Unfortunately, after a very serious turn of events involving some unprofessional behavior, it was deemed by a unanimous vote of other developers and AGN staff that Zoria's health no longer permits him to continue as the head of Zelda Classic development outright and a change has to be made for the betterment of the project.
Now, what this means is that a line of succession has been put into place, and the project has been forked. No one has been fired, let,go, or demoted outright. Zoria will continue on his own fork if he desires,and if he recovers and redeems himself, he can still be a valuable asset to the community. As his friend, I still believe in him.
But with the impending ROMUniverse copyright case and stall in development and the 6th Contest Contest, in the better interest a new fork has been set up and a council has been set up to regulate Zelda Classic development. They will not have access to the DAT files that AGN once had, though with a later read, it is for the best. This three-headed Hydra will be addressed in a different post.
The new ZC Council is:
Nightmare - Acting ZC Head
SyrianBallaS - Day to Day Development
Emily - Project Head/Development
Dimi - Developer
Tim/Naturesucks - Advisor/Webmaster/Discord Master/all around good guy
The final decision on a head will be up to the community, but will not be made at this time. To deal with this mess:
Zoria will continue with his fork. No one is stopping him.
"Zelda Classic 2.53.1" will be fixed slightly and released as-is."
"Zelda Classic 2.53.2" will be made to run with the 6th Quests and released. No further long term support for it besides fixing nasty bugs.
The name of the project will then change to "ZC" and all Nintendo 1st party material will then be removed. There will be one final alpha, "Zelda Classic 2.55 A-F" to hold over, then the devs will get a long-deserved break of six months (they will still be free to work if they choose). There will be no new feature requests for 2.53.1, 2.53.2, or 2.55 A-F and the New Feature forum is to be suspended immediately.
After the break:
A new tileset and DAT will be introduced and mandatory, which will be worked on during the break.
We will work on original music. If we can't we will use 3rd party music that's non-Disney.
The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Quests are out. The 1st and 2nd Quests are owned by Nintendo, and AlphaDawg is out of contact.
4th and 5th are being determined.
6th is up to the developers.
As the last of the original three that started the project and the last active, this was going down the rabbit hole and action was warranted. I will be dealing with the consequences of it and I believe a fork is the path of least resistance. Chris Miller and War Lord will be informed when the dust settles and all the ducks are put in a row.
Sincerely yours
"Nightmare" James Sorge