News and History

2009

2009/09: W Window System v1.4.5 released! It's now Debian packaged, updated to build with GCC 4.x, terminals build with Unix98 PTS, WLua interpreter builds with (latest) Lua 5.1 and manual pages are added to all games & apps missing them.
2009/09: Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is launched!
2009/08: Hatari v1.3 released! Has major DSP emulation and internal debugger improvements + many other improvements.
2009/08: Fixed GCC 4.x compilation warnings, added Debian packaging and long-lost documentation to Clac.
2009/06: Added conditional breakpoints support to Hatari debugger. They work a bit like Gdb watchpoints, but are for the emulated CPU + DSP registers and memory contents.
2009/05: Moved Hatari UI code to Hatari repo at BerliOS and updated it for Hatari v1.2.
2009/04: Had a Maemo presentation at FRUCT seminar in St. Petersburg.
2009/04: Spent 10 days in New York with Kirsi. We got over 600 photos, visited e.g. Harlem and the Apollo theater, but skipped (the queue) for Statue of Liberty... Favorite spots on NY:
- Cloisters (especially the surrounding park/garden and the views from it),
- Central park (and the Museum of Natural history at its side),
- Flatiron building (which seems like it's ready to raise anchors and sail away).
2009/01: Hatari v1.2 released!

2008

2008/11: Hatari v1.1 released!
(builds fine for N8x0 devices and includes readymade config for them)
2008/10: Debian packaged version of Mortar.
2008/09: Was at Maemo Summit 2008 in Berlin.
2008/02: Was at Tracing Summit 2008 in Montreal.

2007

2007/10: Hatari v0.95 packaged for N800.
2007/08: Was at Guadec 2007 in Birmingham.

2006

2006/10: Changed Clac license to GPL (from "freeware") so that it's more acceptable to FreeDOS.
2006/9: Hatari v0.90 packaged for N770.
2006/8: Updated + packaged Mortar for N770.
2006/8: Fixed a stack overflow in Clac.
2006/8: Hatari v0.90 released!
2006/8: Added page about Airstrike and level design and Airstrike design diagram.
2006/7: Announced Hatari for N770 (I've actually been working on Hatari for a few years, but now I also packaged it for N770 along with a few Atari ST games).
2006/6: Ported Ballerburg to ANSI-C and fixed issues with other C compilers. Translated it to Finnish and English. The new sources.
2006/5: Added my historical pages from 1997.

2005

2005/5: Was at Guadec 2005 in Stuttgart.
2005/4: Gramps v2 released.
2005/2: Added a couple of new screen update modes to Mortar game source code: either blit each updated screen area separately or coalesce successive regions together if they overlap. Earlier there was just max. updated area rectangle.
2005/1: Major update to the Gramps statistics chart plugin. Takes advantage of the report plugin API rewrite discussed with Alex Roitman.

2004

2004/10: Fixed compilation warnings in W window system and Makefile bug in the Wyrms W game.
2004/9: I created a bar graphics statistics report plugin for Gramps.
2004/7: I translated Gramps, the Gnome genealogy program to Finnish.
2004/5: Mortar updated. Nicer wind meter, frame time fix (game speed / CPU usage fix for fast machines).
2004/4: Thomas Huth kindly cross-compiled PUNSSi for Atari, so that I could include the binary with PUNSSi source code.
2004/3: Did some performance improvements for sound to the Hatari Atari ST emulator + minor code cleanups. I've heard that Hatari can be used with sound on some PDA machines, e.g. on Sharp Zaurus.
2004/2: I found the code for my PUNSSi game from one of my old Atari floppies, so I put it up here. I also added links to Solarwolf graphics I've created (both of these things are under GPL).

2003

2003/6: Mortar has new cannon and shot images and some Makefile improvements.
2003/5: Added SDL backed to W Window System, updated W-Lua interpreter to Lua v4 and updated the HTML documentation to current state. W toolkit is now in the same package with the rest of WWS.
2003/3: Had a presentation in FOSDEM 2003.
2003/1: Wrote some code and animated POV models (dragon, cannon, zeppelin etc) for Airstrike game.

2002

2002/9: Made a lot of sounds with Spiral Synth.
2002/7: Validated and uploaded the poems page from my archives.
2002/6: Uploaded my script (shell, python etc) collection.
2002/5: 16-bit framebuffer support added to Mortar.
2002/4: Naputus, my first PyGame program.

2001

2001/10: SDL/SDL_mixer port of Mortar game. Game images can now be compressed.

2000

2000/10: WWS has preliminary Lua bindings (Lua is one of the smallest script languages and can be programmed in OO-style) for Wlib and W toolkit.
2000/7: WWS wterm color attribute handling is fixed (by Benjamin Sittler) and there are some minor fixes and updates to makefiles and sources.

1999

1999/10: Frank Wille brought W window system Amiga NetBSD port upto date.
1999/9: Amiga port of Mortar game.
1999/5: WWS has now separate key press and release events. I needed this for the W port of Heretic. MacMiNT port of W (by Jonathan Oddie).
1999/3: Faster GGI version of Mortar game.
1999/1: Wt support for W special keys (arrows etc).
1999/1: x86-linux FB/GPM support for W.

1998

1998: I'm now the W Window System and Wt maintainer. For more information on WWS, see my historical pages.
1998: W, GGI, FB and TOS version of the Mortar game with GSI sample and midi playing support.

1997

1997: Wlib palette, image block handling and font handling completed with appropiate server modifications. All Wlib functions have now manual pages. W linux version works now also on x86.
1997: Ported the Mutt language and text editor (ME) v3 to Linux. I had used a GEM version of ME2 on Atari and wanted to use ME on Linux console too...
1997: PUNSSi game got rewritten 680x0 asm-code for the keyboard handler, which can now emulate joysticks.

1996

1996: W window system v1 releases 2/3 (resizable windows, clipping, polygons, color, GCs and graphics modes) from Tesche. W toolkit and Wetscape browser from Kay. Made networked board game framework and did a couple of games for W and Wt.

1995

1995: Created PUNSSi, my first arcade game for Atari. Multitasking friendly, supports joystick and works in the monochrome mode. I even got a postcard for it from overseas.
1995: Updated version of Clac calculator (with readline and Atari GEM user interfaces). Used it in testing two new free Atari C-compilers. Clac GUI popup code is used in the Mgif graphics manipulation program which included convolution filters, DSP code etc. before any other Open Source image viewer / editor I know of.

1994

1994: Made ST-Guide hypertext versions of some of the project Gutenberg texts and Alko's Cocktail Guide.
1994: Clac command line calculator is created. A simplified version of it is included as a column filter for Edith, a commercial programmer's text editor for Atari. A message passing version of Clac for MiNT.

Even earlier

Wrote a midi player, sound synthetizer and ASCII graphics editor in GFA Basic for Atari ST. Sound synthetizer had some supporting assembler code to actually create the sounds fast enough according to what user had selected in the GUI.