(ƒ) does a happy lil' dance

 
 


news archive  


February 2002

Spring 24hoz judges and prizes confirmed
[ Posted by Hercules on Thursday, February 28, 2002, at 10:05 AM ]
Leamas has confirmed the judges and prizes for the Spring 2002 24 hours of ZZT contest.

The judges will be Leamas, Grinch, Skullie, Hercules (me), Chuck and Fishfood. Leamas and Grinch are also giving away prizers for the winners (top 3). Quoting Leamas:

"Well, Grinch and I have finally thought up some prizes for the 24hoZZT. We had a hard time trying to figure out which prize should be for the first and which one should be for the second, so we are going to allow the first place to choose which one they want. then the second place gets the other prize. I wanted to do the trophey thing that Vedic had suggested, but it would cost to much to make and the send out, so until I become rich and if I ever win this again, I'll do that. :) Well, this is what we have come up with so far:

+ 1st: A CD of the winner's choice
+ 2nd: A made up T-shirt (white).. We are going to actually make it. So the only reason it will be cool is because it will look really crappy! :)
+ 3rd: A SPECIAL gift certificate.

Remember that the first place winner chooses from the 1st or the 2nd prize. 2nd gets the other hand me down, and 3rd gets the SPECIAL gift certificate. :)"

Arguement causes zenryoku's departure
[ Posted by Hercules on Sunday, February 24, 2002, at 8:57 PM ]
An extremely lenghty arguement between zenryoku and several others (including Nadir, Kracken and Funk) has led to zenryoku leaving the ZZT community. The arguement starting after Funk (as a z2 admin) locking xabbott's Riddling in the Dark thread. A lot of arguements followed, of which I'm not actually sure what they were about. All this has caused zenryoku to quit the community and he probably won't use ZZT anymore either. He will still keep in touch with his online friends and keep his LiveJournal. You can read his "goodbye" thread here.

Spring 24hoz page goes up
[ Posted by Hercules on Saturday, February 23, 2002, at 12:20 PM ]
Leamas has launched to page of the Spring 2002 24 hours of ZZT he's hosting together with his brother Grinch here. The contest is now taking place on April 5th (a friday) instead of 6th. At the moment, the judges are Leamas, Grinch, Skullie and me (Hercules). It has yet to be decided of ZZTAE and KevEdit are being allowed. Anyway, visit the page here.

voighdt and Mysterio3k removed from RI
[ Posted by Hercules on Thursday, February 21, 2002, at 9:46 PM ]
Knightt, president of the ZZT company Random Inc, removed both voighdt (who released the GOTM-winning "Today is Monday" under RI's banner) and Mysterio3k from the company's line-up. Here's what Knightt said about it on the Random Inc page:

"Due to extreme idleness, voighdt, who joined between BroKen and Nuero, and Mysterio3k, who joined between Nuero and DarkShadow (after he rejoined), have been removed from Random Inc. They will be welcomed back if I see them again and they have the will to return... however, Random Inc. has simply too many members (now 22) to allow too many idlers in (though, of course, we don't mind a few)."

Spring 24 hours of ZZT date set
[ Posted by Hercules on Tuesday, February 19, 2002, at 8:32 PM ]
For now, the date for the Spring 24 hours of ZZT 2002 contest has been set to April 6th. This date might still be subject to change, though. Also, a time will be given later on, as well as the judges line-up. The contest is being hosted by Leamas and Grinch, the two brothers who won the last 24hoz contest by far with their entry "Welcome to Seasons". When the page for the contest goes up, you'll hear it right here.

Submit your stuff to ZZTV 7
[ Posted by Hercules on Monday, February 18, 2002, at 8:56 PM ]
Nadir is starting to compile the ZZT magazine ZZTV 7, so he's in need of submissions. Here's what he said:

"I think I'll plug ZZTV7 now. Deadline is... sometime in July?

As usual;

No entries under seven boards allowed.
Channels must be in menu format.
No stupid channel names.
Anything in terms of content is allowed, go nuts."


Send your submissions here.

Soupware looks for ZIG help
[ Posted by Hercules on Sunday, February 17, 2002, at 4:57 PM ]
Trapbocks writes in with the following news:

"Soupware is making a ZIG game named Sudica: Blue and Red. The people in Soupware want some people to help out on the game. If you can, email the company: souptastic_2001@excite.com. So far, MasterTMC is helping out."

Zem! X to be released today
[ Posted by Hercules on Tuesday, February 12, 2002, at 8:54 AM ]
Newt comes with the following bit of interesting news on his side:

"I thought that I'd mention that if all goes according to plan (which it should), Zem! X will be released tomorrow, February 12th, at http://johnmoore.cjb.net/ and at Z2 shortly thereafter."

Wayward leaves ERI
[ Posted by Hercules on Monday, February 11, 2002, at 9:56 PM ]
As Zenryoku wrote in, Wayward has decided to quit Eagle Rock Interactive, the company of which he was a member of for quite and while, as well as temporary president in Viovis' absence. He announced this here and left because he will probably never ZZT again. Wayward's games (such as Octagon, Within v1.9 and Apud le Medius Res) were largely seen as good and atmospheric and it's a sad thing to see him go.

Zeuxy returns to Crimson Abyss
[ Posted by Hercules on Saturday, February 9, 2002, at 12:46 PM ]
Zeuxy (Kevin Denoncourt), who used to bein Cheezit's programming group Crimson Abyss two years ago, returned a few days ago. Zeuxy, just like Cheezit, came back to the MegaZeux scene to see what was going on. To his surprise, Cheezit was back as well and reformed the company he used to be part of a long while back, when it was originally formed. He decided to join his partner once again and is now working on a few engines and mini-games.

CyQ quits community
[ Posted by Hercules on Saturday, February 9, 2002, at 12:36 PM ]
CyQ, creator ZZTAE, has quit the community yesterday. He recently got into trouble after an IRC accident involving Kracken and Nadir. CyQ had been able to read private logs of the two of got Nadir's IRC password. He quickly gave himself access to #misanthropy, using Nadir's account. Kracken banned CyQ from #misanthropy a few days ago and I haven't seen him after that. Apparently he has quit the community now. His moderation tasks on the z2 message boards (ZZT general forum) have been taken over by bitman and Nanobot for now.

ZZT - can lightning strike twice?
[ Posted by Hercules on Saturday, February 9, 2002, at 12:33 PM ]
"ZZT - can lightning strike twice?" is what is currently to be seen on zzt.org. People started wondering where it came from and what it meant. Was this a hack, or not? On the z2 message boards, xabbott shortly mentioned that it was him who put it there, but it is unknown if this means a comeback of zzt.org.

A Community X-Mas wins GOTM
[ Posted by Hercules on Monday, February 4, 2002, at 5:16 PM ]
A Community X-Mas, the game made by Leamas and me (Hercules), won Game of the Month on z2. The GOTM had very little contenders this month, only three: A Community X-Mas, Lemming Hunter, Trapper. A Community X-Mas won, but Lemming Hunter came close, after the GOTM's Commitee's votes and the results Opinion Poll were tallied.

You can read the GOTM review here and you can read the Classic GOTM, which was won by Corrupt Mind (an old AKware game), here.

La Roche joins z2 staff
[ Posted by Hercules on Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 9:33 PM ]
La Roche has been hired to reinforce the z2 staff. He'll be handling errors with the script as well as helping getting ZIGsection to merge with z2 (La Roche being the owner/founder of ZIGsection).

New ZZT review site launched
[ Posted by Hercules on Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 8:41 PM ]
RevZone, a brand new ZZT review website, has been launched! It's being maintained by Starchaser and the other staff members are NMZmaster, Knightt and Fishfood. Currently, there are only two reviews (A Community X-Mas, Trapper) and one special (Winter 2001/2002 24 hours of ZZT) up, but more content will be added as time passes. The lay-out is quite fresh and it's definitely good to see a new interesting and motivating ZZT website out there!

z2 faces quite a drama
[ Posted by Hercules on Saturday, February 2, 2002, at 6:08 PM ]
z2, the main ZZT website, faced a suprising setback yesterday. Administrators craNKGod and Shinryuu (Cait Sith) both decided to quit the staff, ZZT and the community. Of course, this came as a huge impact, especially seeing as Lammy (Fishfood) left a couple of days ago as well.

This left Funk and Kracken, who got Tseng to reinforce them. Lammy decided to come back temporarily to deal with technical difficulties and tasks. z2's regular services won't be affected -- the site will still be updated as always. Game of the Month, on the other hand, may be suspsended a few days. I (Hercules) have to craNKGod for a while, which will answer some of your possible questions.

Why did they quit? craNKGod: "Quite simply, the community was supposed to be a place to relax, and it became a stressor for me." Shinryuu: "What reason is there for me to stay? Never did anything anyways."

Did they completely quit the community? craNKGod: "I speak for myself when I say yes, because I've left some burning bridges in my wake. I made it impossible to come back this time." Both will still be on AIM to talk to those they wish to talk to, though.

Why wasn't the sudden departure announced by craNKGod himself? craNKGod: "This is another qualm Funk had--that I didn't write a news post explaining myself (of course, either did Fish), but I did. I just didn't post it. The reason I didn't post was that I didn't want to leave with such a tremor. I wanted to move on silently. Of course, this seems impossible.. I'm willing to answer any questions they have about it and take care of anything I'm asked.. I told them this. I can't completely break in one day--it wouldn't be sensible."

z2 will still keep going, with new people in charge (Funk, Kracken and Tseng). We wish craNKGod and Shinryuu the very best of luck and we thank them for all the hard work they've put into z2 and the community.

iFantasy 11 finally released
[ Posted by Hercules on Friday, February 1, 2002, at 6:44 PM ]
fejjy was finally able to release issue 11 of iFantasy, Interactive Fantasies' ZZT company magazine. It was started back in May of last year, but due a complete lack of submissions, the releasal of the magazine has been delayed several times. It was basically done on fejjy's side, but it hardly had any content. Then fejjy got a virus a month or two ago, and iFantasy 11 got erased. Hercules (I) was able to send him an old version, and fejjy started on it again. Hercules also gathered several submissions from other ZZTers to be incorporated into the magazine, and it ended up with quite some content after all. The only downside is that it doesn't have any previews of IF games. As a small bonus, it has two submissions celebrating IF's 5th birthday (which was on June 2nd of last year) -- by Theta14 and Hercules.

Grab the magazine here. When there's news on the next issue, you will hear it on this page.