Thoughts on LAN (04/02/06)

[Bluepixie]

Hi there, thanks to all that came along to the LAN this weekend, I hope you all enjoyed yourselves! This was easily our biggest LAN and saw some excellent games of BF2 and CS Source.

I could give a whole spool of words regarding my thoughts on the LAN but I'm more interested in what you guys thought of it. What was good? What wasn’t? We want to make it fun for everyone!

Your suggestions are critical to making better LAN's! Don't be shy, get stuck in there!

Cheers

[Ru]

My opinion will be biased seeing as my pc steadyily fucked me over in a brutal unrelenting fashion.
Graphics Card Dies
Reinstall Windows - Lose stream login ino
Lose Sound (driver probs)
ahhh!!!
Apart from that, DECENT STUFF! excellant games of BF2, Dawn of War, some good source (shotgun office carnage!) and a shot of Quake 4! noice.
Good hustle guys!

[Fyndir]

I loved it.

I was getting REALLY pissed at how badly I was playing in some of the games though. =P


Next time I'll have to try harder.

[Strings]

Apart from some dedicated server trouble, (and not much considering it was the first time being done pretty much) I had great fun at the LAN.

Games I most enjoyed was when there was a lot of people playing. i.e BF2, CSS, UT, Sourceforts etc

But I take my hat off to Ru. Can't believe he kept such a level head despite all the nonsense with his computer.

[Sid]

Great LAN. Had a fun weekend.

[YegaDoyai]

Totaly sucked guys, I missed out on all but one of the BF2 games and that blows chunks. Mainly cause I was helping Ru but so long as you guys enjoyed it that's ok with me. Server issues should be sorted soon.

Late night CS:S was good fun, as was the DoW, Q4 shows promise.

AVP2 is working now with a ping of < 20 so it was something specific in the LAN setup that made it fail. Will look into that and the poor FTP performance.

An apology to all those expecting a dedicated Source server, it was my fault the server was on a different version to the current Steam version. It was updated in the middle of the week but there is no notification you just have to run the batch file periodicaly and see. Sorry. I have a checklist now. And with the new harddrive in place (was only put in on thu) things should only get better.

Thoughts to improve the next lan:

Get Win2K3 server edition on the server and have ONE machine doing the DHCP and serving (the initial trouble was the two servers didn't want to talk). 2k3 will also give better control over the FTP/mini web site and should be able to monitor the network better to show up any bottlenecks.

Have enough tables for folk! That's right we ran out of space on Sat and had to bring more tables. No problems there but if you can tell us in advance (ie SIGN UP) then we would not have had the problems getting the tables. Though with the setup we have it was no issue integrating extras to the network.

I have received some feedback that indicates that certain folk at the lan did not feel included in the decision making process of what was being played. As far as I was aware when any game was changed we made an annoucement to all. If this was not the case and you also feel that you were not involved in the process then please tell us here so we can improve the way we handle game changes. (And yes, we would have been better off playing the hidden, sorry)

What happened to the starcrafters on Sunday? Fyndir, I know, was looking forward to a game on sunday but they were all gone, likewise quite a few folk from the table behind me left. If you had other commitments then fine, but if you were not enjoying the gaming then PLEASE tell us why.

[Fyndir]

What happened to the starcrafters on Sunday? Fyndir, I know, was looking forward to a game on sunday but they were all gone, likewise quite a few folk from the table behind me left. If you had other commitments then fine, but if you were not enjoying the gaming then PLEASE tell us why.


I was wondering about that, I was sure Ming had told me he'd be back but I could be wrong, ah well, as we've said before:

Next LAN, for sure.

[Phizz]

More AvP2. I know you guys say it's a little old school but where else do you get to be an alien?

My comp. New and improved. Should be sorted. not sure by next LAN we'll see.

More people staying over night. Kudos to Ru, Chris, Sideshow and King. ;-) (anyone else I forgot please berate me)

[Fyndir]

More AvP2. I know you guys say it's a little old school but where else do you get to be an alien?

My comp. New and improved. Should be sorted. not sure by next LAN we'll see.

More people staying over night. Kudos to Ru, Chris, Sideshow and King. ;-) (anyone else I forgot please berate me)


....


How the FUCK did you manage to forget me you little cockshitter? >=(


Love you really honeybunch. ;)

[--Mogwai--]

all i feel needs to be improved next time is... MORE BF2!!!! that game is aaaabsolutely nuts. less karkand, more dragon valley....

besides that , i had an awesome time. all games played were well populated (even live for speed...), late night DoW and every game of BF2 being my highlights. i would have included CS:S, but having played solid BF2 for the last 2 months, i totally n00bed out at CS on every possible oppertunity (apologies, strings. bit of a let down... ill get back upto scratch for the next one hopefully).

having not been to an event in so long, was the turnout good? were more/less people expected?

[gor]

Good LAN. Only minor points to mention:

We didn't start gaming on saturday until 2pm, down to the server being delayed (I think) - perhaps next time the server could be left set up overnight at the "pre-setup" phase on the friday.

I thoroughly enjoyed BF2, UT, and CS, although usually the period between games was rather indecisive (timetable?). I also noticed a few folk at lan only playing one game - starcraft was it? - I'm not sure why these people didn't participate - they missed out!
Perhaps we could have 2 hours at the start of the lan for game installation... pass round the disks, use any iso's multiple times for multiple disks. This would ensure that when the dedicated server goes up for whatever game next on the timetable, everyone can connect from the off.

- source was fun, not quite the perfection of the 1.6 gameplay, but fun all the same. Only been playing it seriously for 2 weeks, so I found our scrims much enjoyable. Need to undo 5 years of 1.6 - flashed when you turn away, and jumping makes a noise! wtf!

[Sideshow]

More people staying over night. Kudos to Ru, Chris, Sideshow and King. ;-) (anyone else I forgot please berate me)

I approve wholeheartedly of getting two shout-outs. I really am that awesome.

[Bluepixie]

Good LAN. Only minor points to mention:

We didn't start gaming on saturday until 2pm, down to the server being delayed (I think) - perhaps next time the server could be left set up overnight at the "pre-setup" phase on the friday.

Aye, the servers were being a right pest to being with. Turned out as Yega said, that Yega's server and the GUNS server (DHCP server) were not talking. Hence, no body was getting an IP. However, this will be remedied next time by letting just one machine do the whole thing. Bit of a mistake there.


I thoroughly enjoyed BF2, UT, and CS, although usually the period between games was rather indecisive (timetable?). I also noticed a few folk at lan only playing one game - starcraft was it? - I'm not sure why these people didn't participate - they missed out!
Perhaps we could have 2 hours at the start of the lan for game installation... pass round the disks, use any iso's multiple times for multiple disks. This would ensure that when the dedicated server goes up for whatever game next on the timetable, everyone can connect from the off.

I agree completely about game changes. It takes too long for people to install new games and get playing, hence creating these weird-drifting periods were nothing really happens. There was a timetable that I had made up, but I didn’t enforce it at the LAN. There are a few reasons for this.
- I didn’t print out copies for people to look at as I was assured that the FTP server was running fine. Once the server got going everybody just jumped into the first game (i.e. 1.6) I don’t know if anybody even looked at the timetable but as you said, we didn’t get playing til about 2:00ish at least, so it was always going to be out of sync.
- Some groups of people prefer just to play among themselves and jump into the bigger games when they feel like it. This is fine, however, it does make it difficult getting everyone to play the same thing. I don’t really like wandering around the room telling people what to play, it’s not very nice. However, proper announcements during game changes would make things clear I reckon.

There are a few things that could be done.
- As you said, allocate an hour or so to get installs done, and make it very clear from the off what the main games on the timetable are. Everyone gets all the games ready, and then we start together. Suggestions to change the timetable would be made at this time too.

- Use a white board to put up the current game and game list for that day. Seems like the easier and more direct option. No faffing about with paper or FTP servers.

What do you guys reckon? Should the timetable be more enforced? Go with the “everyone must install everything� at the beginning of the LAN?

[Sideshow]

What do you guys reckon? Should the timetable be more enforced? Go with the “everyone must install everything� at the beginning of the LAN?

Nonononono. Install at start would turn Saturday into install day. A clear indication of what the next game will be and how long until would be enough - people who needed to install could drop out of the current game with enough time to do so. I don't think we need to enforce a timetable - this lan seemed to go pretty well without one.

[Bluepixie]

Fair point. I don't want to make the thing really restricting. Would be fine to do so for competitive LAN's but not these. What about the white board for announcements then? Think we should go with that?

[Sideshow]

Well, a projector or large display + PC would be better (obviously), but I don't know that we have that equipment or money. Whiteboards are nice and cheap :)

[YegaDoyai]

First I'd like to mention that the first game played was a game of 1.6 and it was up before 1 o'clock. Second the FTP server has issues with the different configurations of machines at the LAN. Certain machines were timing out for no good reason. When tested at home the server was able to copy 30gb+ at 80% bandwidth. When Nialls machine connected it managed only 25% and at the lan I noticed that several machines were getting sub 25% transfer and timing out. This will be resolved if we can get a server edition of windows. At the moment I don't have the tools to analyse the network infrastructure for bottlenecks or server performance issues. In certain games (AVP2) the ping was noticably high, and yet the server was not being taxed (about 10% cpu load, about 25% mem and less than .5% network bandwidth). Likewise the game of Sourceforts had high ping issues. As such, I shall try and get some network tools for the next lan but also put up a 'How to set up your machine for the LAN' post with optimal settings for our network. Try to remember that the server has to share a peak of 10mb/s throughput with all users, so copying from the FTP server was only supposed to reduce traffic to specific machines not speed up the copying process. The only way to ensure that we can transfer files AND play games is to run two networks. The games could run on a slower standard making the components cheaper but even so it would require that people would need two netcards and cables etc.

During the entire LAN there was a website with the timetable and link to the FTP server. Did anyone other than Strings see it?

Finally, I think we should open the option to folk to setup between 9-10pm on friday. Thus stopping any issues of setting up late and providing time to test the network and server. In future, I think at least mine and/or nialls will need to be set up on friday to ensure that we can have someone at the LAN the entire time to help start games and solve problems.

[Fyndir]

Finally, I think we should open the option to folk to setup between 9-10pm on friday. Thus stopping any issues of setting up late and providing time to test the network and server. In future, I think at least mine and/or nialls will need to be set up on friday to ensure that we can have someone at the LAN the entire time to help start games and solve problems.

If you like we could make my Friday visit to you guys a regular LAN thing where I bring the monolith round and we just leave that in there (it's too BIG for anyone to steal. =P) overnight, hell, with any luck I might be driving sometime soon (work seem more inclined to hire me as a proper member of staff rather than a temp if I can drive) so I could borrow my dad's car for the Friday and use it to transport stuff over to the SRC.

Please remember that I'd need time to get my license, so we're talking medium range planning for future LANs, there's always the possibility that my dad would help if we asked nicely of course.

[gor]

What do you guys reckon? Should the timetable be more enforced? Go with the “everyone must install everything� at the beginning of the LAN?

people who needed to install could drop out of the current game with enough time to do so. I don't think we need to enforce a timetable - this lan seemed to go pretty well without one.

The point in the installation hour would be to avoid this exact thing - if we delegate an hour or two to UT in the timetable, its hardly reaching its potenial when most players connect in the last half hour. It's certianly standard procedure at other lans around scotland. Get a communal bunch of disks, pass them around at the beginning, no-one is left out, everyone is happy.

- the timetable issue doesn't need to be a scrict one: get a lax order of games arranged, and someone can call what time the dedicated will be up and so what time gaming can begin. So at least the people that havent been informed of the proceedings (as is sometimes the case sitting at the back) will know what game to start.

[Sideshow]

no, what I suggested was that if someone wants to play UT when it starts next, they drop out of the current game 15 mins early to install it.

[Phizz]

ok, first of all... sorry Fyndir I was gonna mention you as you gave us some hilarity whilst you slept but as you can see I was writing my post v late and was tired after writing in after a 9hr shift the day after the LAN.

Secondly, although I must say on the whole King you are pretty awesome you only have fatigue to thank for the double mention.

Thirdly, this bucket of bolts although it may not be the best for games thanks to the gfx card and aging processor would be fine for server work. Fancy taking it off my hand once I've got the new one Yega?

[DAve]

The point in the installation hour would be to avoid this exact thing - if we delegate an hour or two to UT in the timetable, its hardly reaching its potenial when most players connect in the last half hour. It's certianly standard procedure at other lans around scotland. Get a communal bunch of disks, pass them around at the beginning, no-one is left out, everyone is happy.
Of course, everyone owns legal copies and licences of the games played.

In an ideal world, the point of the first few hours (from about 10-12 on Saturday) is for everyone to get connected to the network, get aquainted with the timetable and install the games they need to before starting.

In practice this almost never happens, when you turn up, you want to start playing. Install happens later.

It's in your best interests to insure you have all the software you need for the lan, and to install this in a timely manner.

=======
Note: when I say "you" - I mean everyone at the lan. I'm not specifically referring to anyone here.

[Sideshow]

Or, you know, everyone could actually install the games they intend to play before they even turn up. Just an idea. It's not like at the last lan we were playing exceptionally esoteric games - games played were (AFAIK) BF2, CS, CS:S, Q3, Q4, UT2K4, DoW, Starcraft, Sourceforts. And shouldn't people still have these installed from previous lans? Do people go home and uninstall games?
Having a setup time at the start just delays the proceedings for everyone. Instead we could start playing immediately, and if some people don't have games installed they can do it then, or play the current game until one they don't enjoy so much is being played.

[Sid]

Having a setup time at the start just delays the proceedings for everyone.

But people could just install from the disks at the start before the network goes live. Realistically, people aren't going to be ready to game before 1pm - be it due to technical problems, latecomers still arriving or not having games installed. The people who turn up at 11pm would actually be able to have all the games installed instead of sitting doing nothing for 2 hours.

its hardly reaching its potenial when most players connect in the last half hour

Agreed.

no, what I suggested was that if someone wants to play UT when it starts next, they drop out of the current game 15 mins early to install it.

Then you've got 5 people who aren't playing the current game and instead are raping the network by all copying over 2GB files accross the network.