ÜberSoldier (aka East Front) from Burut/CDV is based on the Xtend engine, which was developed by AND.

4Sceners: What was your best moment in the scene so far? And what was your worst?

AND: When I won Assembly 2002 I think. That was the best moment. It was a dream to get to Assembly demoparty one day and of course I didn't expect to win anything. I still remember every second of that moment, of seeing the 1st place: Squish by AND. Every time when I watch that prize giving ceremony I feel the same again and again. Yeah. That was awesome.
And the worst moment was in 2001 at Paradox demoparty where I’ve released my 604 demo. Unfortunately the organizers did everything to win the compo theirselves. Later, when a lot of people told me that they like my demo and when it was included on the Mindcandy DVD I was fine. Anyway, only time shows who is right and who is wrong all the time.

4Sceners: What are you doing for a living now?

AND: For a living? I just work all the time. Only the one way to live :) Not all the time, of course, but still much enough.

4Sceners: On which games have you worked so far?

AND: I was on the first stage in Univercity as one of my friends (Cybermag) called me and asked me if I want to work for Burut. Actually, he didn't work for the company that time but he knew about it. Another friend of mine (RCL) also worked there. At that time I've done a lot of work on my demos including software renderer and 3D engine for accelerators (old times GPUs). So, I was very skilled and wanted to make games. In the beginning of 2001 I've started to work on 3D technology which was a background for my work on Xtend engine and the game Kreed. I've started as a graphics engine programmer. I was doing all 3D related stuff, because we had no tools ready and no one did that before except me.
I have created a core 3D engine, rendering system, some plugins for 3D Studio MAX and then we were able to create scenes, calculate lightmaps, load it to the engine which was just a renderer. But when the actual production of the game started I've became a lead programmer of the game and of the Xtend engine. I have designed most of the XTend engine systems and was still working on all graphic related stuff for the game. It was call Creed in the beginning and was renamed to Kreed a bit later. When the game was finished other projects started on the same engine, like Kreed Addon: Battle for Savitar. I was supporting the engine and did many special effects for the game. Also, the currently released East Front (ÜberSoldier) game is also based on the XTend engine. I am happy that people extend it and create new stuff with it.

4Sceners: Can you tell us something about your current projects?

604 demo by AND. It only came 2nd at Paradox 2001, because the organizers wanted to win the compo theirselves!

AND: Not much actually. I can not talk about it, it's forbidden. But what I can tell you is that it's gonna be a huge next-gen console and PC project.

4Sceners: Are you playing games yourself, too?

AND: I used to play games a lot when I was a teenager. But it seems now it's not that interesting any more. The only one game which I still can play is Quake 3. I play it almost every day up to 30 minutes. It’s interesting that I didn't like to play it some years ago. I think it's now because of work. After a day of hard work you just want to take a rest and kick some asses. Today there aren’t so many interesting games to play. Last time I played Quake 4 and before that I don't remember what :) But I still like to play a lot of old games on ZX-Spectrum, Sega, NES and so on. Arcades mostly.

4Sceners: In which ways did your demoscene-background help you getting into developing games? Or developing better games.

AND: It helped me a lot to get into game development. I have written a 3D engine for demos, including realtime software renderer. So I had very good understanding how things should be done and how does it work. Later it still helped me very much from that point of view that I know how to get from the idea of something to the final result. It helps when I am working on special effects for games, because it's not enough to have a programmer and designer. Having someone who understands what to programm and what to draw is very useful. It helps me to create more advanced stuff. Of course now I don't do everything by myself, but I know how and what to do to get it. Without demoscene background it wouldn’t be that easy.

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