trove of stuff.

WTF is EA's problem its not like theyre going to ever re-release the Collection again or anything..

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:30 am

It seems a lame excuse but UO is indeed the culprit, and it is likely that until theres no money at all in that or other Ultima ventures that EA will keep those rights in a vice hold.

EAs never been about games its been about buisiness and money. So long as theres no money to be made they wont be interested.

Wizardry dragon

Scythifuge · Post by **Scythifuge** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:22 am

What I do not understand is why EA would allow Mythic to allow the CIC guys to have any of it, and then not share it with the rest of the community. Now a few people who are just like us get to have what we are not allowed to have. Something else is going on with that whole situation.

CIC's "Wing Commander is the ONLY thing important in life" attitude could be done without as well. I love Origin, always have, and even tracked their releases as a kid, before having a computer that could run the games. I'll never forget looking at a gaming mag in a grocery store and saw for the first time, what Ultima VII was going to look like, and I was blown away. When I got my 486SX/33MHz, the first order of business was to order Ultima 1-6 Series cd-rom, and Ultima VII, and got Wing Commander 1 and II deluxe versions for Christmas. I have a dedicated bookshelf full of Origin stuff, anything I can find. I suppose that I just wish that the CIC guys felt the same way as I do.

Post by **Dominus** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:13 am

It seems a lame excuse but UO is indeed the culprit, and it is likely that until theres no money at all in that or other Ultima ventures that EA will keep those rights in a vice hold.

I am sure even if UO would shut down, EA would still sit on that stuff, since it is their IP now and giving anything of that intelllectual property away for free would weaken their hold on it. After all, who knows whether they can still make money out of it in a couple of years...
Damn you, Elizabeth and Abraham...

Warder · Post by **Warder** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 8:02 am

The CIC guys didn't get to "have" any of it. The deal was that they were allowed to digitally archive all that stuff so it wouldn't be lost to the ages. No more, no less.

agentorangeguy · Post by **agentorangeguy** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 1:12 pm

UO is a joke now anyway. It has nothing to do with Ultima anymore, but satiating the little kid's desires of bright shiny multi-colored objects until they get bored of the game a month later.