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Hints for Planning a Network Gaming Marathon?
"We have prior experience with private weekend-long gaming parties (with 20-30 people) a handful of times per year at the homes of attendees, and usually they conclude with few problems. However, we are planning on this session being bigger and more public, hopefully upwards of 120 seats. Although we have experience with smaller gatherings, we generally know all attendees, and have little experience with larger, public gaming marathons.
What did you do for advertising? Is it more effective to reach the intended audience by advertising on the radio, TV, internet, or billboard? What can you do about the rare, unmanageable, lunatic gamer? How have you handled cheaters (aimbots, wall-hackers, etc.)? Have you brought in sponsors to help offset the cost? Has there been technical support for the non-tech savvy? If so, was it free, or included in the admission cost? There are other questions, but I'll stop there.".
bathrooms...
We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time...
Bring in some people who can network computers well. 99% of the problems with BYOB events aside from Power is getting all those different computer talking to each other on a LAN... neigh impossible in some cases. =)
As the host you must provide the switch and router to everyone so you might need it to handle say 100 connections.
food....
http://www.lanparty.com/ has quite a few tips/suggestions for setup.
Caffeine soap, because at 48 hours you stink and your tired. The smell of a room full of unwashed gamers is a horror story in and of itself.
One essential thing. Loads of coffee or caffeine laden cola
Better yet, have games that are free (as all information should be). America's army is a good, completely free game.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Read the LANParty.com guide and make SURE you have a power grid already mapped out so you can troubleshoot power failure on the fly. Also, have trash cans EVERYWHERE and designate ppl to take the trash out. Trust me
If possible, supply a showering facility, and bring deodorant or air freshner. I've went to a few lan parties, and le me tell you the grease in the air, you can feel it just clumping on your skin.
after about 12 hours i was pretty much needing a shower just from being around so many unwashed geeks.
power strips and jolt
...to ask your parents for permission.
Make sure everyone has the games you plan on playing and the latest patches B E F O R E the event. It's rather annoying spending the first 6 hours getting everybody set up because each machine has it's own problems.
Oh, and make sure to devote a couple hours to mp3 swapping.
I am a filthy pirate.
Coffee, pizza, chips, popcorn, Coke, beer and lots of Maalox.
nope. Fucking Prick, yes.
We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time...
Insightful? On /.?
I've organiced several 200 ppl lan parties and i can tell theres always something that goes wrong.
The main thing to remember is that it IS work, not fun, if you want to do it for fun your in the wrong bizz. Also remember security, are you capable of throwing out people if needed. How about alcohol, fights? Warez? Whats your policy? Tech support, people always need help with tcp/ip, remember to always have a few people on call to help people. Power recheck power, recheck power again, i can't stress this enough, when ppl start rolling in and they put their machines on, arr...
Also remember that personal faulty equipment like a coffe cooker thats broken can shut down the power to 20-30 machines depending on your setup. Whos fault is this if a computer breaks? (it has happened several times) Do you pay? Be sure to have the answers.
might I also recommend "Trucker's Choice" Stay-Alert Capsules
Mike
Complementary mace for any women who show up.
make sure to bring lots of cd's with copies of games on them - all the normals; counter-strike, UT, UT2k, quake, warcraft blah blah blah. and someone to install for the kiddies that show up and dont know how to install software despite the fact that they're "the shit" when it comes to talking shit about how your computer sucks.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Insightful? Please....
:)
And you post that on Slashdot, of all places...Calling the kettle just a bit black, aren't you, Mr. Anonymous?
First, don't name it a Network Gaming Marathon. Some gamers might see the "marathon" and avoid your event.
Call it "extravaLANza." I dunno. I just made that up. Just name it anything that doesn't invoke images of sweat and toil.
qslack.com
...food situation. Otherwise what ends up happening is one guy brings some bargain chips, another guy brings a 2-liter of Mountain Dew, and you got 8 guys stuck in a room for hours. Not pretty.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
If you have one person try to pay and provide all of it, it'll only be gone in a heartbeat. I suggest everyone bring their own drinks and a big bag of chips to share around.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
We've also queried local hotels for available conference rooms, and thought about power consumption requirements
Make sure they have spare fuses and candles.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If youve got a local shop try to bring them into it somehow. Many of the local LANs around here have some sort of sponsorship or help from a local shop. On tech support I would guess that anyone who would be coming to a LAN would know enough to keep their stuff up and running, but just in case have a few guys there who know what they are doing. If you can get a hold of a large confrence room in a hotel power shouldnt be too much of a problem im guessung, but it doesnt hurt to have a back up if you can get one.
wtfsig?!11
Just curious, but in what locale will you be hosting this tourney? (You never know, I might want to attend.)
something like this?
I wish I had some moderator points! Moderators, mod this man (or woman :)) up. Small lan parties are fun. By small I mean less than six people. Trust me, I have been to some with my friends and it is a decent way to spend a friday night... once in a while. But huge lan parties become boring. I have never participated in one, but I have gone to one and as soon as I saw what a drag it was I left in a hurry.
We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time...
Are almost non-existant (I have yet to see one, in my 300+ lan parties I've been too).
Quite a diffrent thing when you can look at the guy next to you and see him wallhacking, or aimbotting - it's pretty blatant. He'd kick a nice swift kick in the head, and be labeled a lamer.
One thing about planning large scale parties - don't let people without PCs in, unless you know them well.
Being stuck at a LAN party without a PC will lead to the pickpocketing and other such mischief that will give your lan party a bad name.
Also, make up a bunch of "packets" of info. Inside the packet, have a little map with the location to the bathrooms, the name of the game server, the IP they can use (or if it's DHCP), and even their place at the table if you have assigned seating.
Make sure to have a couple of 55gallon garbage cans handy, and assign someone as the garbage man - making sure the trash cans arent overflowing, spills are cleaned up, etc - trust me, this is a must.
There's so much more info and hints out there, I'll let some others answer it.
Hell, every thing you need to know about it has been graciously already written for you by lanparty.com.
It's called, simply enough, "The Guide" and covers everything pretty well. Read it.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
you'd better have BAWLS!
The gamer's choice for over caffination.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
I'm currently in the final stages of doing something like this myself. We're gonna have ~128 people at the LAN. Here's some tips:
Go and talk with the manager at your local software shop. Chances are they'll be happy to place a flyer on the counter, and they may even be willing to help sponsor.
Give yourself at least 3 months planning time. You're gonna need it.
Set a minimum age and stick to it. We decided on 16, no exceptions.
Make it clear that cheaters will be evicted with no refunds.
HAVE SOME PRIZES - very important. Best Case, MVP, winner of tournaments. Sponsors can really help with this one.
For networking we ended up getting several cheap 24 port Dlink switches with gigabit uplink, then had an 8 port gigabit switch that they all headed into.
Get some volunteers to help with setup and takedown. Offer them a free spot, but make sure you can trust them to stay afterwards.
Keep the rules understated. Make having fun the priority but let everyone know on a basic level that the rules are there and will be enforced. Anarchy is not a good thing with respect to a good LAN party.
Have FUN! I plan on doing so.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Indeed, or at that geek bar full now of slashdot readers taking advice from your fine suggestion you could plant a hot illegal immigrant and pay her $0.5/hr to send guys to your place for this gaming. She'll just have to tell them she likes it infront of webcams to make them bring their computer. When the geeks think it is a trick, tell them it is a trick and they are being imagined by a beowolf cluster of illegal immigrants in soviet russia, and they better do what they're told or else goatse.cx or tubgirl.cx will come along to join us.
Gamers are pigs. Extra wastebins everywhere, and extra ashtrays at the smoking area is a good idea.
Don't forget to hire a professional cleaning crew, for cleaning up after the 90% of gamers who can't hit the trashcan if it's five inches from their hand, and insist on messy food.
Also, quadruple the estimated time to pack up before the cleaning crew can do their job.
Other than that, whoever brings extra power strips, hubs and longer cat5 cables is going to be a hero. No arranger in the history of gamingkind has ever provided enough or long enough cables.
If you're going to be a couple of hundred people, make sure your core switch can handle a lot of MAC addresses. Don't use that 8-port Planet-crap just because you only need to uplink 5 switches. When the MAC-cache of the core switch is full, you're in a world of trouble :-).
BZFlag !
From the website:
BZFlag won best in class for "Best Free Multiplayer Action Game" in the HappyPenguin competition.
hmmmm, my first concern is hygeine. Definitely want to get a place with the appropriate accomidations (SHOWERS!!!).
Okay, LAN party experience tells me a few things. Make sure you have a few knownledgable network guys to set the thing up. Make sure you have a game plan for the configuration! Avoid DHCP if at all possible, it's much better to have a well thought out addressing scheme.
Power has always been an issue at the lans I attend. So make sure the facility you are going to has appropriate power.
Cooling is big. Lotsa computers can make a room very toasty.
Food and beverage consumption is a biggy at LANs, so charge people admitance fee to help cover the costs.
Don't be afraid to through ass holes out, a LAN that big will attract some unwanted guests.
Have a few spare gaming rigs that people can use if they don't have their own.
Also, remind people to watch out for their belongings. The LANs i attend are small (30-40) gatherings of friends, yours won't be.
I'm sure there are a million other things I'm forgetting, I'll post more if i can think of it.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Take whatever you think you will need and double it. Specifications only go so far. A 15 amp breaker might trip at 10 amps after it has "warmed up" under a 14 amp load for several hours. Had that happen. It didn't just trip the breaker, but burned it out. Test the power outlets with large loads before the party. Breakers get old and wear out.
I don't know what to do about networking for that scale. Gets scary at anything above 40-50 people. Our parties run between 35 and 50 people and we have some serious networking hardware borrowed from a company one of the guys works for.
Also, we have sponsors. Lots. We have several local companies sponsor with trinkets and t-shirts for door prizes as well as some big names sponsor with certains CPUs and graphics cards that they make. We actually got an entire server from one company. Awesome box too, not some throw-away.
Once you get one good sponsor, that validates the rest of them to do so. Also, we got onto TV on the largest news station in the city. That helps. They were doing a human interest story on gaming. Just so happened we have a good website that was easily found on a search engine.
My name fits again.
You should approach a deodorant company for sponsorship. It seems that their product would be in much greater demand at an event than a gfx card company.
This doesn't even begin to mention the indirect occupational health and safety benefits such sponsorship could bring!
Provide everyone with a utilities cd that contains all the latest patches for the games you will be playing and maybe the latest nvidia and ATI drivers.
And if you're playing some free games, slap them on there too.
Set up consession stand. You'll make a killing charging movie theater prices ;)
:) Not every one who is too good to be true is cheating.
/. about enemy territory here
As for cheaters, I find it useful to figure out who is where whenever possible, and then if I suspect them of cheating, simply pull up a chair behind them and give a gander. You may garner evidence of cheating, and at the very least, you might learn something from a better gamer
Oh yeah, and play some Wolfenstein: Enemy territory. It's cheap (free, 'cept the download time), I don't think most people have played it yet, I don't think there are any cheats available yet and it's available for windows and linux. There are only six levels, but they are big, and require teamwork. It would be very amusing to play in a group where you could have a few minutes to plan your attack strategy in person..
You can read the
You might want to contact local businesses to see if they want to support you by giving ut free food. Shipyard brewers has been providing Sinusoidal Intellectualism with high quality carbonated, cafinated, corn-syrup laced beverages (soda) for a few years now. It would probably also be good to have people bring down their computers over the course of a few hours. Oh, and have a relativly quite place for peple who want to take a two or four hour nap (maybe they have work on Monday).
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Be very clear about what you will and won't provide and groundrules:
- 3'x3' desktop space (so make sure all your stuff fits on top of that or below)
- 1 120 VAC power jack (so bring your own power strip(s))
- No speakers (headphones only)
- Bring your own software
- Detail recommended software and network config
- No food or smoking in the game area
From a large (1500) lan party in Wash DC, IIRC they had issues with lan cabling, so BYOB 50ft of cat5 might not be bad either. Lighting could be an issue. And of course monitors. The DC gig eventually had rentals eventually.
California, I hope.
Step 1: Buy caffenated drinks in bulk from a nearby warehouse club or bottler.
Step 2: Mark them up to $.50-$.75
Step 3: Wait for gamers to grow agitated and tired.
Step 4: Sell caffenated drinks to help recoup the costs of your marathon.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
hi there,
;-). mostly it's: they deliver the pc's (mostly full-blown gaming stations, all brand new for one day, then they get sold as second-hand...), we deliver the networking stuff (lan + wan). we're both good at our own stuff ;-)
at the company where I work, we regularly hold lan/wan parties that extend for a full day, but with the exception that it's us against another company, at another location, with over 50 players at each side. (the last one we did was also an SDSL-showcase for management
but to cut to the chase:
the important thing is to set up a dhcp server that serves every client, get enough network hardware (switches) to support everyone (get sponsorship for this: maybe a local hardware shop? let them put up big ads, and they might lend you some decent lan-hardware)
also get one person to be responsable for each server of game, and that they know what they're doing, so that of something breaks, it gets resolved quickly qnd without conflicts (there's always this geek who knows how to do it better, and screws up everything -- you know the type...)
or even: try to get some advice of the people that organize those massice demo-parties in europe (more than 3000 computers on 1 lan, etc...). they know what kind of logistical nightmare big improvised networks are... (check out http://www.scene.org for info)
Counter-Strike.
file servers
Bring some damned good defense attorneys...
This is the biggest issue I've ever had every time I've tried to do a LAN party: Set the start times for the beginning of any game and hold it. If you don't and allow anyone to say, "But just wait a minute while I configure my system," you'll never get anything done. If you're up and ready, you're in.. Of course, if you have games where people who can come and go as they please, it's not an issue.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
If you are planning to charge an admission fee (which it kind of sounded like you were) you should also require participants to agree to some ground rules. A verbal agreement might be sufficient but I would consider having them sign something at the time they pay their admission fee.
Basically you just need to establish what is acceptable and more importantly, what won't be tolerated and will get you thrown out. Things like cheating in games, rampant piracy, or conduct that is disruptive to another player (like bashing them over the head with your keyboard because you are angry at them for camping) should probably be prohibited by the agreement.
You might also what to establish under what circumstances (if any) a refund will be given.
Depending on the size of the gathering and the amount of money you are investing, you may want to consult with a lawyer about this agreement or at least try to find something boilerplate that you can adapt. The purpose of the agreement is to give yourself prior justification for the unfortunate possibility of having to kick someone out of your event.
Again, IANAL so maybe I'm completely wrong here, but if it were me I would at least investigate this kind of stuff and I'm guessing that this angle is easy to overlook when planning for an event like this.
------
Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
i used to throw parties when i was in highschool called "nerdsexfests" where 15 or so of my friends would come over and we would network and play doom, doom2, warcraft, etc. etc. i remember our first one was a little iffy because we had to go to fry's electronics to buy ethernet cards (BNC no less!) to outfit 80% of the computers my friends bought (we returned the gear the day after!!)
anyway, these nerdsexfests grew longer and longer. we did a two once and i'd say the most important thing about having a long lan party is *pace*...
Pace your playing (don't stay up *all* night), pace your food (junk food all day => feel shitty, want to leave)
We often interleaved playing actual sports to get our blood flowing...
and of course, there is nothing like good ol' loud techno blasting to keep everybody psyched...
pace, my friend
From TechTV, Overclockers and Tweak3D may provide you with some information.
Is this a computer thing, or do you just give rough estimates in powers of 2? Like, "There must have been 128 people at the wedding, maybe 256!" Oh by the way, decimal is evil and causes cancer.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
One lad sitting in the corner leaching pr0n from others computers while they are playing games.
I have attended a couple of LAN parties. The 4 last years I have been attending The Gathering, with almost 5000 people, but the last LAN party I attended was a local LAN with about 100 participants where I was a crew member.
:).
:), and we even made a small amount of money of it because of our 24 hour kiosk!
The first problem occured on the opening day. 70% of the people on the LAN was unable to get a IP address. The problem turned out to be that we were assigned too few IP addresses.
The sysadmins on the school network we were using were however kind enough to give us an extra subnet, since the school was closed
Make sure you have enough IP addresses!
Once the network was up and running, everything worked almost smoothly, except for the occational few who had problems with their network card, graphic card, hard disk etc.
Since we didn't have a tech crew to handle these people, most of our spare time was used to help people fix their personal computer problems.
Make sure you have a tech crew to handle such problems!
We had a small kiosk inside the building where we sold food, beverages and soap. After a few days of sitting in front of the computer without sleep, you need to shower. The last couple of days the LAN party smelled like sh*it. It was horrible to enter the building when you had been outside for a while.
Make sure everyone is clean and shower at least twice!
In advance, we were planning on updating our webpage with stuff that was going to happen (competitions, results, general information etc.). It failed. The webpage was too difficult to update, so noone bothered to do it, since there was more important things to do (like downloading stuff and helping people).
Make sure your webpage can be updated in a second (PHP/MySQL solution preferrably).
These were the 4 biggest problems we had. Except for this, things turned out pretty well I think
--
Will work for bandwidth.
Are you planning on trying to get a patent on it?.... On a more serious thought this sounds exactly like a small little convention called Quakecon
Previous events, hosted in peoples' houses, were one thing. You're now trying to host one in a space you have to pay for. You're going to have costs for the space, costs for auxiliary supplies, and lots of other costs that you won't see ahead of time.
Make sure your party will pay for itself. You can do this by a cover charge, or by getting crates of pop and munchies from costco and reselling them, or what-have-you, but make sure that money in is greater than money out.
Rules of thumb from similar events friends have organized are that voluntary donations (e.g. donation bowl) will fall far short of costs (maybe covering a quarter of it), and that hosting a first-time event will cost at least twice as much as you think it will.
You're also going to have to have somewhere for gamers to sleep. Having them all crash in the party room will probably not go down well with hotel management. Make sure you also clear any selling of food/whatever on-site with the hotel - they may have rules about this kind of thing.
It sounds like a cool event, and with luck, it'll be one, but make sure you aren't taken to the cleaners in the process.
Have plenty of extension cords of various lengths (50+ feet). You may not have your attendees spread out this far and wide, but all of the electrical outlets near where your people are sitting may be all on the same circut. If that's the case, you may wind up tripping the circut breaker. That happened to me a few times. But you can easily solve that problem by running exetnsion cords to other rooms which are hopefully on other circuts.
I've been involved with a couple lan parties, the biggest being 15 people and along with the aforementioned patching (have a fileserver with all the latest patches for the games you plan to host...it works great) the biggest problem was with the gameserver crashing. The first time around we had people hosting and playing on the same machine, and it would crash more than we'd like (both windows and mac). The second time around we set up a few game servers on the linux box and things were MUCH MUCH better....in fact, they never crashed once. Nothing will piss people off more than the quake3/CS/etc server going down in the middle of a session...well, maybe a power outage ;)
I recommend having an under 21yrs of age room and an over 21 room, not just for liquor. A separation of,hmm....perspectives might enhance the fun had.
Maybe this doesn't apply so much to large gatherings where # of people on a server at any given time isn't a problem, but for those interested in smaller LAN gatherings, this may be helpful.
Keep the internet connection (whether it be modem or router) near to where you sit, and have it unplugged except for patches. Why? Because a lot of people are morons, it's hard to find an ideal group. One time, we wanted to play NWN but the kid who had the server cracked (unfortuantely people who buy games like me are a minority and thus we needed a cracked server to play) said that he "needed" to talk on AIM. And no, he couldn't tell us where we could find the crack.
This has happened dozens of times to me before I wised up. One kid had his semi-girlfriend dump him on AIM at a lan and he spent the rest of the night being a whining pussy. Like I wanna hear about that when I'm at a party. Story in point, crap like AIM and mindless websurfing can convince people to forget that they're there to play games, and in smaller LANs that's a real bitch when you're trying to fill up a server.
Or maybe I'm just anal about this?
to ensure a smooth and instant LAN party, you could book a computer school with thin-client setup (or similar, with plenty of machines already networked properly) for the weekend, and ask all participant to sign an authorisation form which gives you the right to use their game licenses for that period of time.
in this case you just need to set up all patches etc on the central server, and it'll distribute applications (games) on demand.
the cost will probably be much higher, but nobody needs to bring their own computers, set them up, fiddle with patches, network issues....
You probably will do your own networking which is good, but remember to leave areas for cables, and bring plenty of them, including crossover cables. Bring tons of cable ties. Bring extra switches, and avoid using hubs. Never have more than 5 cables between any two computers (count each wire between switches or repeaters). If possible, use separate lans for different games if you have many players. You should beware of large-scale wifi with today's products, although this will change with newer tech.
The worst is if you must connect to the Internet from a hotel. People that install these networks often are late, or completely fail to deliver access. Get the contract in place, with a date/time/bandwidth of the connection, guaranteed. Tolerate some downtime, but make non-idle threats if necessary.
I've gone to many lan parties. From 5 people upto 100 people. I have to say the biggest gripe is power outages. Make sure you properly test the power network at the event location. Make sure you have ample power. Test everything. Make sure your network, power, and servers are up to the challenge. Also have backups! Things will die, make sure you have a few spares of everything. If your having the lan party in the summer make sure the place has sufficient cooling. When I went to lansanity someone turned the A/C up too high and it froze so it stopped working. Try having 100 people in a room and it be 95 inside. There were computers overheating all over the place.
Marathon as in 1, 2 or âz (infinity)?
Judging from the current state of AlephOne maybe I _can_ actually get some multiplayer carnage.. after all these exams are done. Damn you quarter system! Damn you to hell!
I'd suggest that the network switching backbone be secured and locked down. You need someone watching this equipment 24/7 in gaming environments or someone will just walk off with your goods. If possible, keep a centralized NOC (network operations center), where the official game servers are secured & administered. Ideally this is where all your network connections come into at.
It wouldn't hurt to have all your switches know STP (spanning tree protocol) to avoid very nasty situations that can occur. Don't have your backbone running off those crappy "8 port" switches designed for home use!
The key once you've solved power distribution and power grid issues is that you need some serious network equipment and you need it setup properly and secured at all times. Setting up a large network that big needs a skilled admin who knows what they are doing, this isn't your typical Home LAN....
Btw, where is this big party happening at?
Ever need an online dictionary?
Trust me, you will blow fuses and there will be hours of downtime while you have to wait for Union electricians to swap out a single fuse. Do what thet do now at Quakecon and rent a generator for the weekend. The one they had at QC was huge (about 10m high and 30m long) but I am sure you will not need such a huge unit. Other good things to have are fans to keep the air circulating and air fresheners.
I hosted a few small (1-2 dozen) lan parties at peoples houses and then tried to host a large one at a hotel confrence room. If you are worried about overflowing have people pre-register and drop you a few bucks. ($5) This not only reserve seats for people that matter, but offsets the cost of the confrence room in case people cancel.
Make people sign something on their way in, basically to the effect of 'If you break something, you are responsible for it and not the hosts of this lan party.'
So, I've never been to a LAN party on quite this scale... But my friends and I are always taking advantage of long weekends to get together and game in a dank little basement. It's so satisfying to be able to yell "you stupid bitch you shot me!" across the room and get a laugh in response. As time goes on we get better and better at throwing everything together. We've learned many valuable things down there.
Like: a ping-pong table can only take so much weight.
Always duct tape vital cables down. Someone tripping over the power cable for the file server/router can be quite a bitch.
one of the quirkier things we've learned: suburban households and power grids are not meant to deal with a room full of a dozen or more PCs humming away. We've blown the house circuit breaker AND the power for the entire block.
Oh, and it is possible to stay up for longer than 72 hours at a stretch. *grin*
Make sure you know the power grid; power outages are common as 20-30 computers trip breakers.
Make sure you have a phone book [pizza is good mmkay]
Make sure you state the RULES beforehand, so everyone is on the same page:
- Alcohol? if minors are attending, it's probably best to set a policy banning it
- Speakers? Speakers are fun, but at a lan party, they can be disruptive. They DO help if you're doing more than gaming [I actually watched the Matrix for the first time at a 3 day lan party like this at 2 am after playing quake for 36 hours. whoa.]
- Minors? While adults can choose to stay up for 3 days in a communal sleeping area, minors make for a sticky situation
Suggestions:
give a list of things to bring; sleeping bags are good, commonly forgotten things like surge protectors, power cables, CDs are good.
Bring extra power cables/surge protectors
Specific questions:
Advertising: put it on lanparty.com a few months in advance. slashdot is also good, but maybe you should tell us where the hell it is.
crazy gamer: usually with 120 people, 1 crazy guy can be contained if anything by sheer numbers. If anything, cops are good if they're breaking stuff. Keeping 'officials' awake and patroling helps disuade thievery.
cheaters/lamers: What else do you do to lamers?!? beat them with a lead pipe until they stop cheating.
costs: charge a fee for attendance; charge less for pre-registration. Only use sponsors for prizes, though charge them ahead of time if they'd like to come and setup a booth or advertising.
tech support: abso-frickin-lutely. Most gamers are computer savvy, but not necissarily network savvy. With that many machines you'll likely need a dedicated network guy/girl or a few non-dedicated. Tech support should be free! materials like power cables and network cables should be free [and retrieved afterwards if possible] though things like network cards, extra mice should be for sale. ALSO: the network guy/girl should not provide technical support beyond getting the guy's computer on the network. It's not your problem.
You really should setup everything and get it run before the first joint ....
;)
I remember a party where everyone first got high, then didn't had a clue how to setup network
Freind had a small birthday LAN (6 people) and we thought we had it all figured out, everyone would bring their routers and we would daisy chain them. These are all you off the shelf home routers and to our suprise they didn't daisy chain very well....We ended up being able to play games but we couldn't share files between the routers. So we just switched where we were plugged in so that everyone got a chance to share everyones files.
Make sure you have some friends or something to address technical problems. There's always bound to be..... too many. The last LAN party my friends and I threw (10PM - 12PM, 24 people) we had 2 computers act up with big time problems. Then again, it seems as if habitual LAN-goers always have less problems.
Ahh . . . we've come so far since that time a buddy of mine brought his P-133 to a LAN party where we were playing Descent and we all bowed before the might of his power.
You have two enemies - well, three or more if someone in the crew is married - when holding an event such as this.
1. The lack of experience of some people who come and hope to immediately set up their computers and start fragging
2. The lack of proper facilities for the enjoyment of all
For issue 1, your best method of correction is to publish a 'So You Want to LAN Party with the Big Dogs' type web page or brochure. Get this to the folks who you are expecting to attend and make certain that they understand the necessary things:
- All NICs set to DHCP; if they don't know what this is provide a link to one of the bajillion sites on the web that document this
- All parts that should be brought with attendees (such as snacks, money for the conference room, pillows to crash when necessary, power strips/surge protectors,proper games, tables or chairs, etiquette expected, etc.)
- A rough schedule of events i.e. Diablo 2 from 9pm-3am followed by Counterstrike from 3am-3pm or whatever; nothing spoils a party quicker than someone coming who was expecting to play one game but then couldn't play.
For issue 2, make certain if you are using hotel facilities to have a conference room with multiple circuits!!! I may be using the wrong terminology but I once set up 18 rooms in a conference room near the Astrodome where the hotel electrician SWORE that there were multiple circuits but the first time the instructor asked everyone to open a certain document, the combined juice request from 18 hard drives overloaded the circuit and bamm-o, instant darkness. Good when you're with a chick but not so good when you want to slay some demons. Explain that you will be having X number of PCs and that continuous power is an important thing!
I used to go to a local Cincinnati Lan party (SOGA), of around 100 people.
.iso anyways.
I stopped after the 3rd time.
1. The food sucked, they asked you prepay, and since I didn't have a credit card, I couldn't, so instead of ordering pizza with the money (the same amount the prepay guys paid to get it) that the guys who just showed up payed, they just got dicked over and starved.
2. If your going to set up FTP warez servers, have time limits. The staff at the lan was awsome, huge FTP server with tons of games movies and cartoons. BUT, it had a 10 person limit so that you got a high transfer rate, so basically the first 10 guys in the door would start downloading, and take all night downloading hundreds of gigs of stuff. I mean, it got a little redicoulas when the fat greasy guy next to me filled 2 hundred gig drives with shit he'd never use, like gigs of NES and SEGA roms or games I know he had because he was playing them, but was downloading the
3. Don't be afraid to kick someone out. The was this one guy (NOTE), who was a complete jack ass and ruined it for everyone. He would bitch and moan because he didn't have a game to play in a tournament, so would make everyone waite while he loaded and configured it, and then he'd bitch and say people cheated when he lost. Everyone hated him, but couldn't make him leave.
4. If your gonna have tournaments, have awards everyone can win. Instead of all time winner, how about...to compete you turn on replay mode, and then judge on the most gruesome death or most awsome kill shot, just don't let the geeky guy who does nothing but sit on his ass and play CS all day take home all the trophies.
5. Have a good sleeping area. Rent out a few hotel rooms if you do it there. The one I went to, it was just a big room, and you went in there, tons of people sleeping. I'd get into my sleeping bag (nylon goose down stuffed) and have people bitch at me because of the noise. I know it was loud, but I couldn't help it, and would have really like to be able to go somewhere by my self or with just friends.
Plus, have good security, I was really afraid to leave my computer alone while I slept, I actually use a bike chain and lock, and locked it to the desk. Even just an old laptop and a few USB webcams spread around would work.
5. Don't just play high end games, not everyone has that kind of CPU. Get some good strategy game tourneys going, like Alpha Centarui, or Civ 2 & 3, or even have a Quake 2 tournament.
I think everyone else hit the important stuff.
but you wont need condoms!
mailto: jaystienstra@aol.com
I didn't realize that you could have a lan party to chat on AIM for 2 days.
Check out the UK's biggest lan event - multiplay
:D
600 people attending a lan over 3-4 days and it happens a few times a year. I went to one myself - great experience apart from the bathroom / shower facilities. They even organised domino's pizza delivary straight to your desk
8 people to a circuit, and an extra of every part you have on your computer, someone will need it. http://www.networkofgamers.com is my LAN party, if you were wondering.
Visit BobtheKing.com it's perhaps the best thing I've ever made to waste your time with.
i've been to some little lan parties, and participated to the organization of some too (only the network part, not financial)
;) )
:) )
..., maybe it would be a good idea to get punkbuster running, if possible?
i es/cheaterlow .wmv :))
:) )
;)
prices may vary, i once paid ~23Euros for a 3 day lan party/demo party with internet access and a very huge screen (about 900 ppl were present, this was 6 years ago
To the last one i have participated, prices were more like 15Euros for a 2 day one (70 ppl, in a school), but think how many ppl will come, and how much it will cost to you to rent the place, and all other "debts", will there be prices for the first one? etc
Ask for a pre-inscription for, let us say 5 or 10 bucks, this will force the ppl to come, and if they don't, you still will have money for the 'debts'
Don't forget to get a place for ppl to sleep in a room with "no noise". Food & drinks to sell to them
Ask for them to come with ear headphones, or it will get very noisy, also ask for them to come with their own rj45 cables since only the switches should be pre-installed and wired
If you receive the network equipment, check it's at least a 100mbit/s one! (yeah, last time i had to manage 70ppl it was a fscking 10mbit/s, a hell to administrate, one file transfer and the pings were getting toooooo high, pita, and i was a newbie on QoS at that time
Games shouldn't take that much bandwith, about 10KB/sec is already high, the most problem will appear when ppl are playing & others are copying files over the network. Try to get a gigabit backbone, if possible, but this depends on how many ppl will come. And No hubs, only switches!
To all i've went, there were always electrical problems, 1 pc can take easily 220Watts if not more, with let us say maximum 10Amperes on 220Volts: ~2200Watts, which means: avoid more than 10 pcs on the same electrical circuit, depends on how good the electrical installation is.
Cheaters should be banned, maybe you could think of some rules to follow like, for CS: seting up servers to fade to black when dead etc, no skin alteration,
or in extreme conditions:
http://fragzone.medialt.ru/files/mov
If possible get some reserve hardware like 1 or 2 network cards, rj45 cables (yes, ppl will forget it, but if they need it, sell it ?
Worst electrical problem i saw was when one guy pushed his wire so hard that it broke the electric socket, shorting it, it took us almost 1 hour to find out the problem...
Advertising: most internet, ppl talking on irc, it also got on the radio (sponsored), a sponsor got us the servers & another one got us the (very poor quality) network equipment
It's all i can think at the moment, hope this helps (a bit?)
Condoms.
Probably, like, not ever.
I know it's been brought up before, but in any environment where you'll have more than 10-20 computers on a "flat" LAN, you need switches.
:)
In the past I'd recomment Cisco 2900 or 3500s, but they're much more expensive than needed. Any decent 100meg switch (or as pointed out earlier, with a Gig uplink) should handle the amount of traffic several simultanious games can generate.
Another thing to do is make sure there's enough food available nearby, and enough ATM's around.
Even without any merchandise for sale, if this is 24x7x3 there will be people hitting the Hotel ATM to refuel wallets, and most Hotel ATMs are pretty anemic when it comes to that (see any Anime convention
Food nearby is also a plus. Don't stick your guests with Hotel restaurants only, because they can be expensive and not exactly in sync with the average gamer's diet.
Anyway, best of luck, sounds like a fun time.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
. . . and ban speakers. This will hopefully keep the hotel from having to shut you down at night.
A few years back, I attended a weekend long LAN party that was hosted by a group called RRGC (Road Runner Gaming Coalition, or something like that). It was like 10 buck for the weekend, wich covered the cost of renting the hotel room (conference room actually. The one thing that I notice people stressing is power, and I agree. This particular group double checked power consumption, and the hotel guarenteed that the power would be adequate, but when people started showing up with dual headed systems with two subwoofers and neons, along with mini fridges, it got out of hand. We blew about 12 circuit breakers in a day, and the second day decided to play in "shifts". Kinda slowed things down and killed the romance, if ya know what I mean. Power is probably the number one thing, with food, drink, and setup close behind.
Try to discourage people from pirating the games on your watch, but you won't stop it. Tell them ahead of time what games you'll be playing. Also, ask eveyone to bring a pair of headphones. The last thing you need is 100 different sets of 5 piece Monsoon systems pumping out 100 different MP3's mixed with game noise. (The 15 year olds listening to Britney Spears and NSync won't mix well with the 40 year olds listening to BTO and Steelers Wheel)
If you have it in a hotel, tell them that there will be 100 geeks in a room, competing at senseless computer games. People will get in arguments, I would bet my gonads on it. If you let the hotel know, they can have security ready incase anyone need to be persuaded to calm down, or dragged out by their feet. It would be nice to think that even if a few people got into it, the others would control them, but that doesn't always happen.
I would recomend food and drink be provided by individuals, yet a group chip-in on a bunch of pizza's could be a cheap way for everyone to eat as well. Encourage non-gamer spouses/sig. others to cater!
Other than that, just make sure you keep it chill and not too competitive. Make sure the nerds know it's just a game.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
With 50+ computers in the room, it's going to heat up fast. Make sure the AC doesn't break down.
... contacting the guys @ http://www.lantrocity.com They run the big Lan Party events here in Sacramento with events in Chico & S.F. so they probably have an idea on what you should have to consider.
-ChoMomma
I wouldn't mod the GP up, he's a fucking troll. You, however do bring up a valid point. LAN parties are usually about a bunch (usually no more than 50 at any given time) of your geekly friends getting together and spending a good friday night having a kick ass time. The relaxed environment and community feeling of it all makes for a much better LAN experience. After all, you already know the people, and the warez sharing is better :]
YOU SUCK BALLS!
We asked around for sponsors, and were surprised by the response we received. A local grocery store sent us tons of chips and pop, pizza place sponsored pizza etc. Go to the local computer stores, as I found they are more willing to donate. Maybe not much, but they will add something.
We had a projector setup up to our main server, and some games (unreal tournament) have spectator mode, which is cool.
We found that alcohol was not fun. Each to there own, but having people slobbering drunk at 7:30 in the morning was just not fun.
spectator mode, which is cool.
We found that alchohol was not fun. Each to there own, but having people slobbering drunk at 7:30 in the morning was just not fun.
Whats your Favorite song or artist? YourFavMusi
Games for sale - Make some moolah.
Food for sale - Ditto.
Diesel powered generator - Was employed at @LANta.con with success in power-starved room.
-- Bob
My work frequently hosts events at conference centers in locations across the nation and we have discovered that each city/state has different rules. Make sure you know the ones for where you are at. We've run into lots of trouble with unions and hotel rules which have included the following:
1. Not being allowed to touch anything power related. Apparently unions have contracts which require you to hire them even for something as simple as plugging in a television
2. Unable to bring in external equipment. They might make you rent from them any one of a number of items: televisions, power strips, extension cords.
3. Not allowed to have snacks/drinks brought in.
Basically, read everything and make sure you don't get hosed with the fine print. Good luck.
is Randy Suess
Instead of spending all weekend holed up in a room playing computer games, find something better to do with your time. No, I'm being totally serious. This is not a troll. There is much more to life than computer games, and regardless of what you say, I don't see sitting in front of a computer in a dark room for 48 hours as being healthy. Get out, live a little.
I knew some guys in high school who were really in to things like this. They hit college, promptly failed out (because they made straight As in high school without trying, they saw no need to go to class) and are now working at various shit jobs. One works at a gas station, one works at a grocery store, etc. "LAN Gamer" is not a skill that will serve you any good in the near or distant future.
I'm not saying computer games are bad, or even that LAN parties are bad. But there is such a thing called moderation. A LAN party once in a while is a fun thing, a LAN party every weekend or even once a month is probably too much. Likewise, 6 hours of gaming a day is also too much. Get out, live a little, you'll be a much happier person than sitting on a computer half your day.
A friend of mine does this fairly often and he uses multiple 24-port 10Mb switches with 100Mb uplinks into a single 100Mb switch. This has several benefits. 1) They're cheap. 2) 10Mb is more than enough for games. 3) If people want to trade files (and they will) it doesn't congest the switches and lag the network.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
+3 mace.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ok, first of all, I'd definately advertise, sell tickets or something. Use the proceeds to offset the room rental costs. The rest should be set up in some sort of fund as prize money. (Which will help get people there...)
Next, I can not stress enough, have a set list of what games will get played, what versions/patches, what maps, etc. Make sure everyone knows this in advance (maybe provide it with their pre-ordered ticket). That should reduce the amount of headaches. I can't tell you how many times this has caused problems at LAN parties at my house because somebody wasn't patched up or didn't have the new map pack we all wanted to play...
Have a set schedule of what game will be played when. That way if somebody wants to check out for an hour or two of sleep they can do it during the time block of a game that they don't like to play. Also, make sure you schedule BREAKS!
Find the local rock stations and see if they can advertise the event. However, it is usually expensive to do a real advertisement. Some stations (at least here in Atlanta) have a "what's happening this weekend" segment during their Thursday or Friday morning shows. Maybe you could get in on those. Fliers on local college campuses work well too...
As far cheaters/hackers... Just having somebody walk around and observe is always a good deterrent. Most hacks are easily noticable by the casual observer walking around the party room viewing monitors. If you get caught, you get removed from the current running game and DQ'ed from the money prize...
Require headphones (NO SPEAKERS!) for all users. Everyone brings their own power strips. UPS'es and extension cords are recommended because you're probably going to need more power than the room will provide.
The only other issue I'd be concerned with is theft of property. How does somebody secure their gear while scooting off for 30 minutes to take a leak, grab some food or catch a nap?
Also, make sure you check out the room and what the hotel/hall can provide for tables. Most conferences at hotels usually have either round dining tables (usually good enough to fit 4-5 computers on) or long rectangular tables that are horrible because they aren't deep enough for a keyboard and a monitor.
Anyhow, hope this helps. Good luck! Make sure you post a followup report after the event!
--Mike
This should go without saying, but don't forget Cat 5's. Someone always forgets his, we all can make them, so bring a few extra. Not a big deal. And power cords. And label them so you don't lose yours, though Cat 5's are cheap.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
First result on google is this
http://www.lanparty.com/theguide/
What a waste of space on slashdot.
I went to a LAN party several months ago. I didn't stay all night. When I unplugged my machine someone else's machine went off in the middle of a game because he plugged his machine into my surge protector.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I can't stress this enough.. make sure not to over do the daisy chaining of the surge protectors. After having just had a lan party at my place with about 8 people in the basement, and all on the same circuit, and two circuit trips because someone went to go pee, we had to start mandating people use the bathroom in the dark, or pause the game and everyone power their monitors off.
Make sure to find yoursefl a lawyer and take care of having ppl to sign an agreement for the rules you put up. A good disclaimer could save your ass a big trouble.
Create a 'Welcome to my LAN Party' sign. Hang it right at the front door. The sign includes some of the following:
1. Suggested donation $10 with an big coffee can recepticle for the money.
2. Bathrooms are here, here, and there. If you want to take a nap, bring your sleeping bag to the lounge over here....
3. Food is available at the following fine locations... and include a map of the area.
4. Please take a sticker, write down your name and moniker and affix it to your computer and monitor and other equipment you own and care about.
5. Rules of engagement are the following... age of admission, food, smoking, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, etc.
6. This is the network setup: DHCP etc.
7. The following games are at such a version:
i) quake3a, rev 1.34
ii) unreal, rev 2.1...
iii) etc
8. Patches, maps, updates, and other installables are available on this machine:...
9. We use ICQ and this is how to contact the important people at this LAN party...
badges really do keep people out pretty well. at the CPL last year this guy was like "let me borrow your badge for 10 minutes while youre eating"... why you ask? so he could go around and steal ram, mice, headphones, keyboards and mousepads. keep in mind gamers are known to spend 80 dollars on an illuminated keyboard and such.
okaaaaay...
And I think that about now is the time that you should start taking your medication again...
--
Hollywood representatives have publicly stated that skipping commercials is "stealing."
But they will, and having some extra hardware from those who do have it to spare will help these people out. More importantly, keep them from whining.
Ahh, the ONLY reason I'm negative in frag count when the rest of the room is 30+ is because I don't have as good an fps
Having a "nice guy" to help them open up their PC's and fiddle with the insides is a good thing too.
My photolog
Can't go wrong with that combination.
Just make sure the BOFH has the nicest kit and plenty of beer.
a) a way to communicate if people are not close, perhaps a local message board or irc chatroom where people can decide what games to play
b) the air freshener guy wasn't kidding.....
Size
Make sure you have more than enough tables, chairs, and floor space for your attendees. I've seen attendance estimates very as much as 20%, and you never want to turn people away at the door, so always over-estimate your space requirements
Electricity
You'll have some attendees. who will bring machines that draw next to nothing, and others who will plug in giant subwoofers and space heaters. Spread your load over as many circuits as you can, and make sure you have plenty of thick-gauge extension cords.
Over a year ago, we ran an event at the local Masonic Temple. It's an old building, and some of us had power concerns from the start. Within two hours, we had run wires to every floor in the building, blown almost a dozen fuses, and destroyed the high-amp fuses on the main. (These fuses, circa 1936, were burned and torn in half)
Technical Support
Without fail, someone will set up, and their NIC won't work, their video card will fail, or they'll need to reinstall their OS. Chances are, you'll be enlisted to help resolve these situations.
Someone will forget a mouse/power cord/length of Cat5, so bring a few extra just in case. A decent percentage of attendees. won't have current patches for their games, so before hand, burn about a dozen CDs with patches for popular games, and hand them out as needed.
File Sharing
The biggest problem we've had to deal with recently comes from this department. When it comes to sexual content, we consider ourselves to be a PG-13 Lan Party. Until recently, we permitted the sharing of adult material, but we've had two recent incidents of inappropriate use. Now, we have a strict policy on the matter. Additionally, we've had problems with infected files/machines on the network. We still allow file sharing, but this may change if this problem continues.
If you do allow file sharing, you'll run into people that don't understand the concept of restricting their shares... You'll see entire hard drives with read & write permissions enabled. We haven't had anyone maliciously delete files off of someone's computer, but a few years ago, someone accidentally shared pictures of his naked wife lying in the bath. He was none too pleased to discover that the photo made the rounds.
Getting back to the inappropriate use subject... a few events ago, someone decided it would be a good idea to bring their LCD projector. Since we hold our event in an airplane hangar, it's pretty easy to set up a 20' screen. Sure enough, it only took a few hours before there were larger than life sexual acts being projected on the wall.
Other
Other than that, you'll run into issues about food & drink, sound (headphone requirements), tournaments, bathrooms, and trash. Use common sense, and these issues *usually* resolve themselves.
seeing that you fuckin losers will never get laid, you might want to pool some cash and get a few cheap ass hookers to show you a good time that you would otherwise never get.
morons
I have run quite a few events myself. Some friday -> sunday justlike the one you are planning. Some things i found absoultly necessary. ;(
;) ) in the price of registration. I normally have chips and stuff for people to snack on between meals, and I found that offering meals isnt always the best but If i put up a survey on the registration page i can figure out really what i need to do for meals. Somepeople prefer Burger king and stuff, others expect you to order pizza. Count on .5 large pies per person, per meal. If you scope out a pizzaria before hand you could probably get them to work out a deal, 4$-5$ a pie if you pick it up aint bad.
;)
1.) Registration System (with prepay)
You always need to know how many people are coming, keeping track of who payed you and who has not. One of my first events, I didnt have a prepay system and all though 55 registered, only the 8 that prepayed showed up. I ate around 600$ on that party
2.) Places to sleep
Its custom for me to rope off a corner of the room for people who cant afford the hotel rooms. They bring their own sleeping bags, and they sleep in the corner!
3.) Check in/Check out... NO GUESTS!
This is a tough rule to enforce, but I found it easier to document what a person has brought in (in terms of equipment) and not to allow guests. It just makes the theft go away. If you dont know who brought what in, you dont know if they should be walking out with that nifty 19inch flat screen you just bought!
4.) Name tags.
You want people to know each other, they have a good time and come back for more. My best system is a php script that handles the registration, pre-paying, and the formating (for printing) of the person's name and of thier handle. Its always feel good to run into someone at the drink stand (another needed thing, a place to snack, grab a dew, or just take a break from gaming) with the handle of the guy you just moped up in a game.
4.) Supplies.
Never have enought toliet paper, paper towels, paper cups. Honestly, sometimes the hotell staff isnt perfect and dont keep up with the bathrooms, i mean after all if you got 100 people, and they each drink 15 dews an hour, thats alot of batroomin!
5.) Snacks, Bevs.
I normally include a 12 pack per day (dew
6.) Staff, Always Available
Someone needs to always be there to greet people, help people get setup, or just be there when the servers break (it will happen, it always does.) For 100 people, of team of 5 normally works well.
I think thats about all i can think of right now, but if you want to email me I can try and help ya out as much as possible
Popsikle...A....T...NYPunk....Org
If you're going to incorporate Dance Dance Revolution into your party (as many do nowadays) make sure you keep it separate from the computers.
Trust me, even the toughest Lian-Li cannot withstand the barreling of a sweaty dancer who has lost his balance or slipped on the pad...
to insure that all the computers will be able to be networked, you should set some guidelines for the type of computer and network protocol used. You don't want a bunch of people unable to play because they use some obscure computer type or network protocol. In my experience this is the kind of thing that absolutely needs to be specified. You could also just rent a bunch of cheap pcs with fairly standard ram and video specs just in case.
You also may want to specify some of the games that will be played so that at least everyone has a few games that everyone else has. If you really want to make sure that everyone has a few standard games, have some games like starcraft that have a multiplayer only and no cd option for installing on unlimited computers so that you always have a few games that everyone can have.
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
You will have to have adequate network connectivity. An ideal situation would be to have about 5-6 24 port switches (real switches) to handle the large amounts of file transfers.
Have dedicated Game servers ready. Nothing is more annoying when tring to have massively large network games are people with slow machines setting up game servers and have 1/4 of the people on 4 different rouge servers. If the game servers are setup to begin with you won't have this problem.
If you are going to have 120+ people I would hire a security guard. At least have some illusion of security. In the small lan parties Iâ(TM)ve thrown, even with people we know, people always end up losing stuff. You might also have people sign an agreement stating you are not responsible for stolen stuff. Cover your ass for some dumbass that leaves his 4 grand computer unattended for half a day and returns to find his processor and ram gone.
Make sure you have bathrooms and parking worked out. Save your neighbors from having to see 120 geeks outside in the bushes taking pisses. Or I would expect some people to not even bother getting up and going outside. Also make sure you have enough trashcans inside. It will be amazing how much trash 120 people can generate in 3 days.
Tell everyone at least 2-3 weeks in advance if you want a large turn out. Make people RSVP as well, especially if you are charging a cover and want to recoup your money.
Have people in charge of different things. One for network/game servers, one for setting people up. One for the door. One for trash.
GooD Luck, I don't envy the people that have to clean up afterwards.
Mere gamers are not worthy of the blessed codewater. I hide mine at parties so that only I can get to it.
Another tip is to put your secret fridge and server on a separate breaker from the computers, so the gaming doesn't interfere with your drinking and coding.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I had all users saturating their 100MB switched links, and it was so beutiful i damn near cried!!
Just make sure that everyone deletes the files when its time to go home...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
One thing to watch for is pervs swapping kiddie porn over the LAN (it happens).
Talking to the local law enforcement beforehand and ideally getting them to make an overt walk around, combined with advertising their presence in advance goes a long way to scaring away these undesirables.
The last thing you want is your LAN being used to transfer this stuff, particularly if you end up getting subpoenaed down the line for someones trial.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
After seeing that video clip of the guy who was caught cheating at a LAN party, two things came to mind.
1. Assault. The "security" guys were guilty of assault. You can NOT even touch someone. You can demand they leave and call the police if they refuse, but don't lay a finger on them. You can go to jail for this type of stuff.
2. Destruction of private property. Throwing the persons computer with great force into the parking lot had the expected result of destroying the computer. This is definately a civil offense. It may be a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.
The people running the event could have been open for some serious litigation had the person persued the matter.
I'm not condoning cheaters. I agree that they should be removed from the event. The wrong tactics, however, can gurantee you can never sponser another event because of liability problems.
You want to make sure you have liability insurance so you don't get sued out of existence by some asshole who trips over his own feet and breaks his leg because he hasn't slept in 72 hours.
-- Will program for bandwidth
and a big screen to show your 64k intro competitions on.
remember the big demo parties.. they would start making a small section for gamers so the loud bunch wouldn't bother the sceners. now its all gamers..
anyways these guys all do huge lanparties and all have advice for you
assembly.org
theparty.dk
scene.org
bite my glorious golden ass.
Keep a schedule and a variety of game genres posted. Very important:
mix up the games. FPS are fun, but after 10 hrs of the same thing (even if it is spread over 6 different games) gets boring very quick.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
It's well worth setting up a DC or similar hub to reduce the network load and hassles from setting up file sharing etc....
If you have a power issue (like only 3 stations per extension cord) for the love of god, TELL PEOPLE WHAT IS GOING ON. I know geeks dont like to communicate in general, but I've seen so many breakers tripped because no one was ever told how much power one outlet could take.
I myself, have hosted several smallish (~10 to 15) lans at my house and have had pretty good luck. It's friends and friends of friends only. So if some jackass shows up, we know exactly which friend to blame
Other things that you may run across depending on setup:
Make a CD that boots windows and includes drivers and such for most common devices (or is it even possible for that to work?), and CD's with the games on them. I suppose you could make them run from the fileserver for anything that needs to be saved to disk, or perhaps even run everything off fileserver(s) if it doesn't eat up too much bandwidth.
Then you eliminate configuration problems (provided everyone has decently popular hardware), and eliminate cheating since they can't install any cheats.
Of course, this might be impossible for any number of reasons:
- Windows won't boot from CD
- Windows won't fit on a CD
- Violates Windows licence
and so on..Could be a neat thing to do with linux (and Wine to get some of the games going), since it can boot from a CD for sure. Would basically turn their computer into a fancy console..
On that note, what about LAN parties using actual consoles? Use PS2's on a LAN.. ?
Speak before you think
...food, beer, good company and fun games make a LAN party successful.
Fitting Slashdot article since I am having a Friday - Sunday LAN party on June 20th.
Networking computers together is a piece of cake provided that nobody is running an old version of Windows (or Linux?)
Having a few consoles set up such as an Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube are also good for the people that don't have top notch computer rigs for some of the newer games. Movies are good to have playing in the background (Matrix 2 Uber Leet downloaded version, Lord of the Rings, Spiderman or whatever.)
Food staples are a must have since most geeks get hungry. Also, most geeks carry a geek pouch, which means food ist good. I say beer because after a few brews you are more likely to want to get some sleep before 6 a.m. if you haven't already passed out from intoxication. Games are also more fun with beer.
Why is sleep good? Well, so you don't keel over like those freaks over in Korea that stay up for days playing Counterstrike.
- food Make sure there's enough to eat for everyone, because even after being sedentary for 8 hours your stomach starts rumbling. And after eating junk food for 24 hours, you start craving something nutritious.
- sleep Most people don't have the stamina to do anything for more than 18 hours straight, even if it is just sit at a computer and play games. You are going to want to crash some time, so provide places to sleep.
Other than that, I suggest you have some movies available, because gaming is competitive and intense, so it's good to just relax for a while. 2001: A Space Odyssey is just wonderful at 4 am.ok, you've never participated in one and you're calling it a drag?
I'd like to publicly state that you're terrible in bed.
"would you have any input (or horror stories!) that could help to ensure we have not overlooked anything?"
Don't bring anybody you have hopes of being romantically involved with.
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=67150&cid= 6166127
This asshole just copied my earlier post and HE gets modded up?
http://lotl.cc/humor/lanpeople.php
bite my glorious golden ass.
Air conditioning is a must! Without cool air, you will find yourself in a sticky and smelly situation.
http://tomgould.com/
Since your event looks like it's about the same size as The Big Crap Shoot (around 100 people), these answers should apply quite nicely:
What did you do for advertising? Is it more effective to reach the intended audience by advertising on the radio, TV, internet, or billboard?
We rely solely on word-of-mouth advertising. By going this route, everyone knows everyone else, and there's higher personal accountability. You don't have any random jerks coming off the street... just jerks that are the friend of a friend.
What can you do about the rare, unmanageable, lunatic gamer?
With word-of-mouth advertising, this problem is reduced, but not eliminated. Make sure that those in attendance are fully aware of the ground rules. If someone starts to get out of line, a nice-but-direct word usually straightens them out.
The best way to handle the multitude of technical and behavioral problems that may occur is to designate unofficial Support Staff members (generally you and the other organizers will fill this role). You can take care of small firefighting issues, and help to enforce the rules.
How have you handled cheaters (aimbots, wall-hackers, etc.)?
Again, here's where your support staff comes in. Make it known that cheats will not be tolerated on the public servers you've set up. If they want to set up their own Cheats enabled server, that's up to them, but they had better have a clean copy of that game if they want to play with everyone else.
You can't be afraid to escort people from the event. It's a last resort, of course, but you can't let one or two people ruin the event for everyone else.
Have you brought in sponsors to help offset the cost?
We have had a few sponsors in the past, but we rely on our attendance fee ($10 Saturday, $5 Sunday) to take care of our costs. We're able to cover all of our facility fees, and still purchase servers and switches.
Has there been technical support for the non-tech savvy? If so, was it free, or included in the admission cost? It's nice to have someone the new people can contact if they just can't get their machine to connect. Here's where your Support Staff comes in handy again. If they can't solve your problem, they can generally direct you to someone who can. Of course, many of the people who attend these events know a thing or two about computers, and they're generally more than willing to help someone out who's having trouble.
But yes, within reason, tech support is free.
There is DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) from sitting in economy class too long, but you can also get this from sitting at your PC for too long without a break. For a laugh (in a vain attempt to take the serious edge off this) I will call the clotting of blood from sitting at your PC too long "Computer Geek Thrombosis" (CGT).
/. and laughed, but seriously don't let it happen to you (or people under your care at your LAN).
To avoid this you should make sure that every hour or so people get up and around. We acheive this at our lan's through:
1 - BBQ, Softdrinks, water etc, and place them at least 20 meters away from the action. It forces people to get up and walk, and at the same time they also tend to wander.
2 - Make sure there is lots of cheap water (not just coke) available, as water prevents dehydration, and it stealthily encourages people to go to the loo... heheh nasty when in the middle of a tough cs WAR.... but it might save youre life.
3 - Ensure that there is pizza delivery, again, people need to stop gaming, get up, walk around etc.
This may sound silly, but CGT is a VERY serious problem, one that people have died from. We have all read the anecdotes on
lounge around on the blue couch
If you need to do it all yourself, I suggest a book on event planning http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471644129/ 002-0704409-4435217. It may seem the examples are more posh than what you have in mind, but the underlying principles hold for any type of event.
My reccomendation? Go to the local gym, pick the biggest guys, and hire them as bouncers. I was at a Science Fiction convention not 3 weeks ago, in Baltimore, during the Lacrosse championships. There was a computer gaming room, and we had a problem of constantly having to watch out for these jerk lacrosse players who were trying to get into the room all the time. Also, this way, you can kick people out, if necessary, although this probably won't occur. Also, if you're planning on using a hotel, see if they have any public showers ... I'm not kidding. The place will reek.
-Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
I've seen lots of mentions of "have enough power" but no one has given you a solid amount. Allow 3 amps per system for a fully stable power grid, although you 'can' get away with 2 if you can juggle your power *really* well. :P - you'll need to spend abut the first hour or so checking people as they plug in to make sure of this but it is WELL worth the effort
Also, make sure that you are supplying the power boards, and don't let anyone else plug there boards in. Give them 2 slots and 2 slots only - otherwise you'll people plugging in heaters
Good Luck
The worst place I've been was a diner hall in the back of a bar / bowling alley. It was loud from the bar + the dozens of computers kept blowing breakers all night (which downed stuff all over the building.) It was definitely not fun watching my poor computer reboot for most of the night.
-d3UCe
More and more participants will be using these - while they add to security, they can also add an extra item to troubleshoot in the event of problems. Configuring them should be the participant's responsibility (obviously) but if you are using free games (as some posters have suggested), they may be new to some people - so having a note of ports used would be a good idea for your network guru.
Make sure you config the switches corectlly. I say switches cos a lan with 120 nodes and hubs are not how you do it.
:) ;) :)
:D
a couple cisco switches will do fine, get someone or a few guys/girls that know how to work with those switches.
make sure you got enuff network cable, and don't forget the RJ45 connectors!!
the power is one important thing also, have enuff of it, better more then less!
oki that's the tech part
now, get some nice tables also, put them up in nice rows and that, get some chairs, no need for fancy-crap, if the visitors want good chairs, they'll have to bring their own
toilets and showers are good, really good. 120 geeks smells!
in fact, 5000 smells even worse, don't go to dreamhack if ya can't stand geek-smell
have some doors open at day-time to get fresh air into the room and all, you will need it
oh, yes, and a barbeque is a must for every lan-party.
a lan-party without a small barbequed party is not a real lan-party!! remember that!!
good luck, have fun..
I will name names! Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Master of Orion 2 both pulled that one.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
"Go to a bar, or club, or party, and pick up a fuckin' girl! Then you will see the stupidity of your network gaming marathon."
If you lived here in Portland, you'd prefer network games over the local women. They come straight from a Cathy cartoon.
DCCon (3?) used fiber one year. They got a sweet network donated by bay networks or someone.. and it included a bunch of 100mbit full duplex ethernet switches that used fiber for switch interconnects. (this was like 1998) The problems were that the fiber was run between tables, and people kept knocking into it or even stepping on it.
At the beginning of the day, the network was clean, no PL, no lag. By the end of the day, the game was all kinds of choppy (NetQuake, btw) and the PL was horrible.
Take it from me, USE COPPER ONLY. Especially today with the affordability of 100mbit ethernet. Gigabit switches/hubs are still expensive, but it is an option for the backbone.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Very important but often overlooked if you are running an event larger than a few friends in someone's basement, is to get public liability insurance. Many venues won't even let you hire them out without having it. You may never need it, but its a damn good idea.
I went to a ~6 person LAN party once that was hosted in my friend's room. His room is a nice place to sit by yourself and use the computer, but when there is a substantial amount of people inside, you can barely move around. I ended up on top of his overturned bed base, with my computer between my legs and my monitor on a fold-open table. There was another guy using the bed base as a desk right beside me, and then the rest of the people were sitting behind the bed base against the wall. It got very cramped and (needless to say) very, very hot and humid. We decided to open the door at about 12 o' clock at night to let out some of the carbon dioxide soup that had accumulated inside the room. Oh! There's another thing I would like to mention. Have EVERYONE run an up-to-date virus checker BEFORE you hook the computers up to the network. I accidentally brought a "Haptime" laced box to the LAN, it did not exactly improve the LAN party.
What, is the whole city invited? Sheesh.
first concern: power
we usually distribute power based on the assumption that each computer will use 4 amps. on a 20 amp circuit this means 4 computers (5x4=20, dont want to overload a circuit). you can get cheap 100' extension cords from walmart. put no more than 2 computers behind one (get some cheap power strips while you are at it). this works out well, it means you run 2 of these to a group of 4 computers (and there are 2 plugs on the outlet anyway). make sure you label EACH extension cord, on both ends. this is INFINATELY valueable when tracing down power problems. also make sure that you have a designated electrician who knows what circuits correspond to what outlets. DO NOT OVERLOAD a circuit. if you are hosting a 120 person event, assume you need 480 amps just for the players, not counting server row, consessions, lights, anything else. make sure you stay at or below 80% power usage for the facility you are at. you might look at getting power boxes or renting a generator from a local construction company. keep in mind generator power is not very clean nor natural to your pc. we got our power figures from lanwar, arguably one of the most successful regular lan parties in the usa. POWER IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION
second issue: food
decide up front if entry cost will be paying for any/all of the food for the gamer.
either see if you can get some stuff donated or on a discount, or just go buy generics. there are always decent generic brands that are alot cheaper than normal name brands. people at lan parties are not going to care that they are drinking vess or big k as long as its halfway decent and there is plenty of it. you might also see if you can get some kind of discount on catering by a local food place, such as subway or a pizza joint. use the "you can only take 1 sandwich" or "you can only take 2 slices of pie" rule until everyone has had an opportunity to go through the line.
third concern: networking
hopefully someone in your group will be a good networking tech. decide up front if you are going to allow file servers on server row (i would advise against, alot of wasted gaming bandwidth). my advice for the networkside is rent out some professionals. www.lanrental.com, i knwo these guys, they know what they are doing. in any event try to build out a network with low latency and not high bandwidth (if you can get both then great, but latency is more important for a game lan IMO, and i dont even game at the ones we throw).
fourth concern: parking
minor concern i admit, but still one to consider. make sure there is enough parking. try to make an area where noone can park but is used for loading/unloading. call the local authorities and tell them what you are doing and where you are doing it.
fifth concern: bathrooms.
make sure that the bathroom facilities are ample and work. this is especially important for multiday events. you might consider offering a location for the attendees to shower.
sixth concern: sleeping/chilling locale.
mark off an area for sleeping. sleeping under your computer with people walking over you sucks. set asside an area with a decent sized tv and vcr/dvd player or run a video projector. have alternate entertainment past the attendee's own pc.
seventh concern:
have people who are definately designated as in charge at all times. they should all wear the same shirt in a bright colour indicating they are event staff. always have someone on duty at a helpdesk or where they can be reached.
please mod this up, should be rather informative
Since you're branching out beyond a group of people you're comfortable with, make an effort to ensure your attendants are clean. Klez, Fizzer, Bugbear... etc. could take a giant shit on you otherwise. All you need is one kid that has parents with a fat wallet to get his system wiped, and you'll have 20/20 hindsight in no time.
Get some tools on the servers that can show traffic usage per IP possibly.
Then incase someone gets the bright idead to start DOSing the server, you can find their MAC, set the dhcp server up to give him/her an ip on a completely different subnet that's not in use. That or block his/her IP or something to get rid of him/her. And depending on the switches you use, you can quite possibly track them down.
The likely hood of that happening is slim, but just incase.
One other thing, make sure you have a few people who know how to admin the server/maintain everything else around the room so you can get decent playing time in. I ran a lan party for our computer club at school, and the janitors got the bright idea to turn of the A/C that night. So I was busy running around the school most of the time trying to find fans and ways to keep the room cool. That night I didn't get in nearly as much playing time as I would have liked.
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is another free stand-alone game thats alot of fun...
Is your friend :) That or just various forms of caffeine.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Make sure you have enough Jolt cola!
make everyone sign an waiver that very plainly states that everyone is gaming at their own risk and holds you harmless for anything that happens
Host the party near a large-scale, 24-7 Tim Horton's. If not a canuck, the nearest local equivalent.
Make sure you tell all the audiophiles to keep their volume down. Just to say it again, lanparty.com, and make sure everyone knows what games will be played, and what patches they'll need.
No beer make gamers something something.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
And all of that belongs at a LANparty, absolutely. What would a LAN be without caffeine and greasy food to blame your bad performance on? (ie: "The only reason you fragged me was because my hand was so greasy it slipped right off my mouse! ::mutter::lucky bastard::/mutter::") Makes you feel better to.
But never will I go to a LANparty without a gallon jug of water for myself. Spacing caffeine and junkfood with water is good, keeps you from eating too much crap and prevents acid burn from eating pure junk for >24 hours.
Just my .02$, and apologies for slight rambling.
Seriously, I doubt anyone will use it.
I used to run MLGC's (Midlands Games Community's, UK) LAN parties, also attended LNGC's LAN's (Leicester Networking Games Club, UK), 40+ PC's from VERY few mains outlets monthly, christ knows how but LNGC did it! Lessons I have learnt to date were .....
1 - Dont route the mains cable through the legs of the barbecue!
In the outhouse where the power is pulled from. 50% of the LAN were pretty pissed off when they were told to power down as the football team needed to move the BBQ and reroute the mains.
2 - Use dedicated servers for the play offs!
When myself and Jahar were playing for an RA2 tournement, EL kinda gets pissed off when he hosted the server on his PC, as the game took over 3 hours to complete ....
Jahar had 70+ Tanks ish
Kehl had 30 Froggy Artillery ish
ED ( I WON £40 ) RAR =D
But aside from that ..... Venue must have .....
Sanitation / Showers
Food Source
Sanitation / Showers
Alcohol source / allowance
Sanitation / Showers
Sleeping quarters (seperate room to crash in)
Sanitation / Showers
Kettle / coffee!
Sanitation / Showers
Decently priced food
Sanitation / Showers
Lots of fuses
I like sausage ... *er I mean lan parties
So you can scan for dhcp servers. There are always a couple idjits who came to the party w/ internet connection sharing turned on the windows boxes, handing out bad or conflicting IPs to people around the network. Then make sure you have a bullhorn or pa system, so you can start yelling "ok, who the hell is 'l33th4xor' and why are you a dumb ass?"
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
I administer a local LAN in Brisbane which normally gets roughly 70 seats, and also reguarly attend a few all weekend lans with the Queensland Gaming League in Australia.
Running a LAN of that size is not for the faint hearted. Things like power, network design, seating, and even security needs to be taken into account.
Power wise: With our 240v 10amp limits we run 1 extention cable 1 double adapter and 4 powerboards (2 deep) from each plug on a 3 Phase converter. Atendees are then free to plug an extra power board bringing a total of 14 powerboards on to each lead. This prevents any overloading and stops unhappy customers needing to restart because of a power outage.
Network: You need good gear but as u said u already did some bandwidth testing i'm sure u've already got a layout sorted out. However DHCP is a recipe for disaster. 1 computer running windows ICS and it all goes to hell. To circumvent that we run on 2 subnets. 10.0.0.0 are DHCP assigned addresses. On top of that each tag that each attendee gets when they enter also has a systematically assigned ip address in 10.0.1.0 range. Should DHCP fail they have something to revert to.
As for cheaters, roudies, and other unwanted guests. They are usually unceremoniously kicked out without question, without second chance, and without a refund.
(just make sure the whole server isn't cheating and enjoying themselves)
I've helped wearegamers.com host smackdown (a London Ontario Lan Party) 3 times... and attended all 4. I takes 6-10months of prep. time..and lots of dedication. I would first start with room costs, sponsors and power/network costs. That is the majority of the budget. Honestly though... if you don't have at least 4months prep time.. I would fall to under 50 seats.. use it as a trial/test lan.. and then plan another one in the future...once you've had a taste of running a lan party.
No, this is
Unless of course you don't mind having a dead body on your hands! And if you do happen to have Korean friends, you might want to prepare yourself by watching Weekend at Bernie's...
You're using her as bait, Master!
As an avid bzFlag player (2-4 hours each day) I heartily agree. Game play is insanely addictive, and the community of players and developers is awesome.
Prepare to deal with the bane of IP networks... rogue DHCP servers.
Any sufficiently large LAN event will inevitably include attendees who for some reason run Windows 2000 Server with a DHCP Server Service configured. Without the proper tools, tracking these down can be a nightmare. Be prepared. Ideally, you'd have managed switches that can tell you what port a given MAC address is connected on, coupled with sniffers to tell you which MAC address is the source of the DHCP service. The DHCP protocol monitor plugin for Snort IDS can be used for this latter purpose (and Snort can also be used to detect hack attempts and DoS attempts).
These tools will also help in identifying conflicting IP addresses.
Then Mitch's dad came home, and the LAN miraculously evaporated, leaving a wake of garbage and destruction.
Make sure:
You don't run a microwave oven on the same circuit as 6 computer systems.
You leave a system 24/7 connected to the 'net and set up as a gateway. Geeks who don't want to play CS or Medal of Honor at any given time can d/l pr0n instead.
Don't purchase "Great Value" cola from Wal-Mart. Yes it's only $2.00 per case, but when you have multiple, solid 10lb corn logs that reek like moldering ass mixed with turpentine, you'll be sorry. Go classy, get real brands of soda.
Well, that's pretty much it for my tips, other than that, just be careful with those Logos, some people tend to get offended... For some reason.
Death to Reefer Addicts.
--
Is a rather long and heavy duty extention cord running from your unsuspecting neighbors outside outlet.....
Why not just pick a girl up at the LAN party? (snicker)
mod this up!
so true
Sure, you can put together a kick-arse LAN party without too much trouble. But if it's going to be big enough to attract attention from non-geeks nearby, then don't skimp on security.
The last organised LAN I ever went to (over a year ago now), I was mugged afterwards at knife-point. I lost my mobile phone and wallet, but they didn't take my computer which I was standing next to. Most probably because of all the friends nearby, the mugging caught them off guard and they didn't react to it, but taking my computer would have had a fair few people coming to my assistance.
Later the police told me that the area where the party was held was one of the worst crime neighbourhoods in Adelaide. Apparently people get mugged in broad daylight. So although the hall would have been dirt cheap at that time of night, it really isn't the right place to hold a LAN.
Even though the organisers also had someone steal a 24-port switch, they still wouldn't move the venue. They practically covered the incident up. The other gamers to this day are unaware of what happened and has probably happened pretty regularly since. The organisers did hire some security guards to guard the cars, but my friend who still attends that party tells me that his car got broken into the very next time he went.
So my advice to you is this: imagine how you would feel if one of your friends, or one of their friends, were mugged at knife-point. Or worse, if their computer were stolen. Then you will make the right decision about the venue and any security issues.
Don't be half-arsed about it, it's better to have less food and no theft, than for the majority to be happier while one person has a really rotten night.
Cathy, huh... I'm betting you come directly from a Dilbert cartoon.
lots and lots of hummus
If you liked licking my balls, add me to your foes list!
I'm with a company called LANtrocity.com and we put on LAN parties in 3 cities in Northern CA each month. We've hosted parties for nearly 500 people at one time, and provide all power, networking cables, switches (gig ports, too!), game servers, intranet, internet connection (where applicable/feasible), concession stand, patch/mod/map download server (sorry, no porn!), and a helpful staff to roam around making sure everyone is happy and functioning. We have insurance as well, which will save you a lot of time, money, and worry (trust me). Visit our website (www.lantrocity.com) to check out current venues and/or to request a quote. Prices as low as $4.50/seat (plus travel if needed). Or join us at one of our events. Can't beat that with a stick.
Don't usually last a whole weekend?
-- Mr E Gecko
Snarfle.
Now that a lot of hotels a wired for broadband in every room, they have 100base-T ethernet. It might be less of a hassle to have everyone shell out 50$ for a room per night. Then rent out the meeting rooms for gathering and talking to fellow attendees. If done right, it could be really cool.
Have at least one or two people who don't expect to play games, at an event that size. Preferably, hook one up with a Linux box with all the hacking^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsecurity tools you'll need to take care of the rogue DHCPer's or equivalent (as already noted). Something not noted, as far as I can see: Have a Windows box with popular trojan clients (SubSeven, BO2000, etc) scanning for servers to make sure that nobody can ruin anyone's fun with a trojan before you warn them and clean them.
:-)
Make sure there's a big sign over the "Help" people, so the average gamer doesn't get ticked off by Mr. Rich Parents who can't figure out how to run a program that's not in his Start menu.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
I've been part of a group that has hosted a lan party for many years. If the group gets too big it just fragments along age lines, so make sure there is a bar nearby, and access to good food. People will just clique up in small groups suitable to the game they are playing.
:)
Finances are the killer, this is not a cheap undertaking so make sure you've got all the costs covered up front, OH and a dozen spare nics and patch cables
If you do enough work ahead of time you can actually enjoy the party yourself, otherwise you run in circles just hosting...
http://www.lanparty.com/parties/100.shtml
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Power: 1 computer uses about 350-400 watts, a monitor is about 60-70, and a small speaker set uses about 10 or so. that's 480, call it 500 watts per computer. I'm also thinking that your in the US so one computer will use about 4.5 amps on the high side. So at the lans that i run we drop 3 cords hooked up to 15 amp breakers into the table setup with 12 computers, since not every one has the biggest baddest super power hungry computer this works out fine. ;)
Network: With that many people it makes much more sence to try and get your hands on bigger switches to hook together with a trunk of some kind insted of lots of little switches, just for price and performance. At the lan i run we have a few centillion switches along with a cisco 5k all of these have 48-96 ports in them the switches are hooked together with ATM or gigabit... but this leaves you with a problem, 48-96 ports in one place is way more than your going to have in a single table cluster. the solution! network snakes 30-50 foot long bundles of 6 or 12 cat5 cables with rj45 plugs on one end, and a box with keystone jacks on the other. this keeps individual cat5 cables to a minimum, and makes clean up a bit easier. besides with big switches you can poll them and find out who's leaching off who
food: I have found that for the really long parties it makes sence to only provide 2 meals (normaly both dinners) since by the time the next mean comes around not every one feels like eating the same thing as every one else... also get buddy buddy with the local pizza manager, some times they will give you deals if you order lots of food at a time, and they might want to sponser you.
BATHROOMS: Possibly the worst lan i've ever hosted was at a place with bad bathrooms, i can not stress this enough. make sure you have the number for the guy who is in charge of fixing them if they break to... it has been known to happen.
Internet always a good thing to have around... for patches or for email... but it is a good idea to have some one who knows what there doing to setup a firewall to limit stuff like... kazaa etc, other wise the people who actualy need that bandwidth wont have it (a cache of some kinda helps here too)
Polices: Make some and dont bend them for anyone, unless you want the attendies walking all over you. it's one thing to have a lan with all friends... it is MUCH diffrent to have a public party were random people show up. It isn't a bad idea to let the local police know that there is a event going on at your location and that you will not hesitate to call them if you need help... then make sure the people at the party know that too. I'm sure theres more, i might reply to this and never mind the spelling mistakes. Seany
"Where ever you go, there you are"
Stop posting "Hey Asshole" comments about how you were first to think of a lame comment.
:P"
"Hey, that was *my* lame ass joke. You suck
Sweet merciful Christ, get these people some deodorant!
of deodorant would be nice... I know I wear mine, but that's just me...
Nobody likes a room full of smelly nerds.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
First, get measurements on the building/room you will be using and map out where you will want all of your tables. You can fit about 3 people per 8 foot folding table. Make sure to leave room for people to walk and have areas for the admins/servers and a checkin table by the door.
For power, my general rule of thumb seems to be about 3 Amps/system. We run 6 systems per 20 amp circuit (117 VAC) in our building without any problems. To get gamers to connect to the right circuits, first map out which circuit every outlet in the room(s) is on. Then, run a fairly heavy duty extension cord from one outlet on each circuit to a group of tables and stick a power strip on the end of it. (use the map to figure cable lengths) Then, just tell gamers to plug into the power strip at their table and things should go pretty well. If you want more info on power usage by computers check this study out: http://www.fwgg.org/files/FWGG_POWER_TEST.pdf
For networking, just go to pricewatch.com and find some cheap 16 port 10/100 switches with uplink ports. They are ~$50 each. Bigger switches require gamers to have really long cables to connect to switches. Smaller switches require too many uplinks to the certral switch. Anyway, you will be able to plug 15 boxes into each switch (1 is used for the uplink) and uplink all of the switches into a central switch that you also plug the servers into (again 16 port should be fine unless you have more than 150 people or a lot of servers).
Once you have all of your switches, go on ebay and buy a reel or two of stranded cat 5 cable, a hundred or so rj45 plugs and crimper and wire stripper. Get a bunch of friends together and make your uplink cables plus a few more cables of whatever size you want in case you need them. Use your map to plan out where each switch needs to be and don't forget to add length for running from the table to the floor/ceiling.
It is really handy to have a dhcp/dns server on your network for easy client setup and to make it easy for gamers to get to stats pages (ie. set a default subdomain and give each server its own dns name in the given subdomain. Then to see your counter-strike stats, gamers can just open up their web browser and type cstrike).
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned that is really nice is a PA system. Being able to crank up the volume and announce tournies, etc is much easier than trying to yell at everybody.
Finally, a central web/file server with current info about your LAN party and torunaments if you have them is also nice.
Finally, check out http://www.nerdclub.net/alp/index.php for some nice LAN party management software.
From my experience:
Bring a team of the tech swaavy to setup the network before hand, with switches / routers setup before everyone comes if possible. Bring all your tech support tools aka cds, screwdrivers, spare parts, etc.
Wire 3-4 computers per wall socket max.. or say goodbye power. And even then if they are on the circuit...spread them even more.
Networking: Bring a box of 1000 feet of cable, and any spare parts anyone has. It helps.
Games: Everyone bring their copy.. and label it. AND KEEP THE CASE TO YOURSELF or say goodbye cdkey.
Burners: Have people who have first burners come an hour or two early to burn everything needed.
Make it planned: Make sure yuo set the games and everything up fast. As in make sure everyone knows what they are playing. and get it them bfeore if possible.
Technicians: Bring people who know what they are doing, and bring them early to setup a pre-network. Tell everyone to bring what networking equipment they have, helps reduce costs.
Food: Food. simple enough.
Sleep: Sleeping grounds. Floor works, when its 6 am, youll sleep anywhere.
Last, but not least, BRING enough tables... How many times i've had to sit in ghetto positions to play...
In this scenario, we are given the facts that this will be roughly 100-150 people and obviously performed at a commercial space... I am curious how we can apply some of the information tossed in here. Many responders have mentioned power and networking as one of their greatest concerns... Networking - Having a networking guru is obviously wise, as few will argue that it may be simple to setup a linksys broadband router, but organizing and subnetting several hundred ip's could be hairy. Simply put, negotiating the services of a net-dude is an obvious thing to do... Power - How do you plan this? Most of the even most technically savvy don't usually measure the power usage of our desktops. We load up the power strip until it pops the strip or the breaker, if it continues to pop we find a solution) extension cord, new outlet/circuit, heavier wiring/breaker). In this situation, one is forced into the confines of a commercial/retail area (Hotel conference room/school gymnasium/rental hall). Most of which are rarely designed with large power consumption in mind. So, whats the threshold of network user size that you would recommend getting a net geek involved? 20-30 people? 50 people? as long as your are switching the network vice using ultracheap hubs, how far can you go on a broadband switch/router before it can't handle the traffic load? My guess, if you go over 30 people or so, and/or go outside your group of friends and acquaintances... get a geek for networking... Power.. how do you measure what power you would need? for example... a lan party of 60 ... if you want to put 2 pc's on each power strip, that will draw X amps, and x amps per power strip will allow you to put Y power strips on one Z rated circuit in your area (conference room/gym/hall). How much amperage does your average gaming machine draw? How do we figure these out? and how do we convince hotel maintenance that we really do need 47,000 amps of 120 VAC. Would it be wise to either enlist the maintenance tech for your location (if knowledgeable enough) or even hiring an outside electrician to manage the power? Obviously everyone wants to keep costs at a minimum... whats the best route for the original scenario...
Anywho... I'm looking at these responses very carefully, as I don't know of any regularly held LAN parties within a 50 mile radius of me, and am thinking about trying to organize one...
Some of the things I have come across in surfing for information...
- Some LAN parties advertise the use of a device that will check the load of your PC. Effectively, if your section or area draws too much power, they test the devices draw and appear to easily be able to isolate the offending juice hog.
- Many LAN parties advertise long hours or several days. If you are hosting this somewhere other than a hotel or large metropolitan area, how DO you arrange for lodging/sleep accomodations.
Anyway... my 3 cents...
~~~ SCO sued me because I printed this t-shirt with a Linux driven printer...
Make sure that the Staff -- you and the other people who will be "in charge" -- are easily identifiable. Since it will be a somewhat darkened room, perhaps florescent green t-shirts/polos, or something along those lines....
load "windows7"
Consider putting together an 'info pack' (if you will) that briefly explains where all the facilities, gaming/hanging areas, where to plug in their computers, set up, etc. are.
You don't want to have a hoard of confused gamers wandering around all asking the same question ("Where do I set up my box?").
Oh, and of course:
Bins... Lots of Bins...
zing. ez.
Make sure there are some console games available for "cool-down." Highly recommended is Soul Caliber for Dreamcast, or, if this will be after August, Soul Caliber II for the platform of your choice. Soul Caliber is an excellent beteween-deathmatch game, as it requires very little thought and is a lot of fun (I generally just play Yoshimitsu and commit seppuku when I start to lose badly.)
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Okay, one more time:
;-).
You need a dedicated network person who only handles issues as they arise, this person can also handle the power load. This person does not need to deal with troubleshooting of PCs because....
You need a few volunteers to get PCs up and running on the network in the first few hours. Ideally, have spare cables and one NIC available for sale (but don't make them cheap, the poor sods deserve it) for the one awkward guys that won't have a proper NIC.
Power:
Prepare the distribution "network" ahead of time and make sure that the different sections are really on their own breakers and not overlapping with those 60 feet away. Providing the initial plug in points limits within 10-15 feets from their anticipated usage point helps control the load on the circuits.
DO NOT under ANY circumstances allo unrestricted access to any wall/floor outlet that is not designated for end users. Tape them over.
All cable snaking on the floor should be taped over, many cables running parallel should be grouped and run under those special ramps that let people walk on them.
Have an extra long extension and duct tape to tape it to the ground. This is to run alternate power to an underpowered cluster of PCs from a place with spare juice. It comes in handy, especially if 10 guys with 3-4 HDs, 21" screens and 5.1 speaker set up all gather nearby, you know like a clan
Misc:
Written policies for thefth, damage, injury, cheating, minimum age, etc. Trash and trash extraction. Facility cleaning and maintenance. Food, Beverages, Bar (and license if you have one) and other things need to be planned out. This means hoodles of soft drinks, whatever you can come up for decent food, etc. Bars are problematic and most venues that will let you have one (hotels) will insist on running it.
Badges are great, tee shirts for staffers and volunteers are awesome. Prizes should be PC/Gaming related, either games, graphics card, speakers, mices, gift certificates for electronics stores, mp3 players... Bonus for anything given by a sponsor.
Parent needs a +1 Insightful or at least +1 Funny.
How have people managed keeping the copies of software legal? Do most LAN parties even care or do they take a "you use illegal software at your own risk" approaches.
Or is there even a way to prove someone is not legally owning a game? I.e. its completely legal to make a backup copy of a cd, and/or use patches to remove cd checks from games, is it not?
Whats the right/wrong way to handle this? should it matter?
~~~ SCO sued me because I printed this t-shirt with a Linux driven printer...
Don't forget the beer =)
Also think about what restrictions on sound your going to have. If there are going to be lots of people in the same room it might be good to just have a headphones only policy although if its in a hotel this might not matter so much. Also if your not the only people staying in the hotel sound could be a problem.
There are always some idiots that like to show how loud they can make their subwoofa go.
cat
I'm not sure if you plan on running them, but with a 3 day event I imagine you would. Be ready. I know with the LAN I help plan and setup, one of our biggest issues has been with tournaments. UT2k3 has been particularly troublesome, even with webadmin.
Definitely try for sponsors. It will help a lot, and if you're hosting a 100+ person event then it should be easy to get companies interested
Crowd control will be necessary with that large of an event. Be it cheaters or lamers, you've gotta protect the equipment of the LANgoers.
Tech support should be included for all attendees, although you should make an effort to keep a community (forum) going so people are prepared to setup their network settings and have the latest patches.
Don't call it a marathon, since weekend LANs aren't all that uncommon. Marathon, to me, implies something like a week. In which case people would start hurting their health...
When I was an undergrad, our fraternity held a marathon basketball game to raise money for charity. We asked sponsors to pledge X dollars to the charity for each hour that we played. In the end, we had earned several thousand dollars for a good cause and had a great time doing it.
You might want to think about hosting a similar event. For instance, a gamer could get a friend to donate ten cents to charity for each minute that he plays Quake Arena in one continuous stretch.
Another idea: Get sponsors to put up prize money for an Unreal tournament. The winner gets to choose which charity receives the money.
Many people don't give enough thought to the power requirements of a sizeable Lan party. You must estimate how many people are going to be there and then figure the requirments of everybody powering up at the same time. Most venues are only setup to accommidate the room lighting and in a best case scenario a large PA system. Figure maybe a maximum of 3 30amp circuits which can supply 3450 watts at 115 volts. Now if you figure (very optimistically) that everybody brings a computer that draws 300w and a 17" CRT monitor that draws 75w then add your networking equipment at 200w and your file server at another 300w. your 3 30amp circuits can support a maximum of 7 systems with a comfortable overhead to prevent accidental breaker trippage. I only bring this up because a friend of mine organizes very large (200+ user) lan parties in europe and has had to have the local utility company come and wire auxillary power hookups, which in turn requires additional fire prevention measures. Which in the end drives the total cost of the event up quite considerably. YMMV & many of my numbers are just estimates, but better to plan in advance and have it go off properly than to get to zero hour and pop all the breakers or start a fire in the electrical closet.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
I went to one that was sponsored by Bawls and Nvidia. It might be worth it to see what they'd give you. I think we got 2 free Bawls, and Nvidia gave their top card away as the prize.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
While something a simple as "power" won't make your LAN party, it can certainly break it.
To keep people happy and playing *different* organised games (not just CS), fire up liab (LAN in a Box) with a few ladders already set up. People can keep the ladders rolling on with minimal input from the people running the LAN. It's much easier than running elimination comps. I also find with elimination comps, most teams drop out after the first round and the LAN dies. With a ladder, those interested just keep on playing.
Having your networking planned out well is key. Get someone who really knows what they're doing with your switches - not someone who just thinks they know. I've seen LAN's that were pretty f'dup because people have switches daisy-chained all over, and the collision lights blink like crazy. Get your network set up correctly and use good equipment, especially for the backbone. Cisco, or Bay Networks work well. As others have mentioned, cheap switches will blow chunks and / or start dropping ports when their MAC tables get overrun.
Secondly, make sure you have adequate power. Our golden rule has always been 8 PC's per 10 amp circut. That may be a bit conservative, but it works well and we have had very few problems that way. Most venues (hotel convention rooms and such) don't have enough power for 120 PC's. Be sure to check - and get someone at the venue who KNOWS what they're talking about, not the sales guy, because he'll tell you what you want to hear.
I've been on staff for a LAN group for 3 years doing LAN's for up to 100 people... and I can tell you if you don't have those two basics covered, nothing else matters.
Our current facility for the last year has been a local Community College campus that just built a new tech campus. Everything is wired with jacks in the floor, and nice Cisco switching equipment. If you can find someplace like that, consider yourselves lucky. Otherwise, good luck kludging your infrastructure together at a hotel.
Some other advice - get all of the various game patches and map packs up on a local file server, and try to get your gamers to use those. Otherwise your outbound internet connection (if you're lucky enough to have one) will get hammered when 120 people go grab the 80mb Desert Combat patch from an internet site.
Also, assemble a good staff that will work together well! Nothing sucks more than having a staff that's fighting at a LAN.
If I were you, I'd hold a couple of smaller LAN's and get your logistics worked out before trying to host a 120 seat LAN right off the bat. Get your staff and some friends together, hold a 25 or 30 seat LAN, doink around with the network, get your game servers running well, and figure out what you're doing before you make a fool of yourselves in front of a big crowd.
Chances are, there's already a LAN group in your area - have you really looked around for one? Consider working together with them. Or at least go to some of their events and get some pointers from people that know what they're doing. Or go laugh at their mistakes.
For that one guy who shows up in a stained pink bathrobe, just doesn't wash, and then sits upwind of you. Spray him down. Febreze has a cleaner, less would-be-sexy smell than that aerosol deodorant stuff, and works better on fabric (bathrobe, anyone?). Not to mention you can dual-weild and call yourself 'Nerdbane the Dissolver.'
Lot and lots of crystal. And a few extra pipes.
an UPS running. This things blow any fuses. :)
I run a 50 man lan, and let me tell you gamers can be a bitch.
First know your community, and beware of its attitude. If you live in CS land where your not cool if you don't know what an AWP is, expect some really mean gamers. I have had people who literly have threatned me because I did not run the lan the way they wanted it.
Second, splurge on the networking equipment. It will save you headaches. For the last lan we borrowed 3 cisco 2900 switches, my dear god the difference. Its like night and day with those things.
Third, security. Know everyone, if you dont know them, have a person go get to know them. You need someone devoed to checking people in and finding out about people.
Fourth, Protect the admin tabe with your life. I know from my lans the admin table is the messiest, and has the most hardware lieing about, waiting to be taken. Make an off limits rule and enfore it.
Finally, don't expect to play a single pc game the entire night. You might, if you have them rigged up, get to play a console game simply because you can jump off those in a matter of seconds, but someone always has an issue, and it does not stop
What does one cow say to the other? Moo.
After hearing that term I may never want to game again...
A solution to the problem with music today
I'm curently planning the second annual Nerdfest in central Washington. The first Nerdfest lasted three days and was awesome, but here are the snags we ran into:
1. We were seriously short on chairs, and had to do some calling around to get seating for evryone. This year I've asked that people make sure that evryone brings a chair and maybe perhaps an extra one just in case someone else forgets.
2. We had 20 people attend which was awesome, but we could have had more. If you make a rough guess at how many people can attend, you may find you could have invited more, or even worse invited too many people and had power problems. Calculate how many people you can fit into your space, and map out which outlets go to which breaker. Then calculate how many computers (don't forget to factor in that CRTs are power hungry too) you can support on each breaker. This year we will be having 32 nerds.
3. Coordinate evrything with forums and a mailing list. Last year we just sent out a big "hey we are having this lan party" email and evryone made reply after reply to evryone in the email including those that had told us they couldn't come and we used work email addresses. It was a mess. This year it's much more simple, if you are invited you get one email with all the details, you get subscribed to the moderated mailing list, and you are advised to use the forums to chit chat with evryone about the event.
4. Encourage everyone to stay the entire weekend. If you have 32 guests but only 16 are there it's only as cool as a 16 person lan party. If evryone can stay the whole weekend it's more like a 32 person lan party.
5. Figure out the air conditioning situation. computers make a crapload of heat and that heat rises. Nerdfest takes place in a two story house and last year it was like a freezer downstairs and an oven upstairs. This year we are going to seal off the vents downstairs so the cool air can travel down.
Other things to consider:
1. We chose to break up the lan party a bit by also having events like paintball and cliff jumping. If somone has access to a projector you can watch movies on a large wall or something. Just find a couple things to break things up a bit.
2. Put someone in charge of making a run to the store to buy food for the entire weekend. When everyone arrives have them pay thier share of the food bill. We fed evryone the entire weekend on $7 a person. We were lucky to have somone that worked at a fish hatchery. All of the salmon and rainbow trout we ate was free. Leave beverages and munchies to the guests.
3. Make a list of everything that people need to bring, it's amazing how many things people forget to bring to a lan party. Have extra stuff just in case.
4. Vote ahead of time on the games you are going to play. This way you can get make sure the servers, maps, and patches are in order. You don't need to stick to the games you voted on, but if you experience some problems you at least know that the games you picked ahead of time will be solid.
That's all, Good luck with the marathon, it's great fun.
One of the major problems I've seen at big LANs (especially where not everybody knows everybody else) is theft. When you're running around trying to fix all the network gremlins that pop up it's fairly easy to nick something from under the admins nose. I've been to big LANs where at the end of it a $10,000 Cisco router went missing. Also warn your patrons about theft and to watch their belongings.
Network Gaming Marathon (LAN Party, except for an entire weekend)
You mean normal LAN parties aren't supposed to take an entire weekend?
read... it...
i used to be an editor on that page...
1 monitor per computer unless they are both LCD. Ask people to set the hard drive power management settings to 30 minutes. Their pr0n drive doesn't need to be spinning all weekend. Systems that will be unused for more than an hour should be turned off. Less power used means a cooler room. Cooler room means less stanky gamers.
Don't include food in the weekend price. Don't cook anything more than microwave popcorn. The health department is not someone you want to meet.
Arrange for food onsite from a restaurant and charge enough to turn a decent profit. Fill a new garbage can with ice (freeze large blocks to save cash) and dump in a few cases of popular soft drinks. Charge 50 cents each. Arrange a discount with various restaurants for ordering mass quantities of only 1 or 2 different items. Order from someone new for each meal. i.e. Arby's regular roast beef or beef & cheddar for lunch. Then pizza for dinner (cheeze or sausage). Wendy's jr cheezeburger deluxes or double cheezeburger for lunch the next day. Sub sandwich place for dinner. Talk to the store manager and get at least 20% off. Be flexible in the delivery time. Order a little less than you expect to sell and charge enough to make about 30-40%. Most people will still be happy that they are not having to leave or pay for delivery. All will be happy to avoid paying hotel-food prices. Scout out local fast food joints for the 20% of people who would rather get their own meal.
A friend of mine runs gaming tournaments of 150-500 people. He alternates between Arby's sandwiches for $2.50 each, and Sbarro. Sbarro brings two guys with about 20 cheeze, pepperoni or sausage pizzas and 20 salads. Cheeze is $1.50/slice or meat for $2/slice. $16 for a sausage pizza is a damn fine profit. He takes a 20% cut of the Sbarro sales.
In my experience two things are absolutly necessary. The first is a lot of power. A 100 computers are using up more power then any domestic power network can handle. Unless you are in a place with some kind of special powersuply (if they don't know, they don't have it) you will need a generator. Even when you have a hughe power surpluss, do not allow anyone to use other electrical machines. People will dragg in freezers, beamers and amplifiers that will take down your powergrid.
The second important thing is good switches. You will have to make sure that leechers will not disturb gamers. Another benefit of good switches is that you can use them to block DHCP. There will always somebody who brought his own DHCP server. Figuring out who it is can be hell.
I've never worked on a LAN party, but I've worked on a lot of corporate gigs in hotels and function centres that need POWER.
1200+ Amps anyone?
99% of these places have 3 phase feeds into their auditoriums, from which you should be able to draw anything from 100 amps up.
Talk to AV hire companies in your area, most of them will have loads of equipment to distribute said power around the venue and feed it to people in single phase form.
And most importantly make sure you have someone on hand all the time who knows what they are doing with serious amounts of power, get a qualified electrician if you can. I'm not kidding...
You might want to ask these guys if you have any questions: http://www.occ.be
;-)
It's going to be their 13th lanparty this july (for 800 people), so they know what they talk about
Bernard
Give http://www.onepc.net/index.php?view=docs&doc_id=75 . a try.
Sick of people knocking on Gentoo's greatness in completely unrelated
I experienced that you need two things, to make a very good lan party: a strict organisation and good personell. Define departments (Servers, Games, Contests, Helpdesk, ...), chose at least 3 supervisors for each department (make them work in shifts), assign a sane number of workers to each department, set up a headquarter, make them report there... (read information flow/management).
Think of the event with you as the company and the gamers as your customers. It is not really neccesairy for smaller parties, but you can gain very valuable experiences from it, not only for other lan parties but for your life.
Hints:(esp. in the UK, may be applicable to others, YMMV)
Health & Safety & Duty of Care.
Once you start charging for entry you are in a whole differnt world of liability. For example, are you insured should someone sue for non provision of something or other?
Maintaining order- Don't think you can just haul someone out for being a twat- Security need to be identifiable: Numbers on shirts, people! Preferably they should not play at all so that they can't be accused of bias. In an ideal world, they should come from a reputable company.
Fire!
Is your venue appropriate? If you have a 1000 capacity venue, that's more likely than not to be it's standing capacity. Seated is more likely to be 400. Fire lanes- make sure there are passages at least 2m wide in the layout and they are clearly marked and kept clear!
On a related note- Power. RCD's are absolutely essential. Don't rely on the house sparky, get someone in you trust.
(plug- Fantastic Illuminations for all your temporary power needs!)
First Aid
Overkill? possibly not. Last thing you need is some kid's heart to fail, or someone to have taken something less than appropriate and then you're fucked and standing on a manslaughter charge. In the UK, I'd suggest volunteers from Red Cross or St John's ambulance.
Alcohol
Planning on selling it? You so need to get a license! Which brings us neatly onto...(UK Specific)
Public Entertainment Licenses
If you have to ask what this is then you need to speak to your local authority. At least two months in advance.
This is a 2 minute brainstorming session and I haven't even got started. The factors involved can be immense, so don't be afraid to talk to people like the HSE.
Or even drop me a line if you're in the UK and you need some guidance!
I am guessing that Macintosh computers may be allowed to play at this marathon. If so, you may have some problems with patches and compliance between all the computers. For instance, I had a LAN party with Macs and PCs playing RTCW we had to make sure everyone was on a specific version, but it wasnt the latest version as that version was not available for the Macs yet. So watch out for this.
I would make sure that the bathroom can also handle the load of highly cafinated lan goers. One lan I attended the toilet overflowed and the bathroom happened to be right above the room where everyone was gaming, so needless to say, alot of equipment got wet from whatever came out of the toilet and threw the floor.
I've been in the organization of the Remedy for a few years now and we have gotten really good at these types of events, if I may say so myself.
:)
/CKret
The Remedy is a 2-part LAN-party. The first part is directed to the Scene and the second part is directed to Gamers. Scenezone starts on Thursday 26 of June and ends on Sunday 29 of June. Gamezone starts on Thursday 3 of July and ends on Sunday 6 of July.
Since these two events differ in requirements the organization also differs. But not much.
On Scenezone we have organized it so that we have a Maincrew, a Netcrew, an Electricscrew, a Salescrew and something you could call a Workercrew.
The Maincrew is composed of the main organizers of the event. This is a rather small section composed of 4 members. The Netcrew ofcourse controls and maintains the network. There are approx. 6 members of which one is the section coordinator. In the Electriccrew we have about 4 members including a section coordinator. The Electricscrews job is ofcourse to make sure there is no power outage and if there is to quickly fix it. The Salescrew has about 5 members and a coordinator. Their assignment is to make sure the kiosk is manned and to simply sell stuff. The Workingcrew is composed of members not assigned to other crews. This is the largest crew and varies from 20 to 40 members. This crew has the assignment to set up tables and chairs, build the stage, build the network, build the powergrid, put up the spotlights, speakers, the viewscreen, set up the kiosk and just about everything else that has to do with setup. Their responsibilities are also to take everything down at the end of the event.
In addition to these crews there is a crew-coordinator that handles all the communication between the crews.
On Gamezone we have also have a Gamecrew composed of 2 coordinators and and about 5 other members. Their task is to coordinate the competitions in various games and to maintain the gameservers.
This sound like a rigid organization but in reality it is a rather loose fit. Most of us know eachother very good but every year there are some new faces and they are as welcome as any other member.
Our goal is not to profit from this event (as it is with many other parties) but to have fun and make it possible for computer enthusiasts to meet old and new friends.
This years event is our 9th Remedy. We have tried a couple of smaller events (in addition to the main event) but their success was not as good. Since there are quite many LAN-parties here in Sweden people seem to limit their visits to a few every year.
The key to an event like this is planning and organization. We have, through the years, expanded from a small party to a rather large one but will no longer grow in size. We feel that about 1200 is a comfortable size and we are reluctant to move from our current location, which we must if we are to expand. Planning is not something one can do in a week. It takes months to plan a larger party. In fact we start to plan for next years party as soon as this years is over. We look through this years event and see what we could make better and what must be changed. There are always new ideas and improvements. Some for the better and some for the worse. The key is to sift through everything and identify what can be accomplished. If one never has organized a party or even attended one then a good idea is to start small.
If you wish to have more information or an exchange of ideas you can find me at ckret(at)home(dot)se.
The URL for remedy is http://www.remedy.se
I hope to see some of the readers there.
Good luck with your event!
They're great for that LAN party mood - and the one we use has tons of power. I run Sinusoidal Intellectualism in Portland, Maine. It's at a very old industrial complex from the early 1900s.
Make sure you have them sign a disclosure before they attend/participate that they will not hold you liable for any theft, damage, or their personal enjoyment of the event! Additionally, have them sign that they will not conduct any illigal (and if you wish morally objectable, offensive, etc.) activities at the event and that they alone are responsible for their actions - CYA. Don't explicitly disallow mp3/divx sharing - they'll obviously want to. Just let them know that it's "not allowed" and that any breach in contract "may" result in expulsion from the event.
:P Have information about games, a database of real names/nicks, a listing of available nearby restraunts w/ phone numbers, etc.
Additionally, this gives you legal room to kick them out after an hour, with no refund, for ripping someone's kidneys out through their ass.
Provide them with paper documentation telling them -exactly- what they will get for the entrance fee: free soda (if you offer that), a seat, a 2'x2.5' square of table space, 1 power jack, 1 ethernet jack, limitted HTTP, AIM, etc. access, a plush toy Gazoo, and entrance in the LAN competitions.
Also make sure that they are fully aware that a working computer is their responsibility and their's alone. You can provide cables, services, etc. (charge for official tech support?), but ultimately, they are simply paying for a seat to sit in, a jack to plug into, and somewhere to put their computer.
Limit the size of the monitor allowed. You don't want some jackass bringing a 100lb monitor (21"+) and taking up all the table real estate, and you don't want some fool thinking it'd be cool to have his own LCD projector.
Have a list of the 'official' games that will be played, as well as when the official play time will be for those specific games. Only schedule 'official' games for the first day or so, and then decide from there on an hour-to-hour basis (if you see it as prudent) using a web forum or such. People are free to do whatever they want, of course, but best to provide for those that do.
If you don't have an official hardware server available to host these games, then I suggest you talk to people upon registration to find out if they'd be interested in hosting games (provided they have the hardware). Give them a discount for agreeing to host the "official" BF1942 server, etc. - and make sure it advertises as the official server.
If you're going to provide outside-world internet access, throttle it down to nothing (unless they're paying for a big pipe too). Allow only the most basic things through: http, AIM, non-DCC IRC, etc. If they want to swap files, let them do it locally. Pretty much any file they could want would likely be on a lan with 120 people (with reason), and if not, they should get it at home.
You will want to have at least one 'server' on the network that is your's. It should provide DHCP, DNS, IRC, and HTTP services. Possibly have a second/backup one running another OS, depending on how many people you have and how much you trust them, as well as your relative administration ability.
Set up a web server! Put every piece of information they could possibly need on the web server, including everything that was in your initial handout. If they question something, point them to the page and tell them to RTFM.
Possibly provide a landline for people to call from, but restrict the line to local calls only. Set it in a public area and restrict calls to 5 minutes.
Financial issues will all depend on whether your goal is to host a LAN party, or whether it's to make money by hosting a lan party. If its the latter, stop right now and give up. If you had to 'ask slashdot', you have nowhere near the mettle to undertake it. Keep in mind that this =is= a business endeavor, whether that is your intent or not. A lot of the same things need to be done if you want to protect your own interests - especially in the lawsuit-crazy American culture. There is a reasonable degree of risk involved: it isn't a
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Publish a list of software versions before (!!) the show, so people can prepare their boxxen with the right stuff.
Stick to TCP/IP and maybe even assigned IPs. Everybody should be able to set up their own box with that. WIth static IPs on the entry-tickets you'll also always know who's who on the LAN.
Put the patches on an extra LAN-Info Server, with all the rules of the party and a billboard and a sceduler for tournatments and stuff.
Don't (!!) have an internet connection that is available for everyone, only one for the admins and emergencys.
Prohibit Filesharing! I mean it.
Use Linux or BSD for the Gameservers if not for all servers.
You might want to restrict to certain games, or support more seldom played games by doing tournaments or organizing specials.
Tribes 2 is a top-line Multiplayer that isn't recognized enough for instance.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Parent funded Dweeb1: Mighty Admin Sir, may I have my near godly gaming rig hooked up now please
Digruntled low wage NetAdmin: No you get me a YooHoo first then we'll "talk"
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
Food: "Ha ha I am so l33t that I don't need f00d but jolt and chips and reeces peanut butter cups and... [thud]." There will be some people, who for a multitude of reasons, are not socially experienced enough to realize that you can't sustain long off of just Jolt Cola and nacho chips. This causes headaches, moodiness, poor game play, and in some extreme cases, serious health issues. Combined with lack of sleep, you might actually have someone just pass out, get sick, or in a majority of the cases, be a total asshat because their body is starving for nutrients. Plus, and I can't stress this enough, ENCOURAGE THEM TO DRINK WATER! Caffeine is an okay stimulant, but it's also a diuretic (makes you pee a lot, which gets back to what others suggested about adequate bathrooms). Diuretics dehydrate you. So do salty foods. And especially alcohol. Dehydration is not fun. Not fun at all. It will make you crabby, moody, and eventually pass out so you'll have to go to the hospital.
Sleep: "Ha ha, sl33p is for lusorz, you STUPID FSCK AND GET THESE SPIDERS OFF OF ME MY STEPMOTHER NEVER TOLD ME SHE CARED ABOUT ME!!!!" Lack of sleep can really affect moodiness. Combine it with improper food and social awkwardness, and you have the recipe for an outburst or angry behavior between people. I have seen fights start between good friends just because they haven't slept in a while. Or in many cases, people do fall asleep, while playing, right in the chair. That's right, they are taking up valuable space or at least an IP you could use elsewhere. I have been to many LAN events where there was some guy, snoozing where he sat, with a trickle of drool soaking a spot into his retro Transformers/Atari shirt.
First Aid: "Hi... I forgot my insulin, and I am not feeling so... [thud]." Have a plan of action in case someone gets cut deeply by a wire cutter, or beat up badly in a parking lot fight, or passes out because they didn't take their prescribed meds. Oh-ho, add drugs to the mix? I can just image taking someone down off of acid playing Doom 3, whenever that comes out. I heard a story about one kid who was passing out Ex at some anime gaming gathering in Baltimore, and telling everyone it was a "stimulant." Ex does NOT make you a better DDR player, trust me.
Most of this stuff probably won't happen, but keep an idea in the back of your head of some emergency plan. Personally? I'd have a few hours each day to clear out the room, and have those posted like "room closed at 6am and 3pm for one hour." That way, you can vacuum, straighten up, clear out drunks and sleepers, reconfigure things, redo the network (if needed), assess damage, and so on. It also gives people time to stretch their legs, go eat real food, see sunlight, etc...
__________________________________________________ ___________
www.punkwalrus.com - We is no longer ordinary.
I'm not sure what to say here. I could say "get a life", or "bet you're kinda pale", or "you should leave the house; there's a whole world out there for you". But who knows, you may be stricken with some sort of disease that doesn't allow you to leave the house: you might be allergic to sunlight, with the slightest exposure to natural light being fatal; you might require a constant i.v. drip of medication, which means you can't leave your desk; you might just have no legs. But really, what it comes down to is this: I admire your single-minded ability to focus on a task; I only wish that you'd use it for something productive. Imagine if someone with your ability to dedicate himself, and obvious vast expanses of free time were to work at somethign like fundraising for charities, or pharmaceutical research, or making meals for the homeless. We could solve urban hunger, or find a cure for cancer. So phyrestang, go out there, and face the sunlight and make the world a better place!
I was expecting a +4 funny, not a +5 insightful with that comment.
Looks like most points about DHCP have been made already by more knowledgeable folks than I.
One thing I don't see mentioned is your love for paper, and/or "handing out CD's". A decent file/web server along with a printer attached, and the same information available on the internet ahead of time would seem to solve this problem with ease. Of course, not being a BOFH myself, (or even a PFY, rather one of those engineer types) I don't know what information to actually make available, just how it can be managed effectively...
RADcon in Pasco, WA, added a LAN party and was moderately pleased with its success.= meetings
http://www.radcon.org/index.php?buttons
THE PRIOMISED LAN in Portland, OR, was last year - no info on it.
When looking for bandwidth, hope you will consider wireless ISPs. I've used them at OryCon
http://www.orycon.org
for several years with no problems. (The convention hotel charges usurious amounts for bandwidth.)
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Solving the power issue is pretty easy. I run a 400-person, 4-day LAN for the Tribes crowd called UVALAN. It's held yearly in Chantilly, Virginia, at the Westfields Marriot. (www.uvalan.com).
A computer with a 400-watt power supply and its monitor (call it another 200 watts) use about 600 watts of power. Electricians will as you what kind of amperage capacity you need. Easy math:
600W X 100 computers = 600,000W
600KW / 115v = 522 amps
So, 522 amps. We host around 400 computers and our LAN has a 2000 amp capacity. As a comparison, most houses use a 100 amp capacity box, and use an average much smaller than that.
We actually had $6K in power work done at the hotel (building boxes, running new mains lines) so the ballroom we use could support that kind of power. But we still have the occasional idiot who thinks it's okay to daisy-chain seven power strips; it's not.
For a network, we have a sponsor who supplies us with a fiber gigbit backbone. We spent a few thousand last year on new switches; we just use cat5 100mb from the switches to the backbone. Each table row has its own branch off the backbone.
Hosting a LAN in a hotel affords you the opportunity to do the LAN in a place which already offers most necessary amenities (food, bathrooms, places to crash, a bar).
Good luck.
I won't rehash the already overstated power and network stuff. But here are some things that should be covered (and usually are not).
1. Have a checklist available on your website listing what the attendee needs to bring. Suggest that they check it when pulling everything together, when putting it in the car, and when they are packing up to leave the LanParty. Include all necessary cables on the list (monitor power, cpu power, ethernet, power strip, et al.) List what they definately CANNOT BRING! (speakers, drugs - unless prescribed and then no sharing, alcohol, small animals or children)
2. Cheap name tags for the attendees and use a rubber stamp with a unique picture/word on it so that it can't be readily duplicated. Keeps out the people who don't pay.
3. Custom t-shirts (cheap?) for your workers. This helps people find those in power and prevents lamers from pretending that they are with the crew.
4. You can provide drinks, but don't supply food. This being your first event of this size, the logistics of food service can be a nightmare - plus the health department just might have a say in this. Instead have a map listing all of the restaurants in the area (yeah, fast food too!). If you want to organize food runs, don't forget to make it worthwile for the runner - mandatory tip of 15-20% on cost of food. Or they can bring their own.
5. Hire someone to keep clean and take care of the bathrooms. Your attendees are going to miss! And I have seen some instances where one individual was so full of it that they actually clogged the toilet! Everyone will be happier in the long run.
6. No guests! If you don't pay and you don't have a machine, you don't get in. PERIOD
7. Have your attendees mark their valuables / systems. Should something *disappear* this will make recovery easier. Have them sign damage / loss waivers (know any lawyers?) provide marking pens (do not use tape). If they won't mark their equipment make sure that they sign SOMETHING releasing you from responsibility in case it disappears.
8. NO SPEAKERS headphones only.
9. If they can bring coolers make sure that the coolers stay ON THE FLOOR!
10. No refrigerators. There will be enough power drain without that too!
11.Tape down your wiring!
12. No Alcohol! If there are minors wandering around, you could wind up responsible. If someone gets sloshed, tries to drive home and dies you could be responsible. Drunks are no fun.
13. Have lots of soda on hand for sale. Make some extra cash. (this one was covered alot but it needs to be said again).
14. Sleeping area.
15. Game consoles. for those who want to try something different.
Don't expect to have much time to play. A crowd this size will keep you and your people going.
Good Luck!!
1. FANS CAUSE IT'S GOING TO BE HOT UP IN THERE 2. DRINKS "beer" IS THE # 1 CHOICE 3. YES OF COUSE EXTRA BATHROOMS 4. YES MAKE SURE NO HACKERS CAN GET IN AND WIN BY CHEATING WITH THOSE AIM BOTS OUCH KNOW WHAT THAT LIKE 5. AIR FRESHER CAUSE YOU KNOW FOR A FACT MOST OF THE GAMING COMMUNITY DOESN'T WASH AT ALL AND YOU WILL NEED REFS AND LOTS OF WOMEN CAUSE I LOVE AN AUDIENCE WHEN IM KICKING TAIL. 6 MOST IMPORTANT USE THE INTERNET AND TV AND RAIDO STATIONS TO TELL US WHERE YOUR AT. 7. LAST BUT NOT LEAST IF YOU BUILD IT WE WILL COME
To all who had witness let me give this upon you in one of my favorite terms "PH34R MY M4D SKILLZ!!!"
Lanparty.com has some very useful information for setting up lanparties and even weekend long events.
Check them out for more info.
I'm not sure how you do this in homes of attendees unless you are unmarried, have very understanding spouses or are actually hosting the LAN party in several adjacent houses... I've been hosting LAN parties for several years and I've never been able to fit more eight people in. Any more than that and you run into room problems with wives/significant others, children and such. Of course, I'm in Texas, where having a LAN party in a garage is simply a stupid idea 95% of the time and basements are extremely rare (they flood). In more moderate environments, I can see a garage or basement making this possible.
Here are my suggestions (and I have been involved a few bigger LAN parties held on a college campus in conjunction with science fiction and gaming conventions):
A. Have a network admin (or a team) that are the only ones who touch the servers. Ideally, the servers should be in an area that is isolated, so that the admin does not have to deal with wanna-be admins pestering him.
B. In adddition to the admin (or team), there should be one or more trouble-shooters. These can be members of the admin team that are not currently minding the servers. Their job is to handle the networking issues on the gamers systems.
C. Some have discussed using DHCP vs. fixed IPs. I would suggest not using DHCP. A fixed IP means you can figure out where the errors are coming into play.
D. I would strongly suggest that when you give out the sheets with the fixed IP info (that was a great idea and would have made the on-campus LAN parties much smoother), you also have some basic network advice (like turning off unprotected file shares).
E. Have CDs with the cab files for all of the many flavors of Windows you will be encountering. You probably don't need the full install CDs (those these are not a bad idea, either), but anyone who has set up a system without the cabs in Win 9x will be wanting them when they start making network changes.
F. In addition, you should hand out burnt CDs with anti-virus software (AVG is free and good) and the update files from the other (commercial) programs. Make sure that every system has running AV software that is up-to-date and has run a complete scan before they are allowed to connect to the network. Nothing like a good epidemic to turn a LAN party into a real bummer...
G. People have already mentioned having the latest patches, maps, mods, etc. for the games being played available on a file server for easy installation. This is good. I would also recommend having a set of install disks for each game (with no CD-keys, serial numbers or anything else that would make them warez-able). These CDs should never leave the sight of the trouble-shooters.
H. A map should be available with local restaurants, hotels, groceries, software stores and hardware stores. Sample menus and phones numbers for food-delivery places are a plus.
I. A small reserve of commonly forgotten parts (network cables, cheap headphones) and easy replacement parts (known good network cards donated by folks that no longer need them (I have about five from various systems that have been upgraded/replaced - I suspect that many people are in the same boat) should be set aside for the trouble-shooters. Anything beyond these basics will require a trip to the hardware store, but a quick fix is good to have available.
J. In that ever-growing CD binder, a set of commonly-used drivers is a good thing, especially for network and video cards.
K. Likewise, a set of basic utilities for emergency work is very useful for the trouble-shooters.
General site ideas:
1) Find out what the alcohol policy is for your site, post it prominently and be prepared to enforce it.
2) Have a ton of big trash cans available and a regular schedule for having them emptied.
3) If the
"Cathy, huh... I'm betting you come directly from a Dilbert cartoon."
Oh wow! Am I really talking to a woman here? Pity I caught you on this particular week of the month.
www.thegstation.com
If you're talking about a real LANfest, not just a kiddie thing, then check out sponsorship. I was involved with an organization that threw a few of these (rented rooms in a hotel, some for gaming, other for warhammer, etc). We were able to get a lot of free software by plugging the big game names and telling them what was going on.
For a little blizzard/EA/etc logo on your the "sponsors" section of your advertisement, you'd be amazed what big game companies are willing to dish out. And the best part was that the games we used for the LAN sessions also became the prizes, as they were given out to winners of the various tournaments.
Of course, this doesn't work on a "BYOS" bring-your-own-software type event... but really these things are a great chance for various companies to advertise their games. Your local comp shop might even chip in for hardware if you find an in.
Even better, let your local geek broker have a kiosk in the corner to sell NIC's/hubs/powerbars/etc to all the poor kiddies that have hardware failures. Nothing makes a good sale location like a huge gathering of geeks