Ultimate Guide to Hosting a LAN Party

WebWord writes "The title says it all. This really is the best damn guide to setting up a LAN party I have ever seen. They cover all the details from equipment to food to network protocols. Excellent!"

Comments

Re:I disagree on mice

[drodver]

I have an optical mouse and game with it all the time. I love it because it's so light and less resistent to movement. When you get to the end of the mouse pad with a ball mouse you have to pick it up, move it and set it down. The ball tends to shift when you pick it up and when you sit it down, which usually screws me up. With the optical mouse I have full control at all times. The problem I think most people experience is that not all surfaces are perfect for optical mice. The instructions have some pointers for good surfaces. If you run it over something like a newspaper it can jerk around, for example.

Lanparty.com

[*Pres*]

A guide like this has existed for quite some time. Check out lanparty.com. It rocks!

Here's a direct link to their guide to hosting a lanparty

http://www.lanparty.com/theguide/

Re:I disagree on mice

[DarkEdgeX]

I just recently got into using optical mice, and I love them-- for some reason (maybe it's my own fault) dust and whatnot screws up old-style ball mice for me faster than anything (sometimes to the point where left/right motion won't function).. with this optical mouse though, there's just about nothing that can cause me to have that same experience. As for your concerns about "pointing better and tracking more accurately", I believe they are unfounded. Microsoft's IntelliMouse Optical, IntelliMouse Explorer and Wheel Mouse Optical all take snapshots 6000 times a second-- that's more sampling than your typical ball mouse receives. (Granted, it likely never sends all that data down the wire, but it does likely process this data in the mouse to create a more accurate representation of your movements.)

I dunno, maybe it's different mice for different folks, but you should give them another chance. =)

dilweed's 15 minute guide to LAN party bliss.

[SyniK]

Firstly, there is a lot of different types of LANs.
I started out doing a 2 player thin coax LAN at my house.
That balloned up to a 12 player coax LAN at my house.
Then it became a 10/100 2 5-port hub, 8 player LAN at my friend Mikey's house...
The next step was a 40-50 player LAN in nice comfortable leather high back chairs and rented hotel space.
And now it's a 100-140 player LAN at Stars recreation center (www.stars.com) in Vacaville.

For lack of a better term I turned "pro". I now do it for money. Once you make the jump from garage LAN to paid LAN you have to keep the atomsphere of the garage LAN but deliever the reliability, power, and network of a professional LAN.
Garage LAN:
DIVERSIFICATION
Some people are console freaks, some people are PC freaks. Have plenty of both. Consoles are great, because you don't have to blow $500 to play a game. Big screens with movies are good too (but watch them copyrights on public viewings!)
PARTY ATOMSPHERE
Keep it relaxed and enjoyable. Do not break out the fine china and do not throw a LAN at a house or location with fine China to break. Loud music (techno, phat beats, or rock) is a must.

Professional LAN:
POWER
Buy, rent, or steal enough power so that there is never a blow circuit. Waiting an hour or so for the circuit breaker to cool down is retard (Go morons in Sacto!).
NETWORK
9 ms ping is your target. Have you ever tried to lightning gun in Rocket Arena 3 with higher than 50 ping? It sucks so much ass... Do you know how evil a railgun is at 9 ms ping?
Internet access is always very nice. More is better, but a little with do. If you have multiday events it's great to check your email. (Gets people to advertise your event to their buddies :) ).
SPONSORS
Everyone likes to get something for nothing. Give away prizes. Get some local or national company to pitch in and just give the stuff away. It's not that big a deal, but to a gamer it makes all the world.
TOURNAMENTS
Everyone likes to win too. Not only do you get the sweet file sharing at a LAN, but you also can prove your skilz. Run a baby single elimination tournament and then ballon it from there. Double elimination is good if you can handle the logistics... It gives everyone 2 games at least... even the people that suck at Quake 3 like me :).
LEGAL
If you allow minors, back off the pr0n and alcohol. You need stated policies and enforcement against them. That's the damn rules :(.

Ok, it's 3 AM, I'm going to bed. Gamerzday is always looking for more locations to LAN... got any ideas? :)

(Damn it's 3:02... It took 17 minutes!)

Re:I disagree on mice

[dorward]

I use an Intellimouse Explorer (I don't use anything written by Microsoft at home EXCEPT my mouse!) and I've had no tracking problems with it.

And lacking a ball means any gunk just rubs off.

(I should point out that my model is the one advertised at having 33% better resolution or some such)

From experience...

[jaavaaguru]

I've hosted a few LAN parties at my house, and we're doing it more now (2 in the last 2 weeks). It's usually 8 to 15 people. Nobody's got any amazing hardware, just a few 8 port 10Base-T hubs, although we'll be going 100mbps soon.

Things that are important to us:

• DHCP - I know people say its simpler to let Windows arrange the networking by itself, but generally all my friends houses (that are big enough to have a LAN party at) aleardy have DHCP, and Windows messes it up sometimes anyway when there's lots of people. Plus, DHCP will set up your internet gateway and DNS too :-)
• Air conditioning - Even with 5 people in a small room on a cold day it gets pretty warm pretty quickly
• Be near a shop - No matter how prepared you are, you'll always need more food (unless you're rich and over-buy to start with
• Someone experienced in networking - It sucks when people get confused about what an uplink socket is for. You should have someone that knows all about it overseeing the network setup.
• Installation Disks/CDs - We had one computer refuse to see the network and refuse to re-install its network drivers, so it needed Windows re-installed (typical); and another lost its registry and didnt have it backed up. it's always a good idea to have Video, Sound, Network and Windows installation CDs with you.
• Internet - People need a break from gaming at some point and most geeks need to check their mail. I've also found this to be useful for downlaoding latest patches, using USENET (or Google) to find the answer to some strange compatability problems, etc.
• Music - The louder the better. And make sure there is one source of music (people's PC should be playing sound effects - not music. If its' mp3 music, get it all onto the machine thats's going to play it at the start so SMB file transfers aren't slowing down the network during gameplay.

My friends and I haven't ventured into the organized type of party where there are tournaments and prizes, but I think we'll be trying that next time, just for a change.

P.S. Why do people try to bring up the subject of terrorist attacks in nearly every slashdot discussion? That's really annoying to some people. If you're going to discuss terrorism, do it in a newsgroup about terrorism, or current events.

earphones

[zerocool^]

Don't forget to tell newbies to bring headphones/earphones. While your set of klipsch promedia speakers may be cool, we don't need to hear explosions at gut-ratteling volumes times 20.

Re:earphones

[Vuarnet]

Volume shmolume. The real reason you need to get earphones is not to avoid hurting your friends' delicate ears with your Nine Inch Nails soundtrack, but to avoid having them hear all your game sounds and messages.

In several games I've played, there have been cases where I waste a perfectly planned ambush / attack / whatever, simply because the other player heard the background noise coming out of my PC speakers, and knowing exactly where my character was.

Earphones are a necessity, whenever you're surrounded by hard-core gamers.

Thank God for LAN Parties

[BadBlood]

Back in the early days of broadband (1999 for me :) I regularly got pings to most servers in the 40-80 range and was LOVING it. Fast forward 2.5 years and packet loss makes nearly every game unplayable. I can't find any servers under 100ms ping time.

This weekend, I'm going to one of the best, if not the best, lan parties around http://www.gamersgauntlet.com/

They have networking and power consumption down to an art form. They give away prizes (last time a GeForce 2 Pro card was one prize), run tourneys, and all-around provide an excellent time. The staff is friendly and accomodating to everyone's needs. It really can't be beat.

I've hosted a few mini-lans at my house and I have to say that having some networking experience w/Linux has been a great help. Running the games servers on Linux has given me very favorable results (compared to win2k).

It's so sad that I'm 33 years old and addicted to LAN gaming. So sad. :)