• Fact, the world has many problems.
• Fact, many of these problems have really simple solutions.
• Problem, these solutions are usually only simple for people who don’t even know that the problem exists in the first place.

So he went and created a site that attempts to solve the world’s problems by making people aware of them. In the spirit of Stack Overflow and the likes, harnessing the community, he built this:

Debug the World

Let’s hope the site really takes off It’s an awesome idea, very worthy of your support.

Oh, and there’s a blog, too.

Now this alone might not have been news-worthy, particularly since it’ll take some more time before it’s ready (pre-alpha ATM), but the thing just did win the ModDB “Indy game of the year” award (where they lumped together current and upcoming indie games). It’ll use an unique engine with neat effects.

Have a look at some just-released footage:

What do you think? I preordered the special edition (directly from the project site) myself, if only to support indy development

Update 2010-02-09 12:24: The development team is on Twitter, too. And an interesting business sidenote: Apparently social media (Facebook, Twitter, ModDB, Reddit, YouTube) drives roughly one third of the preorder sales, and dwarfs even the biggest gaming sites. A really interesting blog post about this can be found on the Wolfire Blog.

Left 4 Dead Survival Pack

Left 4 Dead did get a new update a couple of weeks back, which improved the balance a bit. I liked the Smoker changes, but other than that, it was a bit less spectacular than I hoped. However, the slightly more spectacular update is coming: The Survival Pack, supposed to come out “sometime in March or April”. Careful, watching those videos might hurt if you’re allergic to spastic gamepad shooter movement like I am.

Anyway, what’s gonna be in it for us PC users:

• The SDK, so people can create their own maps (exclusive to the PC)
• Versus modes on the Dead Air and Death Toll campaigns (finally!)
• A new Survival game mode, where the survivors are pitted against wave upon wave of infected
• Lighthouse, a new level for that new game mode

I am really looking forward to this, being the old Versus nut that I am. I actually never played the Dead Air campaign yet, with it not being available in Versus.

There also was a minor patch on the 11th that brought some further balance fixes, in particular, who plays the survivor side first in Versus is now determined by who is leading -- those get to play first, as the ones coming second know where all the weapons are, and have a rough idea of where tanks and witches will show up.

Update 2009-03-14 09:45: Just now, new post on boomercharged.net, with essentially this very information, plus they say that Valve named “before April 21st” as release date.

Quake Live Open Beta

It’s running for a couple weeks already, and the comments on my most-commented-on post ever have dwindled ever since the beta was made public and no longer invites-only. Quake Live is still a perfect reenactment of one of the two core roots of today’s online shooters, Quake III (the other one being the original Unreal Tournament).

If you haven’t checked this out, maybe you should do yourself a favour and relive some good old school fun

Team Fortress 2 Scout Update

Ah, the big one. This update for Team Fortress 2 is a few weeks old already, in fact. Like the Goldrush/Medic, Pyro, and Heavy updates, this one features tons of achievements and three new, unlockable alternate weapons for the Scout, and a couple community maps. Have a look at the goodies!

Unlike with the previous updates, Valve themselves didn’t provide own maps or even new game types this time. I have played all the maps they officially release now months ago, too -- although an official release like that gives them more exposure of course. On the other hand, with payload, control point, capture the flag and arena, there’s plenty game types in TF2 now.

Sandman User Guide

As before though, the unlocks aren’t necessarily better than the original weapons, but different. For example, the Sandman allows you to knock out an opponent, but foregoes your double jump. And you give up your ranged weapon, the pistol, for the Bonk! energy drink. If you’re using the Force-A-Nature and the regular bat over the Sandman, you’ll have a triple jump even, counting the gun’s knockback -- which is awesome, I love it, it gives the Scout even more flexibility and speed and allows you to reach places way faster or even at all. Just watch:

Sorry about the distinct lack of sound, I didn’t switch the recording device for Fraps

Anyway, that’s it for now -- we’ve got plenty of shooter goodness to get us over the coming weeks.

Now, why is that? Of course, it has everything to do with the recently released patch 2.0, and the Titan Pack expansion, and that aforementioned free weekend, and the fact that the game is 40% off until the 15th still; there’s hope the game sales rise to Steam #1 for some time at least and show yet another time how important game updates are, particularly when they’re free.

While we’re on the subject of Steam, my own copy was bought back before UT3 even was on Steam, but there is a way of adding it to Steam meanwhile: This tutorial is really nice and explains how to activate your retail copy on Steam. I’m not sure why I did this, considering the game worked a treat without Steam, but I did it anyway, and it worked.

Anyway, what is in that patch, actually? Have a look here, trailer and screenies! There’s a full Titan Pack preview on BeyondUnreal. Or directly watch the trailer below:

When I first heard about the expansion, my reaction was “gee, I hope they do something against the Biohazard/Deck/Suspense spam”. Well, they did! The new maps are really nice, at least the half-dozen that I already played. There’s new game modes -- Greed is great and works particularly well with titans, Betrayal is fun and spices up instagib enough for me to like it. The titans are awesome, both when being one and when fighting one. And there’s a new voting system in place.

Plus the server browser is way better than before (some say, it now has basic functionality, but that’s what we wanted), with pasting IPs and adding IPs to favourites and better filtering and displaying players (and bots!) on a server.

Really, if you tried UT3 before but decided you just couldn’t overcome some of those shortcomings that stood in the way of great fun, there’s way less between you and the fun now. Epic did fix the game. Now go buy it, and add “haslo” to your ingame friends list

Get the patch through one of these mirrors, or download it via Steam.

In other news, I’ll post another shooter news thingy, probably in a mere few hours.

Update 2009-03-11 12:28: That free Steam weekend that left many players unable to play? Gee, there’s another one, starting this Friday! If you feel like participating, better start preloading now, so you have the game when it’s free Via BeyondUnreal, and visible on the game’s Steam page.

Update 2009-03-19 11:09: Rock Paper Shotgun just ran an article about the amazing turn UT3′s sales took with those free weekends and the discounted price and the big free update. Gulag’s comment sums it up nicely:

RARRGH! Internet Game Gods From The Future Ate My Pre-Historic Business Model!!!

Stomp stomp stomp.

So much for “PC gaming is dead”.

Get the soundtrack from here.

World of Goo Soundtrack

If all the raving reviews everywhere didn’t win you over, maybe this will And maybe you, just like me, merely appreciate that the independent developer that you already supported does indeed care as much about his customers as you knew he would.

My favourite? Red Carpet Extend-o-matic – I’m corny like that.

Samuel Schmid

Disclaimer: Swiss politics, so many links lead to German pages.

Samuel Schmid, member of the Swiss Federal Council (Bundesrat), is stepping back as per December 31th, as he just announced 10am this morning. It was, as sad to say as it is, inevitable.

The SVP, which was Schmids party until the end of last year, was partially torn apart by internal struggles when Christoph Blocher wasn’t re-elected for the Swiss Federal Council (the Swiss main executive body, consisting of 7 members) and Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf was elected instead. That election was a true tour de force with opposition to Blocher that originally sparked in the center and the left of the political spectrum, mainly the SP and the Green, but gained supporters deep into the SVP. Later on, Schmid and Widmer-Schlumpf were kicked from the SVP, quite a few moderate members quit the party only weeks later, and found themselves in a newly formed (and less extreme) party, the BDP. A true polit thriller, we live in interesting times.

Blocher was the man who shaped the SVP for decades before that point, a populist and controverter, isolationist where it fits national-oriented voters and global where it fits his own industrial empire or the interest groups that he profits from, pretending to speak for the small and powerless while being a millionaire himself. When he was part of the Federal Council, he intended to do politics like he does economics, and he thinks economic leadership should be executed just like military leadership – so in effect, he tried to militarize politics. Which just won’t work, not in a democracy. Add his all the way anti-european stance and things that could be interpreted as racism, and you have one heck of a right wing politician.

I don’t like Blocher’s political style nor position, if that hasn’t become obvious yet, and apparently, so did the majority of our Federal Convention. The SVP threatened to enter the opposition, which on one hand isn’t entirely possible in Switzerland due to our many involved parties, and on the other hand is nothing new since the SVP always was in the opposition wherever possible. Anyway.

Much mud-slinging later, Samuel Schmid (who was called “half a Bundesrat” early on in his career in the federal council already by not-so-democratic elements in the SVP) has given in to the pressure, and is leaving. Both due to political and health reasons, it seems in the end the constant stress and pressure affected his healthiness, too.

It’s sad, because while he may not have represented the radical right-wing elements that so cling to and like their power, he certainly did represent the less extreme right, just like Moritz Leuenberger doesn’t follow through with positions from the extreme left but rather proposes solutions that are capable of winning a majority. We lose a down-to-earth, calm and reasonable council member, one from near the other end of the political spectrum from where I find myself that I could thoroughly respect, and that always had reasons for his actions and positions that I could follow and understand. It is a sad day for democracy when a man like that is successfully mobbed out of the position he was elected into.

Sources: 20min, NZZ, Twitter.

Update 2008-11-12 11:22: admin.ch already has a statement regarding the resignation of BR Schmid. Via tou.ch.

Of course they can! Like 20min.ch:

NaN Votes

NaN votes, great stuff Too bad it’s fixed already.

Well, the beta is public now. And they added some more games. So go ahead and knock yourself out with awesome old school gaming bliss!

Also on Joystiq.

Our arrangement with Midway isn’t a license but rather a straight publishing agreement and Midway is still very much the publisher of Unreal Tournament 3. In fact, we’re working together on a major expansion to Unreal Tournament 3, that we expect will excite and grow our UT3 customer base which incidentally, now numbers over a million units sold-through world-wide.

The fun thing about this is that all of BeyondUnreal, Joystiq and Eurogamer claim that it was them who asked Mark Rein, and them who got this answer. Now either they all got exactly the same answer at the same time, or two of the three are full of bull. Certainly wouldn’t surprise me with Joystiq, and not all too much with Eurogamer either. Anyway.

Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the expansion. If it does anything (new voting systems, forced rotations, whatever) to remedy the problem that the sole played VCTF map is Suspense, and the only oft-played DM maps are Deck and Biohazard, I’m a happy fragger. As unlike so many others, I actually liked the gameplay, and got used to the UI…

Left 4 Dead

I just got mine today.

Left 4 Dead is coming in roughly four weeks, I’m sure you heard about it. It’s the upcoming post-apocalyptic zombie shooter by Valve, the makers of the awesome Team Fortress 2 and the Half Life series, with raving previews (an extensive preview is here) – everyobdy who played it loves it, it seems.

The Team Fortress 2 guys are working on it as well in these last weeks before release, and there’s a Left 4 Dead Blog meanwhile. With Lego, how cool is that.

It’s got zombies, and tougher boss zombies, and the humans struggle to survive, and there’s some AI stuff going on that tries to match the enemy toughness to the player skill, and generally it looks pretty interesting and great. Anyway. The reason why I’m writing this post is because preorders are open now (on Steam, for example, which is where I got mine), and if you preorder, you also get $5 off. Via Rock Paper Shotgun, and Joystiq.

On the other hand, I’m fairly certain that you’ll hear more about the game in the following weeks, considering Valve plans a $10M ad campaign (via Edge Online). Video games really do have reached the mainstream, don’t you think?