Hints for Planning a Network Gaming Marathon?

Malfaetor asks: "Some friends and I are tentatively planning a public Network Gaming Marathon (LAN Party, except for an entire weekend) later this year, starting on a Friday night and ending the following Sunday afternoon. We've already acquired a file server and game servers, as well as did some testing on bandwidth usage of various games. We've also queried local hotels for available conference rooms, and thought about power consumption requirements, and so forth. I ask this of my fellow Slashdot readers: If you have ever hosted or attended a LAN party before, even if it was not of this scale, would you have any input (or horror stories!) that could help to ensure we have not overlooked anything? Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated!"

"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.".

Comments

Really good idea

[nidarion]

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. =)

Re:Really good idea

[retto]

Have one person assigned to be in charge of the network. Nothing is worse than having three or four people, that _kinda_ know what they are doing, all trying to do things their own way.

Re:Really good idea

[lastfuture]

better have a bunch of powerful hubs/switches, preferrably intelligent ones which can take either cable (patch or crossover) in any port. and have clear rules about the class of network, preferrably class c, and the subnet mask. we eventually ended up running a dhcp server.

furthermore physically and digitally secure all the equipment you provide. there are always some dumbasses trying to sabotage or steal stuff

Re:Really good idea

[shogun]

Only use DHCP for an event thats more than 50 players or so if you have %100 managed switches and can locate rogue DHCP servers in a matter of seconds (trust me, there always are people running internet connection sharing or the like handing out IP's of their own accord). A decent network topology is always a good idea, if you don't know why you shouldn't be daisy chaining switches or hubs you really should find someone who knows some basic networking to give you a hand.

food

[nzpolar]

food....

be sure of licensing...

[Thinkit3]

Better yet, have games that are free (as all information should be). America's army is a good, completely free game.

Re:be sure of licensing...

[feepness]

Better yet, have games that are free (as all information should be). America's army is a good, completely free game.

Umm, it wasn't free. It was paid for with taxes.

weekend lan party?

[JeffSh]

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.

Note

[blitzoid]

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.

Aftermath

[arth1]

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.

Utilities CD

[Morgahastu]

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.

Re:Make sure you have

[Uber Banker]

And a chlorine bath for the feet before the shower. Some may have foot infections.

IANAL blah blah blah...

[Sokie]

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.

nerdsexfests!

[pioneer]

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

Testing...Testing...Testing

[Seranfall]

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.

I know from experience

[Beowulf_Boy]

I used to go to a local Cincinnati Lan party (SOGA), of around 100 people.

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 .iso anyways.

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.

lan parties

[lethalwp]

i've been to some little lan parties, and participated to the organization of some too (only the network part, not financial)

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, ..., maybe it would be a good idea to get punkbuster running, if possible?

or in extreme conditions:
http://fragzone.medialt.ru/files/movi es/cheaterlow .wmv :))

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?)

Re:Cheaters and such

[Anonymous Coward]

- don't let people without PCs in, unless you know them well.

The best way to implement this is to provide ID badges. You can buy the packets/cords/clips in a kit at any office store for around $20 per 100. Then just print something official looking and stick them in each one. Tell people that they need this badge visible at all times to be readmitted. Trust me, all kinds of lowlifes show up when they know that there will be $$thousands of hardware laying around a single chaotic room.

Good idea from a friend

[dohnut]

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.

Re:Here's an idea..

[squarefish]

Get out, live a little

Who says all they do is game?
Afterall they're going to great effort to put on an event they'll like and it's going to take a shitload of work and education to get there.

This is well beyond 'just gaming'

They sound a lot more intelligent then your schoolmates that can't hold a decent job.

Save the Bandwidth!

[manly_15]

Oh, and make sure to devote a couple hours to mp3 swapping.

What he really means is pr0n swapping - after all, mp3's are only a couple MB's each, while a good pr0n movie can easily be between 500 and 1024 MB, which is quite a pain if you have bandwidth caps or worse yet - dialup :-P. What would be really cool would be to set up BitTorrent trackers - each comp can only send out a max of 100 mbps, but imagine the speed of bittorrent on such a network - it would be worth attending just for the pr0n/mp3/divx opportunities!

DHCP and BOFH

[ebyrob]

Can't go wrong with that combination.

Just make sure the BOFH has the nicest kit and plenty of beer.

Re:DHCP and BOFH

[PPGMD]

I recommend using using DHCP, even if you only have 30 computers that need a manual configure that's 90 less idiots that you have to deal with.

To configure people manually save the first 100 ips (let's say you are using 192.168.x.x) save 192.168.2.1-100) for manual configuring. And only print IP cards for these IPs.

Save the 192.168.1.x range for network equipment that a require IPs, and servers.

Power is a big deal most conference rooms don't have enough plus or they are found along the walls.

If you have any tourneys with prizes with them, you should have all the tools to scan for cheats, and someone that knows the game on staff (that is not playing in the tourney itself).

Being able to scan for cheats and prove that the person was cheating or not, can do alot to prevent bad feelings among the teams and ageist the tourney organizer, which is you.

Also liability forms, and one that says that you must allow you computer to be scanned for cheats, can save you save you from some legal heat.

Re:DHCP and BOFH

[orius_khan]

Gee, spaz out much?

I don't know why exactly they don't work, I'm just telling you from our experiences there's always issues with it. Sometimes you have some jackass WinXP Home computer that's trying to act as a "home internet gateway" for all computers on the LAN with a non-existent internet connection. Or you have NT/2000/XP Pro boxes that win elections with your master browser because they're faster than your server, or they are giving out their own set of DHCP addresses to whoever talks to them first. And somehow, even with using DHCP, there will be 2 or more Win95/98/ME boxes that end up with the same IP address. It's probably that DHCP is working right for 1 of them and the other 1 or 2 just happened to have the same address on their home LAN or whatever, but it's not really relevant because all you care about is getting them working ASAP for the next day or two.

Now maybe if we had a couple network admin experts who wanted to work full time on watching the LAN packets and monitoring the MAC addresses of all the DHCP requests and figuring out all the bugs with it, we could get it working like it's supposed to. But there's other shit to do, and we've never held a LAN party for "business", only for fun, and we the admins still want some game time. And the most efficient way to handle it that we've found is to use static and assign each person the address they'll use.

I'm giving you facts from my own real experiences on dealing with this shit, and you're just sitting in the corner holding a flamethrower with your head up your ass. It's apparent from your uninformed flame that you... are a jackass.

Liability Insurance and a Lawyer

[rossz]

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.

Re:C4H5N20 - No need for sponsors

[weatherboy]

Step 5: Get real - hire a booth babe in Xena garb and have her sell the drinks at 300% markup.

fight the power!

[SophtwareSlump]

I've been to a few medium sized (about 50 people) lans in the great state of ohio, and there are ALWAYS power issues. tripping breakers left and right, not enough extension cord / surge protectors.

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:

• Have enough shower towels if you don't explicitly tell people to bring their own. I live by myself so I have about 4 bathroom towels. 12 people fighting over 4 (wet) bathroom towels is a major issue. Keep people clean!
  
• Lay out ground rules right away. Don't decide to charge people or raise the price halfway through the LAN. Or decide to cut deals with friends. It just makes for an ugly scene. For the LANs I host, there's no entrance fee. I usually end up taking about a $50 loss, but everyone has a good time. I buy food to throw in the crockpot and meat to toss on the grill. Everyone is fed cheap. By not charging people you don't have to listen to anyone complain about food choices or lack of food. I understand this isn't feasible for huge LANs.
  
• Have extra patch cable and 10/100 switches. People will bring 6' patch cable and whine. Someone will dig up a 10 base T card and whine when it won't get a DHCP address. These are my friends. I can't imagine what strangers would do.
  
• Have a free game downloaded that's fun to play. The most fun we ever had at a lan was playing the Wake Island demo map for Battlefield 1942. Even though it was a one map demo, we probably played it for 6 hours straight. Check out the new Wolfenstein game people have already brought up.
  
• Post what versions of a game you are playing. Playing Age of Mythologies is okay. But are you playing v1.05? or 1.04? Or 1.00?
  
• Headphones. Headphones. Headphones. Someone will bring a 5.1 dolby speaker setup. Hand him a pair of $.99 CVS headphones.
  
• Take a break after each game / few rounds. The big advantage of a LAN is being with friends / making new friends and socializing. My friends and I are lushes, so we're always getting drinks between rounds and talking trash. :)
  

Hey asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=67150&cid= 6166127

This asshole just copied my earlier post and HE gets modded up?

Prevent CGT

[StArSkY]

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).

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 /. and laughed, but seriously don't let it happen to you (or people under your care at your LAN).

Just incase

[HeX86]

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.

What?

[idontneedanickname]

Shower... at a LAN party? You've got to be kidding me...

Seriously, I doubt anyone will use it.

Bring a copy of nmap...

[gladbach]

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?"

It does take a bit of effort.

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Security above all else!

[Neurotensor]

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.

Console games!

[AlphaHelix]

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.)