How to set up a match in Quake Live

Are you all excited for our Quake Live tournament, but you can't figure out how to actually get a match going? Don't worry, it's actually really easy once you figure out what you're doing!

If you've been having trouble getting everything started, hit the jump for our simple guide on signing up, finding an opponent, and setting up a match.

Step #1: Sign up for Quake Live

This should be fairly obvious, but the very first thing you need to do is make sure you're signed up for a Quake Live account.  All you have to do is go to http://www.quakelive.com/#register, fill out your information, edit your character, and you're MOSTLY good to go. After downloading the game, you have to play through a tutorial and a quick sample match so that the game can assign you a skill rating. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes, and you only have to do it once. Once you've finished the sample match, you're ready to play!

Step #2: Come into the FNF lobby!

Once your account is made, you're ready to play! Visit fnf.destructoid.com you'll see our main tournament page. At the top of the screen, you'll see your status bar, and a large button that says "play a game now". Click it!

That will take you to our games page, which will have both our competitive game and our participation drawing game. You're obviously interested in Quake Live, so hit the 'Enter Lobby' button and it will load up the lobby.

This is the lobby screen.

Here, you can see everyone waiting in the lobby on the righthand side, and the general chat on the left. Use the chat to find out who is up for a game. In this example, I'm going to play a game with Professor Pew.

To challenge him, all I have to do is click on the big "Fight" button next to his name. If Pew was the one who challenged me, I'd get a screen saying that I had a challenge, and it would ask me to click 'Accept' or 'Reject'. You want to click Accept.

 

 

IMPORTANT: If you both challenge each other at the same time, it will hang on 'pending' and you'll have to restart your browser. TALK IN CHAT and decide who is going to hit 'Fight' -- only ONE of you should be hitting it!

Step #3: Adding your new friend

At this point, you should have Quake Live loaded and launched in your browser. Now that Pew has accepted my invite, we are in our own private chat room. Here, you should exchange Quake Live names. If it's someone you haven't played with before, you'll want to add them to your Quake Live friend's list. 

All you have to do, once you are on the main page of Quake Live, is click the friends tab at the top bar, click 'Search & Invite' right under your username in the Friends Manager, and type in the person you're going to play against's username. It will show up in the search results, and then you just have to click the green + sign under 'View Profile/Add'. If someone invites you, make sure you accept their friend invite! The best way to ensure you both become friends is to have you both search and add each other.

Step #4: Finding a server

Now you and your opponent should be friends! In your private lobby chat, decide which one of you is going to find the server to play on. If it's you, here's what you need to do. Go back to 'Home' on the main tab bar in the upper right. This should take you to the main server page, where you'll see a big list of servers to play on. However, not all of these servers are ideal. Some are full, some are the wrong gametype (You can see in the example below they're all on InstaGib). We need to filter the servers. Click the big 'Customize' button.

This will open a window that allows you to customize your server selection.

There are two settings we're interested in here. First, we want to set the Game Type to Duel, as those are the kinds of matches we are playing. Second, we want the Game State to be set to 'Waiting for Players (Empty)'. This helps to ensure that we get a 1 on 1 match against our opponent without anyone else coming in and messing things up. (There is still a chance other players may join your game. If this happens, just create a new game and try again. There are enough empty servers that it shouldn't happen too often.)

 

With my options set properly, I can hit 'Save'. I now have a list of empty Duel servers that we can play on! Pick one that's close to both you and your opponent (or in the middle if you live far apart), and just click to join the game. Your opponent will get a Quake Live message saying that you joined a game, and an option to join you. Have him/her click on it, and you're good to go! If Pew was the one who joined the server first, I would see this:

 

 

If that message doesn't pop up for you for some reason, you can also click the silver Quake icon next to your opponent's name in your friends list and join the game that way. Now you should both be in the same game! Go to town!

Step #5: Play the game

This is self-explanatory. If you want a guide on how not to get your ass kicked, check out Dyslixec's great Quake Live guide for beginners!

Step #6: Record your score

So, you've finished your game? Whether you've won or lost, you need to record your score. When the game is over, make SURE that you take a screenshot of the final scoreboard (PrintScreen and paste into Paint or use Vista's Snipping Tool). 

If you go back to your private lobby with your opponent, you'll see there's a big red button that says 'Finish > Record Your Scores'. Click it.

Once there, just check the appropriate box, upload your final score screenshot, and hit 'Submit Score'! That's all there is to it!

Once you've submitted, you can go back to the main lobby and find someone else to play. Have fun, and good luck! Three of you are going to win some really sweet computers!

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RetroforceGO! episode 94: Naughty retro games

Happy Friday, listeners. While our show is never exactly what you'd call "safe for work," this episode is seriously NSFW. Conrad joined us this week, to discuss all the dirty, pervy things that game developers used to be able to get away with. Stuff like:

• Beat 'em And Eat 'em
• That's what she said
  
• Boong-ga Boong-ga!
• That's what she said
• Sexy Parodius
• Boobies, asses, dongs, vag00s, etc
• Why is this stuff so shocking?
• That's what she said

You can check it out right here to get the standard rubdown, or subscribe to us on iTunes for the full release, happy ending version. You perverts. Very special thanks once again to our beloved Coffeesash, who created the deliciously pornographic piece of music you'll hear in this episode.

Additionally, we've got a new thingy we're gonna be doing to help enhance your listening experience and fill you in on a few things. Colette will be bringing that to you later today, so keep an eye out for it.

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Stolen Pixels #104: Left 4 Dumb, Part 20

You really just have to wonder about Bill from Left 4 Dead sometimes.

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xels-104-Left-4-Dumb-Part-20

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Qix headed to XBLA, possibly Minter-ized

According to ze German USK rating board, which is famous for spilling the beans on many an unannounced Taito remake headed for the land of downloadable games, the classic arcade title Qix is on its way to XBLA, (and if history is any indicator, quite possibly Wii Ware), under the name Qix++.

If you remember this bastard offspring of a Tesla coil and an Etch-A-Sketch, you know how addictive it could be. Having killed many hours of my adolescent life with the Game Boy version, I'm pretty excited to hear this news, as I think it's among the more underrated games in Taito's library.

Considering the neon rave party makeover the company has given its other gems like Space Invaders and Arkanoid, one would assume that Qix++ has undergone the same treatment. The only disturbing part of that idea is the llama-scented "++" that's been tacked on to the game's title -- a notation that usually means Jeff Minter did something to it. If the core game is still as fun as I remember, we're probably safe, but perhaps we should join hands and pray just in case.

[Via GamerBytes]

 

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27 million balls busted in Combat Arms and other
fun stats

You may remember Combat Arms. A few months ago we showed you a hilarious trailer for the free-to-play MMO first-person shooter featuring nothing less than the best FPS mechanic ever -- the nut shot. In the American version of Combat Arms, the game rewards you for busting dudes in the junk with large bubbly text and a cartoon image of said dangly bits. In a few words, it’s awesome.

People seem to like it as much as we do. Since the game was updated with the “Nut Shot” mechanic in April, about 27 million characters have been nailed in the balls. Whoa. And that’s just the one of the stats we have for you.

Nexon America is celebrating the first anniversary of the game this month. As a gift to us, they’ve handed over some flooring statistics. Since the game launched:

• Over 3.2 billion solders have been killed, 517 million of those via headshots
• Over one million games have been played per day
• And over 154 million terrorists have died in Fireteam Mode since May

The guys at Nexon are happy with these numbers, of course, but they’re always updating, tweaking and bringing out new content to ensure the Combat Arms community continues to grow. This summer, a new mode of play will be unveiled. It’s called Quarantine Mode. It will have zombies. Playable zombies.

Hit the break to learn more. Quarantine Mode is a battle between humans and zombies, said to feed off the intensity of horror-style games. The objective as a human is to survive the zombies. The player zombies, naturally, are charged with eliminating the humans before the round ends. Think a completely playable Horde mode.

The mode will also bring a new map and weapons to the table. You can view some concept art for the map, as well as the zombies in the gallery below.

It’s unknown at this point if zombies will be able to score Nut Shots on human players. We’re told they’ll have special abilities and parameters, so it's totally possible. Hell, players may even be able to bust zombie nuts. We don’t know, but we like thinking and speculating about this stuff. Dangly bits are kinda our jam.

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Twitter Friday: serious bunny is serious about
Cell Factor

Oh look, it's Twitter Friday again, where we give away free stuff and people complain about how much you hate Twitter and hate us and hate everything. That's cool though, because we like abuse. We thrive on it, in fact. That's why I'm going to keep giving away things for free even though people like to be mean. Because we love you no matter what you do to us! *sniff* Also, there is a bunny here who'll chew your face off if you get too testy, and I'm sure you can see he means business.

To win one of ten Cell Factor codes for PSN today, all you have to do is watch the Destructoid Twitter for us to say it's time to give away a code. When we do, reply with the phrase that we tell you to reply with, and the first person to reply with a regular old @ message wins a code. Simple as that! If you hate Twitter and you're not in the mood to get a free account so you can win free stuff, then go sit in the corner and pout, but for God's sakes keep your mouth shut or I'm sending the bunny after you.

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Twitter Friday: Serious bunny, Cell Factor
(winner update)

And the winners are in!  Congratulations to the quickest to tweet back about our mysterious psychokinetic powers.  Our winners are: tr0tsky0 + DarthMazza + milereb + Bug42 + ZombieEmily + zippyduda1989 + Reetesh + Trevkor + FirewalkR + RedFox_ARG.  Look for the code in your Twitter inboxes in a few minutes to start playing.  Didn't win it? There's always next weekend.  Thanks and have a great 4th, b*tches!

Oh look, it's Twitter Friday again, where we give away free stuff and people complain about how much you hate Twitter and hate us and hate everything. That's cool though, because we like abuse. We thrive on it, in fact. That's why I'm going to keep giving away things for free even though people like to be mean. Because we love you no matter what you do to us! *sniff* Also, there is a bunny here who'll chew your face off if you get too testy, and I'm sure you can see he means business.

To win one of ten Cell Factor codes for PSN today, all you have to do is watch the Destructoid Twitter for us to say it's time to give away a code. When we do, reply with the phrase that we tell you to reply with, and the first person to reply with a regular old @ message wins a code. Simple as that! If you hate Twitter and you're not in the mood to get a free account so you can win free stuff, then go sit in the corner and pout, but for God's sakes keep your mouth shut or I'm sending the bunny after you.

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There's a pun in here somewhere: Risen coming out
October 2

Publisher Deep Silver has revealed that the upcoming role-playing game, Risen, will rise on October 2, 2009. By “rise” we mean that’s when it comes out. See what we did there? That’s clever, right?

The game is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PC by Piranha Bytes (also a clever pun!), the same folks who brought you Gothic. Risen is currently it its beta phase, with game proper being completed, the dialogue recorded, and a whole bunch of quality assurance teams on the case to make sure any bugs haven’t risen up during the game’s development.

Unfortunately, we’re out of stupid puns, but encourage you to drop a few in the comments.

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