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Good Games for LAN Parties?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm trying to figure out what games are good for LAN parties and especially what games don't require a CD after installation or at least allow multi-player games with only one CD. I'd like to have friends over to play over a LAN without everyone needing to own the same game. Starcraft will let you do this but I couldn't find much info about other games so I thought I'd turn to Slashdot. Which games do you like for LAN parties and why, and especially which games allow a group of people to play if only one owns the CD?"
- Often, the game has to be chosen to run on the slowest computer in the bunch; running an older game ensures that everybody can play.
- Older games tend to rely a little less on flashy 3D graphics and a little more on gameplay, especially team play.
- Extremely old games (read: those that came on floppies) usually have a trivial form of copy protection which can usually be avoided. Not that I'd ever advocate such a thing.
;) Even older CD-based games with first-generation Safelock and such are easy to copy. Just make sure that all copies are destroyed at the end of the night.
- Finally, older games are less immersive. I don't mind forgetting myself when I'm playing Silent Hill 2 or something similiar, but I go to LAN parties to socialize. Games with MIDI soundtracks are just asking to be talked over.
All that said, some of my personal recommendations for fun games:Total Annihilation (one of my favs)
Starcraft
Warcraft 2
Counterstrike
Quake 1 (yes, 1)
Descent
Diablo/Diablo II
Duke Nukem 3D
Worms 2/Armageddon
Grand Theft Auto 2
One final note: go download GLTron before the party starts. While it's only a 4-player game at max, I guarantee your guests will get a couple of hours out of it, more if you show it on a large TV so everybody can watch. =)
This is an easy question. I just hosted another LAN party, and have thought this through a couple times. There are some places on the net to get info about how to have a LAN party, but I want to preface my comments so that you understand where I'm coming from. We had 11 people in attendance, though I was hoping for 15, so that will give you an idea of where I'm coming from, and we did it from noon till almost 10 pm last Saturday. (Hey, some of use are old guys bringing our teenagers these days. )
Some comments about the mechanics are in order because it goes directly to the issue of the fun factor. If you're going to play a game that can have a dedicated server, do it. I was lucky to be hosting this LAN party in a big conference room at my work, and had a "spare" quad Xeon with 2 GB RAM and 4 36 GB Ultra3 160 drives striped together as a server. It hosted all of the game servers I talk about below, and never even knew it was working. However, it took me most of a day to get all the configurations tweaked just right. On the other hand, no one person could take down the game because his computer crashed. We pulled a 24-port switch from a wiring closet that gave us less than 10 msec ping times. So, though setting up dedicated servers will be more work, it's more stable, and though switches are a little more expensive than hubs, they give great performance. One more thing, the point of a LAN party is to interact. Get everyone in the same room if at all possible. I've done it both ways (with people in individual offices so that we wouldn't have to move computers). Pack 'em in; it's much more fun. With On to the games...
We played UT DM FFA with the bonus pack relics to get everyone up and running, then we had a (small) UT one-on-one tournament. Again, the server hosted the FFA room and 4 tourney rooms all setup exactly the same way. UT - as of the latest patch - doesn't require a CD. However, it does require you to use a CD to load the latest patch. After that, you're good to go. You can even copy the CD to the server along with all the patches and bonus packs, and everyone should be able to get to them. I say "should" because Windows domain issues bit us in the behind and made browsing the server problematic. If you don't know what I'm saying, just make a bunch of CD copies for your friends to get up and running. I don't know if this sort of use of UT is legit, but based on the fact that Epic consciously took the CD requirement out of the game as of the 4.36 patch, I assume that they had this in mind.
After the UT stuff, I had everyone warm up to the Quake 3 engine in an Excessive Overkill DM FFA. If you haven't seen this, it's really neat. It'll wear you out, though, so don't plan to spend all day with it. Although it's available for UT as well as Q3, I like the Q3 engine slightly better, and that's what I went with. We only played it for about an hour before moving onto Threewave CTF, and that's what I really want to talk about. Threewave was the hit of the day. (I must point out that Threewave has been available for Q1 and Q2 as well, and though I have no experience with the Q1 version, I like the Q2 version just as well.) Once again, the dedicated server hosted both of these games as well. Once again, you can serve up the CD and the patches for your friends, or make copies of the disc. id Software made the game such that you can just ignore entering the CD key, and unless you want to play on a public internet server, you're fine. It was designed to play on a LAN like this.
I must change course here and talk about administrating the games: Q3 wins over UT. Although I have thought for a long time that UT was better, I got my opinion changed at this LAN party. Yes, UT has a web browser interface for administrating the server, but that - for me - means going somewhere else to do it. I don't want to tempt Windows 98 fate by Alt-Tab'ing over to a browser to make changes. (Hey, I had everything setup to play under Linux, but my hard drive ate it that morning. Besides, you can't Alt-Tab at all under Linux anyway.) So I wound up walking over to the server to get rid of the bots under UT FFA when everyone got up and running. On the other hand, changing something on the server with Q3 is easy with rcon. Yes, you have to know the command you want, which takes some learning, but you can just get a console in-game, do your thing, and get on with life.
On a related note, with UT you can use the in-game setup to configure your server and then launch in dedicated mode. On my particular server, with no 3D video card, I couldn't do that with Q3. However, setting up a config file for a dedicated Q3 server actually paled in diffculty compared to getting the command line correct for launching a UT server without the aid of the game engine. (I didn't realize till later that the UT engine tells you what command line it's using to start the game in the console. Grrr.) So, even though UT looks easier to setup and admin on paper, Q3 wins on both in actual usability in my book. And being able to change things on the fly for the group is a huge win. (For example: although Threewave allows you to call votes on lots of things in-game, most people aren't die-hard gamers like you and I, and don't understand how to respond to vote requests. Being able to hit "~", type "rcon capturelimit 7", and move on is really great.)
Some people say Counter-Strike is great, and I would agree on principle, except that I couldn't get it to work with a single CD-key. I tried this on a previous LAN party, and we seemed to be limited to 4 people on it. It was goofy for me, and I gave up trying to make it work. I didn't have time to set it up this time around, but I had planned on trying Strike Force, which is a Counter Strike-like mod for UT. It seems to have a few bugs, but being that it's based on UT, you wouldn't need CD's or keys for it at all.
We also have a sub-group that likes to play Rogue Spear. While I'm not a huge fan, I appreciate that we need to play it so that everyone gets to have some time on their favorite engine. However, this is one is definitely not LAN-party friendly. You have to either make copies of the disk or use a crack. Of course, we all had legal copies of the disc, and so were just fine playing this game. ;-) One bad thing about RS is that there is no dedicated server for the game. And it's the flakiest game I've discussed here. So, when the person hosting goes down, everyone stops. Get the person with the fastest, most-stable machine to host.
Lastly, we have some goofballs that like to play Starcraft, but play it at its fastest setting. To me, that takes all the strategy out of it, and I won't play it that way. YMMV. To me, using a strategy game like this in a LAN party is ridiculous becuase you have to sit out so long between rounds. Counter Strike or Rogue Spear are bad enough, but when a game can last for 30 or 45 minutes, that's just boring, except for the last two guys in the game.
We don't play it, because I really dominate in it, but I still love Quake 2 Lithium. You can tweak it to your hearts content, and I still think it's the best DM ever. Really fast-paced like Excessive Overkill, but not so senses-numbing. If you can get away with it, try it. You'll love it. And no CD's or keys, either.
dk
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Maybe I'm a freak, but I don't really like FPS or RTS games. For LAN party goodness, I'd have to recommend driving games as my weapon of choice. Check out the Carmageddon series in particular -- it's like really fast, angry bumper cars.
--saint
I play practically nothing else at Lan's now. Get a rocket arena server up and going (this may take some time, do this the day before), or for a more inclusive game play jailbreak.
:)
Jailbreak is definately easier to set up and has some unique properties: The score of the team is the score of the middle ranking player in the team - this encourages genuine teamplay rather than individual heroics; The game also presents numerous opportunities for the lamer players to be heroes by rescuing their more gung-ho mates from jail.
Once you're in to rocket arena though, point of no return
There's also some mileage in bringing a PS2 along for something more chilled out. SSX and beer, for instance.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
For HL mods at lan parties, I'm a big fan of Science and Industry. Lots of fun there, plus it has just the right ridiculous sillyness to it. :)
Heretic II is also excellent with a good local group.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
the most fun i ever had at a LAN party was in an 8-player Kingpin deathmatch.
You don't need the CD for multiplayer action, and the graphics and sound effects make for a good experience even on older machines (uses Quake2 engine)
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long