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While "The!Cart Studio" is written in Java and runs where Java is available, having a native program version simplifies the usage for regular users. When macOS and Windows stopped supporting 32-bit applications some years ago, the existing native wrappers stopped working. I started working on a toolset that enabled me to create all native versions from a single Java source without copying and adapting countless files. I am happy to release the native 64-bit versions of "The!Cart" for Windows, macOS (Intel and ARM), and Linux based on my new toolset today.
I've also reworked all English and German text documentation and program texts again for correctness and readability using Grammarly. This includes over 600 adaptations.
As requested by several users, I've changed the handling of the cursor keys to require "CONTROL".Hence, you can now enter "+-=*" as characters in the search field.
The new version is available here for you to test.
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English is not my native language; though I use it daily at work, there's always room for improvement. So, I bought Grammarly and reviewed 240 articles on this site, the WUDSN IDE documentation and screen texts, and the "The!Cart Studio" documentation to improve wording, grammar, and readability. I've learned much and hope it will help you understand my writing better.
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I just finished reading the Hints & Tips for Video Game Pioneers book by Andres Hewson and Rob Hewson of the former Hewson Consultants. The book is very well-written and entertaining. It brings back the memories of when it all started on our beloved 8-bit machines. With all the background information and quotes, and interviews of many different people involved, it provides excellent insights. Many of the mentioned games I've not even heard of before. I recommend you buy and read it; it is worth the money.
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The "AtariSIO tools" are a set of command line tools to handle "ATR" and "COM/XEX" files. Mathias Reichel created them, and they are available on his website https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari. Since I am now familiar with Git and Git Hub and own an Intel & Apple Silicon macOS machine and a Linux VM, I've created binary builds and uploaded them to the WUDSN Tools Git Hub repo for your convenience.
Source: https://github.com/HiassofT/AtariSIO
Binaries: https://github.com/wudsn/wudsn-ide-tools/tree/main/ATR/AtariSIO/tools
- adir displays the directory of an ATR disk image.
- ataricom shows the details of an Atari COM/XEX file.
- dir2atr creates an ATR disk image from a folder of files.
The binary versions have been compiled by
- Peter Dell (linux-86-64, macos-aarch64, macos-x86-64, windows-x86-64)
- Sanny from AtariAge (macos-ppc).
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R.I.K. organized another edition of H.A.T.Z., and I had the luck of being there for full three days. On day one, I checked all the Atari computers I had brought. Then Roland Wassenberg and I reconstructed the type-in assembly game "Gunfight". Lots of fun with the assembly source not matching, and the assembly listing is even different from the printed memory dump. I think the author didn't use the assembler described in the book. On day two, I created a new version of "The!Cart Studio" with several fixes since the last stable release in 2020. I also managed to add support for the latest Boot Manager version from 2022, which has been used by all Homesoft disk compilations recently. The rest of the day, I coded in Mad Pascal and Mad Assembler to get the graphics and colors rights in a "soon" to-be-released game by R.A.F. On day three, I made "The!Cart Studio" work again with Java 8 so existing users can use it without problems. Thanks to Tron04 for the quick feedback and testing. Then I created a small tool in HTML and Javascript to convert texts for Mad Assembler. With this, I'll be able to improve the built-in help texts of MADS. Ultimately I spent the rest of the day enjoying the never-ending thrill of using tape drives. It is unbelievable what can go wrong - EVERYTHING!
Nevertheless, it was a great time with lots of fun. On day four, Tigerduck and I played a few rounds of Robix (by Raster) and Scorch (by Pirx and the team). And ultimately, with the support from the guys from Pigwa, my video tutorials are now all also available there for download - just in case youtube goes down one day :-)
Thanks to everybody who participated; this was a lot of fun. See you at Fujiama!