I (Hercules) have been busy "reforming" Interactive Fantasies for a while now. I'm now annoucing the changes that have currently been made. For a while now and especially after Venom quit IF, I really thought I needed to do something about IF's idle state. A few plans were proposed; some were dropped, others were not. The first plan was to get Akwende (creator of the upcoming MZX game Final Fantasy: Dynasty Prelude) into IF. He was really interested in joining, but it would mean that IF had 11 members. I discussed it with the IF members and everything seemed to be alright. However, Akwende still hasn't joined at the moment, because he's really busy with college now. The second plan was to make IF a 12-member company (at least temporarily). The plan was that Akwende and Draco (who was interested in joining IF after the downfall of Deep End). This plan was dropped. Then came another plan: The Agonizer was going to be an honorary member of IF, which meant that he would be the 11th member. Honorary member means that he'll probably never make anything in ZZT or MegaZeux anymore, but he's still in IF, because he has meant a lot to IF in the past and he has been with us since 1996. This would mean that IF had 2 open spots (since Venom quit). Everything was considered and it seemed like a good plan according to the IF members. Finally, I decided to make IF a 12-member company again (this might be temporarily, but that's not sure yet). We welcomed three new members to IF: Draco (who's working on a few games, including Teen Priest 3!), BenW (who quit AuroraSoft a while ago) and Chase Bramlage (who is working on two huge and awesome ZZT games). IF now has 12 members, but it is not sure if Almighty Cow is still in, because I haven't heard from him in ages. I hope to have stuff sorted out with Akwende and Almighty Cow soon. I've updated the Upcoming Titles section with info on the projects of Draco, BenW and Chase Bramlage and the Members Section has been updated, too. The new members pictures aren't up yet, but that's because I'll draw them when I have everyting sorted out. We are aiming for a revival of IF's glorious days and you can expect some new releases in near future.

Fellowship of the Z (FotZ), the company owned by Wayward, recently held a 25 hours of ZZT contest for company members only. The winner was to be the new vice president of the company. Four entries were submitted (by Redmage, Atrocity, ZZTyrant and ZZTbot) and the judges were me (Hercules), GipFace and TimeWaster. ZZTbot won with his entry "Sleep Dying" and is the new vice president now. The results can be read here. In other FotZ news, TimeWaster has quit the company. Visit the new FotZ page here.

DoggyShop has finally uploaded the parts of the ERI page that weren't up before. The downloads section has been done by me (Hercules). DoggyShop will put up the information on ERI's ZZT and MegaZeux projects in the near future. Also, he's considering two new members. More news to follow at the ERI page.

Blue Magus is going to quit ZZT forever, after many years. He writes: "It's been two years since I reappeared on the ZZT scene. I'm making an official end to my ZZT "career." My final releases, including my 24 hours of zzt entry and a new unfinished game/art compilation and final versions of the three dungeon games (Gallery has been changed immensely) are all available at char2.net." Since trap.cx (which hosts char2.net) is down at the moment and it's not sure when it will be back up, I've put Blue Magus' Summer 2000 24hoz entry, the revamped Dungeon Master's Gallery and the new Bluelloween into one zipfile and uploaded it to the IF page. Grab it here. Whenever trap.cx is back up, just grab everything here. It is all certainly worth a look and it's a shame that we won't see any more ZZT work by Blue Magus. Over the past, he managed to create a unique ZZT style (both in writing as in graphics).

Jacob Hammond has revived the ZZT Metro, the ZZT resource that was orignally started by Skepty. It has a neat lay-out and the news section, message boards and a few other sections (like a file archive) are currently up.

Kevin Vance has released version 0.3 of KevEdit (a more powerful ZZT world editor that uses the .ZZT format). You can download it here. It features a ZZT-OOP editor, more sidebar options and more. Visit the KevEdit page here.

Venom, who has been in Interactive Fantasies ever since the first 10-member IF in October 1998, has decided to quit, at least for a while. The reason for this was the lack of productivity and motivation from his side. It's a shame and IF wishes Venom the best of luck. All I can add is that IF will undergo a few changes in the near future.

Myth's Summer 24 hours of ZZT contest ended last week on Sunday. There are no results yet and the entries haven't been released either. Tseng dropped out of the judging team, which means that only Myth, xf and emmzee are left. When there's more news, you'll find it here. Go to the Summer 24hoz page for more info.

ZZTyrant has restarted the ZZT company #mofo, the IRC (Austnet) channel of the famous British duo Lord Igsel and FishFood, was temporarily dropped, due to the fake Fserve child porn ads that some of the #mofo'ers tried to annoy the IRCops with. It was then replaced by #l33tcr3w, but now #mofo is back and #l33tcr3w is owned by Knightt.

Jacob Hammond released version 2.0ag2 beta of his Game Creating System ZIG a while ago. It contains some bug-fixes, a minimal game-engine, several XOP commands, but it doesn't support sound yet. You can download it here. Note that ZIG was released under Interactive Fantasies.

Ibrahim is hosting a Starcraft tournament for ZZT/MZXers, called "The Gathering". A detailed page full of information can be found here. Starcraft is the popular real-time strategy game set in the future by Blizzard Entertainment.

Myth has set the time for the Summer 24 hours of ZZT, too. It starts today, at 12 PM PDT (7 PM GMT) and ends 24 hours later. The judges are Myth, xf, emmzee and Tseng. I do suggest that you read the rules carefully, since some of the rules have changed slightly. The Summer 24hoz page can be found here.

Myth will be hosting the Summer 24 hours of ZZT on August 12-13. The exact time is still to be determined and Myth is still working on the rules and the prizes. E-mail Myth if you like to sign up (you don't need to give an ID number, since Myth got rid of that). The Summer 24hoz page is up here.

Kev Vance has released KevEdit 0.2. You can grab it here. As stated on zzt.org: "I put together KevEdit 0.2 today. The main focus was to fix all the nasty bugs in 0.1, and I think I got most of them. There are a couple new features: floodfill, win95/98 support, and it recognizes the starting board. I probably won't have time to hack together a ZZT-OOP editor before the 24HoZZT, but it can certainly work as an art platform again (no more object handling troubles)."

The new ZZT company Deep End died soon after it was formed. One of the presidents (the company used to have 3 at its beginning), Lenin, quit for some reason. Knightt reformed Random Inc (which was already his company before he joined Deep End). Cait Sith is the vice president of Random Inc and Jimbob and Atom are the programmers.