Knightt announced the results of his Autumn 2001 24 hours of ZZT contest. You can view them here. zzblue won the contest with his excellent entry "Death-wish" and Kev Vance/Lipid (of TeaMofDooM fame) surprisingly placed second. AKware's team (consisting of Misteroo, Neutron and Electron) placed third. zzblue has won his second 24hoz contest in his personal history, which puts him next to Myth and me (Hercules), who both won two 24hoz contests as well.

Terryn is hosting the Newyear Duelstream Day of Zeux 2002, which is set to take place at December 29, 2001 (6:00 GMT) to December 30, 2001 (6:00 GMT). Duelstream means that you will be able to choose from two topics; one broad one and one specific one. The topic will be announced on #mzx (Espernet, IRC) and the DigitalMZX forums. For info on the contest and to sign up, go here.

Dragonlord, one of zzt.org's maintainers, has recently left Knightt's Random Inc. The reason for this is not exactly known to me, but Dragonlord has been pretty busy lately. During his Random Inc membership, he released a new version for his game Dungeons of Despair. Also, Random Inc has an open spot at the moment. If you're interested, mail Knightt.

Kev Vance has released KevEdit 0.3.3, which can be downloaded at here. Here's what Kev said on zzt.org about the bugfixes and new features:
"First, a few bugfixes:
 
+ If you hit ESC in the save dialog, it saved anyway. Oops, fixed.
+ If you cut or deleted on a single line, it crashed. Oops, fixed.
+ A small memory leak was fixed.
 
And now the NEW FEATURES:
 
+ Board Info dialog (with cool * indicator to show if a board link is reciprocated on the other board)
+ World Info dialog
+ CTRL+c/x/v now copy, cut, and paste.
+ Hypertext help system, which is CONTEXT SENSITIVE. Type #play, hit F1, and you'll get help on #play :)
+ Kolor selector, ala ZZTAE or MegaZeux (press K)
+ ZZT Object Library support, to load ZZTAE *.ZZL files (press O)

 
Enjoy, and report bugs!"

Knightt's Autumn 2001 24 hours of ZZT ended on October 14 and 28 entries were received in total! You can grab them here. The topic was "Hope". The judging process has started several days ago and the results are to be expected tomorrow. The judges are Knightt, Tseng, Chuck and Cait Sith. jimbob dropped out of the judging team and won't be replaced -- there will be 4 judges. Stay tuned and keep checking here for the results.

Most zzt.org visitors will already have noticed this on the message boards. xabbott, who owns the domain, was planning to start zzt.org all over again and wanted himself to be the only staff member to start with (more would be hired and rehired later on). Also, he wanted personal opinion not to affect the site. A whole mess came out of this and Fishfood decided to quit. Dragonlord and craNKGod are currently still on the staff, but haven't been able to update since xabbott changed the password.

Knightt set the final date/time to his Autumn 2001 24 hours of ZZT contest a while back. It was postponed twice because of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The contest is set to take place at October 13th, 7 PM EST (4 PM PST). The judges are Knightt, Cait_Sith, Tseng, Chuck and jimbob. If you still want to sign up, be quick and send an e-mail with your name and preferred ID number to Knightt. Visit the 24hoz page here.

_God_, the creator of the GOTM-winning "NO!" who left a while back, has returned to the scene and to his old company, Random Inc. Also, Mike Renner (whom most of you know as Tseng) has left Random Inc. He hasn't officially quit ZZT, but he doesn't think he'll make another game after he recently released "The Misadventures of Mega Job: the Epic Tag Team". ZaPRing, a new and promising ZZTer, has joined Random Inc to take Tseng's place, also by suggestion of Tseng himself. Visit the Random Inc page here.

Akwende has announced his departure from MegaZeux and the community, since he felt no one really cared about MZXAK and he was unnecessary in the community. After he announced this, however, many people thought it was really sad to see Akwende leave, since he was talented and they were looking foward to MZXAK2. Here's what Akwende said in response to those posts (on the DigitalMZX message boards):
"I'm big enough to say that I unfortunately didn't take this advice when I made my decision earlier.
 
Here is what I have done and what I will do:
 
I've restored the source for MZXAK. I will produce a stable binary and release it as I see fit, no strings attached. There will be no more development rather just finish what is already in place.
 
That will be my extent of involvement with mzx or the community. While I do hold a real hatred for certain individuals, I do not wish to hurt the majority of the community who has a positive opinion of me, or atleast doesn't take anysides.
 
This does not change the fact that I am finished with mzx and the community it self. I expect my last and only post will be reguarding the release of mzxak.
 
I wish to thank those who I had positive contact with throughout my time with mzx. While at times trying, some of you have made times truely enjoyable.
 
For my part there is much I wish I took take back. However I still examine myself and I believe that I have contributed more positive then negative, so I hope that is how people remember me. Leaving a legacy is one thing I can't do directly however I hope I can inspire some people. I wish people can see the you don't need to conform to limitation, atleast in terms of mzx.
 
My last request, I ask that people treat each other better, joshdw1 please implement measures so such behavior which myself and other have engaged in both the past and present are severely curbed and have a specific code of conduct which allow people to talk about mzx without politics."

Akwende is still a member of Interactive Fantasies for now, but he will probably leave after he releases MZXAK2.