The Forgotten World project — an effort by Iceblade and others to build patches to correct lingering bugs and gameplay issues in Ultima 9 — has been dormant for around a decade. However, as of late last month, Iceblade has announced what he is calling the Ultima IX Patches Project, and is looking for people to join his team:

The Ultima IX Patches Project has made significant progress over the years, but its development has been the work of just one individual (myself) ever since the tools were sufficiently developed to begin fixing the game. This work has included all testing. It has been a huge endeavor to fix bugs, test them, and then repeat this over and over until the bug is actually fixed – followed by performing final testing. U9 patching has been sluggish, particularly as time has been more limited for many of the recent years.

In order to ensure the U9 Patches Project to reach completion, I am calling out for individuals open to assisting in this patching project as testers and/or game script editors. Your work would focus on testing and/or editing game world scripts using Python-based custom written tools. World objects and their properties may be manipulated/added through our Ogre3D editor as part of these fixes. Terrain and Water editing is not fully supported. Note: Dialogue scripts and Graphics Engine Bugs/crash are not possible to directly fix.

The easiest way to get in touch with Iceblade — if you’d like to join the effort — is via the Ultima Dragons Discord server; there’s a dedicated channel for the Ultima IX Patches Project.

And as an added little treat, Iceblade has also released an entertaining blog post about playing through the segment of Ultima 9 in which the Avatar travels to New Magincia. If you’re familiar with any of the in-lore fiction he has penned in the past, you’ll recall that Iceblade is a talented and engaging writer; the post is well worth a read.