Corridors encourages people to spam weapons down them, I prefer having just a few corridors. I dislike stairs because when you are climbing them you are at a disadvantage because you move slower. The map needs more open space in my opinion; there is only really one or two big open rooms.

Overall I think the map is not bad, and is good fun for a Team Deathmatch or Free For All game, but not much else.

Today we are releasing ‘Hidden Fortress’, the first in a series of new maps for QUAKE LIVE. We will be releasing a new map every week for the next 5 weeks.

Each map will be announced with a sneak peek on twitter, make sure to follow us there!

Hidden Fortress is a Clan Arena, Team Deathmatch and Free For All map that fits 6 to 10 players. We think it’s a great starting pick and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

That’s not all! The practice interface for playing offline games has been completely reworked. It is much easier to use and more powerful. You will also find the brand new Training Center in that section .. we have put together two practice maps to learn and improve your rocket jumping and movement skills. You will find videos and demo replays to help you understand “how it’s done” and start flying through those Clan Arena maps like the pros.

Note that you will need to install a new version of the QUAKE LIVE plugin before getting back in the game. A small price for so much awesomeness.

And finally, a detailed list of the other changes:
Redesigned the navigation bar used for Play Online and Play Offline pages.
Fixed an issue where IE wouldn’t default to a proper game type when going to the Match Browser.
Added a “Link to this Match” button that becomes visible when you are in an online game. You can send this link to your friends for joining you in a game you are playing.
Fixed a problem with long names on the match details popups not using the full available space.
Fixed some problems that would prevent certain clan tags from being saved properly on the Edit Profile page.
Changed the date format used on a player’s awards page to match the format we use elsewhere on the site.
void exploit on qzteam6, qzdm12, qzdm11 fixed.
Fixed proxy mines radius exploit.
Fixes for player names getting clipped in the team scoreboard.
Switching to spectator now properly resets the player ready flag.
practice offline w/ bots uses correct CA health/armor settings now.
Clan Tags now listed on Invite Inbox and Invite Outbox.
New ‘raw device’ input mode. Set in_mouse 2 to bypass DirectInput and talk to your mouse device directly. We have seen bad interference from various software, and in general you might get more reliable / better quality mouse input with in_mouse 2.”

I have been playing around with different HUDs to find one that suits me. For anyone who doesn’t know what a HUD is, it stands for Heads Up Display, it’s all the information on the screen basically. Your health bars, armor bars, weapon bars, ammo bars, scoring, etc.

I could have made my own, but it required coding skills so I just downloaded other peoples. I was looking for one that was minimalistic, so that I have more visability, while being able to see all the information I needed. I found this one:

Compared to the defualt HUD:

As you can see, this HUD is a lot cleaner than the default offering. The timer is enlarged (very important aspect), the health ammo and armor bars are removed, there are just small numbers to indicate your health, ammo and armor. This gives you more all important screen space.

Thanks for reading.

To change your configuration files you need to first locate the file. It is stored… (NOTE: Hidden folders must be shown to see these files)

In windows XP:

C\Documents and Settings\Application Data\YourUserName\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3

In windows Vista:

C\Users\YourUserName\AppData\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3\

And the file you are looking for is qzconfig.cfg (which will mosy likely be called “qlconfig.cfg” in the future)

This is the file you will edit your game settings in.

Here are some usefull settings to change and a description of what they do:

Display:

seta r_picmip “15″ – if you want to remove all detail from the maps basically, makes it cleaner.
seta r_dynamiclight “0″ – 0 removes rocket flash, etc.
seta cg_lagometer “1″ - enables a graph to show your ping
seta cg_simpleitems “1″ – 2D icons for weps / ammo / pickups
seta cg_scorePlums “0″ – Removes floating score bubbles, eg. “+1″
seta cg_kickscale “0″ – Stops the screen from shaking when taking damage
seta cg_bob “0″ – Makes your screen stay straight when jumping and hitting the ground
seta cg_noprojectiletrail “1″ – Removes projectile trails
seta cg_brasstime “0″ – Removes bullet brass dropping everywhere..
seta cg_drawfriend “0″ - Removes the yellow arrow above friends
seta s_ambient “0″ – Removes ambient sounds like rain on qztourney7
seta s_musicvolume “0″
seta s_doppler “0″
seta bot_nochat “1″
seta cg_crosshairPulse “0″ – Stops crosshair “pulsing” when you pick up an item.
seta cg_drawgun “0″ – 1 = show, 2 = show without weapon bob (1 or 2 needed for thinshaft)

Network:

seta rate “20000″
seta cl_maxpackets “125″
seta snaps “60″
seta cg_predictItems “0″
seta cl_packetdup “2″
seta cg_smoothclients “1″

seta cg_railTrailTime “1500″ – Rail stays untill reload time is up.
seta r_railSegmentLength “32″
seta r_railCoreWidth “4″
seta r_railWidth “0″
seta cg_oldrail “1″
seta color1 “6″ – Pink
seta color2 “6″ – Pink

My crosshair (Pink dot):

seta cg_crosshairsize “24″
seta cg_crosshaircolor “6″
seta cg_crosshairhealth “0″
seta cg_drawcrosshair “6″

You can specify FOV, sens, drawgun etc. for each weapon bind, for example;

bind 1 “weapon 1; cg_fov 110; sensitivity 4.50; cg_zoomfov 55; cg_drawgun 1; cl_mouseaccel 0; cg_gunz 0 ; cg_gunx 0 ; cg_guny 0″

Or;

bind 2 “weapon 2; cg_fov 110; sensitivity 4.50; cg_zoomfov 55; cg_drawgun 0; cl_mouseaccel 0; cg_gunz -10; cg_gunx -10; cg_guny 2″

Coming soon: Custom HUDs (Heads Up Display).

My first thoughts of Quake Live.. I was very excited to try the game when I got my closed beta invite. When I loaded it up, it lived up to my expectations, very fast paced gameplay, awesome fights/frags, movement, everything felt VERY polished. My first thoughts were probably: “Why wasn’t I playing this game before?!”

At first I went straight into the Free-for-all game mode to get a feel for the game’s weapons, movement, maps, pickup loactions, spawn points, etc. This game mode was good for what I was using it for, otherwise the maps felt too cramped and you would often die instantly after spawning.

I then went onto Team Deathmatch once I knew the basics, for more tactical play. This was great fun, just as I expected (My faviorite game mode in Unreal Tournament). And it didn’t have the frustrating element of Free-for-all when you die instantly after spawning.

I also played a few duels, another of my prefered game types. The first games I lost 0-20, which wasn’t very suprising, most people playing Quake Live have played Quake for years.  After some more games I found you either owned your oppenent 20-0, or got owned 0-20. I didn’t have a single game that was close, interesting.

In this blog I will be documenting my expericene with Quake Live, a game which is the first of its kind. A remake of Quake III Arena, which is free, funded by adds, and browser based. First of all, some links for information on the game:

http://www.quakelive.com/ – Offical Site

http://www.quakelive.com/forum/index.php – Forums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Live – Wiki

The game is currently in Open Beta stage. However, I got an invite to test the game when it was in Closed Beta stage (invite only). I’ve been playing the game on and off since I got that invite.

Before Quake Live, I hadn’t played a Quake game before, but I’d always been interested in starting to play one, especially Quake III. I’d played a few similar games like Unreal Tournament, which is a similar Deathmatch type game.