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 on the FNF page, we are in our own private FNF 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 friends' 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!

Edited to add: Amp has also provided another way to get your opponent into your server, if you're having trouble with the main interface. If you hit escape once you're loaded into the server, you can click on the 'Link to this match' button in the top left. This will give you a URL that you can copy/paste to your opponent that they can use to join your game.

Thanks Amp!

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.

This might seem complicated, but it's really not -- this is just a very specific, in-depth guide to getting a match going. Once you get in and play, you'll find it takes all of 15 seconds to actually do.

Have fun, and good luck! Three of you are going to win some really sweet computers!