Bluepixie
25th January 2007, 17:53
Firstly, I’d like to say thanks to all of you for voicing your concerns on the LAN. It’s very important to the development of the club and it is much appreciated.
Now, seeing as the minutes for the meeting are not up, I guess the structure that we have decided on for this LAN may seem a little strange. I am not going to regurgitate the whole meeting to you as Strings will be doing that imminently. I shall however explain the reasons for setting the LAN structure as it has been displayed.
When I became secretary of the club last year, one of the first things I introduced to the LAN was a timetable. This was mainly due to the fact people wanted a bit more structure to the LAN, which was perfectly reasonable. The LAN’s at the time were completely free form and had little focus. The timetable certainly helped a fair bit with the organisation of the LAN but it created as many problems as it solved. Many people wouldn’t have the games installed/patched and hence much of the allocated time would be spent getting this sorted out. As you all know this caused everything to be vastly off schedule and generally annoying for everyone.
These problems have unfortunately followed us into the new LAN’s as Pause Gaming. Many issues have been tackled during the new committee’s session, including server hardware problems, networking, layout, tournaments, internet, logistics and many more organisational problems that the club was having. Ironically, the main problem that was not addressed was the issue of game time management. The timetable was used again at the last LAN in a slightly looser form, but again faced the same problems. The LFS slot was a shambles due to many people not having the latest version on their machines and subsequently halted all other gaming. Sourceforts was not setup on time and there were communication problems between the organisers and the server admin as well as many other server/timetable related problems. The meeting we had on Monday both identified the problems from the past few LAN’s and created solutions. We have you guys to thank for highlighting the major problems with the feedback threads and we are very grateful for it.
This brings me to the New LAN Structure, which I hope should answer most of your questions regarding the next LAN. The main problem that was identified with the last LAN was the large breaks in between gaming. This was largely down to servers not going up on time and people finishing previous games before the new one started. The only games that really went up in time were the tournaments of BF2, DoW and UT. Most of the smaller games got played in between other games or later at night. We also noticed that most people didn’t really have a clue what was going on when games over ran, or just in general. For this LAN there shall be a projector (kindly lent by Viper) to display server information, game information etc. There should also be a white board to aid tournament setup. I hope that these visual aids will be useful to the group and that they will be more successful than the dreaded PA system.
The LAN shall be run by the committee in the sense that they shall be the timetable. Only the tournaments have been giving set times to make sure everyone is able attend and prepare for them. All other games will be organized on the fly and announced as servers go up etc. This does require much more input from all of the committee and everyone attending the LAN. However, I feel that this shall make the LAN much more enjoyable and relaxed. The doors to the LAN shall be open as of 10:00, with the first games starting at 11:00. Depending on how many people are there, we could even kick the LAN off with a big game of BF2!
Let me now explain how we’ve organized the gaming in respect to this new open structure. The feedback that Fyndir collected from this thread (http://www.pausegaming.com/forum/showthread.php?t=874) was used to create this, and again I thank you all for your responses. We sectioned all the games off into different tiers in relation to the amount of players. The more people wanting to play the game, the more time it gets at the LAN. It was estimated that there is about 20hrs worth of gaming over the event (this does not include gaming between 02:00 to 11:00 on the Sunday or breaks). The projected time next to each tier of games as an estimate of the time each tier shall receive. Games that had over 10 people voting for them were considered Tier 1 games. These are games that generally everyone wants to play/owns and will get almost half of the gaming time over the LAN, which includes the tournaments. Tier 2 are games that had between 9 and 5 people wanting to play them. These are big games that shall get about 2/3 of the remaining organized gaming time, and are likely to get at least one or two large games over the weekend. It’s considered to be pretty important to have these games. Tier 3 is for games that had between 4 to 2 people wanting to play them. These games are not likely to have a large organized game, and are more likely to be organized between small groups during other tier 3 games. This is the most flexible tier as it’s purely down to what individuals what to play. The list in the events thread can be added to, it’s not fixed in stone. We estimated that about 1/3 of the remaining 10hrs will go to these games.
Tier 1 – more than 10 players – about 10hrs
Counter Strike: Source
Battlefield 2
Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
Tier 2 – between 9 to 5 players – about 6hrs
Unreal Tournament: GOTY
Sourceforts
Live for Speed S2
Armed Assault: Demo
The Hidden
Battlefield 2142
Tier 3 – between 4 to 2 players – about 4hrs
Quake 3
F.E.A.R. Combat
Prey
IL-2 Sturmovik
Defcon
Total Annihilation
Dungeon Keeper
Quake 4
(pretty much anything that people want to play)
These are the guidelines that we were going to use for arranging games on the day.
It does mean that possibly not all games will get played from Tier 3 as they have less time allotted. However, seeing as most of these games only got a couple of votes, people that want to play them should get the chance.
Admittedly this new structure is a risk, but we are never going to improve the LAN unless we try something different. I hope that this explains what shall be happening at the next LAN in terms of organization. If you have any comments or questions in regard to this we are more than happy to listen. You guys make the LAN great, and with a bit more effort we can make the LAN even better.
Cheers
:)
edit: I've updated the event thread to reflect what I've spoken about here.
Now, seeing as the minutes for the meeting are not up, I guess the structure that we have decided on for this LAN may seem a little strange. I am not going to regurgitate the whole meeting to you as Strings will be doing that imminently. I shall however explain the reasons for setting the LAN structure as it has been displayed.
When I became secretary of the club last year, one of the first things I introduced to the LAN was a timetable. This was mainly due to the fact people wanted a bit more structure to the LAN, which was perfectly reasonable. The LAN’s at the time were completely free form and had little focus. The timetable certainly helped a fair bit with the organisation of the LAN but it created as many problems as it solved. Many people wouldn’t have the games installed/patched and hence much of the allocated time would be spent getting this sorted out. As you all know this caused everything to be vastly off schedule and generally annoying for everyone.
These problems have unfortunately followed us into the new LAN’s as Pause Gaming. Many issues have been tackled during the new committee’s session, including server hardware problems, networking, layout, tournaments, internet, logistics and many more organisational problems that the club was having. Ironically, the main problem that was not addressed was the issue of game time management. The timetable was used again at the last LAN in a slightly looser form, but again faced the same problems. The LFS slot was a shambles due to many people not having the latest version on their machines and subsequently halted all other gaming. Sourceforts was not setup on time and there were communication problems between the organisers and the server admin as well as many other server/timetable related problems. The meeting we had on Monday both identified the problems from the past few LAN’s and created solutions. We have you guys to thank for highlighting the major problems with the feedback threads and we are very grateful for it.
This brings me to the New LAN Structure, which I hope should answer most of your questions regarding the next LAN. The main problem that was identified with the last LAN was the large breaks in between gaming. This was largely down to servers not going up on time and people finishing previous games before the new one started. The only games that really went up in time were the tournaments of BF2, DoW and UT. Most of the smaller games got played in between other games or later at night. We also noticed that most people didn’t really have a clue what was going on when games over ran, or just in general. For this LAN there shall be a projector (kindly lent by Viper) to display server information, game information etc. There should also be a white board to aid tournament setup. I hope that these visual aids will be useful to the group and that they will be more successful than the dreaded PA system.
The LAN shall be run by the committee in the sense that they shall be the timetable. Only the tournaments have been giving set times to make sure everyone is able attend and prepare for them. All other games will be organized on the fly and announced as servers go up etc. This does require much more input from all of the committee and everyone attending the LAN. However, I feel that this shall make the LAN much more enjoyable and relaxed. The doors to the LAN shall be open as of 10:00, with the first games starting at 11:00. Depending on how many people are there, we could even kick the LAN off with a big game of BF2!
Let me now explain how we’ve organized the gaming in respect to this new open structure. The feedback that Fyndir collected from this thread (http://www.pausegaming.com/forum/showthread.php?t=874) was used to create this, and again I thank you all for your responses. We sectioned all the games off into different tiers in relation to the amount of players. The more people wanting to play the game, the more time it gets at the LAN. It was estimated that there is about 20hrs worth of gaming over the event (this does not include gaming between 02:00 to 11:00 on the Sunday or breaks). The projected time next to each tier of games as an estimate of the time each tier shall receive. Games that had over 10 people voting for them were considered Tier 1 games. These are games that generally everyone wants to play/owns and will get almost half of the gaming time over the LAN, which includes the tournaments. Tier 2 are games that had between 9 and 5 people wanting to play them. These are big games that shall get about 2/3 of the remaining organized gaming time, and are likely to get at least one or two large games over the weekend. It’s considered to be pretty important to have these games. Tier 3 is for games that had between 4 to 2 people wanting to play them. These games are not likely to have a large organized game, and are more likely to be organized between small groups during other tier 3 games. This is the most flexible tier as it’s purely down to what individuals what to play. The list in the events thread can be added to, it’s not fixed in stone. We estimated that about 1/3 of the remaining 10hrs will go to these games.
Tier 1 – more than 10 players – about 10hrs
Counter Strike: Source
Battlefield 2
Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
Tier 2 – between 9 to 5 players – about 6hrs
Unreal Tournament: GOTY
Sourceforts
Live for Speed S2
Armed Assault: Demo
The Hidden
Battlefield 2142
Tier 3 – between 4 to 2 players – about 4hrs
Quake 3
F.E.A.R. Combat
Prey
IL-2 Sturmovik
Defcon
Total Annihilation
Dungeon Keeper
Quake 4
(pretty much anything that people want to play)
These are the guidelines that we were going to use for arranging games on the day.
It does mean that possibly not all games will get played from Tier 3 as they have less time allotted. However, seeing as most of these games only got a couple of votes, people that want to play them should get the chance.
Admittedly this new structure is a risk, but we are never going to improve the LAN unless we try something different. I hope that this explains what shall be happening at the next LAN in terms of organization. If you have any comments or questions in regard to this we are more than happy to listen. You guys make the LAN great, and with a bit more effort we can make the LAN even better.
Cheers
:)
edit: I've updated the event thread to reflect what I've spoken about here.