Slashdot Mirror
Multiplayer Games For Christmas Lull at the Office?
smallstepforman asks: "Christmas is almost here, and most companies will be running a skeleton staff during the holiday period. Since there will only be 8 people in the entire building where I work, you can guess what we'll all be doing - multiplayer LAN gaming. The team leader (who will be the acting manager for the holiday period) is asking about good games to play during this period. Most of the machines on the LAN are P3@733 with integrated i810 video cards, while some older machines (P2@45) have a Voodoo 3. Which multiplayer games can Slashdot readers recommend? The games need to be easy to pick up, and not require a lot of hard disk space. Free/shareware games or demos should be considered due to legal issues."
Starcraft. Need I say more?
Quake I
-Small [we all run it off of mini cds]
-Can run on anything from a p75 up
-There are things to make it nicer [GLQuake}
-Simple
-Tons of mods avalible [TF]
(Score:0, Interesting)
My best hint is to avoid anything RTS or time consuming. Some of the best ones that you can get away with at work are the older games that can easily be ALT-TAB'd out of when the big boss (not your team leader) comes around. FPS' are probably the best bet. Try Unreal Tournament. You can still get it at most major stores like Best Buy etc... and it does have a spawn version built-in for situations like yours. It is also able to run on the systems that you describe quite well, but the size can be a problem... the spawn version is around 300mb I believe.
Just my 6 cents.
Erutangis ym si siht.
Definitely Counterstrike. The rounds are short enough to make you not realize how many hours you are wasting. It doesn't need an amazing computer to run, and the two teams are quite different so mastering each will take a bit. The levels are fun, and depending on how you do things you can cheat if you have a teammate near you who is dead! Give it a shot.. (it's an addon for Half Life)
Since there will only be 8 people in the entire building where I work, you can guess what we'll all be doing - multiplayer LAN gaming.
:)
I'm sure you are expected to work instead.
Unreal Tournament, of course.
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
Give Liquid War a try...
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/
It's pretty unique.
Here's some screenshots.
How about XPilot? Not much an eye-candy game, but extremely small and fun, free as in beer and available on many platforms.
There is practically no way that you can't become addicted to these games. Worms Armageddon isn't totally 2K/XP compatible but there is a patch for that on their website. Have Fun, Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
For some bloody, visceral shooting action, I'd suggest Soldat, which is very similar to Quake/Counter-Strike, except it's a 2D sidescroller. The chaos is immense, and it's easily one of the best side-scrolling 2D action games I've played. It supports multiplayer quite well, and is free (as in beer). It should run fine on your hardware, as well.
----------
Floccinaucinihilipilification - the action or habit of judging something to be worthless
One word, Cube.
It is free (ZLIB software licence - similar to BSD), runs on win32, linux, linuxppc, and can be played in both server and single player mode. FPS style of play, using OpenGL and SDL, it is smooth, fun, and looks great! We need more opensource games like this.
Most importantly of all, cleanup is simple, just delete the directory you unzipped the archive to, and it is all gone.
Enjoy!
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
Starcraft 100% classic, great multiplayer, everybody enjoys it.
Quake N for positive integer values of N less than 3. Literally 1000s of mods.
Subspace This is the greatest game to hit multiplayer since multiplayer was invented.
Counterstrike The perfect complement to Quake. Must-have for any LAN party.
Daboo!
'nuff said.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
What about FreeCiv? Perhaps it scores low on the easy-to-pickup scale, but I imagine anyone has played some Civilisation version before.
Bonus is that as a turn based game it can be easily paused when necessary, and it is heaps of fun.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I would give a vote to Armagetron. I have burned many many hours at work with this, you just need to have geeks who like tron around. http://armagetron.sourceforge.net Be sure to grab the addons as well
Tank games require a combination of skill and luck that tends to reward skilled play, while still remaining accesible to newbies if that's a concern. Someone can learn to play decently in 5 minutes, rather than the 40-50 frustrating hours it takes to become decent at Quake/UT/Counterstrike/FPS-of-the-month.
Note that there's an ad banner, but that's just HTML, so it can be removed without any real hassle.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
TetriFast is a slightly updated version of Tetrinet but without the piece delay which makes it a bit more fun. They both, however, are tiny installs and, as requested, they leave no footprint on the machine. Just eliminate the directory they install into and you're fine.
However, it's worth noting that the game is insanely easy to cheat at with a custom client, so it's wise to stick to using a local server that only you and your work mates play on. Luckily, the client comes with a (slightly flaky) builtin server which you can use for that purpose.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
http://www.moonbasecommander.com/
Simple and fun to play, low system requirements. Only four players at once, though.
Check out the Quakeforge project on Sourceforge its made alot of advancements in the engine and now runs either with SDL, native GL or Software emu...its excellent and works sweet on my 98, 2k and XP machines, even with my p133 linux box as server :)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/quake/ or
http://quake.sf.net/
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
... but did you not get the memo that the 90's are over and you'll actually have to do some work to stay in business? If you're manager wants to stay a manager, I'd advise him to keep a little tighter lid on things than playing away the holidays. But if you want his job, tell him to play away!
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Here's a thought... work? Yes, that old monkey on the back, the thing that pays the bills, the thing THAT YOUR EMPLOYER IS PAYING YOU FOR.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What? It supports network mutiplayer games too, ya know.
even though it's been out for a while, in my office we still love playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (and the expansion pack Clone Campaigns)...it's a great time playing against each other on our network, or teaming up and playing against others on the zone...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
forgot one point...this game is good for those so called legal issues too..everyone can install the game, but to play multiplayer, you only need about half of the people to have it in their drive...for instance, if you're playing with 2 players, the game requires atleast one person to have the CD in their drive...if you're playing with 3 players, it requires 1 CD...4 players, 2 CD's, etc...and so on and so forth...not exactly free...but half of what you'd pay for a game that requires CD's for everyone!
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
In past Christmas slowdowns, I've taken the opportunity to do work-related things that are actually fun and are much easier to do without a lot of other people around:
- Writing new utilities
- Server stress testing
- Experimenting with new languages
This year, I'll be doing some long-needed data normalization on the Oracle DB while I'm less likely to disturb customers and my fellow developers.Try Abuse. It's an old DOS game, but with minor tweaks to let it run under Windows. (You may need to go to the Free Abuse site for the tweaked version.)
It's a 2D platform game. Run, jump, grab weapons, shoot. Mindless, but lots of good, visceral fun. The controls are trivial (move with arrow keys, aim and shoot with mouse) so even non-gamers can be up and fragging in no time. When my friends and I have LAN parties (which we've been doing since the DOS version was new) this is the "network test game" we run while people are setting up their machines. When you can jump into Abuse, you're on the net.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
bzflag (www.bzflag.org) is open source, runs on windows and linux, and is small and efficient. It will run on almost any hardware if you use basic graphics. A good video card is required to get the best graphics, but it really doesn't affect gameplay.
It is basically a first person shooter, where each player is driving a tank and tries to shoot other players. But these are no ordinary tanks, they can take on special "powers" like the ability to jump, bounce shots off walls, aquire laser weapons, quided missles, etc.
There are many variations that can be introduced to make play easier or harder or just to change strategies. There is also a Capture the Flag variation.
Its good fun and downright addictive. And its free, so you've got nothing to lose - give it a try!
Hey, who else could go for some flapjacks right now?
Last night we had a 78+minute game of Quake 3 Arena after work. The best part was that the score limit was 10. It was 2 on 2 with no bots, ctf4, and the excessive server mod. I thought it was pretty good for amateurs like us.
I think our slowest computer is a PIII-600, I used to be the slowest with a PII-400, but then I got a second processor. I run NT4.0, but we've installed Q3 on linux and a mac once here and played fine across network games. I also used to play with an Evans & Sutherland 15mb(no, not 16) AGP video card (rocks for all openGL except games), but I have been recently upgraded to a Voodoo3 16mb AGP(sux for all openGL except for games), also my ram has been upgraded from 128mb to 256mb. The most helpful upgrade was my $8(after rebate at bestbuy) IBM optical mouse which I bought myself. Q3 played fine before all my upgrades so you guys should be fine running it.
The downside is that its like $30(totally worth it) and requires about 500mb on your hard drive. If you can't spring the dough or spare the space, then Quake 2 or even the original Quake, are decently addicting enough to keep you occupied.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
maybe they're underclocked to save on electricity? or to reduce heat?
;-)
hehe
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Um, yeah. I'm sure that the company would really approve of them getting paid for sitting there drooling on themselves. Which is what they'd be doing most of the time, otherwise. Nine of one, three quarters dozen of the other.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
My favorite is Carmageddon. It's more of a driving destruction game. If you ever saw the movie "Death Race 2000", it's the same idea -- you get points for running people over and running into other cars. There are several multi-player games you can play -- a simple race, tag, fox and hens, most points. There are 3 releases. Carmageddon 3 (aka TDR 2000) may still be on store shelves, and I've seen the first 2 re-released into the bargain bin.
Muti-player is a blast -- the game play is great, so you won't notice if your graphics cards aren't the most modern.
As far as legal issues, I think you can play it directly from the CD. You can even make copies of the CD, as long as there is 1 original CD on the LAN.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Linux World review
Game homepage
It's an FPS, it currently runs on Win32 and Linux (including ppc). It's at the early beta stage (current version is something like 0.3) but already very playable, and it's been reasonably stable for me on SuSE 8.0 with the stock kernel. YMMV, obviously. It's also Open Source.
The graphics still need some work, but I'm getting up to 300fps on a 700MHz Athlon with 384M RAM and a GeForce 2 GTS, so it should run fine on all of your machines. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, so I'm not sure if that works as well as the single player.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Subspace is a kickass game.... I can't even begin to count how many hours I spent on that game. Until I ended up with a vid card that it didn't like :( Would run horribly on it. The new client is called "Continuum". It's an updated, free version of Subspace. Try here to get it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's called "Do Some Fucking Work". Way to power up this economy in time of need. ;)
I've actually always loved working the week between xmas and NYE. There's virtually nobody in the office, so interruptions are kept to a minimum and the hours are slightly more flexible.
-- jimmycarter
Sorry, no link, but supah cheap, and was written by a guy so they could play during lunch at work (go fig). Turn based, good, addictive. A mix between Scorched Earth and Starcraft.
He wants something they can all quickly pick up. America's Army requires you to go through basic training and earn skills before you're allowed to multi-play.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'd love to do this with the family over the holidays, but with nieces and nephews (not to mention Grandma) all First Person Shooters are out. Any networked free (demos OK) sports or driving games out there? Anything without blood and guts will do -- violence (car crashes) is OK, but it can't have blood and guts and death. Thanks.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Don't try America's Coast Guard either. Man, they're tougher than they look.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Happy Holiday Fragging!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
The most fun multiplayer game I've ever played was the original Grand Theft Auto, with the overhead view. I've seen copies of GTA2 in the bargain bins at places like Staples for $10 or less.
Other than that my favorite multiplayer games are Age of Empires 2, and Battlefield 1942. Yes, I know the latter is WAY beyond the specs of the poster, but hell - not everyone here is so constrained, are we ? This is the first game I've ever played which actually made me go out and buy hardware ( a joystick) to play it. The only problem is the shell-shock-induced nightmares I've been having....
Better FX and it will easily run on a 733 (it's Quake II based).
Plus if you run counterstrike it's team oriented for better action in my opinion than just shoot the nearest person.
Free...
Multiplayer...
Lightwieght....
Did I meantion its free...
Better yet its civilization, can kill hours(days) easily...
Just my plug for my favorite time waster
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
You _need_ this game.
:)
Runs fine on a Pentium-100 (Yes, I know, I've tried), and is an absolute _BLAST_!
We played this thing over the network, and it was probably the most fun network game I've ever played.
You'll be hooked, I promise. Just be careful the first time you order a napalm strike; JUDGE THE WIND.
"The first of many!"
--NBVB
Ever played bomberman? xblast is a bit like it.
People running around mazes laying/kicking bombs. There's a bit of a learning curve due to the variety of different rules given different maps, but most people get the hang of it after a short while.
Has some bugs but pretty good fun.
Um...I think we did Warcraft II over the christmas break of um...1996?
Although the need for only one CD per 3 people was nice, it's only useful if you can organize all people joining in at the same time. [It's been a while, so I can't remember what happens when someone leaves, however].
Warcraft II also had a problem that it'd take people fairly long to get used to all of the subtlety of the game (don't turn sappers invis or they blow up, etc)
The real problem is when one person gets taken out, and they have to wait for everyone else to finish to start a new game...you end up with lots of people getting frustrated, starting up lots of 2 player games, etc, which defeats the whole purpose.
The only real game of that genre that we found worked for larger numbers was C&C...played with the highest tech level, and the speed cranked all the way up. [Someone would be launching nukes within minutes....games never lasted more than 15..and that was in the days of a P200 being top of the line]
Another options is having everyone gang up against a team of computer players (AoE supported group victory and 8 players, but you'd need space for computers), so every human player normally gets done at about the same time. [Once in a while, someone woud get rubbed out by the computer early on, but it's still better than waiting for those last two humans to finally finish].
The FPS genre might be your best bet, so long as you don't have anyone who gets motion sickness, just because someone can just sit dead as they answer phone calls, or have to run to the john, without screwing up everyone else.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You always play games!
Ask any "gamer" about the "must play" game the response is predetermined - Counter-Strike. They would also add that it has been the king for many years and everyone now plays it. However, most people use Microsoft software but that doesn't mean it's any good. Choose games that appeal to you. Don't ask anyone else. Another note - I have hosted many LAN parties and I have found that you buy allot various games. Then choose what your are going to play on the day. As peoples moods tend to change.