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Welcome to the WUDSN ursel home page
WUDSN ursel - or short WUDSN - is a demo group founded in 1991 . There is an explanation why the group and the site are named like that, but that's a different story you can find in the FAQ. For the time being it should be sufficient for you to know that me, Peter Dell aka JAC! am one of the members ever since. I have created this web site to offer my tools and productions and to share the fun I have had for more than 20 years now with my Atari-8 bit computer and other classic computers. 2013-03-18 Easy math for bulb@Since bulb@ had some trouble understanding my comments on Ye Olde Plasma and seems to be new to the Atari scene (and actually also to the rest of the scene if not even the whole world) I decided to follow his suggestion and add a little guide here. The Atari Composite file format is a segments file format originating from Atari DOS 2.5. Each segment consists of the start address and the (inclusive end address). The first segment requires $ffff as additional prefix, adding a total of 6 bytes to the file length a minimum file. Though this header is larger than the 2 byte C64 header it is still much smaller than the header of for example Atari ST executable format. Therefore compo rules of Atari related parties like Forever take the header into account and refer to the file size, like this is done on most other platforms. This means that this actually quite nice intro does not fit in to the 256 bytes category on Atari 8-bit. So bulb@ selected the wrong category, but hey that happens. And instead of starting to bash him, I contacted the coder Dimitry instead, sent some respect for cross platform coding and gave some tips on how to even make this better and smaller. I like the scene, competition and exchanging ideas with cool people. I actually don't like trolls, though.
2013-02-22 Site updateThis week I attended a course about "Sematic web technologies" at the Open HPI university where I learned new things about RDFa and Microdata . So I tried enriching my site and ended up with one of the "One day I will..." improvement which have been planned for too long. The list of productions on the Atari 8-bit tab is now generated in PHP based on a simple CSV file. The resulting HTML contains all semantic information about the productions, so search engines can use it. See what the Google Webmaster Tools can get out of this now.2013-02-09 SillyPack 2k13 releasedOn Thursday Grey announced that 2k13 IS going to happen, today my 1st price for RGBA arrived. And it works perfectly with AspeQT and POKEY divisor 0 at 125.000 kbaud. Well, that's what I call motivation - Count my in for SillyVenture 2k13!
2013-01-17 SillyPack 2k12 releasedThis pack contains a disk image in MyDos format with all Atari 8-bit releases of SillyVenture 2k12. The disk was originally compiled by PIN/TRISTESSE. I felt this is a good idea and SillyVenture deserves a good presentation, esp. the graphics and music releases for which no art pack/music disk exists. This is an updated version with a proper results viewer which also acts as a menu from where you can directly start all releases and read the readmes. The menu remains memory resident, so you don't have to load it again every time. This makes watching the graphics entries and listening to the music entries much more fun, esp. on the real machine. These are the controls for the menu:
2012-12-24 RGBA - 1st place and final version releasedRGBA yielded the 1st place in the Atari Intro Competition at SillyVenture. Though the party version was way tooooo long, the youtube video of RGBA got 1000 views in only one week! And in two late-night coding sessions I have now re-synced the whole thing. The result is the final version which has 4 times faster transitions, less text and much a better pace. The new version including the sources are available on the Atari 8-bit tab. And the best thing for me after all was finding this one. A true Atari guy stunned by the unexpected demo ending. It really made my day :-)![[65XE] WTF? Crazy Demo Crash Craziness!!](home/news/images/2012-12-24-rgba-wtf-video.png)
2012-12-09 RGBA - Rasters Girls Beer Atari released at SillyVenture 2012Once again I totally failed. Once I again I decided to enter a limited size competition because "with less space I'll be done earlier". With 10974 lines of final code, this became the largest project I've ever had so far - once again :-). All packed into 16k together with 2 girls, great music by 505 and a nice 70'ies Disco font by OOZ giving 7 minutes of effects. Fun fact: The original of the KickStart ending screen was coded 21 years ago to the day - back in 1991 on my Amiga 500 in my teenage room.
The download archive is available on the Atari 8-bit tab and contains a pre-configure Altirra emulator. I strongly recommend using real hardware and TV set or Altirra if that's not possible. I also created a youtube video, but as usual 30 FPS cannot give you the real feeling and smoothness. 
2012-08-14 Fujiama 2012 - Lots of code, fun and beerFujiama was simply great again. I finally met 505 of Checkpoint in person, made some WUDSN customers like happy (hi 1ng), made some "prospects" new customers also (hi Norbert, I'm 'looking forward to the final Asteroids emulator) and got to know new coders (hi RA). Sascha created a great time lapse video. Click on the image below to watch it online. By the way, the small green point that doesn't move away from the keyboard all the time is me :-)
2012-06-09 WUDSN IDE update 1.6.3 releasedAfter my vacation I was sufficiently relaxed to sit down and decide to get ONE thing DONE instead of starting the next cool - but never finished - thing. So here's the update the C64 people have been waiting for (too long). The parser has been extended to handle the block definition of KickAss. Also the Apple II support and the dynamic online help have a stable state now. Here's the complete list of enhancements and fixes.Menu
Preferences
Fixes
2012-07-28 Radek - you are not forgottenOne year ago, Radek Štěrba, also known as R.A.S.T.E.R., left us forever. In a few days we all will be be at the Fujiama Party - and we all will remember you. This year in in all the year to come.2012-07-12 Apple II - late birthday presentWhy oh why am I so easy to distract. I hope the C64 people forgive me. Triggered by all the buzz about 35th anniversary of the Apple II , I had a look at the platform again and at the mails Nick Westgate wrote me quite a while back. The key issue was that there no such thing as defined executable format on the Apple II. Everything is strictly bound to the DOS and hence to the disk image. But when I realized the possibilities which arise from the idea of creating disk images directly as part of the IDE, I simply had to go and try it. Now WUDSN IDE supports the full develop, compile executable, build image, inspect image and run image required for Apple II. And I have written my first Apple II program to send greetings to the people who helped to make this work.
2012-07-10 Site updateAfter fiddling around a lot with validators and selfhtml, I finally managed to make the site work again. I should now also work fine in FireFox. The Facebook button remains removed until I found out how to make it an asynchronous call. Otherwise the site takes ages to come up.2012-06-30 Open Source - supporting and getting supportI know I should rather get KickAss up an running correctly, but I had some many new ideas and input in the past two weeks that I simply had to try out a few things. In particular I found that supporting other people and getting support becomes more important as the IDE grows. I have worked intensively on Apple II support and have a first prototype running. Thanks to Sean, Nick, Brendan and Robert for their support. The major steps towards improving WUDSN IDEs features are related to three projects: AppleCommander, JavaHexEditor and Jexel.Currently I am working on my contributions for all of then, so I the next versions of these tools are ready to be included into WUDSN IDE. This way i can support other projects, keeping the WUDSN IDE's own code base small. AppleCommander will be used for creating disk images, i.e. the IDE will learn to put the output files directly onto bootable images. JavaHexEditor will be refactored and its core will be the basis for the improved Hex Editor in WUDSN IDE. It will be much faster, functionally complete (cut/copy/paste) and work for files or arbitrary size. Finally Jexel will be used as expression parser for a built in calculator/cheat sheet, which was inspired by Barbarossa's feedback at CSDB.
And besides this, there are also two more video tutorials available now.
2012-06-28 Fujiama Party 2012 - See you all in Lengenfeld6 weeks to go! on 10th-12th of August Fujiama Party 2012 is taking place again. A long weekend with Atari and other nerdy systems and nerdy people in one place. Visit the official web site , register yourself and spread the word. Unfortunately it's also the weekend when Evoke takes place, I won't be not be at Evoke (of course :-). The bad news is that I didn't finish it because of this, the good news is that I have enough time to get completely lost in WUDSN IDE enhancements.
2012-06-12 Celebrating 3 years WUDSN IDE - 6500 hits - 1000 views for the video tutorialToday it is exactly 3 years since I've release version 1.0.0 of WUDSN IDE - (to himself) Wow. I can safely say that I never thought it would become so rich in terms of features and so widely used in terms of platform. Even more, I am sure it would have failed if I had started out with these goals in mind. The same goes for the video tutorials. I started them because I found it too hard to re-write the feature list into a proper documentation. And they turned out to be the based way of getting information to the consumers. With the new recoding equipment this also easy for me and I plan to create a "Coding an 8-bit oldschool cracktro in 15 minutes" tutorial soon after the next release.
2012-05-30 PayPal, Facebook ... and some really useful thingsUseful things first. As a learning from "update disaster", I have extended the update site. If the update fails for whatever reason or if the installed version turns out to have severe issues you can uninstall it via the link "What is already installed" in the "Install New Software..." dialog and restart the IDE. Then you can reinstall the latest version from "http://www.wudsn.com/update" or previously released versions starting with 1.6.0 from "http://www.wudsn.com/update/1.6.0", ""http://www.wudsn.com/update/1.6.2", etc.For those who like the IDE I have added buttons on the header to donate via PayPal or Flattr or simply give kudos via Facebook . 2012-05-16 WUDSN IDE update 1.6.2 releasedA bug in 1.6.1 can cause lockups when typing the "." of a directive which starts with ".". This should be fixed in this version, if not, please notify me. Platforms
2012-05-12 WUDSN IDE update 1.6.1 releasedAfter 13 months of development, the new version is ready and released. It contains so many improvements and fixes that the most difficult part will be rolling them all out in a structured way. That why I'll group the features and fixed together per topic this time and mention the same thing multiple time when required. Currently I am not even sure if a single release news video will be enough to cover everything without driving me crazy and without demanding too much from the audience. And of course they will be bugs but I think the best way to find them it roll the version out to you. The new features are not yet described on the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE and also there a no screen shots yet, but they will follow.Installation
2012-03-21 WUDSN IDE Tutorial part 7: New features in version 1.6.0After 10 months, multiple adapters, cables, drivers and failures I finally managed to buy a working USB head set which is compatible with my PC. So I am able to continue my tutorial series today and present the new features and fixes.
2012-02-23 Visdom I and II story and fixed versionsI don't like bugs and they keep bothering me even after many years. What I did this week are very likely the most delayed updates in the 8-bit system history . On the tab Atari 8-bit (previously named "Productions") you can now find only 19 respectively 21 years after the original release ...
2011-12-09 Teenage dream challengeToday I started with the ambiguous assembler project I ever did. In the 1990ies I used ATMAS the largest project were around 1.000 lines of code. Visdom II took 6 months of coding on an Amiga 500 cross-development system and has about 2.000 lines of code. Thanks to MADS and WUDSN IDE, I could create Silly Things within 3 months and the result has 10.000 lines of code.The new project exceeds this in two aspects:
2011-11-13 Sillyventure 2k11 - .. and how it endedWhen Grey and I discussed the compo rules for the VCS compo, I also suggested limiting the cartridge size to 8k . One the one hand 8k was the typical size many real cartridges. On the other 8k can be filled within some weeks for sure, so I won't spend so much time on the demo. And in fact, all effects were ready after 6 weeks . And they took 12k. Damn. Consequently I spent 4 more months reworking and code in order to squeeze it into the 8k boundary. At the same time I was hoping and waiting for Jakub Husak to complete the tune for which I had reserved 1k. The first deadline passed and in the night when the extended deadline also passed, Jakub sent the final tune. After 1 hour of tracking down a bug in the player routine, it compiled properly and reported: 335 bytes free. WHAT? 335 bytes free? I cannot release an 8k demo with 335 bytes free . So I sat down and added again most of stuff and details which got removed in the months before. 4 hours later, i.e. 2 hours after the extended deadline, I sent my mail to Grey ... who had extended the extended deadline meanwhile ... thanks ;-)The result is ISO which went 1st place in the first VCS only demo compo in history. It also climbed up to the 3rd place in the top of the month of Pouet and received a loot of nice feedback. Thanks for all your votes! 
2011-11-03 Sillyventure 2k11 - How it started...In March Grey^MSB contacted me and asked if I would contribute a demo for Sillyventure 2k11. Well, creating Silly Things took the whole three months of my parental leave for my youngest daughter. Therefore my immediate reply was: Sorry, I cannot beget another child just to have enough time for a new release. Then he told me that he already has two possible entries on VCS and he was looking for a third one in order to hold the first VCS only demo compo in history. My first tough was: OK, the worst then is becoming third - that's cool. I immediately started coding on VCS and my first VCS demo BeamRacer was released in the Oldschool 4k demo compo at Revision 2011 . There I had the same problem as the two VCS demos in the Sillyventure 2k10 combined demo compo: 4k Amiga demos simply look more impressive, especially if most people don't even know about the VCS and it's restrictions. So it ranked 5th in the compo, not bad for a first release though. Also there was a lot of trouble getting it on the big screen. Therefore I had to tweak the faster and more colorful final NTSC version (left) into a slower and less colorful PAL version for the beamer (right).
2011-10-29 ABBUC JHV 2011The JHV (AGM) is over and here are some impressions. After getting lost in the "Palz" due to my outdated navigation system, I even managed to arrive just in time. It was a joyful day with playing Warlords and impressing people with the preview of me new VCS demo for the Sillyventure 2k11 . Later in the evening, mega-hz, hias and I discussed the top-secret new hardware developments for the hardware contest 2012 .. and 2013. Thanks to the good reaction of mega-hz, the top-secret prototype is hidden behind his hand an a glass of beer.
2011-10-19 Atari Speed ReadingOne of the most distinctive features of the Atari is the fact that the program recorder uses one channel for serial data and one for normal sound. This means that you can replay music and spoken words during loading. Based on this feature, Atari released a number of educational software titles. One of them is the "Atari Speed Reading" course from 1981. On the picture below you can see Tigerduck an me after we spent the whole evening trying to sample the first tape using a notebook with AudaCity, a hi-fi system and put a back on a tape again. It took quite a while but finally we managed to find the right recoding and re-recording settings to make it work also on the Atari again.
2011-09-27 Site Update
2011-09-23 Site UpdateThe content has been split into into individual PHP pages. So instead of editing an HTML document with almost 4000 lines, I can not update more selectively and more frequently. In case you experience problem with the site now, please contact me.
2011-07-28 Rest in peace RadekOn this date, one of the most prominent, influential and gentle guys in the Atari 8-bit scene died: Radek Štěrba, also known as R.A.S.T.E.R.On 30th of July I was preparing my stuff for the Fujiama party. When I was there last year I met Raster personally after all the years of admiring him and using his tools, games, demos and hardware. He always had the strangest and funniest ideas what to do and how to do it on the Atari. We all competed in his multijoy game Cervi . He won - of course :-) 
I was hoping to see him again next week. Now I'm deeply sad and to be honest don't know how to handle it. I met him on the 30th of July, and that's also the day when I lost him. For those who did not have the chance to meet him personally, I recommend to have a look at the more then 100 releases from Radek. And that's only the software part. Therefore I provide here the English translation of Fandal's blog entry from 2008-01-28. Thanks to twh for the German translation . Tribute to RasterWhen writing something about Radek Štěrba you cannot but write in superlatives. For the majority of Atarians he is a living legend, simply superhuman, for some even a demigod. Imagine that. Raster is dedicated to software and hardware development, is an outstanding musician, graphic designer, coder and writes games and demos. In the world there are not many people like him, especially not here with us. When Jirka Bernášek (Bewesoft) and Davi Spilka (Datri) left the Atari scene, he had absolutely no competitors left in the Czech Republic and nothing indicates that this situation will ever change. So let us take a closer look at Raster.Let's start with software. The database on atari.fandal.cz contains more than 80 (!!) entries with his name - quite unbelievable. Some of the most famous games from Raster include undoubtedly the outstanding Naturix, Magnetit, Videopoly and Dangerous Street, as well as the games series created in cooperation with Robert Knill which includes Gunhead, Predator or Imagine which where. More recently he created incredibly popular Multijoy games like Cervi, Cervi 2, and Shot’em All. In the demo scene Raster scored a lot with his "Self Demo" and his 1kb intros with which he beat his competitors at the famous Forever Party on more than one occasion. Of course we should not forget the famous Raster Music Tracker, a Windows music editor which unleashed a real revolution in the musical development of the small Atari. Finally, Raster created a large amount of native and cross-platform utilities. All this is just unbelievable! And the list does not end with Raster’s software activities in the Atari Scene. He is also a hardware guru. By creating Multijoy Raster created an interface that makes it possible to connect 8 or even 16 joysticks to a single Atari. This hardware wonder allows you to play together simultaneously. Moreover, our hero is responsible for the S/XEGS RAMCart Project, a programmable 128 kB cartridge which supports the vast majority of our beloved Atari's cartridge types. At present Raster is working together with Bob!K on another - initially top secret - hardware project, which will make an impact again – you can be sure of that. To sum it up: Raster is a hyperactive Atari all-rounder, an Atari master at professor level, the driving force of Atari Club Prostějov, the first man in the Flop-magazine, a superstar with format who deserves a monument. He is by far the most notable and famous Czech Atarian of all time and his popularity will continue to grow every year. We can be glad to have him in our midst. I believe that not only foreign Atarians, but also people from other platforms are secretly envious of us. PS: If this tribute sounds like some heroic epic, then you should know that this is completely intentional. This man really deserves it. Someone just had to say it. 2011-04-02 IDE update 1.6.0 releasedAfter 5 months I have completed a new major update of WUDSN IDE with a bunch a new features and improvements. Some of the new features like the graphics conversion and the content assist for identifier are still "beta" but already usable and useful. For example the syntax highlighting sometimes detects keywords within other words. This will be corrected soon.Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots or click on the inline links
2011-02-23 ABBUC Awards 2010Normal ABBUC contests are exclusively for ABBUC club members. But since there are also a lot Atari people outside the ABBUC community, the ABBUC decided to also honor people and products outside the club in a non-monetary way. The so called ABBUC Awards are awarded for the best application, best game, best demo, best coder, best best sound, best graphics and best Atari related PC program. The decision is taken by a jury. This year I was part of the jury - but since I was also nominated in two categories, I was not allowed to vote in these categories. This is why I'm even more proud to be awarded in both categories: best demo and best coder. Congratulations also to the other winners!
2011-03-20 WUDSN IDE Tutorial Part 5 and 6By now you have seen a text editor with syntax highlighting and nice compiler configuration. The following part will show you what makes WUDSN IDE unique: The parser, the content outline and the hyperlink navigation integration for source files, binary files and identifiers. When I started implementation two years ago, I was dreaming of it but I didn't think it would be possible. But piece by piece it to came together. Of course it is not yet 100% complete, but, well, it never is ;-)
2011-03-14 WUDSN IDE Tutorial Part 3 and 4The feedback was very positive, so I sat down and talked to my computer again. Two more parts are finished. All parts are recorded in 720p HD format and best watched directly on youtube in full screen mode.
2011-03-12 WUDSN IDE Tutorial Part 2I never thought it'd be the case, be actually creating this video stuff is much simpler than creating a written tutorial. Any most likely more people will benefit from it than from any written document. So here it is. This time even with a reasonable screen resolution and aspect ratio (not 1400x1050) and with the mouse cursor visible.
2011-03-11 WUDSN IDE Tutorial Part 1For quite a long time, I've been thinking about creating a tutorial for WUDSN IDE and rather early I decided to go for a video based approach. Today I finally took courage and created the first part with the basic overview of what the IDE is, how it is installed and used.
2011-01-22 HomeCon 10After quite a long break, Tigerduck and me attended the HomeCon this weekend. So finally I found the time to test my 1st price from the Silly Venture competition. It contains a VBXE expansion which acts both as memory and graphics expansion. Unfortunately the additional plug was no standard VGA plug as expected, so I was not able to run VBXE games. But the memory expansion works fine, so I could test one of my forthcoming demos on the real hardware. The rest of the day we spent playing Robix in two player mode and finally defeated the first end boss. And as a special highlight for me, I won Rally Speedway against Tigerduck this time. The photo was taken by Boris, the issuer of the RETURN magazine, to whom I gave a short presentation of WUDSN IDE. Maybe I'll create an article for the mag with a short tutorial on the IDE.
2010-12-22 Silly Things - Fast Mix releasedMy "Silly Things" demo scored 1st place in 8-bit competition at Silly Venture 2010 . And I remember that when Grey/MSB told me that LaResistance is also going contribute an entry to the competition my thought was "OK, it's simply no use". Now I finally managed to create fixed version and the "Fast Mix" of the demo which contains even faster and smoother effects. So if you like it, I'd be very happy to get your feedback on Pouet where you can also find the download with all versions. Here is the capped.tv recordings of the fast mix.
2010-12-12 Silly Things - party version releasedThis weekend my new demo "Silly Things" was shown at Silly Venture 2010 . At least I hope so, because unfortunately I was not able to join the party and know nothing about the results yet. This is the first time I entered a demo competition - after 21 years of demo coding. But thanks to be wife - who supported my during the 3 months of development - and thanks to 505 and OOZ who provided the music and the graphics, this became what it is now: my best demo so far. I just can't tell you how excited I am to see how the competition will end.So if you like it, I'd be very happy to get your feedback on Pouet where you can also find the download. Here is the capped.tv recording.
2010-10-27 IDE update 1.5.0 releasedThis version has Eclipse 3.6.0 as minimum requirement. See the tab "Installation" for the description and the link to the Eclipse download.Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2010-09-01 IDE update 1.4.4 releasedHere it comes, the last version of WUDSN IDE which is downwards compatible Eclipse 3.4.2. All subsequent versions will require Eclipse 3.6.0 at least. Of course you can already update Eclipse to version 3.6.0 now to benefit from the new features like block selection mode.Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2010-08-24 Fujiama picturesFor those who were not able to attend "Fujiama 2010", here are some pictures to give an impression what was going on there at 12:00, 20:00 and 02:00am. I really recommend to everybody to plan to visit Fujiama next year and to have fun with all those nerdy people there.
2010-08-11 Site updateThe Atari convention "Fujiama 2010" is over and it was a really great experience to be with so many crazy people for 3 days. And it was really great to present WUDSN IDE and to make atarixlxe, Bernd, Dietrich and mega-hz new happy users. I got a lot a new input and ideas and there will be a new version of WUDSN IDE soon. Be prepared: It will be the last version which runs on an Eclipse version less than 3.6.0. The new Eclipse version will allow me to fix some UI shortcomings and also includes block selection mode. But don't worry. Updating Eclipse is as simple as unzipping a file to a folder and all you files and settings in the workspace will remain.The tab Productions has been updated with a youtube playlist overview and download entries plus the detailed story behind the "size-coding for fun" production "Dieter und Gisela ... wie die wilden Tiere in Nachbars Whirlpool". You can also comment on Pouet if you like. 
The tab WUDSN IDE has been updated:
2010-06-15 ABBUC Magazin 99 intro added and 20 € for youThis intro for the 99th issue of the ABBUC disk mag was released in December 2009 and was my first real Atari release after 7 years. You can read the entry in the Productions area for the details, downloads and story behind it and visit Pouet to leave some comments. Also this time I uploaded a recording to YouTube. But again the 50 FPS PAL recording end up in a jerky, blocky and clipped 30 FPS playback. The video looks really bad compared to the original. There will be a proper capped.tv upload in the future.
2010-04-28 IDE update 1.4.3 releasedAfter having recovered from BreakPoint 2010 I managed to compile a new version.Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2010-04-27 BreakPoint 2010 - The day after tomorrowBreakPoint 2010 was absolutely great. I never thought I'd be there and in particular not with my Atari. Since I was quite unprepared I had no camera with me and so there are only the pictures Mr. Curly from Abyss Connection took while I was running my demos on this Commodore monitor which did not like the composite signal at all. For those whole like to get a feeling of the party I recommend visiting the BreakPoint web site. In addition you should image a dark hall crowded with crazy people and huge posters like this one ;-)
2010-03-29 HomeCon 5 InvitationThe HomeCon is a small German convention for 8/16 bit consoles and is organized every 3-4 months in the area of Frankfurt/Germany. I have been there 3 times by now and have met many cool and crazy people. Based on some party coding I did to show the way WUDSN IDE works, I decided to promote the party by turning my party coding into a real invitation. Given that fact that there have been more than 400 views on YouTube already, I think it is really time to upload my latest production to my own site. Since the YouTube video is my first upload ever, then encoding is quite jerking and one sound channel is missing. So you might better check out the entry in the Productions area, read the German blog entry or visit Pouet to leave some comments.
2010-03-28 Site UpdateAfter a long period of being busy with things that provide money, I finally managed to come back to the things that provide fun. All the time I shied away from creating a new version of the IDE because I had a lot of changes to the site structure pending which I wanted to finish first. Now finally it's done. The WUDSN site is now member of the Atari 8-bit WebRing . Thanks to Raphael Espino for his support. In addition you can now find it via DMOZ Directory in the branch Computers > Systems > Atari > 8-Bit . And those who like that new way of chatting, you can now contact me via WUDSN on Twitter .2009-10-11 IDE update 1.4.2 releasedOnce again it's early morning and I'm finally done with packaging the new version. As usual you can update the feature via the update site. Note that the file format of the ".cnv" files for the graphics editor alpha version has changed incompatibly - and probably also not for the the last time ;-)Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2009-10-09 IDE update 1.4.2 announcedAs you can see it took far more time but now the features tab is updated. I have added all the new features of version 1.4.0 and also the features from version 1.4.2 which is going to be released next weekend. Originally I had planned to use "PNG" as the file format for the conversion files of the graphics editor. The idea was to store the converted image as thumbnail in the conversion file itself. This way you could have watched the conversion files in the Explorer directly without creating separate image files. I got the idea from the nice game "Crayon Physics" which I bought some time ago. There they use the "tEXt" chunks of the PNG file to store the level information together with the level map thumbnail. Unfortunately it turned out that - even after tweaking the registry - Windows refused to display thumbnails of PNG files if the file extensions was ".cnv" and not ".png". And since I want to keep the focus of this project I decided not to start creating C# code or DLLs to make that work. So I had to revert all my changes for the file format and that is the reason why there is no official version 1.4.1.
A major enhancement of the forthcoming version is the result of the past two HomeCon parties where I met many very nice people using Commodore machines. Some of them were very interested in WUDSN IDE an Draco provided me the ACME compiler and samples source (after he actually bought an Atari 800 XL, too ;-). So I added the support for multiple types of hardware, i.e. besides Atari 8-bit compilers now also C64 compilers and emulators can be added. 
2009-09-13 IDE update 1.4.0 releasedIt's 4 am and the new release is finally out. I'll just summarize the new features and updates here and update the "Features" tab tomorrow since I really feel like I ought to be in bed now ;-)Features:
2009-09-10 Finally Progressing - The Graphics PluginIts been a long time since the last update so here are some news. The assembler and editor part is almost complete with many major and minor improvements especially regarding MADS. The whole project has been restructured to allow the addition of C64 assemblers and the the new "Graphics" plugin. This plugin is what I've always wanted to have ever since I started cross-platform development back in 1990. Since almost 20 years now I've been converting graphics to and from my Atari using "for" loops and any language you can think of. But I never got to complete the interactive converter with parameters I dreamed of. The first trial was done in the language "E" on my Amiga, the next was done in Delphi on my PC both never could be finished. But now there Eclipse and SWT and finally there is a first working version. To be honest some parts of SWT are far more complex than back in the days on my Amiga or with Delphi controls. For example it took me 3 days and 2 tutorials to get a properly scrolling and resizing image area. But on the other hand you get really high execution speed, flexibility and it will run under any operating system.The alpha version will be part of WUDSN IDE 1.4.0. It includes loading and displaying fonts, bitmaps and sprites from Atari and C64 and the creation of ".cnv" conversion parameter files so you can repeat the conversion for example when the original files have changed. The conversion will also work in the other direction of course. New converters are pluggable via an extension point. 
2009-07-26 IDE update 1.3.2 releasedWelcome to the "M&M" release featuring support for Mac OS X and MADS content outline You can use the menu entry "Help/Software updates/Available Software" to update from version 1.2.0 to 1.3.2. Note you have to uninstall version 1.2.0 explicitly before installing version 1.3.2 this time because of the restructuring of the packages and extended preferences settings. After the installation the have to set some of the preferences again, since there are more options available now and some options have moved.
Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2009-07-22 Site Update
2009-07-12 IDE update 1.2.0 releasedAfter a major rework a lot of new features were added and the first usable version of the MADS integration is available now. Now "only" content outline and label file creation are not available yet. I know may people are waiting for the content outline, but I first had to get the syntax for all definitions of pseudo opcodes and directives straight and had to extend the parsing to block comments. Otherwise parsing for a content outline is simply not possible. And comparing the 61 definitions in ATASM (described in an English manual) to the 168 (!) definitions in MADS (described in a Polish manual) you may understand what kept me busy in the past weeks. And without the great support from Tebe for the technical details it would surely not have been possible! Also my wife did a great job in translating the relevant sections of the MADS manual for me, so thanks for that!Unfortunately the starting the emulator automatically on Mac OS X does not work yet. At least if have Mac OS X emulation up and running now for my tests and found out that the problem is passing parameters to the "open" command in addition to the binary file name. You can use the menu entry "Help/Software updates/Available Software" to update from version 1.1.0 to 1.2.0. Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2009-07-10 Visdom LogoThanks to Thorsten, the web-master of www.nizagam.org for creating the following absolutely cool impression of this historical moment of 1992. Funny, when I first created this site, I tried to do exactly the same using a face-morphing program. Well, the result was an epic fail. So I have added Thorsten's excellent version to the FAQ section.
2009-07-08 MADS and Mac OS XThanks for the support from Tebe regarding MADS and thanks for the support from Spookt regarding Mac OS X! Meanwhile a lot of bug fixes and new features are ready, especially the first version of the compile log parser for MADS works now. The sheer amount of 115 additional directives in MADS made it a tough job to get the syntax coloring correct, but now I'm through. So prepare for WUDSN IDE 1.2.0 next weekend. I hardly dare to think of the content outline parser, therefore that will be included at earliest in the subsequent version...2009-06-28 IDE update 1.1.0 releasedYou can use the menu entry "Help/Software updates/Available Software" to update from version 1.0.0 to 1.1.0.If you have problem during installation, uninstall version 1.0.0 first. Note that you have to do you compiler settings again since the data structure of the preferences was changed to support multiple compilers at once. Features: See the tab "Features" on WUDSN IDE for screen shots
2009-06-09 Site updateNew section FAQ added with "What is WUDSN?" and "Why did you create WUDSN IDE?"Broken links fixed, favorite icon fixed (moved to web root), XHTML errors fixed, e-mail scripted against spam. MADS support added as planned feature, provided there are people helping with that. Project creation example extended to directly open the correct editor. Screen shots added. 2009-06-08 First official version 1.0.0 of WUDSN IDE releasedI am very happy to announce that finally "WUDSN IDE", the free integrated Atari 8-bit development plugin for Eclipse is available.It features syntax highlighting, content assistance, content outlining and many more features which are helpful when developing 6502 assembler code. The first version is 1.0.0 and was released on 2009-06-08 . I have released it though I know about some bugs already, but - damn it - I need to get this web site up and running now. If you already have Eclipse 3.3 oder newer installed, just add http://www.wudsn.com/update to the available update sites and install the latest version. Click on the tab WUDSN IDE to get a complete overview of the features and the the instructions how to install and configure the plugin. 
What is WUDSN?Back in 1992 I was sitting in my room together with my friend Erwin Steif . There was a demo group called "Visdom" which produced demos for the Amiga and I was the "8-bit guy" in that group. I always tried to port the latest releases of my friends from the Amiga to my Atari, just to keep them angry. That day I was using DPaint 3 on my Amiga 500 to draw the "Visdom" logo you can see above. After a while I was very satisfied with the result. Then I left the room just for two minutes and when I returned there was no longer "Visdom" on my screen, but Erwin had all the letters mixed and mirrored. It looked like the drawing of a three years' old nerd who hit the mouse and the keyboard for the first time and it read "WUDSN". So Erwin smiled at me and announced: "I have just founded the first demo group which only consists of people who don't know how to code". Because I created the basis for the logo (actually I had to draw it again because my version had not been saved...) I became a honorary member of "WUDSN". Note that all this has absolute nothing to do with the Waseda University Doctoral Student Network (WUDSN) , except that we share the same acronym.Thanks to Thorsten, the web-master of www.nizagam.org for creating the following absolutely cool impression of this historical moment of 1992.
Why did you create WUDSN IDE?I've been working with Eclipse as IDE more than 5 years now. When I was in a different company, one of my team members created a small Eclipse plugin to integrate our repository and our pre-processor with the IDE to simplify the life of our developers. Meanwhile I am working for SAP and have no way of coding Java anymore at work, so I tried at least to code some Atari demos when I'm late in the office. But I could not find a reasonable, free editor which was legal and able to run ATASM (under Vista the output could not be captured). And then one day a colleague told me "Look I have created an editor with syntax highlighting and code completion in 1 day based on the 'xText' domain specific language (DSL) tool from openArchitectureWare . That was the day when my idea was born and two weeks later there was a first version for ATASM. Thanks to Alexander Nittka for that. But it was incomplete and the way the ATASM/assembler syntax work is quite different from todays XML like languages. As a result I got stuck. 4 weeks later my hard disk reported a physical error and than never reported anything again. All source where lost. Today I call it good luck, because I had to start all over and now have a quite good experience in what can be done in Eclipse easily and how. I also found the ASMPlugin for Eclipse on SourceForge. This plugin is targeted at x86 development on PC and it was the template from which I started to create my own plugin. Thanks to Andy Reek and Daniel Mitte for that. Meanwhile the IDE has matured and thanks to the continuous development of the excellent MADS compiler by Tomasz Biela (tebe) and the excellent Altirra emulator by Avery Lee (phaeron) it now represents probably the best cross-platform 6502 assembler IDE. Most features like content outline, hyperlink navigation and content assistances for opcodes, labels, macros and so on where only a far away dream when I started, but now they are for real and they become better with every release.Where can I find answers for problems regarding WUDSN IDE?First you should check the FAQ section on the WUDSN IDE tab. If you cannot find the answer there, you can use the corresponding threads I have created in the in English AtariAge forum or the German ABBUC forum . Of course you can also just write an e-mail to
or drop me some lines on
Twitter
.
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Welcome to "WUDSN IDE", the free integrated Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari 8-bit, C64 and NES development plugin for
Eclipse
WUDSN IDE combines the powerful capabilities of Eclipse with the speed of native 6502 cross compilers. If you already have Eclipse 3.6 oder newer installed, just add http://www.wudsn.com/update to the available update sites and install the latest version of the plugin. Click on the tab Tutorials to see the short video tutorials, the tab Features to get a complete overview of the all features and details and on the tab Installation for the instructions how to install and configure the plugin. In case of problems check the FAQ tab for answers to known problems. The latest version is 1.6.3 and was released on 2012-08-09 . If you have comments, bugs reports or suggestions, please contact me per e-mail to
or drop me some lines on
Facebook
Twitter
.
You can also use the corresponding threads in the com.sys.apple2 newsgroup , AtariAge forum , the ABBUC forum (German) , CSDB forum and NesDev forum .
When I was thinking about creating tutorials, I decided not to simply write text but to create short videos instead.
They are best viewed in full screen mode and in HD video resolution.
I think this is the best way to show how things are intended to be
used. On the other hand, these tutorials cannot
tackle every detail of a supported feature. So please also check the features section.
The latest version contains the following features:
General IDE enhancements » top
Fully integrated assembler editor » top
Content outline and source folding » top
Content assist and code completion » top
Hyperlink navigation » top
Creation of label definition files for emulators » top
Hex Editor » top
Graphics Editor »
Preferences for editing » top
Preferences for compiling » top
Known bugs » topOpen bugs:
Planned features » top
The installation steps are described here. In case something is not correct or not working, please contact me:
Installing Eclipse » top
Installing WUDSN IDE » top
Installing compilers like ATASM, MADS, XASM... » top
Installing Atari800Win and other emulators » top
Creating and compiling an example project » top
Here you can find the answers to some frequently asked questions. If your question is not answered here, please have a
look at the video tutorials or contact me.
InstallationHow to I install Eclipse at all?If you are no familiar with Eclipse at all, make sure that you have installed the Eclipse platform distribution only - without Java or J2EE tools. This distribution is much smaller (normally around 50-70 MB instead of 170 MD) and will not confuse you with tons of features and buttons you do not need at all. See the section "Installing Eclipse" on the tab "Installation" for the required steps.When I try to start Eclipse is get an error like "Failed to load the JNI shared library 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\client\jvm.dll'". What is wrong?The Eclipse version and the Java version on your system are not compatible. The Eclipse is not pure Java, but uses platform specific native libraries to run and debug Java efficiently. For example you must install the 64-bit version Java (JRE or JDK) if you want to use the 64-bit version of the Eclipse. This is a frequent issue under Windows 7, because be default there is only the 32-bit version of Java installed. See the section "Installing Eclipse" on the tab "Installation" for the required steps.How to I use Eclipse at all?Start the build-in help of Eclipse via the menu "Help/Help Content" and read the section "Workbench User Guide".
Why is WUDSN IDE not available via the update site?Most likely you typed in the wrong update site URL, for example using "wusdn" instead of "wudsn". The correct URL is "http://www.wudsn.com/update". In addition you should disable the checkbox "Hide items that are already installed", so you see what really is there. See the section "Installing WUDSN IDE" the tab "Installation" for the required steps.
ConfigurationWhy do I see wrong messages in the "Problems" view?The default configuration of the "Problems" view show all error from all files in the current project. While this is a good default for Java programming, it does not fit at all for compiling single independent assembler files. Therefore you have to configure the "Problems" view accordingly. See the section "Installing Eclipse" on the tab "Installation" for the required steps.EditingIs there support for source version control?Yes, there are several plugins available to connect Eclipse to CSV or subversion. Also the "Local History" feature is installed by default. You can configure it in the preferences. It automatically records all changes to the source file and let's you compare versions in-place.
Is there support for block selection mode?Yes, there is a toolbar button and the shortcut "ALT+SHIFT+A" to toggle block selection mode in all text editors. This can be very useful for adding and removing common prefixes such as line numbers.
In case the toolbar button is not visible, you have to set it to visible via the menu entry "Customize Perspective" in the context menu of the main toolbar. In the customizing dialog you have to activate the commend group "Editor Presentation" and then the toolbar entries you want to see. 
Why does CTRL-Space not open content assist?There is a known key conflict when using Messenger Plus Live! v4.85.0.386 with Microsoft Messenger 2009 on Windows 7 Ultimate. This may also occur in other version of course. Justin Payne has provided the following description of the solution.
CompilingWhy is MADS the primary compiler?When I started with WUDSN IDE, ATASM was the first support compiler. The reason was simple: 90% of my sources are in ATASM format. ATASM is very comprehensive and fast. Its capabilities to define constants an byte sequence is very complete (".BYTE", ".WORD", ".DBYTE", ".FLOAT", ."SBYTE" for ATASCII, ".CBYTE" for terminated strings, separate offset for all constants). Over time additional platform compilers haven been added and support for them will be completed step by step. When the support for MADS was rather complete, I found that it is the most powerful compiler I have ever seen and used. The support for ".PROC/.ENDPROC" has revolutionized the way I write assembler code now. It allows logical structuring and visibility control without any runtime overhead. At the same time MADS is compatible to MAC/65 and XASM and even ATASM sources can be adapted to MADS with a few minor changes described below. Therefore MADS is the primary compiler since WUDSN IDE version 1.6.0.Why do I get the error "No ORG defined" when compiling the example from the tutorial?Since WUDSN IDE version 1.6.0 MADS is the primary compiler which is registered for the file extensions ".asm" upon installation. You are trying to run the code example for version 1.5.0 or before, which is in ATASM format. Therefore you can either
How to I convert an ATASM source for to MADS format?Because both ATASM and MADS syntax are based on the MAC/65 syntax, there are not really many differences. Therefore manual conversion using "Find/Replace (CTRL-F)" is very easy.
How does ATASM generate segments in executable files?A helpful feature for small projects is that by default ATASM sorts the segments by address and warns if the same address is overwritten by code or data. Since version 1.05 the ".BANK" directive is available, which allows you to create COM files with "INITAD" segments and arbitrary segment counts. If you don't use the ".BANK" directive, ATASM will sort the segments by their address and will put consecutive blocks into a single segment by default. While this saves some bytes, it might be confusing if you are used to other assemblers. Note that you have to use the ".SET 6" directive to set the assembler origin offset in every bank if you use it in one of the banks.
; Bank 0
.bank .set 6,0 * = $8000 start lda #0 jmp * ; Bank 1 .bank .set 6,0 * = $2e0 .word start; ; Bank 2 .bank .set 6,$4300-$C000 * = $C000 lda #1 sta label+1 label lda #2 jmp * How do I compile ROM images?Plain ROM Images do not have header bytes by default, or at least they do not have the same header bytes as executable files. In order to create raw object files without headers, compiler specific options have to be used. Some cases are listed below. See the manual of the specific compiler for more details.
How do I compile into disk images?Atari 8-bitFor ATARI 8-bit, the ATASM compiler has dedicated parameter to write the executable file directly into ".ATR" or ".XFD" disk images. The disk image must be formatted with Atari DOS 2.0S, Atari DOS DOS 2.5 or a compatible DOS. All Atari 8-bit disk formats can be created using the "dir2atr.exe" tool of the AtariSIO tools by Matthias Reichl (hias). The tool can create a complete disk image with arbitrary DOS (Atari DOS 2.5, MyDos, SpartaDOS) and size based on a folder which contains "DOS.SYS", "DUP.SYS" (or the equivalent files of the respective DOS) and all other files requires. I have packaged an example including the "dir2atr" tool, a batch script to call the tool and the emulator and the "files" folder in this archive . Unpack the archive to your output folder. Double-click "makefile.bat" to see how the disk image is created and started. Read section How to run a makefile script instead of an emulator? for the details how to configure the call to "makefile.bat". For productive usage you should of course put the "hias" folder into a central location and use the most recent version from hias' site.Apple IIFor Apple II, WUDSN IDE automatically generates a bootable AppleDos disk image with extension ".dsk" if one of the predefined emulators is used for execution. If you want to use another DOS or disk size or if you want to but more files into the disk after compilation, you can use the command line version of AppleCommander to achieve this. Create a makefile script and configured it as described in How to run a makefile script instead of an emulator? .Other hardwaresIf you find a tool similar to "dir2atr.exe" for the Atari 8-bit or "AppleCommander" for the Apple II, you can use create your own script an run it as described in How to run a makefile script instead of an emulator? .How can I run a makefile or script instead of an emulator?Sometimes it is useful to run a makefile script instead of the emulator, for example if the output file shall be combined with other files into a single ATR file. To execute a such a script select "User Defined Application" as the "Application to open Output File". Specify the path to the shell as "Path to Application". In the command line you can then use the standard variables to start the shell, pass the name of the script and pass the file path of the compiled output file. Since the working directory at the time of execution is the output folder of the compiler you must place the script file there or you must specify the script file with its absolute path. If you are using Windows and "cmd.exe" as shell, you must specify "/c" before the name of the script to prevent "cmd.exe" from remaining as process after the script has finished. The resulting command line is "${runnerExecutablePath} /c makefile.bat ${outputFilePath}", assuming "makefile.bat" is located in the output folder". See How do I compile into disk images? for the example how to use this for compiling complete disk images.
A project like WUDSN IDE is not possible and not worth anything without the contributions provided by others. So here's
the list of credits of all involved people and related projects.
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Welcome to the Atari 8-bit productions of Peter Dell also known "JAC!"
It seemed that quite many of you know my "Visdom" and "Visdom II" demos. It also seems that some of you like them and like to know how I did them back in the "golden days". So here is the complete set of my releases. Actually it is not complete yet and you will find many "Coming soon" entries here, but is will be completed over time. For each of them you'll find a detailed description and the background story on the corresponding sidebar tab. All my releases are also uploaded on Pouet for the group JAC! .
Back in the golden times of 1991 everybody was chasing after the record for creating as many hardware or software
sprites as possible. My never released contribution to this was called NetBalls. Here is the
download
of the executable.
This fun production called "Dieter und Gisela bumsen wie die wilden Tiere in Nachbars Whirlpool" is a little 64 bytes
effect (58 bytes+6 byte file header) for the Atari 800 XL (PAL). I created it on 2007-06-06 between 23:31:00 and
23:57:14. In case you are familiar with German, please don't be offended by the title but read the explanation below
instead. In case you are not familiar with German: "Dieter and Giesela are fu..ing like wild animals in their
neighbour's whirl pool".
I had just re-discovered that there is this strange web-site called Pouet which is dedicated to demo sceners. I found out that I even had an account there which was created many years ago. But ever since then I never had the time to look after demos or to even create one again. So browsing through all the latest releases there I found "Dieter und Gisela trinken Limonade und Hören Beat" by Camelot and the comment from "am-fm" on the 2007-06-01. When I read that comment I first had to laugh out loud and immediately started Ultraedit and ATASM just to be the first to occupy that cool title. Indeed my first production after many years, yep, thanks am-fm! The effect will start right away from any game DOS or emulator and will change every 5 seconds.
What started out at
HomeCon 3
as party coding to show that modern laptops are really useful peripheral devices for 8 bit computer is not finally
completed: A real invitation intro for the HomeCon 5 party. As you could imagine it runs on an Atari 800 XL and was
created using WUDSN IDE. The executable, the sources and the
video
have
been published on
Pouet
. There I got quite a lot of positive feedback and finally my neat little production went up to the 5th place in the
"top of the month" on 2010-02-02. That's what I call product placement ;-)
Isn't it great that there are not movable dates. New year's day for example is always on the first of January. And for some years PPS has been collecting everything that the Atari fan community has created regarding X-mas, new year's day and anything else in the world that has 8 bit. This means pictures, sounds, games and demos. All that is compiled on one disc an then published for free as the New Year's Disc . It means a pretty variety for the "retro spare time" at the turn of the year. This year I had decided to take part in all this it soon it was clear what should be the contribution. It had started some time back... At the HomeCon 3 party I had spent my time with testing my 6502 IDE for Eclipse in a productive scenario. That meant to create some real executable Atari code instead of playing around with the IDE itself. Complexity did not have to be too big since the few hours of a HomeCon party are over quite fast. Fortunately I have quite a lot of unfinished and never released effect from my hyper active time 1990-1994. Many of these effects are conversions of Amiga Demos of that time. Of course, because firstly I had an Amiga and seconds those were the demo years. So my choice was the "Rainbow on Mars" sequence from Joyride by Phenomena . This one allows the Atari palette to show up nicely. A demo tune was also found quickly since about one year ago 505 from Checkpoint had sent my a disc with his creations. Then I painted the HomeCon logo on checkered paper and added the 2 bit planes fading effect which I had always wanted to create.
Where the ... is that charset now and why is the executable now loading properly, aargh, I have overwritten the DOS area, and now it is jerking because there's not enough raster time left ... after about 5 hours the whole thing was done and working on the real hardware. So I swiftly took a picture and a small video and then HomeCon 3 was over and almost nobody had seen the production at all. Well, damn. Finally I failed in uploading the video due to its file format and I failed with all the rest due to my missing spare time..
That meant I had some partly finished but not ready for releasing - as always. That really annoyed me. So I decided to turn the quick hack into a real release for the New Year's Disk 2010. I sat down after X-mas and reworked the whole thing: Replaced the tune, changed the loop into interrupts so the effect can run in parallel, added two scrollers, added up-scrolling of the rainbow effect, added fading for the logo, reworked the color scheme, wrote the scroll texts, synchronized the texts and the music, ported to inflate routine from FOX to ATASM to compress the rainbow animation (32k to 8k), created the loaded, optimized everything so it also works on NTSC. Done. It is 2010-12-31 17:45 and I am DONE. Even before the dead line- I can hardly believe something like this happened my life. At this point I really like to thank Nils for the great tune and above all to my wife who encouraged my all the time to get this one done. On 2010-01-01 the New Year's Disc was released and in parallel I uploaded the executable, the sources and the video on Pouet . And since that day I am as happy like a child when somebody adds comment, a thumb or a view.
The "Visdom" demo, called "Visdom I" after the release of "Visdom II" was coded on the Atari 800 XL with ATMAS II. The
idea of the demo was to port my favorite C64 intro (cracktro actually) by the
"Hotline" crew
to my machine because I simply loved the style and the "smooth criminal" tune. Since I never was into composing sounds
and didn't know much about creating sounds I had a problem. But there was an Atari Basic listing for a tune named
"Honkey Tonkey" in some printed computer magazine that I bought in the super market and so I ported the replayer and
the DATA statements into assembler. Maybe one day I'll find out the original author and send him some regards. See the Atari
version versus the C64 version below.
Meanwhile I also found some minor bugs in the demo and its successor. Fixed versions can be found on my web site. To be honest all bugs amount to the same root cause: I only had a quite bad color TV set at that time, so some flaws were simple not visible. But todays emulators and screens are merciless in this regard and I don't want to be blamed for a dutch color scheme after all these years ;-) Recently I also found and nice external reference on Page 6 : "Requires enhanced density drive. Another selection of demos from the Continent to show off the power of your Atari. The first is from Visdom with an excellent massive scroller with bendy letters and a rainbow added to the massive logo, obviously this is the source for the even better Visdom demo on The Halle Project. Next up Is a desktop type screen with messages scrolling in every possible direction. This is followed by an extremely busy screen with every type of scroll imaginable taking place at the same time. Four more demos include many bouncing effects and some great music and in one pressing the space bar gives access to a Ninja type game (although we're not sure if it is actually playable). Overall a nice disk, not as strong as some, but still with plenty to impress you and your friends."
The Visdom II demo is the second major mile stone in my demo career. It was created in 1992 and was the first demo that I
created as contribution for something like a computer convention and therefore the first demo for a large audience.
The "Halle Project"
was an Atari 8-bit demo compilation organized by Carsten Schmitt (CSS) for the computer convention in Halle.
This convention was the successor of the "Hobbytronic" which had taken place multiple times in the years before.
Many people were impressed by the
demo and in fact it is still one of my all-time-favorite creations.
Here's an excerpt from a
Page 6
article
"This is the official continuation of the Hobbytronic demos comprising demos from
groups all over Europe and presented on three disk sides! There are 5 demos each on sides 1 and 2 and 4 on side 3
ranging from the simple scrolling message to effects that
you have never seen before on your Atari. It is not possible
to detail every demo but if we could only select one it would be the Visdom demo on side 1. This has a large VISDOM
logo at the top with a scrolling message at the bottom. The logo is large
'hollow' letters which are filled one by one
with a rainbow scroll but what makes this quite stunning is that each rainbow scroll is different! This should not be
possible! At the same time the centre of the screen is filled with blended colours in a sort
of water reflection which
scrolls up the screen. The total effect is amazing and nothing like it has ever been done on the Atari Classic before.
This is just one of 14 demos to choose and many have a choice of music and other
effects by pressing various
keys (try
everything). This disk set represents the very best programming to be found on the Atari as those extremely talented
programmers from Europe squeeze every bit of power from the Classic. The ethos behind this demo is 'if
we can dream it, we can do
it' and boy, have they done it!"
It pushed the Atari to expose the maximum of colors in ways that were unseen before and which exploit many effects in the hardware that were unused or even unknown at that time. Therefore it also became a benchmark for Atari emulators later, as you can see in the screen shots of the Atari800 emulator for example. The demo was very unique at the time of creation and the main reason for that is that the process of creation was very unique in itself. It took 6 months of tough coding and designing... In 1992 I was stuck in the Germany Army. After 3 months of basic military service in Holland (i.e. near the end of the world), I ended up in Karlsruhe (i.e. at the end of the world). I was the only one out of 400 soldiers there who did not live in Karlsruhe but 200 miles away. As a consequence, I was the only person left at the barracks after 4 p.m. While the hours from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. where boring (cleaning the room, painting the tanks, reading porn ...), the afternoon and the evening were boring as hell. Even using retro communication systems was no fun there. 
Soon I figured out that the only solution was to bring my Atari XL computer there, including the Amiga 500 cross development system which I had created for my own purposes. The cross development system called DTrans consisted of a Seka Assembler used as editor, a modified ASM 6502 cross-assembler, a self-made connector cable to link the printer port of the Amiga with the two joystick ports of the Atari, and a self made OS ROM for the Atari. With a set of command shell tools it was possible to transfer single files from and to the Atari (put/get) or to even transfer complex programs consisting of several chunks of data (rec). The self-made OS ROM in the Atari checked for a pending transmission upon RESET and then booted from the Amiga with about 14 kb per second. It also contained a very specialized monitor which allowed fast analysis of programs and finding bugs. 
The later versions of the OS could also be loaded from disk into a modified BIBOMON board where I had exchanged the 16k ROM by 32k RAM with a battery backup. All together this was a very comfortable and powerful environment, comparable to today cross-development using emulators. And the KickStart power-up screen in the OS is something that I really miss nowadays. 
I created large wooden box (rather a cupboard) which contained two layers one for the Amiga and one for the Atari. Like on a modern computer table, the layers could be pulled out of the box individually. At the bottom of the box, there was enough space to store the Amiga monitor and the TV set for the Atari. Here a some impression from the last day at the army. On the second image you can see room mate carrying the parts of my wooden computer box 
So every day at 4 p.m. I opened my magic box, put the monitor and the TV set on top, pulled the keyboards and sat down on my chair in front of the box and started coding. The three main effects are the raster split logo, the "Wiggle" and the waving "ImpRes" pattern. The most sophisticated is in fact the "Wiggle". 
The raster split in the "Wiggle" effect uses two hardware effects at the same time. It is based on a self modifying kernel loop which delays the split of $d01a with 1 cycle accuracy. Since this is too coarse to achieve full coverage and reach every single pixel, the missile 0 is used in the 5th player mode of PRIOR and quadruple width to color the missing pixels. The original version has a minor bug when choosing the random colors for the "Wiggle" which results in sporadic artifacts created by missle 0 in certain color combinations. Therefore it is recommended to download this fixed version which prevents that and which is a single executable file which can be loaded from DOS. 
Discovering the famous "GTIA bug" was a side effect of trying to find the exact timing for the raster splits. Because the graphics 9 pixels were hard to distinguish on my old color TV, I used graphics 10 with a flashing color / luminance during the development to find the correct split and missile position (see "braxtab"). But for half of the pixels the missile position wasn't correct when I ran the split with graphics 9 afterwards. The investigation yielded what I called "ImpRes" (Impossible Resolution) because it was just a fake based on a picture pattern with a very special layout. It gives the impression of having 16 shades in a graphics 15 resolution in full overscan. 
I told TLB about my findings and he used the one pixel delay of "ImpRes" to let the converted version of Peachy's excellent snake picture look more natural in his part on the third disk of Overmind 
.
Some years later Polish coders started to exploit the GTIA bug in all variations to create interlace pictures (HIP,RIP,TIP). And though there is of course no "inventor" of the bug in the GTIA, I can fairly say that I was the first to exploit it. And yes - I'm fuckin' proud of it :-). While the demo runs, you can press "HELP" at any time to display info screens (German) which explain the effects in detail , contain the greetings, flame war against somebody who claimed to be the coder of Visdom I, funny nonsense and state that army suxx big time. Pressing "HELP" again displays the next info screen,"SPACE" returns to the demo main screen and "SHIFT" ends the demo and loads the next part of the compilation." Finally there is also a hidden part included to make sure nobody can claims he's the coder this time. 
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