This is quite a nice idea!
To answer your question about KovuLKD (the creator) and his sudden "poof" from existence, he supposedly just fell completely out of contact one day. Though I was not around long enough to have met him, or to witness his departure, he stopped updating the game, fell out of the community, and kept the source code to himself. He may still lurk around, I'm not sure, but I believe he turned to other projects. I'm not sure if we'll ever get the source code, but we can all hope.