Basically me and some friends will be having a week possibly more then a week long lan party of doomage so any advice on planning and preparations would be most welcome.
Also could use some help planning the games, I am thinking of making a spreadsheet (because spreadsheets are l337! ) of the schedule so basically any suggestions on good lan party games that have a 60% chance on running on most computers would be welcome and in what sort of order we should do it all.
Mechwarrior Dawn of War Warcraft III FEAR Combat FarCry Neverwinter Nights 2 Diablo II Titan Quest Starcraft Battlefield 2 Any STEAM games if you've got em (Counter-strike, TFC, TFC2, HL: DM, CS: source, etc...) Freelancer Red Alert 2 Supreme Commander Total Annihilation Civilization 4 Halo PC Company of Heroes Unreal Tournament 3 BF2142 BF2
I'm also thinking of war hammer 40k.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
A week-long LAN party? Where?
Posted by IcedFalcon (Member # 11593) on :
How many people at this party? Id not worry about a free play schedule. Have never seen one work well. Dont forget Quake...
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: A week-long LAN party? Where?
Montreal.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: A week-long LAN party? Where?
Montreal.
I think he meant what venue are you booking for a week-long LAN party. A home, a cyber cafe, etc.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
My friends home, his parents are away for a while.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Are they aware that you're doing this? Be sure they know that LAN parties aren't necessarily cheap or clean -- the electricity cost alone can be rather impressive -- and they're liable for any accidents in their home while they're away. You don't want them unpleasantly surprised by what a house looks like after 2000 man-hours of computer gaming.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
It was my friend's idea I'm just helping making things efficient. Hes perfectly aware of all of this.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
In my experience, any play schedule you make will be largely ignored after the first couple of hours.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Dude. In Nomine is just out, and you are planning to play second-rate FPS games? Sheesh. Beat your friends over the head with the EU3 jewel case until they see some sense.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I like EU. But if someone seriously suggested that I play EU at a LAN party, I'd thwap them with something.
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
I played BF2 with some of my friends using teamspeak and that was pretty fun.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
*snacks on some popcorn*
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Interestingly enough, I am going to be in Montreal during your party.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I'd highly recommend one of the Worms games, especially as a break from all the nerve-twitching FPSs.
Oh, and if people aren't too snooty about 2.5D games and you can get machines to run it, the original Blood is a blast in multiplayer, in part because there are no "useless" weapons.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Interestingly enough, I am going to be in Montreal during your party.
You should come Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
Wow. Of the games on that list, there are only three that I've spent more than a few hours playing. There are a couple more that I played once and haven't touched since. Have you played all those games?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I only even own one of them, and it's probably the oldest, or one of the oldest, on the list.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
Every LAN party I've ever been to or hosted (a lot, one or two a week every summer or winter break of my life since midway through high school) has consisted entirely of those three games. They never get old and will easily maintain you through a good 72 hours of straight play. Dota and Starcraft you can play for ever and every game will be different (given an adequately sized LAN).
I guess I must be getting out of touch though, cause I don't even recognize most of the games on that list. Some of them I really can't see working on LAN. For example Civ 4, what are you crazy? A turn based game in a LAN? *thwap* Civ 4 is not designed for LAN.
Also Halo PC, it's a nice thought, but forget it. Halo PC is so badly designed it's not even funny. Which ever machine runs the server will have a zero ping. Everyone else will have pings in the 100s. Even on LANs with fast machines. Whoever runs the server will win. My brother and I are roughly equally skilled in Halo PC. If anything I used to be a bit better than him. But it proved every time that when we went one on one, which ever of us was running the server would win. With out fail. Or at least it used to be that way, maybe they've fixed it in recent patches but I don't recall hearing about any patches so...
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Alcon on a lan I have never had that problem with Halo PC, my ping has only been around 10 on lans if i wasn't the host and only around 40-90 over the internet.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Interestingly enough, I am going to be in Montreal during your party.
You should come
I appreciate the offer, but I'm going to be too busy with other stuff. Ya know: tennis, studying foreign languages, going to non-lan parties, etc.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote:Alcon on a lan I have never had that problem with Halo PC, my ping has only been around 10 on lans if i wasn't the host and only around 40-90 over the internet.
Maybe they fixed it then. This was a while ago, when it first came out.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
I wish my friends played video games. Starcraft definetely, I personally love the risk version 2 map. Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
I've never found Starcraft to be very engaging...
*ducks*
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
quote:Originally posted by Threads: I've never found Starcraft to be very engaging...
*ducks*
Same here. It was pretty nifty back in the day, but I don't get random cravings to play it.
Posted by Mr.Funny (Member # 4467) on :
The games might have a 60% chance of running on the computers, given your estimate, but unless everyone has some pretty beefy computers to bring (and in my LAN experience, this is often not the case), few people will be able to run many of these games without bumping settings down to run a decent frame rate. Supreme Commander, FEAR, UT3, and to a lesser extend NWN2, come to mind.
Plus, for those other 40%, it really sucks to be left out. Unless you have more than 20 people or so, at which point it lets the party fracture into multiple smaller groups.
I'm also going to agree with TomD about the play schedule. It's often very difficult to get people to play the same thing at the same time, let alone get them to agree to a plan in advance and then stick to it.
Also, (and your friend may be taking care of this already) make sure that you have adequate network set up. I've been to some home LANs where there weren't enough physical ports to plug everyone in, which forced us to do some juggling, including running one guy through through another guy's computer (who had multiple network cards) through firewire.
You never did answer Tom's question about parents. If they don't know about this, I can almost guarantee you that they are going to find out, either from stuff left around or from the spike in the electricity bill. For your friend's sake, I'd strongly advise getting permission if he doesn't have it, or abandoning this idea. And if he does get permission, he should charge some sort of cover fee that more than covers the food/caffeinated beverages so he can pay his parents back for the electricity.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
my friend already informed his parents, theyre going to europe.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
This thread kind of makes me want to go to a LAN Party. I'm not sure why.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The use of "informed" instead of "asked" makes me kind of sad.
Posted by T:man (Member # 11614) on :
Starcraft is the ultimate multiplayer game, plus it's only 5 bucks.
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