Courtesy of former Origin programmer Bill Randolph, and thanks to the tireless efforts of Joe Garrity of the Origin Muesum, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present six documents — which have been broken out into over thirty images — which discuss some of the technical details of Ultima 6.

Specifically, the documents — all of which appear to be internal documents from Origin Systems — discuss the game’s alpha testing, the clue path and plot, the planned dream world encounters, maps, tilesets, and in-game flags.

There is some truly fascinating stuff to be found within these (often amusingly ketchup-stained) pages, at least for those who enjoy getting a look at the technical foundations of software. There’s even a really cool sketch of the gameworld map (that is: Mars), which was scanned in two parts by Joe Garrity and stitched together by myself:

And thus…enjoy! Pull up the images, download the PDFs, and pore over them. Search out every little detail, and enjoy a fascinating glimpse into the nuts and bolts of how Origin crafted a truly ground-breaking RPG. Ultima Aiera is indebted to Joe Garrity for providing these documents, to Bill Randolph for releasing them and making them available for us to see, to Ben “Bandit LOAF” Lesnick for his invaluable insights, and to Mike McShaffry, “Philip S.”, and everyone who worked at Origin Systems.