What Is the History and Background of Project Britannia?

Project Britannia is a fan-made project that recreated the world of Origin Systems' Britannia inside Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege engine. According to the project's own site, it represents "the culmination of almost a decade of work," beginning around 2005, and lets players run Ultima V and Ultima VI on modern hardware with enhanced gameplay and graphics. The same page describes it in the past tense — "is, or perhaps was" — which tells you the core effort has wound down, even though modding activity continues.

Origins and timeline

The project started in roughly 2005. Dozens of contributors put in thousands of hours over the following years. The website hosts a development blog that, in the site's own words, is "mostly filled with links that no longer work, and announcements that no longer matter," but it still stands as a timeline and record of the team's work. If you want to trace how the project evolved, that blog is the closest thing to an official history.

A global volunteer team

The Project Britannia team drew people "from all walks of life, all across the world" — the site specifically names America, New Zealand, Finland, and Hong Kong. The project describes itself as "truly a global effort" and "a labor of love," and thanks everyone who contributed. This matters if you're trying to understand why the project exists at all: it was a volunteer collaboration, not a commercial release, which explains both its scope and its eventual slowdown.

What the project produced

Two complete games were built on the Project Britannia engine, created collaboratively by Team Lazarus and Team Archon:

• Ultima V: Lazarus
• The Ultima 6 Project

Beyond the games, the site distributes the engine itself (installable in your own development environment for use with the Siege Editor), the Siege Tools development toolset for building mods, a wiki recording the engine's featureset and history, and documentation for the custom "Skrit" API used to customize the Dungeon Siege engine.

Is it still active?

Partly. The site notes that "there are still people writing mods," with links to them in the forum, and the forum remains the place to connect with other modders or get help with the two games. The core team effort, however, is framed as finished. The site also mentions possible future additions — how-tos, an installation FAQ, and a setup guide for new modders — but presents these as intentions rather than existing resources.

Why the background matters to you

If you're deciding whether to invest time here, the history sets expectations: this is a long-running volunteer project with a finished engine and two playable games, plus tools and documentation for making your own content. Support comes from a community forum rather than an active studio, and some older links on the blog are dead. The practical resources — engine, tools, wiki, Skrit API docs, and forum — are what remain useful today.