Posted by TheCrow @ 10:04 CST, 30 December 2012 - iMsg
Quake Live Gaming League - North America Season 1
All players and teams wishing to participate in this league must register @ www.qlgl.net by January 5th 2013 11:59pm EST.
The Season will commence on Saturday January 12th, 2013.
This league encourages competitive play in various Quake Live game modes. To kick off the first season QLGL will host leagues for the Clan Arena and Instagib Capture the Flag game modes. QLGL's first season will feature teams of 5 to 8 players competing in weekly 4 versus 4 Quake Live Clan Arena (CA) and Insta-CTF (iCTF) matches. We will expand into other mods as well as Europe, specifically iFT, CTF, and TDM provided there is enough demand for these mods.
Currently, we have 32 teams for the CA league, 7 for iCTF and over 175 players registered. A full list of teams and players is listed on the site.
You can also contact me directly through ESR, Quake Live chat, iRC (TheCrow_), or thecrow@qlgl.net if you have any questions, comments and or feedback.
Thank you all for your continued support. It is shaping up to be a great first season!
The IGN Pro league will be hosting weekly cups for ShootMania starting next Monday!
- All matches will be played using the Elite mode
- Rules will coincide with the IPL5 rule-set
- First place will receive $150 each week
- The event is open to everyone with the top 8 teams being streamed
- Matches begin at 4pm PST on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Events for the EU community will be announced soon!
With great joy and excitement, I’m here today to present you FACEIT: Legends Cup. The best of the past will go up against each other to bring you an awesome show!
FACEIT will be bringing together eight of the best Quakers the game once had to offer and let them go head-to-head with each other! We will be announcing the eight oldschool players over the coming weeks via our Facebook page.
FACEIT: Legends Cup will be brought to you live by us on FACEIT TV on 16th December. The show will be casted by the by now familiar duo Xavier "Zoot" Dhorne and Daniel "ddk" Kapadia, but as an extra surprise, Stuart "TosspoT" Saw will be joining them.
As mentioned before, we will be giving out more details in the coming weeks, but for now we can give you two of the eight names attending already.
Officially retired from eSports this year and currently a car sellsman, Cooller can be considered to be Russia’s greatest FPS player ever. He was incredibly successful in Quake III and Quake IV, but he also played his part in Quake Live. The Russian has represented teams such as mousesports and Moscow Five during his career.
It all started in 2002 at 15 years old, when the back then young Russian went to the World Cyber Games. This was the kick start for a great career, winning several major events, including ESWC,QLAN,CPL Winter 2005, WSVG Sweden ,Extreme Masters European Championship, and Dreamhack.
He was renowned for his sometimes controversial remarks, but also by his think-based style and great timing. Over his career he racked up around $150,000 in prizes.
The Italian Stallion, one of the most successful Professional Gamer in the last 10 years, has played 9 different games including Quake III Arena, PainKiller, FIFA, Quake IV and of course Quake Live. Over the course of his time, stermy has built his own name and became successful both as a gamer and businessman.
When he was 15 he attended the World Cyber Games in South Korea representing Italy in the Quake III tournament, being one of the youngest contestant at the time. Even though he didn’t have major success this tournament, it was followed up by some great performances, with top placements in the CPL PainKiller World Tour, WSVG in Quake IV, and captaining the CGS team San Francisco Optx to a second place in the World Finals, playing FIFA.
After a successful run in Quake Live, both in duel and team tournaments, the Italian now plays for the best ShootMania team in the world – and he gives back to eSports by sponsoring players and hosting the UGC.
Posted by cityy @ 16:47 CST, 8 November 2012 - iMsg
With this article I want to provide a quick guide to setting up GTKradiant and Wolfcam for mapping as many people were willing to try it out but had problems getting started.
1. Setting up Wolfcam
In order to be able to quickly test your maps without having to put together a .pk3 file after each compile you need to set up wolfcam. To do this, download and unzip the wolfcam archive linked above to any desired location on your harddrive (I suggest you make a special folder for all mapping related files) and copy all the .pk3 files from your quakelive\baseq3\ directory to wolfcam\baseq3\.
Can't find your QuakeLive folder? Click here.
2. Setting up GTKradiant 1.6.3
GTKradiant is the editor used to create maps for several id tech 3 engine games. To make it work with QuakeLive you need to download the archive linked above and unzip it to your new map creation folder from step 1 or any other desired location.
If you launch the radiant executeable now, a popup will appear and you will be asked to specify the game you are looking to work with and enter the path to the game's engine directory.
Select QuakeLive and point the path to your wolfcam directory containing the wolfcam.exe (DO NOT ENTER THE PATH TO WOLFCAM\BASEQ3; CHOOSE THE WOLFCAM ROOT DIRECTORY).
When you are done, confirm your choice clicking the OK button; radiant will now load the game's shaders, textures and entities.
3. Learning the editor
Learning how to make maps requires patience at the beginning but once you learned the basics and got comfortable with the editor it will be a really fluid and fast paces process.
GTKradiant 1.6.3 is still a very young version of GTKradiant so there aren't any tutorials working with it. However, tutorials using version 1.4 and Quake III translate almost 100% to 1.6.3 so you can read those without any concerns.
The downside of using Wolfcam for QL editing is that it does not come with the QL physics. In order to test your map in QuakeLive you need to pack it up in a .pk3 and encrypt it using quakelivedec.exe (link at the top).
.PK3 files are nothing but renamed .zip files and have the same structure as your baseq3 directory.
[url=http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/how-to-make-pk3-pak-files.php]How to make a .pk3
Quakelivedec.exe uses a simple input-output system to encrypt files. To use it create a .bat file (make new .txt file, change extention to .bat) and enter:
<path to quakelivedec.exe> mymap_notencrypted.pk3 mymap_encrypted.pk3
Adjust the path (drop the <>) and the names to fit your pk3 file. To load the map in QL, drop the encrypted pk3 into your quakelivebaseq3 directory and set it to read only (right click, properties). Then use the QuakeLive ingame console to load up the map (map mapname).
Hope this helps. If you got questions, post below or join #radiant on Quakenet.
Posted by roychez @ 11:37 CDT, 30 October 2012 - iMsg
FACEIT have pushed out a major update today, which will allow us to do better ELO-based cups, and many more things have been fixed and added.
We have added a total of ten levels, which will allow us to also host cups for the lower ranked players. Next to that we have added "Series" tournaments, team FACE N GOs, an automatic updater and many other things.
The ELO-system will allow us to do better cups for lower ranked players. And we're happy to tell them that the action will already start tonight, one for players up to Level 4, Level 6 and Level 8 (see your level in the press release). Find out how to attend a cup below.
Format: First rounds will be Best-of-One, Quarter Finals and Semi Finals will be Best-of-Three, and the Grand Final will be Best-of-Five.
Map pool: Silence Furious Heights Lost World Aerowalk Hektik Blood Run Toxicity
Map picking:
- Bo1: Player A (player labeled as "host" in match-up), elims first map, Player B elims second, repeat until one map is left.
- Bo3: Player A elims first map, Player B elims second, Player A elims third, Player B elims fourth, Player A picks map, Player B picks map, final map decider
- Bo5: Player A picks, Player B picks, Player A picks, Player B picks, Player A elims, Player B elims, final map decider[/q]
ELO based Skill Level:
A skill level system from 1 to 10 for Quake Live players has been implemented. From now on your skill level on FACEIT is going to be based on this number. Your skill level is initially based on your QLranks ELO rank and will change as you play on FACEIT. Levels are calculated based on the following table:
- Level 1 ELO from 1 to 800
- Level 2 ELO from 801 to 950
- Level 3 ELO from 951 to 1100
- Level 4 ELO from 1101 to 1250
- Level 5 ELO from 1251 to 1400
- Level 6 ELO from 1401 to 1550
- Level 7 ELO from 1551 to 1700
- Level 8 ELO from 1701 to 1850
- Level 9 ELO from 1851 to 2000
- Level 10 ELO above 2001
The FACEIT staff will be reviewing ELO scores periodically and has the right to change the above table at any time. Matches played on FACEIT are reviewed on a continuous basis by our control software and any player caught losing ELO instrumentally with the purpose to gain access to lower level cups will be banned from the site.
Series Tournaments:
Series tournaments have been released. These tournaments allow players to join the tournament at different stages and win different prizes based on the number of matches won in a row. To play there is no need to be online at the same time as all other players. You can decide to play or cash out from certain stages at any time. No rush for the 3pm tournaments from now on, just play when you feel like it!
Automatic Updater:
From now on your Quake Live stats and the stats of your friends will be continuously updated on FACEIT even if you don-t play for a while. This is yet another step forward towards updating you of all your friends and favourite pros gaming activities.
Team matches:
Some Clan Arena FACE'N'GOs are now available. you can join them with your team or be part of a random team. These will initially be available only for free matches. More will be added depending on demand for them.
Minor improvements:
- Sound when receiving chat messages has been implemented
A chat is now available in the tournament page for all users subscribed
- New layout of the tournaments page has been implemented
When a user does not show on the platform for a certain amount of time, it will now be marked as offline
- Search bar in friends tab has been implemented
- Team function has been improved with notifications for entering rooms
- Notifications when FACE'N'GO starts have been implemented
- Sorting of tables is now available in the dashboard
- Smooth animations and transitions have been integrated around the platform
- Avatar upload feature has been improved and now includes a size and crop feature
Bug fixing:
- FACE'N'GOs are now working properly. Bugs relating to the starting countdown have been fixed
- Cash withdrawal button is now fixed for all users
- Tournament BO3 and BO5 is now showing the exact result of the match rather than just the result of the winning player
- Users with higher skill level don't have access to tournaments reserved for lower skill levels
- General bug fixing activity around team functionalities
- Proper labels for game mode (e.g. duel, CA, CTF,e tc.) have been implemented
- Timezone issues have been fixed. The timezone of all the platform activities and statistics will now be based on the same timezone as set on the computer you are connected with
- Stability and scalability have been improved significantly. The platform should now be stable at any amount of connections with significantly reduced downtimes.
- A significant under the hood work on data storage has been made, which allows us to implement a gaming activity feed in the next release
In the meantime, feel free to enter in the Series tournaments here, or play a FACE N GO with a friend or your team mates here!
A special thanks goes out to the gentlemen of QLRanks, who were kind enough to allow us to use their ranking system.
- Sinister by Mike "Yellack" Schreiber and Gary "akm" Turner.
- Terminatria by Russell "bst" Vint.
In the spirit of the last Silence Cup, we want to host a Sinister Cup to test the map first hand and see what the best dueler can pull off. Terminatria and Windsong Keep will follow in the future.
The cup will feature a 1st place prize of 100 $ sponsored by the donations to the Kevin "Strenx" Baeza's Streaming Project. The cup will be run on the FACEIT platform.
Date: 31.10.2012 Time: Check in 12:30 CDT, Start 13:30 CDT Prize: 100$ Format: Double Elimination (Bo1 all matches except Bo3 Final) Map pool: Sinister Additional Info: All players need to check in before the cup stats.
Posted by GUArd @ 03:26 CDT, 12 October 2012 - iMsg
Hi! No trashtalk, just straight, screenshot with GREEN enemy standing in front of GREEN tubes/flags. Better in same position as mine.Good map, but impossible to play with my gfx or I need glasses :))
ps. I won't change model to other color.
Needs a new channel layout. Describe the options, suggest one. Needs playlists with proper ordering (#1 start to finish, #2 [missing?] start to finish, etc.), and the titled of the videos needs some revising. For example, some videos are marked as one part of a whole but there are no other parts.
11:47
FACEIT QL #1 - strenx vs. guard - 1/2 Part 1
Are there missing VODs? I am attempting to seek through the videos in an attempt to create playlists myself in the meantime. Playlists may be shared and copied as your own IIRC.
Edited by everamzah at 06:39 CDT, 10 October 2012 - 1425 Hits
Yesterday found a hearty Music =)
and decided to quickly washed down shortmovie
turned out not bad like
as such effects are virtually no
in general, nothing more
just good music and the same frags
Posted by SIHdW3W @ 18:48 CDT, 25 July 2012 - iMsg
these are like the most played maps atm, just press 0 in numpad to start it and then you can vote the result with numpad numers (1-6). This way you can train random maps for each game. Have fun !
Hey! My names Luke, I live in Dublin, Ireland and I`m 16 years old. I`m currently on my summer holidays but I shall be going into my 2nd last year of highschool in september.
You`re one of the youngest Quakers in the scene. When did you start playing Quake, and in particular duel?
I started playing Quake around this time of the year in 2009. I only played duel because at the time I found it hard to find a CTF team and TDM wasn`t very active (or I wasn`t in touch with it) so I found it easiest for me to play duel as I only needed myself and an opponent to play.
Your father traveled to dreamhack with you. How has that trip influenced his view on the game? Did you discuss about Quake after you came back home?
My dad is beginning to understand how quake works. We discussed the main problem with Quake LANs is that players after receive any prize money so they have no real motivation to come other than to socialise at the events.
Did you watch the demos of your match against weird? Did you learn something from it?
I have tried to watch my demos, yes, but it isn`t easy! I`ve mainly watched the Aerowalk game and the main mistake I made was that I paniced, I`ve done this plenty of times versus players and I never seem to learn from it. Take for example last weeks zotac, I had p0ni in the first round. We were playing on ZTN and the score was 4-4 with 5 minutes remaining and I had just ended a fight coming out as the obvious winner (me: 200 100, him: <25hp). He restacks on the 50hp and YA and hits 3 rails in a row and then shafts me on the red without me dealing any damage. I`ve made this mistake time and time again against "top" players and I know about it myself (I hate it) but it happens every time I come close to taking the lead against higher skilled players.
At Dreamhack you said that you don`t really time to the clock. Is this really the case, and if yes, do you feel this is something you gotta change to step up your game?
I think I will only begin timing if I seriously start playing duel for a tournament but I`d rather practice my positioning,combat skills/dodging before I focus on timing.
What would be your favorite map pool?
ztn,aero,tox,dm6,t4
Sound is a crucial component of the game. There are some questionable design choices (like the fact that you cannot walk down stairs silently), and technical limitations (the visibility-sound coupling, creating problems like the one of battleforge, where a window in the middle of the map screws up everything). Imagine you could influence the next Quake, what would you like to see there in terms of sound features? You can go as crazy as "YA armors making you silent for 10 seconds", but motivate your suggestions!
Well I think that id software has to fix the sound in general in quakelive but thats another story I suppose. I`d like to try some sort of silent powerup where you make no noise at all for 30 seconds (weapons and movement) just so you could suprise your enemy. However the main problem I see is if you pick it up in duel the enemy knows you have it and they will just be super-cautious. This is what we have qlfocus for though, so we can try these things out and see if they work and if they don`t we can just remove them.
You once proposed the idea of allowing weapon drop in duel as a way to bait your opponent. Can you expand on this?
Heh, I did mention this at dreamhack. I approached rapha and cypher about it and cypher seemed against it as he thought it wasn`t very realistic and if you accidently hit your drop weapon bind in the middle of a fight you`re doomed. Rapha said he had thought about it but that cypher was right. However I don`t see why idsoftware can`t add it anyway, I mean whens the last time you`ve accidently hit your drop weapon bind in a TDM game? Just because its there doesn`t mean you HAVE to use it.
Can we expect to see you at one of the next lans, in the Netherlands or Italy?
I`d love to, I had a great time at the last event with you guys (even if I didn`t get to go to the after party :D). However I really don`t know, we`ll just have to see in the future.
Any final shout out?
Basically to anyone who I talk to on a regular basis!
Hello maza. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Hello world. I'm a 20-years-old dude from Finland and probably the current Finnish hope in QL dueling scene. Some people might recognize me from Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a game which I used to play until I found about the lovely quakelive. At the moment I'm working but I'm going to start my studies this august and hopefully I'll be able to carry on practising QL!
Tell us about mazaa in Quake. When did you start playing and which modes? What about today?
Like mentioned, I played ET since 2003 or so and in 2010 I started following quakelive tournaments. ET didn't suit me very well due to various reasons, I started noticing it in 2010 as well. It was a team game so the outcome wasn't always in your hands. Also the main format 6on6 required staying up too late for my taste so I never got into that. But most importantly ET lacked the challenge and it was frustrating for me to notice how low the level of play was in ET and how easy it was to dominate in. As I got very good in ET I realized I must have some sort of talent in me as well. Then QL stepped in, in august 2010 I began to play QL and started liking it more and more. I tried playing both ET and QL but that didn't work out, I couldn't play good in both games at the same time. So in may 2011 I decided to go all-in in quakelive and not once have I regretted that =). Since then I've been focused on getting better, and eventually the best, in duel. To summarize, I started playing QL duel almost 2 years ago and been doing it hardcore for a bit more than a year.
Describe what you like of the game in one sentence.
It's 1on1 and the player who plays better wins.
As dueler around 1900-2000 ELO, how is your experience in terms of finding practice partners in EU? Have you ever had specific training buddies? Do you see it as an advantage over playing random opponents? What is your practice routine?
Depends on who you are ready to play, I for instance don't like playing boneheads or cheaters so that makes it a bit harder for me. But yeah you can get practice any time you want but the quality of practice varies hugely. To mention one, I've been practicing with Sc00t every once in a while and nothing beats that practice. I mean, usually if I want to play versus good players and I lose I need to find another server or wait 10-20 mins in the queue because there are always other players in the row. You might be searching the game for 60 minutes but in the end you get like one or two games max. When you have a practicing buddy, like I already have a few, you can potentially play 6 games per an hour. And then again, atleast for me, playing players that are on a level below me can get extremely demotivating for some reason, maybe just because I've had enough of winning and noob-bashing in ET and now I actually enjoy getting to play players better than me =). If I had like 2100+ ELO it would be easier to get practise because there would be nobody that wouldn't consider me as a contender and therefore decline from playing me. Now there are still guys who think I can't give them hard time, but getting good practise was a lot harder 6 months back so it's only getting better from now on. I'm likely to purchase pro account in the following months and that should make practicing more efficient also, because on your own server you can make sure you can play all the time. My practice routine is pretty much playing for a few months and then I'll do a mazamovie and doing it I analyze my progress and the cons and pros of my game. Recently in the last 4-6 months or so I haven't played necessarily for the win and instead tried out crazy/different stuff that comes to my mind. Also I've played a little CA and stuff to get better in combat. Now I should put the crazy stuff in balance with safe play and I'll be good to go. I play to get better, not to win =) Obviously another story in zotacs and such.
Are there features you would like to have included in QL webpage that would make your experience better? Or do you feel the current external tools (irc, QLRanks) compensate well enough?
Well, noobs don't know about IRC nor qlranks so they (id) should at least integrate qlranks with QL. Few days ago I was skill matched with 990 elo guy... Then maybe some sort of introduction to configs and HUDs because QL is one of the few games you can modify endlessly! Why not having some community shiat and link to esreality.com too?
You seem to play all maps of the official map pool evenly, except for toxicity. Is there anything particular about this map that makes you like it less? Or do you feel that map requires less practice than the others?
I somehow dislike the way toxicity works, it depending on spawns and combat situations hugely. You mess up one important situation and you might find yourself 5-10 frags behind. In dm13 you can switch control via positioning and thinking, in tox you gotta be aim-wise awesome instead. But I'm gonna start practicing it more now that my combat skills are getting better I'm automatically getting better in tox too, right?! D:
If you could decide how the duel map pool should evolve, what would you do? Are there maps (either in QL or Q3) you would like to see played? Are there non-played maps that could fixed and become good?
I'm not anybody to answer this really, I never played Q3 or the 'underground' maps in QL but from ET I know new and unknown maps never get the attention the should, which is a shame but not much you can do about it really. The ongoing map pool of dm13, ztn, t7, aero and toxicity would be perfect if you removed toxicity and put hektik back in. I kinda even like toxicity how it's different but I find it horrible to play so I would prefer hektik. Maybe try having both for a while and see which one is preferred?
Looking at your records, you did beat players like Baksteen, Scoot, and Evil. Were these lucky matches, or do you feel that on a good day you can play at that level? What do you think separates these players from you?
I don't think those were lucky by any means, haven't played evil much but I've won baksteen and Sc00t multiple times. When I'm warmed up and happen to hit decently I feel like I can beat pretty much anybody excluding likes of cypher. Then again there are games where I pick up a rail and use the 10 slugs and haven't hit a single one. Tough to play if your aim lets you down like that. Also I'm very warmup dependent player and I never can be bothered warming up before casual practice, can't help it :(. I think they're on a level above me simply because they've played the game like twice the amount I have. You just gotta grind the maps and situations hundreds and hundreds of times, which I haven't yet done enough. Doing that you dodge better which already can decide matches, leave alone the aim part. The biggest bottle-neck is combat skills but also map knowledge sets me apart from players like Sc00t.
Are you going to attend LAN events in the near future, like Adroits in the Netherlands, or UGC in Italy? What about Dreamhack winter?
I don't think I'm going to attend those LANs unless I get sponsored. If I do happen to get a sponsor I have no reason to not to go. I simply am not good enough to enjoy LANs yet. When I'm pretty much guaranteed to go playoffs I'll start considering going. That's probably next year or the year after when I'm supposed to be dh14 champ :x Although, there are rumors that there would be a minor Finnish LAN which I might attend if it ever becomes reality.
Thanks for this interview maza. Any final word or shout out?
I'm just gonna thank you Memento_Mori & twister for the cup and invite, you're doing good job keeping quake alive and kicking.. and the same for zotac crew (donathan)! :)
Edited by Memento_Mori at 06:34 CDT, 8 July 2012 - 2232 Hits