Hi Logan and you other people,
I'm hosting a LAN for about 30 people and I had a few questions.
1. What will I need networking wise?
2. What snacks do you recommend?
3. Best LAN games?
4. Any other tips for an enjoyable experience
Thank you in advance,
Brian
ps: Logan, if you do not respond to this I will put 7 racoons in your fridge and they will be very hungry.
Thanks for the quick reply, this really helped.
Switches and ethernet for sure. I usually have chips or something that I can put in a backwards hoodie hood for snacks. Coke for a drink. UT(99 or 2k4 not 2k3) and quake for sure. Rise of the triad is good too. Really anything else is dependent on what types of games you like. Borderlands is always fun too
No problem hope everything works out well and you guys have fun.
I would honestly recommend counter strike, because a lot of people have the game and if they don't it is extremely cheep.
Do you still need some insight on this?
ask everyone coming to bring power strips, extension cables, Ethernet cables, and a switch if they have one. It would be really nice to have a 24 or 48 port switch, but if you don't, buy several 8 port switches and hopefully the guests will bring a couple. chain them all together and voila!- you've got a big star network lol
Pizza and Soda. I would find a good deal on soda and buy a ton of mountain dew or cola. Buy a bunch of cheap thin crust pizzas or ask everyone to bring cash so you can order pizza delivery.
Team Fortress 2 is the perfect LAN game. It's free, very customizable, and very fun. I also recommend Battlefield 1942, Halo CE, and Left 4 Dead.
To have an enjoyable experience, try to prepare in advance with cabling. It's a pain when people start coming over and it takes 2 hours to wire everyone up. If you prepare and have cables at the ready there will be limited downtime. Make sure everyone has a place to sit. might have to ask people to bring chairs or tables. have plenty of time to play. try to keep a schedule - It really sucks when people all want to play something different and can never agree.
Be aware of power consumption and the load levels on circuits. Some people might come over with SLI Titans and require their own circuit. It really sucks to trip a breaker in the middle of a game. try to minimize downtime by distributing machines evenly on circuits.
@Logan. Where are you guys located roughly? I heard in the video you want to do a lan.
Garry's Mod..... the greatest LAN game ever... turn your friends against eachother
Chivalry is epicly hilariously awesome for LAN parties.
Quake 3 arena is a staple. Same with UT 2004.
@Logan ,If you hosted a LAN party in Cincinnati i would totally be there!
I second that
@lan-ta
The pun writes itself
HL deathmatch on the crossfire map will keep you entertained for hours.
Some really awesome older ones are games like Battlezone 1 & 2, F-22 TAW, original Red Alert and Starcraft, Diablo 2, Homeworld 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption or you could run a WoW server emulator. The crucial thing to a fun LAN is preparation as some older games might use the IPX protocol which isn't supported anymore or require a glide wrapper. Also, configuring mods and various game options should also be done beforehand.
There's nothing worse than going to a LAN and then having to fiddle with settings and patches for hours.
I think the key to making it enjoyable is to not have 30 people.
In the end people bring their own snacks, and it won't matter what games you play imo if the people you do invite are all proper friends.
I guess different people might get different things from LAN parties, but for me having about 8-10 people was super manageable and all of them are still people I keep in touch with now 15 years later (not that I knew that back then of course haha)
Good friends having good fun is what it's all about.
As soon as I went to bigger LANs or had people there who were kinda one or two steps of separation then things were nowhere near as fun. And quite often you had bad elements in there who thought it'd be great to hack computers or spread Trojans and so half the night became clearing up that mess!
But I hope whatever you do goes well. These are just my thoughts/feelings as a brain dump response :D
Dave
Iced Tea, for the love of god, ICED TEA! Perfect for a LAN-party, make your own if you dont want the store-bought kind.
Easiest way to get a lan running with internet is the following.
1 router which acts for several things:
- delivers ip adresses in the group so everyone just plug in and can go do stuff.
- bandwidth limiting of the internet per ip. This so people dumb enough to download torrents on a LAN which happen more often than not don't kill the internet.
- can setup QoS so gaming and IM can go before other stuff.
beyond that you use switches. For 30 people I would say 2 of 16 and 1 of 8 ports. Why you might ask well on the 8 you can put servers and on the two of 16 the pc's. 1 of 48 might do the trick but you need some more cabling.
beyond that make sure not all pc's run of the same fuse. In Europe a group can handle 16A which is about 3500 watt basically meaning 6-8 PC's before things start getting bad ;) How it's in the US I don't know exactly but you need to calculate around 500 watt per PC when it's gaming.
On a lan you DO NOT disable firewall, anti virus programs and other stuff. Your PC might be safe but others probably won't.
You do want to turn off your public file and folder sharing. Nowadays it's less of an issue than in the Windows XP days but still having open folders for everyone to add stuff on your pc is not a good suggestion.
as for snacks.... people generally bring their own stuff to a lan just make sure you have some options to get some meals or make some stuff by yourself. With drinks people generally use the regular stuff like cola, beer, juices, energy drinks, tea and coffee.
As for games it's no way to tell. just ask among the people who come. We generally do some Warcraft 3, Borderlands, Trackmania Nations and Serious Sam for the lolz beyond Battlefield, League of Legends and god knows what is out around at that time.
One real big advice would be to have someone who knows a few things on networks and router configuration. It doesn't have to be pro's but someone who knows how to deal with issues that might arise and basic configuration and you can have a blast.
no chips, unless you want everyone to have greased up peripherals XD
Chocolate covered peanuts/macadamia nuts? jerky? dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets with forks/toothpicks and dippin sauces?
Games: the best times i had in large 8+ player gaming was with Halo lol. i think the first 2 halo games are on pc? Tribes Ascend looks like a lot of fun. probably not something that is possible (dues to a gamepad being needed) but mini fighting game tournaments. Project M (smash bros), Street Fighter. maybe even a co-op 4 player game like Turtles in Time would be fun =)