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Ultimate Guide to Hosting a LAN Party

Posted by Hemos on from the planning-and-preparing dept.

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!"

6 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. I disagree on mice by sokoban · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They say to use optical mice. I have never really liked the feel of optical mice personally and aren't there tracking problems on most of them at high velocities. Ball mice just have that more definite feel to them. They point better and track more accurately. Just get a good mousepad and keep it clean. Optical mice are kind of cool, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to make them usable for hardcore gaming.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
  2. Why bother - go to a net caf� instead by mjul · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It seems like that article leaped out of stasis from five years back.

    Nowadays, with a net/LAN gaming café on every corner it is much easier just going there instead - the iron is faster, the network is already set up, everyone has a decent chair, and they have more games than I care to count. At 2-3 an hour for the cafés, spending hours getting things set up for a private party really does not make sense to me.

  3. Wishy-washy namby-pamby corporate sponsored crap by Hypnos7787 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That article was cleary written for morons, who overplan everything. IT IS A PARTY, not a damn business conference. Checking in indeed. Just get together, bring as much kit as you can get hold of and have fun setting it up half the night.

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    - Hypnos
  4. Gaming Cafes Instead by shut_up_man · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I've run quite a few LAN parties, but I'm steering more towards booking out local gaming cafes these days. It's just easier.
    • All hardware already there and set up
    • Games installed and patched
    • Hardware competition-grade (no more sore losers on P233s)
    • Nerdboy clerk to help people with tech problems, so I don't have to
    • Often ninja-fast net link for online team gaming
    • Stacks of gaming supplies (caffeine drinks, snacks, local fast food delivery menus)
    • Some cafes have a BAR! (Playing Fields in London, yay!)
    • Paying to play makes people act cooler, reducing the "Screw you guys, I'm playing Tribes Shifter Server or going home!" factor
  5. Re:This guy is too difficult! by BrookHarty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Um, no. DHCP isnt hard to setup, and any linux geek could download dhcpd and the sample config works fine. And @home/dsl(some) peeps seem to use dhcp anyways, all lan parties I goto use DHCP so nobody has to give out settings. Plus you can do cool stuff like playing with DNS and redirects. So people can hit the fileservers without knowing its ips. http://files and they can get all the mods/patches.

    I personally love DHCP, I can plug in my work laptop at home and not reconfigure any tcp/ip settings. I even tweaked my dhcpd.conf so that my MAC address gets the same IP and network settings for VPN.

    Also, Now that switches are cheap, might as well spend the extra 10-20 bux and get a switch. 8 ports switches are like 40 bux now.

  6. Re:At School! by turbine216 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    you avoid the situation altogether by asking people to bring their own equipment. I know that in your particular situation, this wasn't really a possibility...but hey, that's the disadvantage of using someone else's LAN.