Great lan guys!

[Bluepixie]

I don't know about the rest of you but I had a damn good time. Still feeling tired too.

:)

Will get some of the pics up soon, but not real soon. No Interweb at home currently for Yega and myself. :(

LastChanceHotel? You going to post some of those great pics you took to the the big man? Would be cool!

Hope the rest of you had a goodtime. The next one will be even better! That's a promise.

[Strings]

Still tired after 12 hours of sleep.

Bruises all over my lower back.

Had a class time :)

[Phizz]

Really enjoyed myself too. even if 3Dmarks03 did say I only have a benchmark score of 228. Checked it out on 01 version it's actual more like 4457 3D marks. So unless the marks have devalued that's quite respectable for an untweaked ageing 3yr old rig. :-)

[DAve]

Glad you enjoyed it. I still think there are areas we could improve the whole lan experience. Setup and game timetables could use a large improvement, IMHO.

We've got a major site upgrade in the near future, and this includes a gallery where you can all upload your pictures & screenshots from the lan. More later in the week.

[bluntpencil2001]

The LAN was kick ass indeed. TKing with a flamer in complete panic in AVP2 is always fun....

[DAve]

That was actually a great game, I was in fear the whole way through it, really white knuckle stuff!
I'm sure I must have blown myself up hundreds of times with the rocket launcher, but at ;east I took some fricin' aliens with me. Mostly Phizz, really.

I'm still twitching.

[Phizz]

Well Dave, I aim to scare the crap out of people on AvP2. Just be thankful I hadn't played it in like 6 months or the carnage would have been worse. lol

[Tiberio]

I must agree, the lan was awesome, should have been there for AVP2 though, since i love the aliens, muhahahaha :twisted:
And Battlefield 2 was just perfect!

[Bluepixie]

I must agree, the lan was awesome, should have been there for AVP2 though, since i love the aliens, muhahahaha :twisted:
And Battlefield 2 was just perfect!

Hell yeah! Need more Bf2 action in future, get the CS boys on to something new. :P You did miss out on some mental AVP2 action, Phizz was scaring the heck out everyone. I screamed like a girl, frequently. Playing as a Predator was great! Nothing more satisfying than pinning a marines head to a wall and being rewarded with the shouts and screams from across the room. :twisted:

Heh :D

[Phizz]

You're pathetic cloak doesn't keep you safe from me. You're still a big green splodge to me!

[Bluepixie]

You're pathetic cloak doesn't keep you safe from me. You're still a big green splodge to me!

*Bluepixie slices Phizz in two with the disc, then rips off his head*

:twisted:

*Then just for good measure, owns a marine with a quick speargun round*

[DAve]

/me screams like a girl

[Exuus]

If I could only play as a facehugger instead of a runner you'd all be screwed.

[Sid]

Been at Glasgow Uni for 2 full years and still hadn't got round to going to the lan so that was my first time! I thought it was great! Weekend went pretty well other than the gaming maybe dying down a little on the Sunday.

The main game I played was CS as my current GFX card wasn't up to the newer games. But that should hopefully be fixed come next lan.

Any idea of when the next one will be. Would be good to know in advance so some of us can request time off work etc.

[DAve]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

The LANs are scheduled for the first weekend of the month. So that is the 5th & 6th of November and the 3rd and 4th of December. We scheduled the lans far in advance, because we know it's getting a lot harder to survive at uni without a job, so people really need as much notice as possible.

Se you at the next LAN!

[Sid]

Cheers! Should hopefully be there in November then.

I agree that setup needs to be sorted out a bit. Me and my mate (gee) arrived early on the Saturday morning and had to pretty much work out most of the setup. Things such as the workgroup name and other details were just found out on our own as the day progressed. Perhaps if everyone was issued with a piece of paper with the key bits of information when they entered?

The cable situation was a little messy too, but I'm not sure if that could be helped. In a few cases, a single power socket was feeding about 10 plugs via 3-4 multiblocks all attached in a serial chain. Everyone really needs to bring a 1 -> 4 extension thing (ideally with a long cable) for themselves.

I was plugged into a hub which was going into the switch, purely because my network cable wasn't long enough to reach the switch. At times the network access went down randomly, for reasons that I have yet to fathom.

It might work better if when people turned up they recieved their piece of paper with all the correct settings and told "you've got desk 7, power socket A and network switch 14". This would hopefully sort out the problem of people plugging and unplugging things randomly and things being all over the place.

One last thing that I think could be improved would be the LAN communication ie. Chat program and Voice Comm software. Would be good to be able to communicate with everyone without shouting over to the other side of the room. (I know most games have in-game comms but it would be good to have a permenant place for people to idle in). How about an IRC server running on the server and also a Ventrilo server. Ventrilo was up at the beginning but went down shortly after. The details for these servers could given on the entry sheet of paper, too.

Just some thoughts...

[Sideshow]

The cable situation was a little messy too, but I'm not sure if that could be helped. In a few cases, a single power socket was feeding about 10 plugs via 3-4 multiblocks all attached in a serial chain. Everyone really needs to bring a 1 -> 4 extension thing (ideally with a long cable) for themselves.

Most people do this. However, eveyone using their own 4-bar only works if there is a wall socket each, which of course there is not. No-one want to string 5 4-bars together, so instead we use fewer 8-bars, to share between everyone.

I was plugged into a hub which was going into the switch, purely because my network cable wasn't long enough to reach the switch. At times the network access went down randomly, for reasons that I have yet to fathom.

Network access was going down because the switch and the network server were both plugged into the same power circuit, which kept outting. (mostly cos Strings is a dumb-ass). There was talk of someone (Aaron?) bringing a UPS next time, so that shouldn't happen again.

And really, everyone shold be bringing a network cable for themselves, and it should be long enough to reach - at least 5 meters, preferably ten.

[Strings]

What did I do? :(

[Sideshow]

'Hey, look at this fucking PA! It's fucking awesome! Really loud! So loud no-one will be able to hear their game, never mind anyone else! Hmmmm, but first I haveb to plug it in. Hmmm... no free sockets. Oh well, I'll just unplug this one' OOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo.......m

Shit. I've just realised the Strings != LastChanceHotel. Sorry. My bad.

[Phizz]

You're pathetic cloak doesn't keep you safe from me. You're still a big green splodge to me!

*Bluepixie slices Phizz in two with the disc, then rips off his head*

:twisted:

*Then just for good measure, owns a marine with a quick speargun round*

My flatmate is teaching me to dodge discs. You have been warned.

[Strings]

Im not Lastchancehotel... and I certainly didnt bring a PA system. That god damn loud music was pissing me off aswell.

*sulks*

[Sideshow]

yeah. I know. Sorry.

[DAve]

Hey, be fluffy!

I know the PA annoyed some people (me included) and tripping over the power cables wasn't the best thing that could have happened.

You know what the alternative is:

Getting there early and helping set up so we can be prepared for everyone turning up and loging on.

I really want to get to the stage where people can just turn up and power on, but GUNS needs you. It requires about 3-4 man hours of setting up to get the lan organised. So far it's just been me and Aaron setting up, it would be a lot less painful if there were multiple people helping.

Giving someone a table number and a logon is a great idea. Let's do it next LAN.

Ventrillo and TeamSPeak were up, but I've forgotten how to run them from default in gentoo linux, so they went down when I disconnected the remote session. Oops.

The games situation needs to be sorted out too. I think pre-arranged times for the major games would work well, and sorting out the timetable beforehand is essential.

The LAN was good in October, I want the next one to be great, but I need a little bit of help getting GUNS there.

[Phizz]

Well me, strings and Adrian came pretty early and helped too. lol
Next time give us some orders and I for one will do more stuff to help.

[squalid|chimp]

I wish I'd been around for the AVP2 instead of wussing out and getting some sleep... bah! I'll know better next time.

It was a great LAN, and aside from being unplugged 3 times (!) all went smoothly for me hardware-wise. A long and frustrating part was having to install games to play. e.g. I managed to get BF2 demo running 5 mins before people stopped playing it. :)

So, my suggestion is: everyone that's going gets to put in their game vote in advance so that everyone knows what game(s) they will be expected to play.

Everyone helped out when someone needed either network or games set up, but it took a bit of time and it meant that the helper as well as the helpee missed out on some fragging/chewing/camping time. Pre-organised and at least almost ready to go would be ideal.

[Bluepixie]

I hear you Dave. Unfortunatley, moving Yega into my flat took a little time. However, next lan we'll be there early. Going to start working out some kinda timetable this week also.

[Exuus]

I don't mind turning up early to help set up.

[Sid]

Yeah, same. g0r and myself will (probably) be available to turn up early to help set up.