Dr. Claus Volko

I'd like to develop a turn-based strategy role-playing game. Yesterday I've designed much of the gameplay, including the A.I. behaviour of the non-playable characters. At least I can already say now that the enemy A.I. will be far stronger than in the game which serves as my source of inspiration. I've found some parameters with which the strength of the A.I. can be easily modified so I'll probably offer several levels of difficulty. Maybe I'll also do it like that every enemy character displays a different level of intelligent behaviour. However, implementation is going to be a great problem since I have no experience at graphics programming at all. At the moment I'm not even able to display a bitmap. :-(

I ask myself: What would the Internet be without Wikipedia? A mess stuffed with information, but without a central place where to find all of it at a pretty high level thanks to open reviewing and editing. Wikipedia has been the greatest innovation since search engines!

I've discovered an interesting book in my shelves and am now reading it. It's called "Geistige Strömungen in Österreich 1867 - 1918" (Intellectual Movements in Austria 1867 - 1918). The author is Albert Fuchs and it was first published in 1949. On about 320 pages he describes (classical) liberalism, catholicism, the workers' movement, various social reform movements, German nationalism, idealist philosophy, the influence of psychoanalysis and pacifism.  For the first time in my life I've read about "Volapük", an artifical language. I really wonder if today's Greens somehow relate to the "social reformers" of those days who had similar ideas in some aspects. I've also found an interesting quote about liberalism: "Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln scheint ihnen die einzig mögliche Basis der zivilisierten Gesellschaft." In other words: For classical liberals, socialism was barbarism.  By the way, the liberal party was

I've successfully managed to install SDL on my Visual Studio. After some tweaking the .exe file is 40 kb (debug mode, so I guess it will be even smaller in release mode). This means it will probably be no problem to create a 96k game with this configuration. I guess the first thing I'll code is gonna be "shadeblobs" :-) ((c) by one of our proofreaders) OK, I've managed to reduce the size of my SDL template .exe to 7168 bytes. It's still in debug mode as I get a linker error when trying to build the project in release mode (it says: "msvcrt.lib(MSVCR71.dll) : error LNK2005: _exit bereits in LIBC.lib(crt0dat.obj) definiert" - maybe somebody knows how to fix that?). Anyway, this leaves more than 88 kb for code, gfx and music - that oughtta be enough to make something decent. What a coincidence: CoaXCable has asked me to join his group CoolPHat as a demo/game coder - so maybe he has some ideas about what I could code (i.e. better ideas than I currently h

I tried some tests from http://queendom.com/tests/ (I had found the link on DiamonDie's homepage). One of them was the biggest personality test I've ever taken. Here are the "Summary Results": "Based on the Five Factor Model credited to Goldberg, Costa and McRae, the Advanced Multidimensional Personality Matrix (AMPM) is a comprehensive personality assessment designed to provide you with valuable insight into your character, aptitudes, and disposition.  The AMPM is based on the theory that all human personality traits belong to one of five broad dimensions of personality. Below the summary report, you will find a detailed personality report, including an advice section and your scores on the thirty-seven distinct personality traits.  Your Personality Type:  Manager  Your confidence, flexibility, and organizational skills make you the Manager. Your ability to juggle tasks is admirable, and your firm but friendly attitude gains you respect. You love trying out new

Ich stimme diesem Satz von Karl Marx zu. Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein, nicht umgekehrt, wie Hegel noch behauptet hatte. Es gibt nicht einmal eine unmittelbare Wechselwirkung zwischen Sein und Bewusstsein. Vielmehr bestimmt das Sein das Bewusstsein, das Bewusstsein das Handeln, und erst das Handeln wirkt wieder auf das Sein ein.

While I'm almost finished with Hugi #32, I'll be loaded with even more editorial work: The board of directors of Mensa Austria wants to make me the new editor of Mensa Austria's official magazine "Diskussion". I've told them I'm interested since I like this type of work and I also like the magazine. I'm confident it won't take too much of my time; the magazine is released once in two months, but its contents are far thinner than Hugi's.