LAN Procedure

[Sideshow]

I could have made the title more boring, but I didn't want to.

Just trying to get a feel for how everyone thinks the lan should go. The basic framework goes something like this (all times are changeable. actually, the whole procedure is changeable)

Saturday

10:00am Setup begins. Anyone with a desktop is encouraged to arrive early.

11:00am Setup continues. Laptop users can trickle in now.

11:30am Game nominations. Every person who has turned up at this point gets to pick a game they want to play.

Noon Nominations close. Gaming begins!

The game nominations are fed into a program which shuffles them into a random order. We play each title for 2 hours, or for one complete game, whichever is longest. We have a 5-10min break between each game, and a longer break every second or third game. Everyone goes for food at the same time!

Everyone must play the currently selected title if possible. If their pc can't run it, they can do what they want. If there is a player cap on the selected game and none of the overflow want to play it, they can do what they want. Example: Starcraft has 8 players max. 8 people must play it. If everyone else doesn't want to play, then they can do what they want. If some of them do though, then enough people will have to join in to make it a good game. It's only fair that everyone plays games other people enjoy, since they will be playing the games you enjoy.
However, some games just suck (I'm looking at you TFC) - every player gets one veto - one get-out-of-jail card they can use to not play the current game.
N.B. Picking a game purely to annoy everyone present is possible. Everyone will be obliged to play it. Everyone will also be capable of taking you to the restrooms to help you quench your thirst for toilet water.

We can call a respite to these orderly proceedings around 12/1am. At that point a lot of people will likely depart for sleep, to arrive refershed the next morning. The hardcore who remain can, of course, do what the hell they like.


Sunday

- see Saturday : Noon

[YegaDoyai]

So, my plan goes like this drop off pute, nominate someone to setup and play with it till I return. (phizz?)
Leave my postal vote for Grand Prix Legends (2 two hour practice sessions(best time for qualification), 1 two hour race) Which should force everyone to squander thier veto on this game leaving me to play on my own, while you guys have 6 hours to kill. [could go for Spa 24hr race, take it in shifts etc.] :)
Get shit together, arrive sometime in the afternoon in ernest.

<note: my ACTUALL vote is more than likely going to fall to ghost recon/veitcong as noone would be sufficent challenge to beat in any racing game.>

[DAve]

I like this system, I've been thinking of introducing it for a while now, it sounds like other people have been too (Thanks, sideshow :)

There are usually enough people (20+) to play more than one game at a time, which would work for the one veto we all get.

As with everything, I'm willing to try everything once. Let's do it for the first LAN and see how things go. It may need a little tweaking, but I think the idea is sound.

PS, try to be fluffy in the forums as well as at the LANs: a good camper is a happy camper :P

[YegaDoyai]

i thought there was no camping???

<adds 'fluffy' subroutines>

[DAve]

Have you read Sideshow's take on camping on CS?
http://guns.joanddave.co.uk/forum/cms_view_article.php?aid=4

[Sideshow]

Wow, hey, thanks for the plug DAve. Not that Yega needed it, since he's already commented on said article...

Unrelatedly - did you get email addresses for all the new sign ups? Do they know to come visit here?

[DAve]

Yes, I'm currently typing out all the email addresses for the mailing list. Once that's done I will send out an email advertising the forums, the website and the next few lans.

[Sideshow]

Yosh!

[Strings]

Did you get quite a few E-Mail addresses aye?

[DAve]

64. about 10% will bounce or be completely illegible. I'll scan them and post for amusement :)

"is that baked_squirrel or barry_scimitar @ hotmail.com"

The sort of things you can expect at the freshers fair, even we were high on sugar and had women in corsets passing by at regular intervals. :D.

[Phizz]

I have no probs with setting up but I may have a job by then so I may miss out on the night bit and turn up to be let in approx 11.30 or something.

[Strings]

FPS's are best played when your not sober anyhow.

[Bluepixie]

This is all sounds great! Good work Iain.

*gives Iain an ice-cream*

Are we still going to go for the white board or is gamecall taking care of everything?

[Sideshow]

if you can get a whiteboard, then you should, as they are very handy and we can draw profane things upon it.

Also, you had better actually give me an ice cream next time I see you, or there will be... trouble...

[DAve]

Fair enough. There is one for £20 at officeworld (http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?CatIds=,&webid=1T0024&affixedcode=WW). Does that sounds reaonable?

The alternative is we can [ahem] borrow the one in the williams room. I mean, we will be in there already.

[Bluepixie]

Fair enough. There is one for £20 at officeworld (http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?CatIds=,&webid=1T0024&affixedcode=WW). Does that sounds reaonable?

The alternative is we can [ahem] borrow the one in the williams room. I mean, we will be in there already.

£20 is a bit steap no? Lets just borrow the one in the Williams room. However, what do we do if it already has stuff on it?

Maybe we should just buy one and some pens. Would be v.handy.

[Sideshow]

I think you can probably get it cheaper than £20. If you do, give me a shout - I've been wanting to get one to put up in our hall for a while...

[DAve]

Borrowing the williams room board will do for this month. If it's OK, then buying one will probably happen.

[DAve]

RE: Lan procedure.

If we're going to get 20 people to the LAN, and each has 1 vote for a game and we get 20 different games, how are we going to find the time to play each for 2 hours? (20*2 is bigger than the 24 hours of gameplay we're going to get at the LAN)

We do have the (excellent) gamecall by Sideshow, but I think it needs to be weighted with the most popular games getting the prime slots.

[YegaDoyai]

well considering the votes will be blind, about half the votes will be duplicates so it's not an issue.

[Sideshow]

also, the way GameCall works is via the impartial and fair ajudication of the dice. Everyone puts their game in, everyone has an equal chance of having their game played. If there are still games to be played when we run out of time, well, unfortunate, but that's the luck of the draw.

[Sideshow]

Also, the 20 people / 2 hour per game thing was aimed at a full weekend. I hadn't realised we were only getting one day. I still think 2 hours is the right duration though. We could drop it to 1h30m, if you want.

[Phizz]

*checks code*

Hey! What's this line about CS being picked straight of 3 times?!

lol

[YegaDoyai]

only 3 times? last time I checked all it did was show CS. :)

[Sideshow]

I stand by the fairness of my code:


if random.randint(2) == 2: #50/50 chance
nextGame = randomChoice(allGames)
else:
nextGame = CounterStrike

[YegaDoyai]

allGames = {counterstrike, Starcraft, counterstrike, ghost recon, counterstrike, raven sheild, counterstrike, JK2:Academy, counterstrike, Quake 3, counterstrike, counterstrike, counterstrike,New World Order, counterstrike}

[Sideshow]

well, duh. I won't even have to cheat in the code to make the gamelist look like that.

[YegaDoyai]

sadly that's probably true.

[DAve]

So, the code takes all the votes, and then selects a random game.

If 9 people vote CS and one person votes HL2, does that mean there's a 90% chance of playing CS next, or a 50% chance?

[Sideshow]

In your example; First there's a 50% chance of CS, and then if not CS, there's a 90% chance of CS. So that's a total 95% chance of CS. That would be a sweet LAN.

[DAve]

I tested the game's code with a 90% chance of CS, and there seemed to be CS 90% of the time.

Ronseal Gamecall. It does what is says on the tin.

[Sideshow]

Yeah, I *was* just kidding about the bias toward CS. The actual code (which you can see simply by loadinh GameCall.py in a text editor) that handle's the randomisation looks like this:


def shuffle(l, times):
if not l:
return l
lastitem = len(l)-1
l.append('')
for c in xrange(times):
i = random.randint(1,lastitem)
nl = [l[i]]
for item in l[0:i]:
nl.append(item)
for item in l[i+1:]:
nl.append(item)
l = nl
return l[:-1]


You feed it in a list of object 'l' (in this case, the list of games), and the number of times you want to shuffle. It selects a game at random from somewhere in the list, and then moves that game to the front of the list. Repeat for 'times' iterations.
When this is called in GameCall, it's called with 'times' equal to double the number of games, so it should randomisse the list fairly thoroughly.

[Phizz]

That's a damn good job you've done Sideshow. You should be proud of your baby. :-D

[Sideshow]

It *is* the cutest little thing, isn't it?! :)

[YegaDoyai]

Sorry sideshow, no praise until it's recursive.

[Sideshow]

just for Yega:

def shuffle(l, times):
if not l or times <= 0:
return l
lastitem = len(l)-1
l.append('')
i = random.randint(1,lastitem)
nl = [l[i]]
for item in l[0:i]:
nl.append(item)
for item in l[i+1:]:
nl.append(item)
l = nl
return shuffle(l[:-1], times-1)

[YegaDoyai]

'spect

[Anonymous]

Not sure about this everyone has to play the same game at set times policy. And what's this about everyone must go for food at the same time? lol?

*shrug*

[Sideshow]

You did not witness the shambles that was the last lan. We got all 10 or so people playing the same game for maybe an hour total. At one point it looked like everyone was going to play CS, then after ten minutes of play half the players left for food. So yeah, there will be scheduled breaks for food.

[Anonymous]

If there's going to be 30 people there, though...

5-10 people could easily be away for food at one time and at the very minimum, even with people playing different games, you could have 5 people playing a particular game.

[DAve]

If there's 30 people there, I will be amazed. I think the williams room could hold that, but it will be a squeeze.

Power will become short with that number, but the games would be fantastic. 15v15 CS could be mind-blowing.

Yeah, I get your point though, there is usually a max of 80% of the people in the main game at any one time. That's just LAN gaming, not everyone will like every game / own it / have it working on the day.