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               Bound onto the hot seat... today: Ray of .tSCc.
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UCM .... Moin Ray. The Atari scene must go on about one year without you, as the
         military service captured you. How do you  feel today as you can invest
         more time again into Atari'ing?

Ray .... Great, what else. Coding has been an important thing for me  during the
         last years, some sort  of passion if you want. And yes, like everything
         else  about my  personal life  coding  had  to  suffer  a bit  from the
         military service. Let's be honest about that, I think many of us had to
         do some kind of (military) service in their lifes and those would agree
         that it doesn't neccessarily remain a negative experience and it hasn't
         been that hard, eventually. It's been an interesting time to go through
         and now  I'm happy  to be 'back' having  collected  lots of  new coding
         ideas which I can put into action soon hopefully.


UCM .... You know, as you  left the  scene for  the army  last year, you  left a
         quite hungry comunity behind, so "Beams" and "Wolfenstein" had feed the
         hype quite well before and in the end the scene got nothing.
         Are those your top projects now?

Ray .... Yes that's  true. I planned  to finish "Beams" asap to clear up my head
         for "wolf3d" and other new projects, completely.


UCM .... Concerning "Beams"... how would you describe its  development state? Is
         there still that much to do or can we expect the demo in the next time?

Ray .... Many  things could  be improved  about the  code, actually. But I don't
         want to  lose my  way in  perfectionisim  optimizing  every  single bit
         leaving the scene  behind waiting, endlessly. As  said before I want to
         clear up my head, so  it's getting  time to  release the thing not only
         because the scene had to wait for almost a year or something.
         If I had to fix the development state in percent I would say like about
         80% since some textures, gfx, camera paths, timing and etc. are missing
         here  and there  but concerning  the code, it  is finished except for 2
         bugfixes, an endpart by remo was planned as well which brings me to the
         next question/answer...


UCM .... As we know, Remo  vanished for  long times without stepping forwards in
         coding, so "Beams" seem  to hang on you  more or less alone, how do you
         feel with that pressure in your back?

Ray .... The fact  that Remo seems to have left the scene for unknown reasons is
         a bad pitty  to me. I feel like  his quitting itself is a greater shame
         than a  demo or  something having  to suffer  from it simply  because I
         don't know  what happened to him at all and why we can't get in contact
         with him  anymore. That  guy was on  his way to  get a  kick-ass coder,
         honestly. He kept having/implementing great ideas which got even better
         after he got to coding his stuff in 680x0 assembler - believe me, I had
         seen some  previews. I'd really have liked to work together with him in
         the future but now things went that way.
         So, remo, if you happen to read this please give us a lifesign.

         Regarding  the  pressure on  my back  I have to  say that  I've stopped
         feeling  pressure at all. I got fed up with feeling like I'd have to do
         things  on my own, completely... and I  think many sceners tend to feel
         the same  nowadays, for  instance take you  or STS with standing almost
         alone  writing your  diskmags which  is just funny  because that's what
         causes the dilemma in the first place:
         I as coder  would have the  possibility to "saturate" the  scene with a
         new demo or something similar but  for one reason or  the other I'm not
         able to code anything during a  certain period and the  scene goes like
         "lazy coder bastard" or  something. But  should I feel pressure because
         of that?
         Sure, it  isn't the most  refined thing  to let you wait  for a project
         that long. But if it doesn't work out for me to do any code due to lack
         of  creativity  or  anything   for  some  time, is  there  a  sense  in
         convulsively  releasing loads of crap instead in order  to just release
         anything, at  all? That's  like saying  "Hey  guys, look here, I'm  not
         dead, yet!" just to make sure everyone knows it.

         To me it  makes more sense  to produce  stuff only if you feel like you
         want to  do so or  if  you're  in a creative  mood and  not  because  a
         comunity  fearing their  platform  might die out  demands it. The whole
         demoscene is about  fun and releasing demos should be nothing more than
         a hobby, plainly because it isn't - it's obvious that Atari (I mean the
         company) is dead, so what's the deal, should that stop us from going on
         producing  code running  on their  hardware or  even worse should  that
         force us to yell at each other just because someone isn't interested in
         Atari anymore? You just have to accept that...so what?


UCM .... I guess you  are fed up with  falcon coding  after the "Beams" odyssey,
         aren't you, or have you already other ideas in mind?

Ray .... No, I'm not. I got very curious about what I could do with the DSP, for
         example. Laugh  at me but as mentioned above I collected loads of ideas
         during my military service  such as a video codec, a decent and modular
         demo engine, a 3d API etc. everything for TT and Falcon computers yeah,
         yeah, I  hear you  say: "For heaven's  sake, why  that TT thing" - it's
         just that  I like to work  with that machine  and no one seems  to ever
         have coded TT specific stuff, which doesn't neccessarily mean it has to
         be Falcon incomatible software at the same time.


UCM .... Topic "Wolfenstein", that  was laying so  long on ice that I don't even
         remember right when  the last preview  was released, is it easy for you
         to dive  into your old  sources? I know that you announced to start the
         work on this project again.

Ray .... Yeah, you're right those sources seem to  have gotten old. And it isn't
         very easy to get into it after this had rested for so long, that's also
         true. But in  general I still  know what I meant  and I can  follow the
         lines of  code I've written  down there. So  after a couple  of days of
         work I believe I could continue the project, too.


UCM .... When can we expect the first major steps in  its development? Still the
         essentials  aren't included, but  anyway, what  will be the  things you
         want to include as next?

Ray .... True, at  the moment this  is nothing more  than a 3D  engine, the next
         steps on the way to game are sprites as it had been planned a long time
         ago. This way  we may add  some "spice" to  our maze in  form of static
         items at first, like tables, pillars, pickups and so on.
         The  next major  step would be  some sort  of AI taking up  the work of
         moving  sprites to control  and animate your enemies, as obviously they
         have to behave in some way, i.e. they need to move towards and shoot at
         you :).


UCM .... While  you were  working on  "Wolfenstein" some  other  quite  good W3D
         routines popped up, esp. the  one of Defjams "Posh" and Ear_X' rout for
         the current UCM intro. What do you think about them?

Ray .... I admire both  engines, for their speed and especially Defjam's for its
         features like mapped floors/ceilings and animated textures. At the same
         time I have to say that I'm not going to compete with any of them since
         my goal was to recreate the  game, plus it should be  playable on plain
         ST machines. I didn't  ever intend to  release it as a  demo screen  so
         please don't  blame me if  my engine is worse  and keep in mind that it
         has to be much more flexible in order to work as a game not as a "mere"
         demo screen.


UCM .... Have you ever thought to join forces with other coders to  speed up the
         development a bit  or is it your  very own project? I know you invested
         a lot of your heartblood into it.

Ray .... Concering "Wolf3d" I want to finish the project on my own, since as you
         say it has  been started  as "my very own project", so in it's  current
         state it would possibly be very hard for someone else to dig through my
         code, you know.
         But in general I would have  nothing against  joining forces with other
         coders to produce projects a more professional way, maybe this might be
         an option for the future, dunno?


UCM .... Ok... as we  know .tSCc. always  say "no promises - no demands"... what
         are your dreams to do after you finished "Beams" in the first place?

Ray .... As I said, I'd like  to start experimenting with the Falcon's DSP and I
         would like to start programming  more "professional" software  or maybe
         some new  games (?) because you can't go on coding demos all your life,
         there simply isn't any demo effect which has not been shown yet in some
         way, in my opinion.


UCM .... So we reached  nearly the end  of this small "up-to-date" interview, if
         you  have something  to add here, to greet  someone or  something  like
         that, do it now.

Ray .... I like to  thank anyone who  has managed to stay  active on Atari until
         today. What I'd  like to add: hat off to Ear_X and Lineout for bringing
         some fresh air into the scene with some  hifi code/demostuff, Reservoir
         Gods  for  the  same  reason  and  for  their  nice  games  popping  up
         frequently, Defjam for  surprising ST fans once more  during  the EIL3,
         Charon for  surprising us  with his  unexpected  kick-ass DSP abilities
         (even  though everyone thought "_" was a "Hmmm..." ripoff, which is not
         true in my opinion).
         Finally, I'd  like  to  spell out  my best  hope for  the long  awaited
         Coldfire Atari. If it  would eventually  make it  that would  be a true
         step forward  for the scene, even more than the not less worthy CT6o as
         I believe.


UCM .... Thanks,  mate. That's  all, hope  you  didn't  felt  too  uncomfortable
         answering the questions, but you know, the scene already smashed an eye
         on you and is hungry for the things to come :)
         Stay cool and take care!

_________________________________________________________________moondog_o3/2k4_