Re: LAN Party Questions
 

wow that is small ours that robotic puts on is set up for 120 people about half of our school. 50 or so people bring there comps. the rest play systems. one recommendation is have a plan dawn out of where computers are going to be and where the cables are going to be. also how to get power to every thing. also make sure there are alot of plugs so you dont over load the circuit. but if you plan it out every thing should go smoothly.

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

another game is ut 2004

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Jane ,
At our school we have a "Game Club" and we hold LAN parties at least once every two months. If you would like more details on how we do it, I can get you information since I'm on Game Club and the Captain on our Robotics Team is the Game Club President as well.

You can just PM me if you'd like.

Oh and our LAN parties usually accommodate around 30-100+ students. So I think we could help a bit with planning

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

I have a dealt with many LAN parties, and from experience I have one little suggestion about the power issue. This would only but helpful if you are planning on a large scale LAN party and would be pointless for small to medium ones. OK... so now the suggestion.

Take a look for any companies that deal with live concert production (aka..Sound system, lighting, video) in your area. Give them a call and tell them what you’re doing, and about your team and what not. (just like a sponsor) These companies have to deal with large values of power, so they have everything necessary do this kind of thing. The main thing you would be looking for is a power distribution; this is what they use for concerts to control their power flow. They genially have their own breaker box built in to the system, but the only problem with them is that to really get some good use from them they need to be hooked up a three-phase circuit (this makes the need for a electrician duty) and most of the time someone form the production company needs to be there to hook them up.

Here is what you might run in to if you get one. LINK

They also might be able to provide you with some heavy duty power extender (I mean heavy duty), these well be nice to handle some nice amounts of power over a far distance.

Let me list out some pros. and cons. about doing this.

Pros.
• Deals with large amounts of power
• Built in circuit
• Makes easy transition from three-phase to standard Edison (if needed)
• May provide with high performance power extenders (big plus)
Cons
• Needs electrician (particularly for three-phase)
• May need tech from production company for hook up

Getting this equipment really depends on the shows they are doing that day. Again I well highly stress not to try this for small (20-30) to medium (40-120), but only for large scale (140+) LAN parties. For this is wasting both your time and the production company’s time and equipment if not really required. I do have an internship at the company that does this in my area so I do have experience with this kind of thing.

I hope this advice is helpful for any one that might need, and sorry for maybe wasting your time if you don’t.

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Thank you for all of your helpful suggestions, everyone.
It is greatly appreciated.

Great responses!

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Get sponsors to supply cool prizes. Contact places like Alienware, nVidia, Intel, ASUS, ect. There is probably also a LAN party company near you - they can hook you up with free stuff. That way people can win cool stuff!

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

I have not read all of the responses as I'm in a bit of a hurry so I will put in the things I make sure of during a LAN as I've run quite a few of them before.

Power: I always check the circuits I will be using estimating each desktop to use between 5 and 10 amps at first boot if using a CRT guess higher and LCD go lower, you can *sometimes* fit more per circuit than that. On a 20 AMP circuit I usually put 3 desktops and 2 laptops after that there are issues on occasion with popping a breaker.(2 desktops with CRT and one with LCD if they have all LCDs you could probably fit another computer on there.)

have lots of heavy duty power cables.

Network: DHCP is nice for the net as you don't have to go to each computer and set it up manually but it can be done on its own. I prefer wired over wireless but its your choice.

FPS and RTS are usually big games for LANs so try to stick with those

for fees usually 5-10 dollars per player with raffles and prizes is usually a good Idea. email me if you want more ideas as I'm late to class.

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

We tried to do a LAN party a few years back - it wasn't successful..
We've been doing Xbox/Game console parties instead. Much easier, if you've got an Xbox, it easily networks to the next Xbox, etc.

We've had 7 or 8 of them at church as an outreach/evangelism event.
We've had 55 kids at the biggest one and from what I understood, the majority were all in the same game of Halo2, just in different campaigns.
At church, the kids bring what ever console they have and we hook them up through a switch/router. It's easy, cheap and the kids do most of the work (setting up/taking down the tables and connectivity).

We are planning another party as a fundraiser for the robot team - it's next Saturday night..we were going to borrow our church for that as well, but we talked to the owner of a local gaming place (pay by the hour) and he is thrilled to sponsor this event for us. We will be charging $10 per player, it runs from 5pm to midnight. Team members will be providing food and we'll have our previous year robots there. We hope to have 50-75 kids next Saturday night.. He has plasma tv's, 20 Xbox 360's to play with..

We are requiring registrations in advance so we know who's our guest and who is a customer for him.

If you want more info, let me know..if you'll be near STL next weekend, come on by!!

DeAnna

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

I actually just got back from a Lan tournament we held in our school's Lab today, and we've done this twice before as well. The last two we had 18, and t his time we had 28. I'm not particularly good at giving detailed instructions but here are some things to think about.

IF you play an easy to play game you can get even non-gamers to come and play. It will seriously make a huge difference. We've been playing Unreal Tournament 2004 for all three and so far we have not gotten a single complaint about the game being too hard. And at each we've had at least 5 people who had never played a computer game before, beyond solitaire.

Also, because we've played Unreal Tournament 2004 we could simply run the game on all of the school's computer because you can practically run the game on a calculator... ok hyperbole but that's all right.

We had 28 kids playing, and each payed 20 dollars, but got 5 dollars off if they invited someone, so I believe the most anyone had off was 10 dollars. We then bought a bunch of two liter bottles of pop(I think easily two dozen two liters.) along with some pizza from Little Caesar's. We then bought some fun little prizes for most kills or loudest player from the dollar store. After all was said and done we were 306$ richer , and we had similar cash draws for previous tournaments.

We probably spent about three days of work ni the Labs making sure they could run the games and figuring out the best way to set up servers and such. So if you figure that it took 5 people 3 days to set it up and you brought in 306 dollars in about 5 hours, that really isn't bad at all.

So since I know that might be hard to read I'll try to summarize in a few points.

• Run a simple game and use school computers to do it to get more people to come.
• Play an easier game, such as UT 2004, to get many non-gamers to play.
• Set it up FIRST style with qualification matches, then team pickings, and then a standard ladder.
• Make sure you have at least one person who knows the insides and outsides of the particular game, and maybe someone who has had experience running a gaming server before.
• Give out prizes to the winners, but also to other people such as the best sniper, the most improved player, or even the worst player. People like being rewarded and are more inclined to return.

I hope that helps.

David Resowski
Team 910

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

We've done a Halo Tournament for the past few years. Our next one is coming up in 6 weeks. It will be our 3rd Tournament and our 4th LAN type party. Our first LAN party was a combination PC and X-Box party with no structure, just come and play and have fun. But there was some issues with kids playing games on school computers so we have now switched to a console only, structured tournament. This has been discussed in an old thread before but to keep it simple here's a run down of what we now do.

1) Charge $20/person entry fee. $10 deduction if they bring their own console with copy of Halo and controllers.
2) Max players is 32, with 8 X-Boxes networked to one router and 4 players per box. Students usually form teams of 4 when they sign up.
3) We give Best Buy gift certificates to the winners. Not a big deal as mostly they sign up to have fun and for bragging rights.
4) Lock-in overnight, 8 pm - 6 am
5) Sell Pizza, Red-Bulls, Monsters
6) We make around $500-$600 profit.
7) We hold it in our school library, using projectors borrowed from classrooms (I'm the tech chair - so I have some influence with this). Here's a pic in CD media
8) Supervision is minimal, half the students pass out at around 4 am.
9) We hold a team tournament using a variety of maps and games. After several qualifying rounds, we do a double elimination type ladder. The winning team usually is determined at after about 3 hours of play (last year at about 1 am)
10) We then do a Free for all individual tournament that takes about 2 hours.

The hardest part is having enough energy in the morning to do a good job cleaning up. This year I think we'll recruit volunteers for just this part - not use the volunteers who stay up all night.
We will also be adding later in the year another tournament - perhaps Madden.

The downside is that Halo is not for young kids, it's a violent game and we only allow high school age students with permission slips from parents making them aware of this. I have mixed feelings regarding this - but I see that they play these games anyways, why not bring them together in safe environment.

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Has anyone ever required any type of liability form be signed in order to participate?

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Nice. Usually I've seen them either for overnight or multiple day parties (e.g. LanWar, All-Nighter/Lock-ins, etc) Unless you plan on keeping minors there overnight, I don't think this application needs it. Don't quote me on that, I could be wrong.

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

It might not be a bad idea as some games can cause epileptic seizures. Also, most popular games for playing on LANs contain some kind of blood and violence; hence, a form of some sort might be good for avoiding an angry parent coming in claiming that you ruined their child's upbringing or some garbage like that. (Not that I have a problem with parents limiting their children's exposure to simulated violence, I just think some are ridiculously uptight--and naive--about it)

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

Team 1511 just recently held a "Gaming Party" as a fundraiser / team social. They also included active games such as DDR which seem to be more social and interactive.

There was a required parental permission slip for the students that wanted to play "Mature" rated games.

I don't have any more specific details because I wasn't involved, maybe one of the 1511 kids will post and fill in some of the gaps!

Re: LAN Party Questions
 

I met with the LAN party lead and a few members of our parents' association tonight to discuss the current upcoming party and future parties based on this one's success. Several references to this thread were made and also to information provided via PMs. This has been a very helpful resource. You guys rock - thank you!