if you're still looking for testers, send me an email. 

you wont get any technical feedback, I'm no mapper. 

I'd like one very much sir! Been looking forward to checking it out... 

I couldn't give a shit what browser other people use, but since I compulsively have to customise everything, I'm a sucker for Firefox. Firecrotch?

I'm currently running Firefox 3 with Greasemonkey scripts (lets you tweak individual webpages to work the way you want), mouse gestures (amazing), the web-developer extensions, grab and drag (what it sounds like: hold a mouse button of your choice and drag the view about), adblocker, the camino theme, and a few more. 

at QuakeOne.com 

included with the game 

I know. But its good to see someone make an effort! 

go map, btw 

http://www.cumbria.ac.uk/Courses/Courses2009bylevel/Foundationdegree2009/Arts/ArtGamesDesign.aspx

I know some of you guys are actually pros, so I wanted to ask what you think of the look of it?

Is near where I live..... 

OK, I'm going to be honest here because I don't want to go down the wrong path...

That course looks fine for what it is but understand that game designers aren't hired cold off the street. Those positions are generally given to people who work within the company who have worked their way up and proven that they know what they're doing.

If you want to be a game designer, then this course certainly won't HURT your chances but it's not a golden pass key either. You're going to need to design games, a lot of them, and get them into finished form. That will impress a prospective employer a lot more than a piece of paper will.

Again, the course seems fine and I won't want to be a wet blanket - but you're going to have to do a whole lot more than get that diploma if you want to be an actual game designer. Passion and results first, paper degrees second. IMO. 

As well, and it did help, not least because I learned alot. Getting the actual job is going to take a portfolio, and university is a good place to start putting one together.

Most likely alot of your tutors will have worked in the industry as well, so their advice is going to be useful.

It's true that games desginers have to work their way up, but not always from the most lowly positions - its perfectly possible to start in level design and get there. 

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression about working your way up. Yes, I'm not saying you have to start off as the janitor. All I meant is that the odds of you starting as a game designer are very slim. 

Interesting points.

I mean to get a job working for a company producing games you need an impressive portfolio of work, i.e. games which you have made.

So for a person like me (who isn't imtimidated by the design aspect - i.e. creating graphics/artwork) I need to learn how to actually program a game?

And as I've said before - I'm no programmer, but I want to learn how to program. So what is a good medium to work in? Say for example I wanted to make a side-scroller - I could create the artwork - but then I would have to actually program it (not necessarily in that order) - So I could self-teach myself how to use a language.

Where would I find info to do that?

What is a good medium to learn?

Lol! The concept of programming is pretty alien to me, but also intuiguing. I used to dabble in BBC Basic when I was about 14, and was able to make pong-like games, and even simple top-scrollers (just using simple line-art)....

Where should I look? 

Just woke up, so too blurred to give actual advice, but no, you don't _need_ to learn to code to create a portfolio (in fact, given your releases you already have part of one).

Infer from following;

Those positions are generally given to people who work within the company

All I meant is that the odds of you starting as a game designer are very slim

but [...] its perfectly possible to start in level design 

but from what I have seen, surely making a portfolio that includes works in various engines is a definite plus? 

http://www.cprogramming.com/

Maybe I should make a mod. For Quake.

Although I feel that if I can get a handle on creating programmes/games it would become more addictive and interesting to me than mapping....

Well to apply for that course I need a protfolio anyway, which I will be putting my maps and webpage in. And a couple of pop-up banners which I created for a trade show.....

Hopefully they will consider me despite that fact that I only got to GCSE's, and a couple of other certificates. They expect me to have "A" levels, which I dont....

The thing is that I dont want the piece of paper, I just want the living/career. And to do the course I would have to do it part-time due to real-life situations.... Which would take four years....

I really am interested in learning C though. 

"but from what I have seen, surely making a portfolio that includes works in various engines is a definite plus?"

The engine you choose isn't all that important. What's important is that you finish things. That's really what companies want to see. The fact that it's in Unreal, Quake or your own engine doesn't matter.

Having an idea, building it, and actually releasing something to the world puts you leaps and bounds beyond most applicants. 

Lots of open source games are very short on manpower. You could pick one, add lots of artwork, squish all the bugs, and make a proper release. Especially if you can do artwork, many open source teams would kill to get you on their project.

http://happypenguin.org/

Learning C:

http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book/

and get a pet project to practice on.

Also, did you get my mail? 

Well if I can get my current map out of the way (imminent) I s'pose I can start on the said map you mentioned. I think I might actually have to be working on two maps at once though...

I'm really keen on making an ep. still but my current map is no longer gonna be part of it. It sucks. It was an interesting experiment, but ultimately a fail. Heh - you'll all see soon enough!

you can do artwork

Crikey! What I mean is i understand how to make artwork - bitmapped images. But really I havent got that much experience in the area..... Lol! its all to play for I guess.

I spent about an hour reading through the first tutorial on cprogramming.com then went cross eyed...

So yes, I'll commit to doing that one map to start with! Im in. :-)

BUT - I will be working on other stuff at the same time. Not to say that I'll never finish it, just that I will be attempting to multi-task....

Meh - I think I've HAD ONE TOO MANY CUPS OF TEA..... 

Oh, and as an aside ... QuakeC is not really, entirely, "C". It's basically C but it's so Quake specific and so locked into it's sandbox that whatever you learn there isn't really all that relevant to what you might get a job doing in the 'real world'.

You might want to start off doing command line based Quake tools or something if you wanted to get your feet wet with C. Find the file specs for a BSP file and see if you can open the file, read some info about it, print it to the screen and clean up. Stuff like that will teach you more than making the Ogre fire nails will.

Not that QuakeC is useless in this regard. It certainly isn't. It inspired TONS of guys back in the day to learn to code so in that light it's fantastic. It's incredibly satisfying to change a few lines of QuakeC and see the game itself change it's behavior. That's almost instant gratification, baby! :) 

#include <stdio.h>

yup - that means that the compiler has to look in a file called stdio.h before proceeding to obtain any, er, functions which might get called on within the script?

A bit like telling an xhtml script to look into style.css to get the definitions of each one of the heading/span styles?

Thats about as far as Iv'e got, and I dont even know if it's right.

Cups of TEA! 

If this is the rate you're going to ask questions, this is going to be a very long and painful process for everyone. :) Take it slow, compile a lot, change things and see what happens. 

You are, to me and at this time, the pretty much the best person to finish (and finish good) things around here. :)

(If you want to get into programming, join the dark side and install Linux!) 

I havent really had a chance to fiddle yet, this has all happened since I started work. This morning. Tomorrow who knows, I might be stripping and rebuilding car engines.... Anyone know any good links ? (jk)

Spirit - Lol! Wait till you see the map! 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EPeSU3H0Yv8

highly relevant!