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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!"
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This only applies to smaller at-home LAN parties, as I have never been involved in organizing a large 20+ persons LAN party.
Anyway, my experience is that you shouldn't overplan what activities/games should take place/be played when you are throwing a LAN party.
Mostly, just going with the flow is a really good idea, as pressuring people into playing a game they might or might not want to play, most often leads to a lot of bitching, and generally unsatisfied players.
Another thing you should consider (when hosting at home), is to offer other activities than LAN gaming.
Ofcourse, if you only have a weekend, then this mig ht not be all that important, but when we do LAN'ing, most of the participants take a week of from work, and then we do a 10-day stretch, and THEN its important to offer other activities, such as DVD movies (if you can get a projector, its a BIG thumbs up, ditto for a decent 5.1 surround system), if its summer, setup a barbeque, take an afternoon on the beach, etc.
I've found that this is a really great idea, which makes participants happy, and gives a generally much better ambiance at the LAN party.
Actually the best 2 mice out are the Boomslang and m$ intellimouse explorer. They have higher dpi(or whatever) than a standard mouse. Boomslang is suppose to be the best gamers mouse, but rides a little high on the grip for my taste.
So the 5 buttons, scroll wheel, and opitcal made me choose the m$ mouse. It took me a little while to get used the extra weight for the m$ie mouse, since it doesnt have a ball to roll on. A nice 3m mouse pad fixed that.
Ive been to Lan games where people still keyboard it. Some peeps even use a trackball, this I never will understand.
a LAN party shouldn't be about extreme hardware or exotic projection systems. It should be about fun. We started ours in a small one-car garage and they've only gotten better. But looking back, it was the least-planned parties that were the best. We even had one in my tiny apartment -- in fact it got so cramped that we had to move the furnature to the bedroom and outside and even balance a monitor on the edge of the kitchen sink. But know what, it was a blast! We played games for over 18 hours, most of us surviving thru the whole thing.
http://www.hublan.com/hublan09/HubLAN9-6.jpg
http://www.hublan.com/hublan09/HubLAN9-7.jpg
Me and a couple of friends set up a lan party at School during the last week of the summer term. We had about 12 computers with an extra one projecting the game onto a large screen. We made loads of money for charity but it was really difficult to persuade the admin to allow us, we also had problems with irritating kinds wanting to change the controls every 5 minutes. What is the best option, leaving it on default controls, or allow people to change?
The last LAN party I went to was real fun. We had a projector which played a few good/bad movies(it doesn't make Joes Apartment any better), but momre importantly, we had tables.
Nothing is more fun than having a DJ spin while you're playing Counterstrike, and having a large projection(life-size) screen of someone playing Cstrike on that.
Then when we were all gamed out, we watched Quake 1 and 2 done quickly, some strange music videos(one from Atari Teenage Riot involving erasing faces) and had a blast.
It's all the music of a rave, without the fucking e-tards, cudddle puddles, or police involvement.