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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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A mate and I set up a Quake2 party complete with a digital projector set up on a seperate machine on the network using the "camera where the action is" mode and..... no bloody one came. Everyone wanted to go see anyother stupid hollywood flick. :(
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
What makes lan parties fun is cramming yourself on the edge of a bed, where your mouse works crappy, getting fragged while the host(ess) kicks your ass while sitting at their desk - that and brownouts when the sub woofers woof (for the lack of a better word).
I see doom on the page - how long has it been since you've last played that game.
Honestly though, planning helps, but the article isn't that extensive.
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Remember to allocate space for sleeping if your event spans more than one day because even the most hardcore gamer cannot play for 24 hours straight.
Poofters! Wimps! It doesn't get fun until after you've been up for 24 hours straight. Then you turn the volume wayyyy up, and shotgun about 4 cans of Jolt... Blammo! Good God, I'm hit! The monsters, they're all around meeee
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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.
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.
The guy mentions getting a 24 port 10/100 switch. Is this guy made out of money? I've been to god knows how many lan parties, and there are some pretty pathetic gaming rigs people have scraped up the little money they have to build a box with. How does he expect someone to just pull a damn switch out of their a$$? and DHCP? Why? If you use windows and tell it to automatically select an IP address (w/o a DHCP server present) it will automatically choose a random IP address out of the 169.254.0.0/16 range. a DHCP server is a lot of hassle for less than 20 people. This guy goes way too much into depth on holding lan parties. See, if this is how it is going to be in the future, I guess i'm going to be the old fart reminiscing on how "lan parties used to be simple, back when we just brought computers over to our friends house with an 8 port hub and played quake, no planning, no charging, no designated break areas, no sponsorships...".
We have lan parties typically every weekend. They consist of 10-20 people at any given time. It is extremely simple... some of us in our group work for the city and have access to one of their buildings (hookups are great). We hold our lan parties in a big room, have tables & chairs there for our use. We pitched in $5 each (one time fee) and bought a 24 port 10/100 hub. There are no designated break areas. People go on their own food runs if they're hungry, and we don't charge or have sponsors. Just a bunch of guys (and one girl) who get together and play counterstrike for hours up on hours upon hours.....Dick
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.
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/
For some reason, whenever I write out a plan for an upcoming LAN event hosted by myself (using vi, of course) we never get around to playing the games I planned to play (Eg. AvP, Jedi Knight, Emperor battle for Dune, Summoner, CounterStrike), instead, everyone wants to play nothing but UT. But, when I use emacs to plan it out, noone shows up :(
My best Lan Party investment to date was the nifty little Sony CPJ-200. Street price is under $800.
2 00projector.htm
http://www.supremevideo.com/internet_specials/cpj
You'll need a dimish room for it to be effective, but we tend to have our lan parties in darkened rooms anyway. 16 monitors keeps things bright enough to walk around, yet dark enough for the projector to work fine.
No. The first rule of the LAN party is that you don't talk about the LAN party.
A list of one-time and recurring LAN parties is available Blue's News. Notice something weird about it?
Yup. There's no regular LAN party in the San Francisco Bay Area. (BANGG (Bay Area Network Gaming Group) appears to have gone quiescent.) Anyone out there know of recurring LAN parties on or near the SF peninsula?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Actually the best 2 mice out are the Boomslang and m$ 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.
The two attempts at a local net cafe in my area failed. They closed their doors and are gone. Perhapse they didn't understand the market. Or maybe the economics are different in this area. (shrug).
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.
- Hypnos
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
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. =)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
This Web site is very handy for small and HUGE LAN parties. Everything you need to know!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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!)
-Tom
Just curious, how many /.'ers goto tribescon lan parties? 1999/2000/2001?
We have normally over 200+ people, and each person chips in 25-50 bux for renting the room. (also couple bux of it goes for prizes)
At the 2001 tc3 we had tribalwar.com and wsbn sponser us, it was at portaland airport embassy suites. 2002 tc4 will be in SanFransico (Rumors)
Oh yeah, we had the Dynamix dev team show up again. Nice of them, since they were just canned. (fcking sierra...)
This is great and shows that those that run large lan-parties are good at networking abd are valuable people to have around.
Only problem was the author's crack, "Any smart people will run virus software anyways"... Hey Bite Me! I have virus software but I do not run it, I use my computer in a way that significantly reduces the threat of Virii. First, I have completely switched to linux, but before then in my Windows life, I have NEVER gotten a virus running rampant on my pc. I have found and dissected them, researched them (and the early virii were damned clever programs, the stuff now is all crap)
a SMART computer user doesnt need to run a virus scanning program, they dont get infected by the normal stupid channels by blindly opening email, downloading filez from untrusted sites, leaving shares open, etc... and yes I do scan once per day (well in my windows world I did) just to clean up any shared areas on the server.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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?
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)
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.
Follow me
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.
sig?
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.
Absolutely. Trackman Marbles are awesome. For gaming, I liked the non-wheel variety better since the middle button is easier to press. I only game about 20% of the time though, so I wouldn't give up my wheel for scrolling in other apps.
FWIW, LanParty.com has had a hosting guide up for something like 3 or 4 years. It is a bit dated, but the info is still good.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
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.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
While it is true that these optical mice have a much higher samping rate and, as such, tend to be much more accurate and sensitive, they also have a problem tracking when you move the mouse rapidly, where the old-fashioned ball mice do not. This can be a problem for gamers that are accustomed to moving their mouse in that fashion, it was a problem for me initially. However, this problem can be worked around if you just INCREASE the sensitivity [or rather scaling, so that LESS mouse movement is required to rotate the same number of degrees in the game] and learn not to move the mouse itself quite that rapidly [there appears to be a certain threshold where the problem vanishes all together]. Once this is done, the optical mice makes a vastly superior gaming device, because it is more accurate, but probably most importantly because it tracks more consistently overall [No more crumbs and crud causing your mouse to move around jerkily].
PS: If you don't believe me, just try whipping your optical ball mouse left to right, over virtually any surface, but particularly sub-optimal ones, and you'll see the cursor get totally lost and move in seemingly random directions.
This post was really a trick to get all of the dorks to confess. I will now be taking your lunch money and delivering wedgies.
> happen, there is always the chance that two
> machines will grab the same IP address.
First of all it's not the "Windows" random assignment. The 169.254 stuff is a public spec, and so far both Windows and MacOS support it. It's called "Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses" and you can read about it here. (Microsoft's implementation is called APIPA and you can read about it here).
Have you ever actually seen an address conflict happen? It's not supposed to under the spec. Each box after picking a proposed address is supposed to ARP it. If it gets a reply, it then tries again. And so on. Works kind of like a hash table.
of course your intellect is a wee bit on the small side but us geeks are understanding and forgiving, we'll let even wastes of skin such as yourself in :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
will allow speakers..sorry try head-phones, 40 sets of speakers going is a waste of POWER outlets and makes playing impossible.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If you're looking to run a party, it's not as much of a party as it is for the party goers.
The people who set up and organize it will probably not be playing as many games, nor having as much fun as the guests because they'll be ironing out problems, setting out food, crimping another network cable, etc.
If this article helps them get things better organized beforehand, they then have the opportunity to play more and have more fun themselves... and thus be more likely to run another in the future.
So stick a sock in it, buddy.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.