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LAN Party at a High School?
Coolnat2004 asks: "I'm a high school student and a member of our technology group. Our school needs extra money for our technology, and I thought that a LAN party would be an effective, and exciting, solution. How can we make a great LAN party with the supplies at hand and make a profit while doing it? We have a network, but not a large enough room with enough ports. We're most likely going to create a detached network for the party, but don't know how to set it up because we have limited supplies. I guess we could seek a sponsorship from a local company, but that is unlikely to happen. Any suggestions on network layout, power layout, and general party to-do's?"
Go with the detached network. With enough people at a party, someone's going to have fun digitally spelunking. Better it be on machines owned by attendees than on machines owned by the school.
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One caveat, though: I don't know anyone who has profited from a LAN party. Usually, it's considered a stellar success if they break even. However, since yours is for an educational institution, you might be able to work the sponsorship angle extra hard and make a few bucks.
Another one bites the dust
If you do it w/ a friend, make sure you outline who does what, and who gets what. Make sure it is signed, and you have a witness.
I made this mistake hosting a lan w/ a friend. Bascally, he decided to keep the cash, I had nothing saying otherwise. The only payment I received was 8 copies of call of duty I could not sell(that came after the lan), and 2 eight port switches.
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the comp sci department thows one 3 or 4 times a semester at the college i go to. it is not that hard to do.
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i would sugest that you tell every one to bring there own computer. we geranly swipe a few from the school too in case someone has an old one or cant lugg it down to where the partys at.
you need to get a switch form somewhere if the you might even be able to bribe the netadmin of the school to let you barrow one (from my own exparnce doubtful but anything possable) or even do it wireless if every has a wireless card. i do like the idea of going to the local computer store (tell'em they can say they help out in the comumty/schools by doing it)
the swtich and cabel are your biggest prblems. we tell everyone to bring there own cat5 cable. if they dont have one, we grab more from the other computers in the computer lab. something you can do just make shure it gets put back! if you ever want to have another one
we use a little home router. so we can be online and all the game trafic stays local. our lan grew slowly witch was a good thing. it was not that hard but we were able to have a few runthews to get all the kinks out. if this is your fist one i would sugest you do the same with some knoagable friends. goold luck and happy fragging
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Some thoughts and suggestions in no particular order...
It sounds like you're a little hazy on some of the technical details. If I were you, I'd check around and find a LAN party in your town and check it out. See how it works. The second thing I'd do is try getting this setup with just your computer club. Try and get some of the kinks worked out BEFORE you charge people for the service you are providing. If you put on a good event people will come back for the next one. If you put on a bad show (can't get the network up, food sucks or is too expensive, etc.) then no one will come to the next one. Make it a good one and you might be able to do this once every couple of months or so.
Door prizes might be fun. Check with some local businesses and see if they'll donate cash or items for door prizes. They don't have to be big or even computer-related. Fun stuff that kids like.
I think the money to be made at a LAN party is in the food. Sure, you can charge everyone who comes $5 to get in the door or whatever, but then have all the eats and drinks you can think of ready to be purchased. Get it from Costco, and have folks lined up to work the food booth (cute chicks would probably work best). Plan a pizza run and charge everyone a fair markup for running for the pizza. See if you can get the pizza for free/cheap.
On the physical setup, you'll need a computer or router to act as the DHCP server. Then just get a mess of switches/hubs and hook all that up. DO NOT worry about cabling from the switches to the player's computers...make the players bring a cable.
Tables and chairs should be no problem at a school. Just make sure you give everyone plenty of space to spread out.
You will also need some extension cords for power. Again, I'd require everyone to bring their own power strip.
In general players should be required to supply: Computer with network card installed, monitor, power cables, power strip, network cable (15-25 feet should be plenty) and the games.
You might also think about setting some minimum requirements. Require Win98/ME/2K/XP, machine speeds, etc. You don't want someone showing up with their parents old Pentium 166 and wondering why they can't play.
Create a game list so people know what to bring and to make sure their systems can handle it. You might also specify patches that should be applied and possibly have a server or some CD's burned with all the relevant patches.
There are a lot of free demos out there for games. I'd make sure at least one of these was on the list. That way, anyone can come and take part even if they don't own any of the games.
Have some folks on-hand to do tech support. They should be familiar with setting up TCP/IP networking on the various Windows systems and configuring the games you will play. Depending on the size of the group, you might also want them well-marked (special hats or shirts).
Security is an issue. I'd make everyone aware that they are responsible for their own data security. If they have their computer open to the world and someone else sniffs into it and copies whatever, then it's the COMPUTER OWNER's fault.
Anti-Virus - REQUIRE everyone to have anti-virus software installed on their computer BEFORE they are allowed to connect to the network. Seems like every time I go to a private LAN party, there is always one idiot who doesn't have it, and of course is INFESTED. If they don't have one of the commercial packages they can get one of the free ones.
Physical security - tell all of your participants to mark their hardware and keep track of it. There are a lot of stories about folks going to some of the big public LAN parties around here where they get up for 5 minutes and come back to find their uber-cool headphones and joystick missing.
Allow a couple of hours for setup. It takes longer than you think.
Plan that you'll have at least one person who will need dedicated help fo
I'm on staff for a local Lan party and have dealt with a lot of the issues. I recommend that you start with power. Having enough electricity is usually more of a problem than the actual floor space. We tested our systems with an Ammeter and found that an 'average' gaming system will pull around 3-4 amps under gaming load. (less when idle). Obviously it depends on the number of components and lcd vs crt monitor, etc. Most buildings will run with 20 amp circuits but you'll have to get a electrical blueprint for the building to know which wall outlets are connected to which circuits. It's important because it really stinks to be in the middle of a tournament and breakers start flipping. That's a start... feel free to drop me a line and I can give you more details about other lan challenges, advertising, tournaments, food, location, and other logistics. [ daph00z@ h s v g l . com ] remove spaces
What my school got away with is setting up a console game tournament. It is MUCH easier than setting up even an 8 player LAN, it's much easier to bring a GameCube and a box of games and controllers than to set up 4 PCs on a LAN. Charge a buck or two for tournament entry, have a couple freebies for the cheapskates, give a cut of the entry fees to the winner of a tournament, and watch the cash flow in. The anime club at my school (2000 students) did this a month ago and got around a hundred bucks, so don't expect to buy a new alienware box, but you could get a huge hub for the lan party you host later on.
Good luck to you, whatever games you manage to sneak into school.
SAILING MISHAP
My first suggestion is to hold your own informal LAN party at home every week for a couple months to get a feel for the logistics. You'll get a feeling for the challenges very very quickly. If you're planning on playing for six hours and you end up spending three on machine setup, network config and game patching, your LAN party idea is doomed. You have to get people set up and ready to play in 15 minutes, so planning is important. You may be able to get five or six people to play regularly, and maybe someone else can get a different group of 5-6 players meeting this way. Share notes on what works and what doesn't, decide on the games you'd like to play and what patch level you want to be at.
You didn't say what your materials are, for one thing, and you didn't say how many people would be interested. These are BIG questions that you need to answer.
It sounds like you might have one network jack in each classroom, at least in a few rooms. Your school's network should already accommodate fast ethernet and should be able to hand out IP addresses via DHCP. Putting one 8-port switch in each room should be sufficient.
Decide what you're going to play! If you have to meet the approval of a teacher or chaperon sponsor, make sure they know what you're going to play. UT2K4 can be a great game for a larger LAN party, because it has a number of different game types. You can rotate from onslaught to CTF to assault, for example. If it's too gory or violent, then you'll have to pick from other options. As with questions others have raised about licensing, each person will have to buy their own copy of the game, unless you can get a game company to donate copies. Remember that everyone will have to have the proper patches applied, and if you plan on using add-on maps/skins, you'll have to make sure that these are also available. Burning five or six setup CDs withe the game patches and add-ons will make setting up each player's environment as easy as possible. Another thing to look at is if you're going to be running servers (such as UT2K4 or Call of Duty or Rise of Nations or whatever), bear in mind that it's often nice to have servers that are set up and named for the skill level of the players that will be playing on them. Having just one UT server with the bots cranked up to godlike abilities is not going to appeal to people that only frag every few months.
If people are going to bring their own machines, decide on what the minimum standards are for the hardware. If you pick a game that requires top-flight hardware, not everyone's parents will be interested in having to pony up 100-500 dollars for the necessary upgrades. You have to pick a game that fits the hardware constraints you have, and pick hardware constraints that will make the game you choose equally playable by everyone. One of the nice things about the XBOX suggestion posted by someone else is that the hardware is pretty standardized and the titles are probably familiar enough to most parents. If you're running servers, make sure they're well-oufitted with RAM and decent processing power to handle the load. A server meltdown can bring the whole show down very quickly.
Power is important. If you're playing with PCs, each person will need a minimum of three power outlets: 1 for monitor 1 for PC and 1 for something else (speakers, mebbe). How many power strips can you get together in one place? Remember that extension cords will become pretty valuable in getting power to each seating area
Decide in advance what people must bring to the event. Is everyone supposed to bring their own power cords/strips/monitor/PC/mouse/keyboard/joystick? One thing to remember is that people will be more likely to abuse hardware they do not own, so if you're using machines from
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