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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 I, Peter Dell aka JAC! am one of the members ever since. I have created this website 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. To learn more about me and what I'm doing, check out this personal interview that I gave for ANTIC - the Atari 8-bit podcast.
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On March 11 2023 Andreas Gustafsson, aka. Shadow (Sdw) died unexpectedly in an accident.
I was returning from Midwinter Meeting when the news reached me. Just two weeks before I had sent him my appreciation for the beautiful latest Atari VCS release he had created with Mermaid. Andreas was an absolutely outstanding demoscener in many regards. Not only he created over 130 demos - each of them was a gem and some even milestones. He had the unique passion and ability to create demos on essentially everything that consumed electricity and that could be programmed. His skills were not only in the area of coding but also in the area of design. He always impressed me with the color schemes he used and with the brilliant ideas to overcome the limitations of every piece of hardware. His work was a source of true inspiration for many of us and for me personally. Some of the best demos I ever did were nothing but humble attempts to adapt his ideas.
He was always kind and helpful to many of us, and I am happy that I could help him a few times when the chips in the Atari didn't want to obey his commands. I owe him many cheerful moments in my life. We've lost one of the best and I am deeply saddened that I have to write these lines. If you have something you'd like to express, you can write in his obituary.
You can find the list of his releases on these websites and I'm fairly sure none of them actually covers all of what he did. The screenshot below needs no further explanation.
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Finally, I've managed to fill the pages for the Atari Action! system and the Atari Action! Editor with content.
The Atari Action! manuals in English and German are now also included in the Sourceforge repository.
The Atari Action! Editor manuals in English and German are now also available there as separate downloads.
The previous download of the temporary versions from wudsn.com has been removed. The official builds are now always at Sourceforge.
- Binaries: https://sourceforge.net/projects/atari-action/files
- Source Code https://sourceforge.net/projects/atari-action
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This release lays a new foundation for WUDSN IDE in many respects. The inner structure of the IDE has been reworked, so it can be extended to other languages beyond 6502 assembly languages. The main reason for this is that I want to make it the primary development environment for Mad Pascal. I consider Mad Pascal the most important step forward in development for my beloved Atari 8-bit platform. Its perfect integration with Mad Assembler finally offers the opportunity to use the best of high-level and low-level languages in one project. The level of reuse possible via Mad Pascal Units is unmatched in the 8-bit world.
Java and Eclipse
- The minimum requirements are the same as for WUDSN 1.7.2, i.e. Java 11 and Eclipse 4.19 or newer.
Installation
- Perform a new fresh installation using the new WUDSN IDE installer scripts.
They are available for the 64-bit versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux. The installer will automatically download and install all required components like Java, Eclipse, compilers, tools, and example projects. All information is available on the updated Installation page. The installer replaces the previous Windows-specific "zero-installation" downloads. As opposed to the "zero-installation" downloads, the new installer scripts allow installing WUDSN IDE into freely chosen folders on your hard drive. This way you can also have multiple installations in parallel. - This a major version change, so a new empty workspace folder for the new version.
The installer creates such a folder for you. If you update or install manually, make sure to use a new empty workspace folder or delete the ".metadata" folder in the existing workspace folder. Otherwise, you will see errors caused by incompatible settings and entries from the WUDSN IDE 1.x.x versions.
Releases
- Stable and daily versions are now available via separate update site URLs.
The recommended version to use is the stable version. The daily version is available, so bug fixes and new features can be tested by reporters before pushing them to the public. - The new default updates site URL is https://www.wudsn.com/update/stable
The old https://www.wudsn.com/update update site is no longer available.
If you need to install old versions of the plugin, use the version-specific update site listed on the Releases page.
Source Code
- All WUDSN IDE-related source codes are now available on GitHub
- https://github.com/peterdell/wudsn-ide-install - WUDSN IDE Installer
- https://github.com/peterdell/wudsn-ide - WUDSN IDE
- https://github.com/peterdell/wudsn-ide-tools - WUDSN IDE Tools (assemblers, compilers, ...)
- https://github.com/peterdell/wudsn-ide-projects - WUDSN IDE Example Projects (for every target platform)
- This way you can more easily download individual files and follow the progress of the projects.
Bug Reports and Feature Requests
- You can now report bugs and file feature requests directly via GitHub.
Just click on the Issues section of the respective project. This also enables you to vote for fixes and features, comment on them and receive notifications when something was created. Feature Requests should be tagged as "enhancement".
Source Compatibility
- All source code from previous versions of WUDSN IDE will continue to work in the new version.
- Use the new annotation prefix "@com.wudsn.ide.lng" instead of "@com.wudsn.ide.asm".
The old prefix is deprecated because the IDE now supports multiple languages. Using the old prefix results in warnings during compiling for now.
Behind the Scenes
In the course of the past 14 years, WUDSN IDE had grown immensely and the creation of a new WUDEN IDE release became increasingly complex: more assemblers, more support target platforms, and more requests for operating systems like macOS or Linux. Because building a release consisted primarily of manual steps and testing was tedious to impossible (for example I didn't own a macOS machine). So something like a preview for testing was unthinkable without investing a whole day of work. In the end, I didn't even want to code something in the IDE anymore, because 5 minutes of coding resulted in hours of painful post-processing.
But since I want the IDE to continue and evolve, I've now invested several months to break the vicious circle and make my development cycle ready for prime time. This included:
- Splitting up the sources
- Getting familiar with git after all
- Moving all sources to GitHub
- Establishing issue management Github
- Buying an Intel-based MacBook Pro
- Buying an M1-based Mac Mini
- Setting up Linux VMs for development on macOS
- Setting up Linux VMs for testing on Windows
- Creating and testing installation scripts for Windows
- Transcribing the installation scripts to Unix shell scripts
- Testing the installation scripts on macOS
- Generalizing the installation scripts for Linux
- Creating test scripts for automated tests on the development machines (aka. "Does it work here?")
- Creating test scripts for automated clean-installation tests on the test machines (aka "Will it work there?")
- Reworking all source code to use the language as an additional dimension
The process took several months a now it finally pays off. I guess that's where all progress comes from: Underestimating the actual time and effort something will take :-). This is what my new workplace looks like and below that picture you can find a short video (German language) where I demonstrate the new workflow when using GitHub.
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- Joomla and PHP have been upgraded to up-to-date versions (4.x,/8.x). Also, I've reduced the number of modifications to the template, so future updates are easier for me. The look of the page changed slightly because of that.
- The Sillyventure 2022 Winter Edition page is finished, including a snapshot of the Silly Venture website content, my picture, and the link to Wingman's very nice party report.
- There have been problems with my monthly backups and the WUDSN IDE download had to be restored, they may be partly broken. I hope I'll find the time to fix this asap.