>>2005 APR 08

Another collaborator: François Devic has done a very good work! He has translated the (very long!) 2nd tutorial to French.

>>2005MAR2

Sorry for this last long period of silence but I had many things at work to finish, I've had not time also to answer to some of your e-mail regarding tutorials support, please consider that I receive many e-mails everyday, I do my best for give support to all but I give priority to the contributors, as I wrote into the store section. 

This year I started again my studies at the university, computer science at La Sapienza in Rome, since I interrupted them 5 years ago. I discover that studing and working in the same time is really hard. Sometimes I think to stop again making exams, I found infact that for this University is not important your background history and your past knowledge, you are only a number... it is really strange... with my tutorials I helped many people making their graduation thesis and for some reason I don't succeed helping myself.

Again I want to update you with the Zetadeck project, since about one year infact I stopped the development of this space sim but I never thought to abandon this project. Now I started again working on it.

There are two new collaborators that have translated the first tutorial in French and Dutch, they are:

Sylvain Carding - French

Maarten Heidenrath - Dutch 

I've also published the original italian translation of the 3th tutorial.
All the translations can be found on the tutorial page.

>>2004NOV24

Again a new collaborator: Jonathan Dornan has sent the english corrected version of the tutorial 5, vectors and lighting. Thank you Jonathan!

I've also published the original italian translation of the 2nd tutorial.

>>2004OCT31

Two new collaborators of spacesimulator.net have sent the translation of the first tutorial in other languages, they are:

Frank Kramer - German

Ciro Durán - Spanish 

I've inserted a new column into the tutorials section in which will be inserted all the tutorials translations. For the Italian users I have also published the original Italian translation of the first lesson, soon I will publish also the translations of the other tutorials.

If you want help me with the translations you must download the tutorial html page, modify it and send me the new translated html file.
My apologies if you don't like the source code of the html pages, unfortunately, because of my short time, I have used a WYSIWYG compiler. I am working for a new layout (PHP based) of this website but I think to release it not until the end of this year. You can have a look at www.spacesimulator.net/test_newsite/index.php just to see something similar to the future layout I will use.

Some updates also regarding money contributions, the total amount of the donations is near 100$ (in 13 months). This is not so much but this means that probably as soon as I have to pay the renew of this web space I will use, for the first time, the money of the contributions,  thank you so much! ;)

>>2004SEP03

Good news for Mac OS coders: Martin Williams, a new collaborator of spacesimulator.net, has
successfully ported the source code of the 4th tutorial - 3ds file loader - to Mac OS X with GLUT and Xcode headers. Martin has also created an utility header with endian swapping functions for easier convertions of the tutorials code for Mac OS platform.

You can download the new porting from the tutorials section.

>>2004AUG16

After a long time of coding and cleaning I have finished to write the source code of other 4 tutorials:

Tutorial 9: .INI configuration files - Parser
Tutorial 10: SDL Framework and FPS calculation
Tutorial 11: Physics: dynamics, acceleration and force
Tutorial 12: Physics: Collision detection and collision response

You can download the Windows - EXE version from the tutorial section. 
I am sure: You will be really amazed to see how much Physics adds realism to the 3d engine!

To get the source code now I invite you to make a donation or help me with the tutorials, visit the store section for more information. 

>>2004MAY08

I have just inserted a test page for the new website, you can find it at: www.spacesimulator.net/test_newsite/index.php
It is programmed in PHP and HTML. Many links are not working yet but the layout is more or less the final version. I would like to know your opinion.

>>2004APR16

I want to let you know about the great risk related with the software patents. European Commission proposed a directive that would legalize software patents, this means that the free-software is facing a great risk. This could cause the death of this web site (and many others). I pray that it will never happen.

You can find more information in this web site: http://swpat.ffii.org.

>>2004MAR25

Finally I finished to write the tutorial 5: vectors and lighting! It is a very long and tech tutorial, exactly what are you looking for ;)
Please note that this tutorial is not yet completely English-corrected so maybe you can find some mistakes, let me know any error please!

>>2004FEB25

Wow! The new web site is going to be completed soon and has really a professional aspect. I think to release it the next month. 
For the rest I thank all those people that have already sent donations through PayPal (four people in four months for a total of 20 $). Without any doubt a concrete help to support this web-site =))). 
I am very happy also because this website was inserted into the opengl.org tutorials section, to celebrate this event I decided to do a nice thing: 
Source code of lesson 6 (matrices and multi objects loading) RELEASED in advance!!! (download it from the tutorials index)
Now you can rate me 10/10! ;-)
Finally... have a look at this screenshot:

...finally a clean space to work in... ;)

>>2004JAN28

Important info: I've temporarily disabled the subscribe[at]spacesimulator.net address because I am receiving many viruses. To continue subscribing you can send a message to info[at]spacesimulator.net with "subscribe" on the subject line. Subscribing means that I will send you e-mails only to let you know about updates. Please consider also that I don't store the e-mail addresses into the outlook address book, a location often used by viruses, but simply into a my local directory - txt file.

>>2003DEC24

Just in time for Christmas the site is updated again. Now also the tutorial 4 is more pleasant to read, of course it was corrected by Robert Napolitano! In the meantime Zeeshan Ali has converted for Linux the tutorial 5. I have finished also to write the source code of the tutorial 8 (fonts printing), to download it in advance before I release the correspondent lesson please read the contribute section!
I wish you a Merry Christmas! ..and Happy Holidays-Coding! ;)

>>2003NOV23

I want to thank all those people that have sent compliments for the tutorials, you are helping me to continue my work! Regarding the many questions about the future of spacesimulator.net and Zetadeck please don't worry, I have many projects for the future, I will continue to write lessons and develop Zetadeck in spite of my not much free time.
First of all I want to renew completely the site: now the HTML code is redundant and dirty because I have used a WYSIWYG compiler, therefore the most important thing is to re-write the various pages using directly the HTML. I will insert also some dynamic elements and roll-overs, a new logo, a FAQ, maybe a forum and, where possible, translations in other languages. 
Regarding the tutorials, thanks to the help and the suggestions of Robert Napolitano, I will modify the structure to make the various source codes like libraries. The new structure of the lessons will be based from a central knot: base code (GLUT and SDL) and from various libraries (graphics, physics, AI and so on) that can be linked together as needed. Will be inserted also conversions of the tutorials from C to C++. Obviously with this structure I have intention to satisfy any developer of videogame that will visit this site. 
Any other suggestion is welcome, write me! 

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