It’s about time! I finally got a Quake Live beta invite. I got it earlier today so, I setup my account and installed the browser plug-in. Since, I was knee deep in work I left myself logged into the site and let the it cache around 280 megs of data. The data files are stored in C:Documents and Settings<profile name>Application Dataid Softwarequakelive.

Anyway, I had a chance to play through the ‘tutorial’ level during lunch. It started out very easy until, I had around 15 kills then the bot AI decided that to put up a fight. After that point, it was a hard fought game with the bot Crash closing the gap to 17-11. I also played a couple of short practice round on a few different maps. Practice rounds are easily setup with bots which will allow new comers to learn the map. Short games are nice too, ten minutes or ten frags – I could get used to that. I don’t think we’ll see too many short games during the beta but, we’ll see.

Replaying the tutorial level I found Crash remembered our previous battle and brought the fight right at the start of the match. After that all was left was to ruin my perfect standings in the game and join a live free for all match. It started off pretty going with my establishing a nice path around the map pretty quickly. At least that’s what I thought until some one who had obviously been playing Quake 3 since it was originally released. Going from zero to 15 in just a few minutes. Of course, part of his killing spree was hanging out sniping people with the rail gun – until I realized he was up there and ended that.

I’ve only seen one piece of advertising in the game so far and it’s an ad for a boxing match. I’m not sure it speaks to the demographic of the typical Quake player but, I’m no ad wizard so who knows.

I am seriously behind schedule on my game design project.  I think at least partly because I’m not really interested in doing an educational style game.  It’s not very exciting.  It kind of reminds me about when I found out I was on the team for the game that still says “shhhhh…..” over on the sidebar.  I was not very interested in the project, which made it difficult to work on.  I spent most of my time playing the still work in progress Guitar Hero for Wii.  Anyway, I’m going to buckle down this week and actually get some work done – I swear – and considering that it’s Friday already…

For the project I decided that I was just going to make a Pac-Man-ish maze style game in which the main character is attacked and then trapped by the evil “Energy Hogs”.  She then has to work her way out of several mazes while defeating the enemies.  She will be collecting power ups that will allow her to remove enemies from the play field.  Unlike Pac-Man the enemies are removed will not come back.  Once an enemies is defeated the player will see a short blurb on the joys of energy conservation – the message will display in a manner as to not cover the play field.

That’s all I’ve got so far – not very exciting – but, I’ll be whipping up a prototype tonight and continue to work on it throughout the weekend in hopes of coming up with something I’ll be able to turn in for a grade.  Of course that will probably not happen since I’m sure I’ll end up playing Left 4 Dead…

Finally, had a chance last night to get some co-op gaming in with Left 4 Dead and it was awesome!  I preordered the game last week so I was able to download the demo on back on the 6th.  I played through the single player portion a dozen or so times waiting for the public version to be released.  Anyway, it’s out now and there are zombies to be killed.  So, I’ll leave you now with some screen shots (then I need to get back to work), all the shots are 1680×1050 and show how much I need to pickup a new video card.

I finally have word on the “topic” for my game design final project.  The game is to be an education game with a theme of renewable energy or energy conservation.  This weeks assignment is to write up a game proposal.  The game proposal’s purpose is to cover details of your game – this is what you take to a publisher (along with a demo hopefully) in order to convince them that your game is the next best thing and worth an investment.  While it is not as all encompassing as a full game design document, the proposal explains the high concept, game genre, target platforms and game play features.  If it was developed by an actual company with an actual budget it may also contain development estimates, risk analysis and possibly some target market research.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before I even get to the proposal comes the hard part – deciding what style of game I want to create and how to tie in the energy conscious and educational angles.  When this class started I was considering attempting a simple “Metroidvania” style game but, I’m not so sure about that any more.  Let’s start simply, a short list of possible ideas:

• Maze game: Run around turning off lights while avoiding energy hogs, energy saver bulb power ups.
• Adventure game: Uncover how the evil corporation is preventing the adaption of energy efficient products.
• Action/Adventure game: Metroidvania style 2D – explore buildings, turn off lights change, needs bad guy of some sort.
• Flash style mini game: Try to keep earth clean using renewable energy.

Due to time and team limitations I’ll be ditching the adventure game idea and not even thinking about doing a role playing game.  While, a maze game would be very simple I’m not sure I want to do that either.  Whatever I do I’m going to try to keep it very simple since I’m basically going to beg a friend of mine for some art.  I think I’m going to take some time away from the computer to sketch out some ideas.  Once I’ve got some solid notes I’ll try and get them posted up here.