(ƒ) does a happy lil' dance

 
 


news archive  


May 2001

Jojoisjo joins Interactive Fantasies
Thursday 31 May 2001
Jojoisjo is the newest excellent addition to Interactive Fantasies. He is the author of the ZZT games River City, Possessed, Gems & Pipes and 4 and is now working on a promising new project, Rebirth. Jojoisjo was offered a spot in IF a while back, but he decided to stay in his now ex-company, Lame Game (run by Ringworm). Now he was interested in joining, so Hercules decided to give him The Agonizer's 15th spot and to no longer count honorary members (The Agonizer, who isn't around anymore) as real members. The member limit, however, will stay at 15 and if it'll ever be changed, it'll be less than 15, not more. Jojoisjo's IF interview, Upcoming titles info and Member info is all up. The IF member pictures still need to be updated with Theta14 and Jojoisjo on them, but that will be done as soon as Hercules finds the time.

New zzt.org GOTM system
Thursday 31 May 2001
zzt.org has a new Game of the Month picking system now, which has been introduced this month. At the end of each month, all zzt.org users will be able to vote on their favorite game released that month by filling out a simple form. Votes will be handled by Dragonlord, co-maintair of zzt.org, who will also verify all votes (IP checking them, etc). The game with the most votes after the voting has been closed will win Game of the Month. The zzt.org reviewers Hydra and Hercules will still write the GOTMs and they will still pick the Classic Game of the Month themselves, like they always did. This is what Dragonlord told Hercules about it:
"as you know, it was an idea i had back when you were creating deceiving guidance and because it was an IF game, it wasn't eligible for gotm. i thought this wasn't fair, so i came up with a system. za staff agreed with it, though some people are bitching about it. `v^"

teenspirit joins Eagle Rock Interactive
Thursday 31 May 2001
teenspirit, ex-member of Nuero's old company "That Guy in Panama" (TGIP), has recently joined Eagle Rock Interactive, the formation led by Viovis (president) and Wayward (vice-president). teenspirit is working on a few ZZT things, like ZZTennis, which is an interesting game according to some people. Visit the ERI page here.

Random Inc at 19 now
Tuesday 22 May 2001
Knightt's popular ZZT company Random Inc has now gotten to the point of having 19 members. The member limit is either going to stay at 19 or it might be 20, according to Knightt himself. DarkShadow (formerly known as Sierramwb) has returned, after a period of absence, and ZZTDogbert, who used to be in RI a while ago, returned as well. The other two new members are skullie and God (ex-TGIP member). skullie apparently dropped his company TurboWare, which he revived a while ago (TurboWare used to be a semi-big ZZT company in 1998, with people like skullie, Flatcoat Lab/Venom/madeku and some others). Visit the Random Inc page here.

ZZT emulator on the Dreamcast
Tuesday 22 May 2001
As posted on zzt.org, there appears to be some sort of ZZT emulator on the Dreamcast being worked on by Sam Steele. The project is called DreamZZT and is a text-based (as far as you can get the Dreamcast to be text-based) ZZT engine for the Dreamcast. The version 1.0 release is out. If you'd like to try it out, you'll need a Dreamcast and a CD burner in order to use it. v1.0 doesn't include much usual stuff and doesn't completely look like ZZT yet, but it does have an interesting multiplayer mode (ASCII Death Match). I did some research on finding the development URLs, and here they are -- visit the DCEmulation.com DreamZZT page and the official DreamZZT development page for more information.

Akwende to host MZX graphics contest
Tuesday 22 May 2001
Akwende is hosting the MZX Graphics Competition 2001 during the weekend of June 23-24. It works like this: the contestants will be given a generic MZX board and they have to improve the graphics as much as they can (they have two days to do this). There are a few rules, of course -- the competition is for individuals only (so no teams), no external files can be used (you can change the chars and colors of the MZX file, but you can't use external .CHR and .PAL files) and you cannot use any pre-made graphics. The board will be posted on Friday June 22, 8-9 PM EST and they have until Sunday June 24 (8-9 PM EST) to finish their entry. Entries will be judged on overall quality, originality, use of char set & palette, active graphics and style/theme. You can sign up by sending an e-mail to Akwende and submissions should go to this address as well. The page for this contest can be found here.

ZZTV6 submissions
Tuesday 22 May 2001
Zenith is still working on issue 6 of the community ZZT magazine, ZZTV, which was once started by Dark FLR. ZZTV is a magazine that every ZZTer can submit their "channels" to. A channel is your own part of the magazine, which should be about 6-16 boards long, and has whatever you feel like sharing (art, previews, rants, reviews, interviews, mini-games, etc). According to Zenith, who compiles ZZTV, addition is granted as long as your channel isn't completely crappy. The deadline for issue 6's release is June 25th and you can submit your channel to here.

Theta14 joins Interactive Fantasies
Sunday 20 May 2001
Theta14 has recently joined Interactive Fantasies. Hercules decided to kick yllek out, because he (and no one else) didn't hear a word from him since September of last year. Several people applied for the open spot (Blazer, Slamice, Theta14, Snorby, Scorch, Axikal, Burakthebest, Mattęo and a few others) and a vote was held in IF. Theta14 by far got the most votes and got in. He has handed the company he was president of, AuroraSoft, to KKairos (the former vice-president). Theta's IF interview and member info are up. His upcoming title info and member picture are still to follow.

Akwende works on MZXAK
Thursday 10 May 2001
MadBrain recently released a small example of 4 color chars in MegaZeux in a version of MZX called SuperMZX. This was just a little experiment and now Akwende (member of Interactive Fantasies) has started work on a new MegaZeux version, called MZXAK. It also includes 4 color chars, just like MadBrain's SuperMZX, but it will feature many other improvements, such as new counters and new editor graphics, as well. The development site can be found here and you can find some early screenshots here.

Zenith joins Eagle Rock Interactive
Thursday 10 May 2001
Zenith, who recently quit Random Inc, has joined Eagle Rock Interactive, the company currently run by Viovis (president) and Wayward (vice-president). Zenith used to be in ERI once in the past and released Fantasy World Dizzy under their banner. Right now, Zenith is working on a game called "Flood" that will be released under ERI's banner.

Summer 24 hours of ZZT page
Sunday 6 May 2001
Dsone is hosting the second Akim Productions Comedy 24 hours of ZZT. It will be held somewhere in late July or early August -- a date hasn't been set yet. The judges are Dsone, D. and Knightt. To sign up, e-mail D. or Dsone. For more information, go here and click on "24hozzt comedy NEW" in the navigation bar.

Tseng joins Random Inc.
Sunday 6 May 2001
Tseng, creator of the famous Da Hood universe and author of many a succesful ZZT game, has joined Knightt's company Random Inc. He is working on a ZZT game called "The Misadventures of Mega Job", which will be rather neat. Tseng has taken the final open spot in RI, replacing Zenith, who left.

Random Inc. news
Wednesday 2 May 2001
Random Inc., Knightt's ZZT company, has recently attracted two news members: Nuero and Mysterio3k. Nuero used to be president of That Guy in Panama (better known as TGIP), but he disbanded the company to join RI. Mysterio3k is the author of "Destroy Demo". It also appears that Zenith may be quitting Random Inc. because of him disagreeing with Knightt, and joining Eagle Rock Interactive. Visit the Random Inc. page here.