Inside LAN-O-THON, a LAN Party at USF

How not to kill a computer...

2008-01-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

I just read a great article over at pcstats.com with some great tips on how to prevent a disaster from happening, One tip I a really liked was this one-

It's unknown how many fatalities LAN parties contribute to the global toll of computers, but it's got to be a large number. Moving your computer too often is a recipe for disaster. ... If you've just transported your system any distance, take the cover off and check inside to verify that your expansion cards, memory, heatsink and video card are still seated correctly. Doing this before you power on your system can substantially increase its lifespan. Also, don't drop it.

[link]

VALVe and nVIDIA Team Up

2008-01-09T16:53:00.000-08:00

VALVe and nVIDIA are partnering up to offer an exclusive demo of Portal...

The most recent Steam Hardware Survey shows more Steam gamers play on NVIDIA GeForce hardware than any other graphics platform. In an effort to further support this popular PC gaming configuration - Steam games plus NVIDIA hardware - Valve and NVIDIA have entered into an agreement to collaborate on development, distribution, events, and more.

Effective immediately, all NVIDIA gamers may receive a free copy of PortalTM: First Slice, a special version of the award-winning new game from Valve, by visiting www.steamgames.com/nvidia1 and "Taking the Test." Steam will then auto-detect the presence of NVIDIA hardware and make Portal: First Slice available immediately, free of charge. To make it easy for all NVIDIA customers to redeem this offer, a link to the Steam offer will also be included in all NVIDIA drivers.

"More Steam gamers, including myself, play on NVIDIA hardware than any other GPU," said Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve. "That's a testament to the company's long history of innovation and quality. By working together with NVIDIA to expand our development, distribution, and marketing efforts, we're increasing our ability to serve the millions of NVIDIA customers logging onto Steam and help us prepare for our next generation of content."

Throughout the coming year, the companies will also be working together to support competitive gaming events for Counter-Strike® and Team Fortress® 2 and will continue to work together to define and support the breakthrough features of tomorrow's games and graphics hardware.

"Valve's endorsement of our technology and tools is yet another example of how the world's leading gaming companies are working with NVIDIA," said Roy Taylor, vice president of content relations at NVIDIA. "Portal is the hottest new, award-winning title from Valve, and we're delighted that Valve will offer First Slice exclusively to GeForce customers."

Portal: First Slice is now available to all NVIDIA customers. For more information about the offer or to take the test, please click here.

VALVe also threw in some extras too, the exlusive deal also includes Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, and the very addicting Peggle Extreme.

With the announcement of this deal, it must mean that VALVe's previous partnership with ATI has expired. ATI had been best buddies with valve since before the release of Half-Life 2.

For now it seems that VALVe's previous offer for ATI Users is still alive and kicking - which means at LAN Parties most poeple will be able to join in on playing Half-life 2 Deathmatch with out needing to buy the game.

Another year Done

2007-12-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

My busiest semester yet is over and another crazy one is on it's way but before it comes I hope to get a bunch of stuff updated on this site, so look for new content soon and the announcement of LAN-O-THON v4.5.

RHA LAN-O-THON v4.0

2007-10-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

Whew, after months of planning and two days of settinging up LAN-o-thon fianllay happened. Thanks to all those who came! We had some interesting challenges this time around like the visit from the campus the campus fire marshal and the head of resident building maintenance and the hl2dm tournament server crashing but we pushed forward and had a decent event. The tf2 action was awesome and every one had a great time playing it.

Our next event will be late febuary. I will post the date once it is finalized

RHA LAN-O-THON v4.0

2007-10-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

RHA LAN-O-THON v4.0 will be October 26, 2007 at 7:00 pm at the University of South Florida (Tampa Campus). It's the 9th largest university in the US and you've probably never heard of it

It's going to be a 50 seat BYOC. USF Students Only and those who live on-campus have priority.

Games we will be hosting servers and tournaments for-
-> Counter-Strike: Source
-> Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
-> Day of Defeat Source
-> Team Fortress 2

We will be providing at least 25 temporary Steam accounts with the above games for the event.

This is a social event, so feel free to just to play WOW, surf the internet or just hang out but a computer is required to enter.

We are interested in having other games at this event but we are limited by man power. If you would like to manage a server for another game, please message me and we can work something out.

Registration has finally started!! So head over and Sign Up.

The process is a little different this year because with more people, comes a need for better planning. Our registration form this year is collecting more info so we can prepare better event. We are interested in finding out what games people want to play and such. This time around we are trying to take security seriously, so again this year, we will be signing computers in and out of the building but we will have a better system and as another defense, we are only allowing people who bring a computer to enter.

See you there!

LAN Party Friday!

2007-10-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, the LAN Party is this week. I've been working hard getting everything ready to go. I got a bunch of temporary accounts from valve this week so any guests who don't own Team Fortress 2 or any of Valves other multiplayer games will be able to play them free and legally. This ought to be a great event! See you there!

ps. Early registration ends Wed!

Updates

2007-10-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, my life has gotten really really busy. Architecture, as predicated, has consumed my life and now, I have almost zero free time. I'm still going to make LAN-O-THON v4.0 a great event, I'm devoting every spare moment this week getting ready for it.

This past week our box of goodies from Alienware arrived and earlier this week, more stuff should be arriving. I post pictures soon.

Please sign up early as it will make check-in for the event go a lot faster for everyone. We need help setting up on the 25th so if you're available stop by the RHA office around 1pm or Cypress E later in the night.

See you there!

Registration Starts

2007-09-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

Last week, Sign Up for the LAN Party Started. So if you want a seat saved for you, GO! before they are gone.

Weekly Update 9/3/07

2007-09-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

LAN-O-THON v4.0 News
In the mail Friday, I got our first box of goodies. The nice people over at Vroom Foods, who make FOOSH™- Energy Mints and BUZZ BITES™ - Chocolate Energy Chews sent us a bunch of samples to give out. Everyone is going to a sample of the BUZZ BITES in their goodies bag and you'll also have a chance to win more in the raffle and other events.

In the next week, I hope to launch the official registration for LAN-O-THON v4.0. This year we are doing things a bit differently. After last years large number of no-shows, a different system was needed. On our site soon, there will be a registration form in PDF format that you will need to print out, fill out and drop off at a yet to be determined location.

Orange box is finished.

2007-08-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

In an interview posted on the web today, Gabe Newell himself said that all thee games were done. The Half-life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal box will be released on Steam October 10th at 12:01 (Pacific time). I quoted some of my favorite parts:

Game Informer: So how are things going with the development of the Orange Box?

Gabe Newell: Good. We ship to retailers on October 9. October 10 at 12:01 we let it go on Steam, and it’ll probably show up at retailers Europe on the 12th.

GI: Are all three of the games pretty much finished?

Newell: Yep.

GI: So you’re just bug testing, and everything is in its final phase?

Newell: Yes.

GI: Will it be available separately on Steam?

Newell: We’re going to announce specific stuff. But we’re probably going to have a bunch since there are no shelf-space issues on Steam, so we’ll have a bunch of different offerings. All the multiplayer products, all the single player products…So we’ll just try to figure out the most popular ways that people will want to buy it.

GI: Obviously, with Episode Two, I don’t want to get any spoilers out there. The tone seems to be, at least with what we’ve seen of the trailers, a lot darker. Like, this could be the Empire Strikes Back of the Half-Life trilogy. Do you think that’s safe to say?

Newell: Yes. I think that we tried to make it darker and also have more of an epic feel so that’s translated into the settings and some of the events that have happened. It’s got to be dark before it gets better! (laughs) That’s the rule of trilogies. This is the middle act. This is where all of the problems get worse. The depth of your problems becomes much clearer before everything gets resolved in the third act.

GI: To you have a target date for Episode Three?

Newell: No, we don’t have a target date.

GI: That’s probably a safe answer. (laughs)

Newell: If we did, would it matter? (laughs) Have we done right yet?

GI: No. (laughs)

Newell: I think a target date is when people can start yelling at us with more ammo. (laughs)

[Read More]

A new video of HL2.2 was posted online ****contains spoilers****.

How to: Setup a Dedicated FreeBSD Web Server

2007-08-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, you may be asking- Why Use FreeBSD instead of one of the many Linux distros like Ubuntu or Fedora? Well, these distros are great for desktop use but they are not as reliable, stable or as fast as FreeBSD is in the server environment. The only downside to FreeBSD is that it doesn't have the snazzy installers the others have and at first glance, it can be a little daunting to install but don't worry this guide attempts to make it easier. I use FreeBSD because it's what my web hosting company uses on their servers. I like to test my web applications on my own server before making them live on the web and I like it loose software license, it allows virtually unrestricted re-use and modification of the source code for any purpose, Apple's OSX was derived from it.

Step 1
This point is where I found that this FreeBSD Install Guide over at openaddict.com was far better than what I was writing. So use it! (It's like they read my mind... scary!). I still plan on making a video version though.) The guide takes the long way to install but it will give you the best results. You'll come to love the command line.

USF Architecture is Sweeeeet!

2007-08-24T12:48:00.001-07:00

I just finished touring what will be my studio space for this semester and it looks great. By the number of desks, there should be around 16 students in the class, a great number compared to some of my past classes. I also took a peak in some of the other rooms. The wood shop looks cool with a bunch of different tools and next door, the computer lab is brand new with big monitors and fast computers. I can't wait for class to start!

Meet the Soilder

2007-08-24T11:23:00.001-07:00

Valve has released another one of their great promo video's for Team fortress 2.

There's also an HD Version

New Address!

2007-08-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

If you're a frequent visitor you may have noticed our domain name changed. the blog now has a more official sounding address of http://inside.lanothon.org and the main site for the event registration is http://www.lanothon.org keep in mind that I'm cheap and this address redircts back to the old address of http://lan.mcdportal.com. I'm giving google apps a try and having gmailfor our domains email. The DNS record is still updating so email won't be working for another 24 hours.

Weekly Update 8/18/07

2007-08-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

LAN-O-THON v4.0
While I was away, I got two more offers for sponsorships. I don't have anything to confirm yet though. I started work on some ads again. Hopefully I will have some ready to post soon after classes start.

Inside LAN-O-THON
I'm still working on more site content... I know I'm slow.

The LAN Party Initiative
I setup a group on the steam community for our group, check it out

It's good to be Home

2007-08-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

After traveling for two weeks, It's nice to be in my own bed. My trip was great. I visited Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Hallstatt, and Salzburg in Austria, Munich, Germany, and flew out of Zürich, Switzerland. I also quickly visited New York City during our 8 hour layover at JFK. I am working on getting some pic posted and working on a Weekly LAN Party Update.

Steam- Update News

2007-07-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

Weekly Update 7/28/07

2007-07-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Ok this has to be my slowest week yet. Honestly I've done squat. Well I did a few small things- I got the logout button working on my new site. I played around with phpbb3. attempted to install ubuntu. (microsofts vm'07 hates it, got a different vm to try). I help my cousin move. (I'm still tired from that). I went to the gym. I got a slurpee. (Where would I be without those delicious smooth frozen caffeinated drinks?) and I'm going to sleep.....

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.......

O wait! I can't sleep!!!!!!!!! I have to pack for my vacation!!!!! My family is spending 2 weeks in Europe!!!!!!! (Ok. If I keep this up, exclamation points are going to be an endangered specie) I leave next week. If they have internet I'll post some pictures. We're going to Budapest, Viennia, München, Zurich and a bunch of cities in between. Btw, On my Birthday, I'll be in München ( probably without internet) so thank-you in advance for all of you who will write on my facebook page.

Game server Memberships

2007-07-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

As you may know,The LAN Party Initiative is sponsoring a couple of game servers. To fund these, I'm selling 4 levels of memberships- Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.

Bronze $3 for 3 months
Reserved Slot on one server

Silver $3/month
Reserved Slot on both servers
Immunity from the crazy admins
ability to kick nonmembers
ability to play sounds.

Gold $6/month
Everything above and ...
Temp ban players
Manage maps
trigger map votes
ability to hard restart the server.

Platinum $12/month
Ability to permanently ban users
Full Mani-Admin tools
(below- one server only)
Have rcon access
Have root server access
Ftp access to add maps

If I sell out of reserved slots, I will buy more slots for the server.

Buy for three months and save 11.11% (aka. silver for 3 months = $8)

Please paypal the money to crocodolljr@cfl.rr.com and include the membership level you want, your gamer handle and steam id in the message box. If you don't know your steam id, see the link below. Please

allow me at least 12 hours to set up your account.

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=112

Thanks
Matthew

Suprise Revealed

2007-07-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

I have been hyping this surprise for quite a while now. With a little luck and a lowball ebay bid
I am the proud owner of 4 Chauvet Intimidator 2.0, a USB to dmx adapter and plenty of cable. Below is a quick demo by one of the lights.

Adblock

This video is a better demo.

One more quick demo. This is one features a possible scene from my LAN Party light show.

Adblock

See this page for more info on the lights.

Weekly Steam Message

2007-07-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 20 2007

Last month, we announced the Steam Community, which will let you connect with friends and other gamers, create and join groups, and organize matches. We're adding the final polish now and are right on target to launch the beta version at the end of the month. More details on the way.

A note to owners of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1: If you buy the boxed retail version of The Orange Box, you can simply hand-off the games you already own to a friend. Or, you can give away the games within Steam. When you install the Orange Box, Steam will identify the duplicate games and let you send them as gifts to a friend, which will enable them to download the games from Steam for free.

THQ joined Steam this week, kicking things off with three great games: Company of Heroes (widely regarded as one of the best RTS's ever made), Titan Quest (RPG) + the Immortal Throne expansion, and Full Spectrum Warrior + the Ten Hammers expansion. You can read more about the starting line-up.

If you're looking for a cool indie game to play this weekend, check out Gish, the 2005 Independent Games Festival Grand Prize winner. It's a platformer set in subterranean sewers. You play as a ball of tar. Enough said.

Weekly Update 7/22/07

2007-07-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being a few days late with this update. I spent the the weekend up in north Georgia helping to celebrate my maternal grandparents 50th Anniversary.

My grandmother wanted a BIG party at her house but that meant that there was a lot of work to do to get everything clean and setup. I spent most of the party directing cars were to park. (It got me out of some of the say hello to this person who hasn't seen you since you were an infant talk). Overall the party went well and every one had a lot of fun but now I'm exhausted.

I did get to escape for about an hour after the party to go visit my paternal grandparents lake cabin and go for a boat ride to have a nice break.

Now back to LAN Party news....

LAN-O-THON v4.0
I have a new sponsor to announce.... GIGABYTE (Thermal Division) . They are donating one of their mid tower GZ-X1 chassis for us to giveaway. I don't now what it will be prize for yet, but I can't wait to give it away!

Inside LAN-O-THON
I'm going to start my FreeBSD Install article this week. I've been playing around with some different configs using Microsoft's free Virtual PC 2007. It's a great free way to try out different operating systems and such. I've was running a couple of virtual pc's running all week. I have my plan nailed down. I'm going to do a video walk through because I'm lazy and sick of writing long articles. I may transcribe it later in to a nice text article. It is going to be a multi part thing so expect How to do a basic install and get a gui installed

The LAN Party Initiative
I have our Counter-Strike: Source Server setup and ready to go. (Click here to play) If you don't own the game, you can buy it over here. I also setup a stats site for you to see how you rank against everyone else. Im still crafting a nice motd (the front screen you see when you connect) for the server. I still plan on setting up a HL2: Deathmatch server once they come off backorder. I'm going to be on playing the server Monday night if anyone would care to join me.

MCD Portal
My web software is one step closer to being done. I finished the ACL and login system. I'm going to start on the log out page and the user admin panel.

I'm going to post a picture showing off my LAN Party secret I've been talking about soon.

New CS:S Server for us!

2007-07-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight I ordered a Counter-Strike: Source for our group. I hope to have it setup and ready go by tomorrow afternoon. I hope to see you all on it!

Weekly Update 7/13/07

2007-07-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

LAN-O-THON v4.0
I got an interesting email out of the blue from a company interesting in sposnoring our event. I'll let you know how it pans out.

The LAN Party Initiative
I'm still planning on getting a Counter-Strike: Source and a Half-life2: Deathmatch server for our group. East coast Source servers are still backorder at gameservers.com. Consider supporting the group by shopping online using these links. To raise addtional funds I'm going to sell reserved slots for $3 dollars (good for a spot on each server) or add $3 dollars more and get some admin privileges such as setting the map rotation. Discuss this more over here

Inside LAN-O-THON
I've started work on my freeBSD article. I'm trying a few different things out to see what works the best. My box is a little slow installing it so its going to take a little while.

MCD Portal (the CMS I'm writing)
The CMS I'm writing is looking great. I got the registration and login forms done, sessions and user/group data inheritance works. A lot of the code is a mess but I'll work on it later. Next is applying the Acl info from the user session info.

Crazy Guy Video

2007-07-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

This has to be the most absurd adaptation of gaming to real life. This guy loved his third-person game perspective so much he created a rig to experience it in real life.

Installing FreeBSD

2007-07-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

Well I started to install a fresh copy on my webserver but I forgot to install a few parts and so now I'm starting over again. FreeBSD is fairly easy to install. Not windows easy but easy enough. It's getting all of the extra modules installed is the hard part. By default, the only things FreeBSD installs is the command line. This is great for servers and advanced users but makes its hard for Windows users to transition. For ease of configuring my new server, I'll have it install a GUI which I can later disable when I'm done. Since FreeBSD 's command line default, its the installer is not as pretty as some of the Linux's but prettiness doesn't affect it's function.

So now I'm onto attempt #2.
I'm currently waiting on my machine to finish installing the list of ports I want. Ports are software that are in a master list of software available for FreeBSD and makes it easy to find any software you want to install. Hopefully I'll post chapter 1 of my install article tomorrow.

Teaser Pic #2

2007-07-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Ok here's a little bit more revealing picture. Next week's pic should give it away completely.
Start your guessing. If you're a good at google you'll get close to the answer quickly.

Weekly Update 7/6/07

2007-07-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

LAN-O-THON v4.0
I haven't heard back from any more companies on sponsorships. I did follow up with a guy from thermaltake so hopefully I'll have banners up soon for them. I'll post another picture of my LAN Party surprise tomorrow.

The LAN Party Initiative
I'm going to get a Counter-Strike: Source and a Half-life2: Deathmatch server for our group soon. East coast Source servers are still backorder at gameservers.com. These server cost money to run so consider using these options to support it. To raise addtional funds I'm going to sell reserved slots for $3 dollars (good for a spot on each server) or add $3 dollars more and get some admin privileges such as setting the map rotation. Discuss this more over here

Inside LAN-O-THON
I bought a hard drive to setup freebsd on so this week I'll start working on my server guide.

MCD Portal (the CMS I'm writing)

The CMS I'm writing is coming right along. I got the display block system setup and now I'm starting work on the first module- Users which is probably the most critical as it controls user registration, login and who has access to what and I started laying out the database setup for it. The first subcomponent I'm have to tackle is the ACL (access control list). the ACL is the bit of code that detrimes whether not a user has permission to access a component and will allow me to grant indivual users the rights to somethings like add news articles but not others like delete those articles. I've never used such an advanced ACL setup like this but I'm using the ACL componet of the Zend Framework so going to be fairly easy I hope. My goal is to have a working site by the end of July. The next module is news and then search and then I would like to work on recreating all that ALP can do using my new cms.

Personal
My parents family room remodeling project is getting closer to being done. The walls were painted and the floor got tiled this week but we are still waiting on the trim, finish electrical and windows to replace the old ones. I can't wait to be done baby sitting this project so I can work on other things.

My dad took off work today so he could finally clean and prep the sailboat he bought used a few months ago. He's been so busy that we've haven't gone sailing on yet and it's just been sitting in storage so I'm glad the boat's getting one step closer to being sailable. The picture left is the only picture of the boat I have at the moment. Its from the sales listing so I have no idea who the guy on the boat is. I'll try and remember to take a new picture tomorrow.

Source Engine and Steam Client Update

2007-07-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Source Engine

Fixed VAC icon not showing up in server browser
Fixed the Buy Favorites button not working
Enhanced sv_pure's output
Fixed delay when disconnecting from a server
Fixed a rare crash in Day of Defeat: Source
Made demos record screenshot and jpeg commands
Added the cvar cl_playback_screenshots to control whether or not the screenshot and jpeg commands are replayed while playing back a demo
Fixed the Add/Remove/Edit/Import buttons in the dedicated server's Bans page

Steam Client

Added a "Go Offline" option in the File menu, which will let Steam run without an Internet connection
Fixed localization of "English" in language dropdown for Dutch and Norwegian languages
Fixed the ATI Hardware Promotion not being accepted on 64bit versions of Windows
Fixed the mouse wheel not scrolling when the cursor is over a flash image

[source]

Teaser pic

2007-07-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

A week and a half ago I hinted that I had a surprise for the LAN Party and when I was writing the (very lame) weekly update and last week I forgot to post the teaser pic I promised so here it is.

A few hints: It was one of those low ball bids I didn't expect win on ebay and people will want to borrow it for their own events.

Stay tuned for a better pic next week.

Help support The LAN Party Initiative

2007-07-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

I want to rent game server to run CS:S and HL2DM so all of you to play against each other all semester long but my funds have run out so now I'm starting a fundraiser.

All you have to do is use the links below when you go shopping online. It doesn't cost you anything but I'll make a small commission off of your purchase. Use these links when you're buying your text books this fall or buying computer parts. If you shop at a company that I haven't listed, leave a comment and I'll look to see If I can get a link for it.

Other Options

Make a Donation via Paypal (see the "Donate Now" button in the right hand column)

Weekly Update 7/1/07

2007-07-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

Ok I now I'm late but not much happened this week. I spent a good bit of time supervising our remodeling project. the drywall is up and is going to be painted tomorrow. Last night, I finally started working on my CMS (Content management system) using the new Zend Framework and the SWAT Application system as a template system. I want a block driven template system and thats what Swat is all about and is much better than Smarty. I probably will butcher the integration of the two since they both try to do some of the same things but it should work.

Late night Steam Fix

2007-06-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

I found this problem in the steam forum....
Question:

When i open steam there is a box that says updating steam and it is stuck at nothing. What do i do?

Answer:
Your internet connection is messed up. Steam can get a connection but can't transfer data. Make sure your firewall isn't blocking some of Steams ports or that somewhere else on your network is like your router or ISP.

I see this problem when I'm connecting to a captive portal like pay wifi. Steam sees that there is internet access but it can't connect until I open Firefox and login into the wifi.

Weekly Update 6/23/07

2007-06-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

This week I launched my new LAN Party Initiative. I still have a lot of work to do to get things set up but it will be ready to launch by the time classes start back. Join this Facebook group for more information. I'm Already impressed with how many people join the group. It's going to be a great fall semester. (that and me being run over by the SACD work load)

I posted my article- How to: Make a LAN Cable but it still needs one more editing pass. I also need to add a section on the differnet types of cat5 cable and which ones are best for patch cables. I'm not a very good writer and I get tired of proof reading after a while. I still need to post the video version too. The next article "How to: Install pFsense" is on hold until version 1.2 comes out of beta and "How to Setup a web server" is also on hold until I get a new hard drive for my server box. So my article for this next week will be either budgeting or event layout. Also I want to start posting reviews of HL2:DM maps so I may start a couple this week.

As far as sponsorships go, I don't have any new information. Still waiting to hear back from companies.

In other news, this blog is finally in the yahoo search results. After yahoo failed to crawl my site automatically (they have something against Google's blogger app. All the other search engines picked it up on their own), I manually submitted it 2 week ago and finally it's showing up. Over 60% of my blog hits come from Google so it's good that I can get some from yahoo too.

I also got a surprise planned for LAN-O-THONv4.0. It will help shed light on our event. I'll post a teaser pic next week.

Intel wants fair and balanced online gaming

2007-06-23T20:19:00.001-07:00

Intel just caught Player 1 cheating at Quake 3.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--There's always one guy who seems a little too good at mowing down players in a Quake 3 session. Intel thinks future PC gamers might be interested in technology that helps level the playing field.

The company showed off a research project into "anti-cheat technology" during its Research@Intel Day at Intel headquarters. The idea is that Intel and the PC gaming industry would build technology into gaming rigs that could detect when common cheats--such as "aimbots" that handle targeting while the player just holds down the trigger--are used in an online gaming session, said Travis Schluessler, a researcher at Intel.

Cheats such as aimbots or "wall hacks" that expose players lying in wait send data to online gaming servers in unnatural patterns that could be detected by other PCs connected to the same server, Schluessler said. PCs equipped with this technology would notify a server that someone in the game is using a cheat, and then the game administrator could set a policy of kicking the cheat offline or some high-tech method of saying "nyeh, nyeh, cheater cheater," shaming the cheater and warning other gamers not to enter into sessions with that particular player.

Intel is still working out the details; don't expect to find this in a high-end gaming PC anytime soon. This also being Intel, there's more practical business-related implications for the technology as well, such as click-fraud detection. But with the amount of money that serious PC gamers spend on their rigs and software, there could be a market among those who don't want to see their investments ruined by cheaters.

[Source]

Screens of the upcoming Steam Community

2007-06-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Searching the web this week, I found some one who took a picture of what the new Steam Community from Gabe Newell keynote speech at Showdown LAN.

The control panel

Gabe Newell gave a presentation at the Showdown LAN event the other day (thanks Greg), which seems to have focused on the Steam Community. Fortunately for us someone had a camera, but don’t get too excited: there’s nothing particularly remarkable yet. There are surprises, like global voice support handled by Steam itself and support for external games, but otherwise it’s what you might expect from a post-Xbox Live community system.

Gabe’s release estimate is this summer July, before the launch of Team Fortress 2 and the Orange Box.

A CLAN Page

Gabe’s slides

The “Steam Identity”

Create Profile and Home page

Preferences
Affiliation
Statistics
Control Panel

Public versus private
Schedule
Real-time status
Revamped all the communications function to make it easier to play with your friends

Find a friend
See who’s online or playing
Invite Friends to chat or play
Join a friend’s game

“Communications”

Instant Messaging, integrated voice (finally), and chat rooms

Works with non-Steam games

“Affiliation”

Join or create new groups

Scheduling/Organizing tournaments and matches

[Source]

The LAN Party Initiative

2007-06-21T00:23:00.000-07:00

No we're not going to strand you on a haunted island in the middle of the Pacific that's only accessible by submarine, rather This group is meant to promote LAN Parties at USF.

If you have no idea what a LAN party is have a look at http://lanothon.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-is-lan-party.html

This Initiative has three objectives
#1 To get new LAN Parties started at USF and to help these events by providing some of the necessary supplies.
#2 To Advertise these Events
#3 For People to have fun!

Part 1
This Initiative is to get people to start their own small LAN Parties in their own dorms. To help you out, I'm going to set up a system where you can borrow some of my collection of supplies like extension cords, power strips, switches/routers and LAN cables to make it easier to do.

Part 2
To advertise these events. Please see the discussion board to find upcoming events or post your own. When a new event is posted, I will send out a message to all the group members to let them know about it. So invite your friends to join this group so they can get these updates too.

Part 3
Everyone needs a break from their school work and these events make for a nice diversion. I love LAN Parties and I have gotten my friends hooked so hopefully you will go out on a limb and try one too. Since we can't have a LAN Party every night, I've set up some game servers so that we can play against each other any time.

Play on our Counter-Strike: Source Server: http://tinyurl.com/33oxza

Check your rank at our new Stats Server...
http://usf.mcdportal.com

Coming Soon- Our Half-life 2: Deathmatch Server.

Help support these servers by using these links when you go shopping online- http://lanothon.blogspot.com/2007/07/help-support-lan-party-initiative.html

VALVe Planning Major Update for Steam

2007-06-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

This summer Valve will ship a major update to its online gaming platform Steam, introducing an advanced set of community features to more than 13 million gamers around the world.

Beginning in July, Steam users can set up their own personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more. These new community services and features can be used with all Steam games, which include new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and independent developers.

Free of charge, the new community features will be accessible via the Steam desktop client and via the web.

"Our community has given us great direction on the ways they want to see Steam evolve," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "Adding these new community features to make it easier to connect with other gamers is something we've wanted to see on Steam for a long time and this latest update is just the start. We've got a long list of items that we're working on to make it easier for gamers to connect and play games on Steam."

This upgrade marks the largest extension to the Steam platform since its first commercial release in March 2004. In its three year history, Steam has defined the next generation online gaming platform delivering hundreds of games to millions of users with services such as Guest Passes, Automatic Updates, Free Weekends, and allowing gamers to access their games from any PC.

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com.[Planet Half-life]

It's cool VALVe is adding some new features to Steam. I can't wait to create my own profile and have another way to advertise my LAN Parties. Hopefully VALVe will be able to implement the upgrades without screwing it up and creating another community backlash.

A Fish in a Coffee Pot

2007-06-20T00:44:00.001-07:00

My fish tried to stage a jail break so I had to find a place to put him till I could buy a new bowl. It just by happened that the spare coffee pot was about the right size. This is starting to sound like something from a Dr. Seuss book. It's hard to see the break in the little picture but the break is on the very front towards the bottom.

(Ok, I fess up, my fish ain't smart enough to do it on his own, I broke the bowl while I was cleaning it)

How to: Make a LAN Cable

2007-06-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

[Its late and I'm going to bed even though I still need to edit this one more time so please excuse any errors.]

LAN cables are used to link computers together to form a network. This network is a core component of a LAN Party and LAN cables are a key ingredient in it. These cables can also called network cables, cat5 cables and other names so don't get confused.

Why make my Own?
Simple, It's cheaper. For example to buy 100 10ft cables would cost about $175 but you can make them yourself for about $100. At a LAN Party where budgets are tight this can be a great money saver. Another benefit is that you can custom size the cables for your needs so they fit "just right" and you don't have messy piles of extra cable around.

Getting Started
First you are going to need a few tools to get started:
From left to right: standard wire cutters, cable stripper for standard UTP cable, crimper for RJ45 plugs, basic CAT5e cable tester (optional). You can buy most of these at your local hardware store but it may be cheaper to buy them from a company like DeepSurplus.com, a site that sells these sort of things for dirt cheap.

And some supplies

From left to right: Cat5e cable and RJ45 Connectors/Plugs.
You can also buy most of these at your local hardware store but it may be cheaper to buy them (especially the plugs) from a company like DeepSurplus.com a site that sells these sort of things for dirt cheap. Ensure that the plugs match the the type of cable you're crimping. For example, stranded cable needs plugs designed for it and solid core cable needs a different type for it.

Step #1 Cut to Length

Measure out the length of the cord you want to make. Add 2 inches extra for when you strip and trim the ends before crimping it. Cut the cord using your standard wire cutters.

Step #2 Strip the Ends

The next step is to strip an inch of insulation off each end. Start by by placing the the cable in the correct spot in the wire stripper for cat 5 and spin it around few times to get a nice clean cut. If its your first time using you it, you may need to adjust the blade so that is cuts cleanly through the outer sheath without damaging twisted pairs inside. To adjust it, take a screw driver and tighten or loosen screw at tip. Its good idea to test it on a spare piece until you get the blade set right. It is better to set it too shallow than to have it cut too far and cause damage. Give the end a little twist to free insulation and then slide it off. Repeat on the other end.

Step #3 Get the Wires in Order.

There are 4 twisted pairs in a Cat5e cable, each a different color: orange, green, blue, and brown. Each pair has a solid color wire and a white wire often with a matching stripe. For example the orange pair is made up of a orange wire and a white of orange wire. It is important to keep track of which white wire belongs with each solid wire because it is hard to tell the white wire apart if things get confused. The final order of the individual wires should be white of orange, orange, white of green, blue, white of blue, green, white of brown, brown. This may sound confusing but there is an easy way of doing things.
Hold the end of the cable in your hand and bend the orange pair to the left and the brown pair to the right. Then bend green pair to the bottom and blue to the top

Then untwist each pair and smooth them out so you can start lining the wires up in the correct order. Get each pair in the right order looking from the top: white of orange should below orange; white of blue should be to the right of blue; white of brown should be above brown and white of green should be to the left of green.

Bend white of green upwards so that it sits between the orange and blue wires and then bend the green upward so that it is between white of blue and white of brown.

then gently slide the wires together so they are all parallel to each other and smooth them out

Step #4 Trim

Once the wires are in the right order, You need to trim off the excess so when crimp the cable all the individual wires are siting correctly. When your trimming you want to make sure that not only the outer sheath extends as far as possible in to the connector but that individual wires do to. First just get all of the wires even by snipping off just the wires that hang past the shortest one. then test fit the connector by sliding the row of wires into the connector (tab side down, gold side up) making sure to keep the wires flat and in order.

Then trim the excess until the outer coating can't be slid in any further. (in the picture left the wires are too long and need to be trimmed)

For the first few times it will take trial and error to get the wires in the connector correctly and get the length right, but after a while you'll get the hang of it.

Step #5 Crimp

Once the wires are all in the connector correctly (make sure you triple check the color order) insert the wire with the connector on it in to your crimper and firmly press the cable in the connector while squeezing the crimper.

Use a fair amount of pressure and hold it for a few seconds to make sure you get a really good crimp. Then give the wire a little tug to make sure the crimp is tight. If the connector comes off cut of the end and start over.

Step #6 Test

Once you get both ends crimped its time to cross your fingers and test it. for the first round i use a cheap tester I got off of eBay. You just plug in both ends and turn the tester on. On my tester both lights on each channel should light up to signal a good cable. After that I test it by connecting it to my laptop and switch to see if I can load a web page or two. If fails one these the only option is to start over.

All Done! You should now have cables that you made yourself.

Have a question? Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Bloatware on new PC's

2007-06-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

This is a great video showing just how bad this problem is

Adblock

[Source]

Cool Case Mod Pics

2007-06-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

Thats insane!

my regular morning surfing of the web, I came across some case mod pics that knocked my socks off. Have a look at some of the insane mods. i'm seriously thinking about hosting one of these at our event just to see what the crazy students at USF can come up with.

View More....

Orange box gets a release date.

2007-06-15T23:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, during a pre-E3 press event held at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles offices, members of Valve Software revealed the official launch date for the highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game compilation, The Orange Box. The big day is October 9th.

This is exciting news for just about any gamer because The Orange Box includes a little something for everyone: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the unique physics-based first-person puzzle game Portal, and the long-awaited Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box is scheduled to ship simultaneously on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.Source

I'm glad to see that valve set a date for the release of this fantastic set of games. I can't wait to play them at our LAN Party. Please Valve don't suddenly decide to delay it again and ruin our LAN Party plans

Weekly Update

2007-06-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Ok this week I finally spent some time to type up an email to send to companies who only list an email address for sponsorship request. I kinda like the Email thing because it gives me a chance to explain all about are event in a little bit more detail than some of the web forms on some of the other sites. So yesterday I sent out about 5 emails to these remaining companies on my list and one company was quick to bite- Velocity Micro. I glad they came on board for our LAN Party. If you had to pick a company to buy your custom computer from, they should be at the top of your list. If you don't believe me have a look at this Super in depth review by [H]ardOCP and you'll see why they're so good.

In other news, I'm still really grateful for electricity because a day in Florida without it is $%^#!

Electricity is Great!

2007-06-14T20:29:00.001-07:00

The reason I didn't have electricity

My home in Orlando is under going some renovations and today the electrical contractor upgraded our electrical panel, meter and weather head (that part where the powerline from the street comes to the house) but it meant that power was disconnected for seven hours. Seven hours without air conditioning during the middle of summer in Florida is loads of fun. I knew that today was the day but I still stayed up too late last night and planned to sleep in but I woke at 8:38 to the sound of my uninterrupted power supplies beeping that the power was out and had to get up and shut down all of my machines (and stop that insane beeping noise). The upgrades took only a few hours to install but then I had to wait for the city's inspector to check off on it. The inspector came an hour late but he said everything great and called OUC (our power company) to grant them permission to reconnect the power. OUC was like an hour and a half late but finally it all got done, the master switch was flicked and the air conditioner never felt better when it kicked on.

New addtion to the LAN Party Guide

2007-06-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

I had some free time today to work on a new article titled LAN Party Nourishment and it covers LAN Party food, drinks and the best ways to go about providing for a hungry horde of gamers. The article still needs some pictures and such which I'll add when I find the ones I want.

The next article is going to be how to make your own LAN Cables and I'm going to try doing a video post to so have a look out for that in the coming week.

Steam Update

2007-06-12T16:50:00.000-07:00

Valve just released a major update for Source servers. They final made official a new feature called "Pure Servers" that prevent files that were not download from Steam from loading. This will help close several loop holes that have allowed some players to gain an advantage like using custom skins and textures. For server admins, they were kind enough to keep this update in beta for the few months so we could test and work out any bugs with 3rd party plugins.

Updates to the Source Engine are now available. Previously this was in Beta, behind srcds0407. Please run hldsupdatetool to receive this update. The specific changes include:

Pure Servers:
Servers can now force the client to match the server's files, by becoming a pure server. When a server enables sv_pure, clients who connect and play on the server cannot gain an advantage by modifying the game content. For more information about Pure Servers, click here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Pure_Servers.

Source Engine:
- In-game server browser only shows human players in the player counts column. Bots column now shows number of bots instead of a "some bots" or "no bots" icon
- Fixed servers with bots reporting incorrect number of bots when
sv_master_legacy_mode is set to 0
- Fixed a server performance problem with queued packets
- Increased the maximum rate to 1 megabyte
- Added a findflags console command, which can list all cvars with a specified flag. For example: 'findflags server_can_execute' will find all console variables and commands marked with FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE
- Cheat protected many cvars and commands
- Removed cl_restrict_server_commands to prevent clients from being redirected
- Fixed user names reported as "unconnected" when greater than 32k players had connected to the server
- Fixed a client crash during authentication
- Fixed a crash when mashing the ~ key on disconnect
- Fixed a bug with sv_minrate and sv_maxrate not applying properly on the client
- Fixed the free roaming camera in SourceTV demos
- Fixed cl_language archiving itself and not updating correctly when the language changed
- Fixed a voice recording bug that could cause voice dropouts
- Fixed a rare crash when spectating in Counter-Strike: Source

We'd also ask that everyone please set sv_master_legacy_mode 0 again and report any problems.

UPDATE:
Like most major Valve updates, yesterdays had a few bugs but they fixed most of them today.

Source Engine
- Fixed a client crash
- Fixed sv_allow_wait_commands restricting the server using wait
- Fixed a crash in "soundlist" command
- Reallowed fps_max value of 0 (= unrestricted fps)
- Fixed exploit that showed spectator radar when not a spectator
- Fixed a crash playing back demo files recorded with the previously-released engine
- Client forwards server commands it doesn't understand back to the server
- Allow servers to execute chooseteam in Counter-Strike: Source
- Allow servers to execute retry
- sv_pure 1 now allows custom spray decals by default
- Fixed "Has Users Playing" checkbox not using the new change where we only display human players in the players tab, so you'd see servers with 0 players (they actually had only bots) listed

LAN Party Nourishment

2007-06-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

One of mans most basic needs is food and to keep your LAN Party guests alive and gaming a little of this vital ingredient is necessary. There are many options to choose from like brussel sprouts and apple juice but I'm going to list some I that feel will be better received.

Pizza
This is a LAN Party staple. Unless all your friends are allergic to it (how sad that would be) this is your best bet. A few thing to keep in mind..

Get a variety of toppings, not every one like pepperoni or cheese, I like getting 40% cheese, 40% pepperoni and 20% sausage.
Negotiate a good deal before hand. If you have a large order, don't be shy asking for discount. Also look out for 2 for 1 sales and other deals.
Place your order before hand so your large order isn't delayed and the place has a chance to prepare.
Considering picking it up. The delivery tip on a large order can be expensive and you can save a nice chunk of change this way.
Have a table set up with plates, napkins and space to put the pizza because there nothing worse than the mayhem caused by trying to hold back a pack of hungry gamers.

Other food items

Chips
Nachos
Candy
Cookies
Hot dogs
Hamburgers

Drinks
At a LAN Party, Caffeine is the name of the game. Bawls is a common favorite and best of all they are often willing to send some free for your event and they can also give you some good deals if you want to buy more.

Sodas like Mountain Dew that are high caffeine are popular but other flavors can be a hit as well. I try to have a nice variety for people to choice from.

At my Events I prefer to use cans that are pre-chilled in the refrigerator or in ice. Cans may be a little bit more expensive at the store but they make up for it in convenience because you don't need to buy cups and ice like you would for 2 liter bottles and left overs don't go stale and can be reused at your next event.

While name brand soda may be preferred by your guests, if you're footing the cost of the refreshments, an off brand may be a better choice. one of my favorites is Publix's own brand (Publix is a grocery store in the South East) soda. Walmart's brand comes in second in my opinion to many other brand because they are too eager to use less quality ingredients just to keep their costs down while still making a nice profit.

At the end of a long night some people will be ready for sleep and as weird as it may sound, they may like something other than caffeine so it is a good idea to keep some bottle water, lemonaid, Gatorade or similar drinks around.

Breakfast
If your LAN Party goes over night, while old school, coffee is popular choice. Couple this with a truckload of donuts and all your guests will be happy. Nothing like caffeine and sugar to start off the day right.

Distribution
To prevent some craziness, some sort of plan needs to be decided on before hand to establish a fair way of distributing the food and drinks. At a small event, its fine to spread out the available food and allow your guests to take what they want but at a larger event a better system is needed. You don't want to have three people eat all of the food for your 50 guests.

I like to use a ticket system kinda like the county fair. Guests can buy tickets for say 50 cents each and trade these in for food. This keeps those who are handing the food from dealing with the cash and it helps keep some of it from disappearing. For an event where food is covered in the cost of admission, you can give each guest a set of food tickets when they check-in. For those who want even more, offer them the opportunity to buy additional tickets.

Consider distributing the food over the course of the event. Offer pizza at different times so that as people come and go from their games, they can get food without having to give up winning a round to get some before it runs out. At my last event, we ordered pizza to have ready at 8pm and at 11pm to split things up.

Other Considerations
I haven't had to deal with this personally but some locations have a set food service company you have to use instead of selling your own food which could cost your guests more than they are willing to pay. So to prevent 5 Dollar Soda check if your location does something like this check to see if they have a "Buy Out" price where you can then sell your own concessions at what ever price you want.

The Side Effects-

Trash
Make sure you have lots of trash cans around. The bigger the better. Gamers are lazy and don't like getting up so place them in convenient locations like at the end of the rows of tables. Consider getting a large rolling garbage can that you can roll around the room so you get the room clean without making the gamers get up. Make sure you check the garage cans regularly and empty them when their full to keep the mess down.

Bathrooms
The inevitable outcome from drinking a dozens soda's is an urgent trip to bathroom. Make sure restrooms are marked and that they are visible even in the dark. (when the lights go down, the confusion goes up). Consider putting a light over signs to spare someone the embarrassment of asking where the bathroom is.

Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Continue on to ...

Valve Sponsors Showdown LAN

2007-06-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

Special Gabe Newell keynote. Free game from Valve. Exclusive play-test. Only for Showdown Attendees!

You read correctly! We are extremely proud to announce Gabe Newell as our first ever Showdown LAN keynote speaker. Gabe will be on site on Saturday to give a presentation about Valve’s contribution to the multiplayer arena and introduce Left4Dead, their next multiplayer shooter.

Immediately following the keynote, Showdown attendees will get some exclusive hands-on time with Left4Dead at the Valve booth between 1pm and 6pm. If you haven’t put this together yet – this is the FIRST TIME Left4Dead will be play-tested in public and YOU get to be first to play it.

It doesn’t end there! Valve will also be giving all LAN attendees one copy of Half Life 2 AND one copy of Half Life 2 Episode 1. Consider your admission fee paid for!

Free Games. Gabe Newell. First ever public play-test of Left4Dead. San Jose Showdown 2007 rocks. Indy, get ready for even more!
Source
It is nice to see Valve giving back to the LAN Party community and even better, they are finally shairing their new game with the public. Since I love Valve's games, I wish we could land a deal like this but alas, we're to small to get this sort of attention. Maybe one day... I can dream, right?

Weekly Update

2007-06-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

Not much to mention this week. I did some digging on the web and found one more company- Patriot Memory that sponsors LAN Parties and submitted our event to them so hopefully we will have one more company supporting us. Have a look at my LAN Party Sponsorship list for all of the companies we have/will apply to.

I did find out this week that yahoo hasn't indexed this blog at all. I guess yahoo has a thing against blogger after Google bought it. Right now, 60% of my traffic comes from Google searches. This site comes up for some crazy search. I should post that list one day....

I got into the SACD

2007-06-08T21:57:00.000-07:00

Well for those who haven't heard yet, I got accepted into the Masters of Architecture program at USF's School of Architecture and Community Design. I turned in my letter and signed up for classes. I had to wait almost three months to hear anything. Its nice to know that my dream is one step closer to coming true.

Weekly Update

2007-06-02T08:14:00.001-07:00

Not much LAN Party news this week. I'm still waiting to hear back from a bunch of companies and I found a few more to email to ask for sponsorships.
I had a fun week at the beach but I'm glad to be back. I can only handle so many days with my whole extended family (15 people total). At least I wasn't without internet. It just by happens that the hotel in Ormond Beach we stayed at is in the same Bright House network as our house in Orlando so we just brought our Cable modem and Wireless router with us and had our own private wifi spot all week.
Yet I couldn't go a week with out fixing someones computer, in this case my uncle's laptop (which is faster than mine). It was an easy fix and I got a free dinner out of it.
On Thursday my family built an awesome sandcastle-

Radeon Owners Get Free Valve Games

2007-05-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just in from Valve:

Valve just announced that for a limited time that all ATI owners can download a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch through Steam. The software will automatically check to see if you qualify. If you already have an ATI Video Card you download the free games here

In related news, Shacknews says:

Steam will be included with the ATI Catalyst driver and software suit until early 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT owners will, upon release, receive Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two through Valve's content delivery application.

I haven't had a chance to test any of this but it is great to see ATI and Valve working out a great deal to give out my favorite LAN party game. In my opinion, ATI's plans to bundle Steam with their drivers is good and bad. It will make it easier for new gamers to get their free games but for the rest of us, it will just bloat our drivers. I hope they made it an optional download that can be triggered from the driver installer.

I Want to host one!

2007-05-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

I've been going to LAN Parties for a while now and I want to host one, Ok? Now what?

Hosting a LAN Party is a ton of fun. Its nice to meet gamers just like and make new friends. You will learn a lot about computers, networking, marketing, people skills and more, some of which you can learn how to do in this guide.

The bad news? Hosting a LAN Party is lot of work.

If your planning a LAN Party be prepared to:

Get stressed Out
Put your own money into it.
Not make any money from it.
Work more than you play.
Deal with crazy people.

Truthfully, Its a LOT of work but for me, the rewards out way all of this. I find it fun to make new friends, help people fix their computers and see everyone else having fun. What you get out of it could be different.

Size is Everything.
A lot of what you have to do to host a LAN Party depends on the size. A small party can be quick and easy but a major event could take months of planning. They do all have somethings in common, they all need tables, chairs, extension cords, power strips and some networking equipment. If you are new at the whole LAN Party thing, I suggest you start small and slowing increase the size of your event. Below is a summery of what it take to put on each size event.

Garage LAN Party (3+)
A Garage LAN Party is one that you host in your house/apartment/dorm room for a few friends. It doesn't take much time to setup and don't require much preplanning. Guests don't expect much either. Messy cords and lack of organization are normal. Everyone is here just to hang out and have fun. The cost is minimal because nothing big has to be bought, you only need a couple of extension cords and power strips. The network is simple and is probably already in place a small switch may be the only item needed. Tables and chairs can be moved from other rooms for people to use. Food and drinks may be as simple as everyone chipping in some money to get a pizza delivered. Cost- each event: $0, one-time: $80- $150.

Small LAN Party (10+)
While bigger than a garage LAN Party, this still a small event, you'll probably have a few new people coming. You will have to do some planning before the event to get everything going and a few volunteers to help with check in. If you have a friend that can help you, you'll do even better. You will need to keep some form order to keep thing under control. You will need to have a bigger space to host this party. If your house/ apartment is small you may have to see if you can checkout a community room or the like (See the Location Guide). With more guests comes the need for more you have equipment you have to buy and setup. Table and chairs may needed to be rented to giver every one a space. Electrical circuits need to be looked at to make sure they aren't overloaded (See the Electrical Guide) . The network also needs to be setup beforehand, you need a nice table switch and a router that can handle the extra load (See the Network Guide). You need to plan food and drinks to fuel your guests gaming. Charging a small fee for this isn't unreasonable. A registration system and a wavier is a good idea to prevent any legal problems. With 10+ people, you're more like to get a sponsor that will send some free swag for you give out. (Don't expect any hardware). Cost- each event: $100, one-time: $150- $300.

Medium LAN Party (50+)
A medium size event needs to one or two dedicated people to plan and organize it and several volunteers to help at the event. Guests expect a lot from an event of this size and you need to be prepared. First you need to decided on a budget to keep costs from getting out of control. Then you need to pick a location to rent (See Location Guide) along with tables and chairs. Electrical requirements soon become your primary concern and must be calculated and if the location can't provide enough, a generator may need to be rented (See the Electrical Guid e). The network must be carefully planned in order make sure it can handle the number guests your planning for. You will need to have multiple switches, servers and other network equipment to keep the gaming going(See the Network Guide). Food and drinks need to be bought and a distribution system decided on (See Food/Drink Guide). Advertising needs to start early in order to fill all of the seats. You will need registration system and volunteers trained to run it. With so many guests you need to consider taking security measures like making sure computers are labeled with their owners information and checked in and out of the room to keep items from getting stolen. However a benefit of this many guests means more companies may be willing to sponsor your event and you may even get some hardware for prizes. Cost- each event: $300-$500, one-time: $500- $800.

Large LAN Party (100+)
A LAN Party of this size is outside of the scope of this guide and anyone in their right mind would already have the experience and know how to put one on.

A Little About Me
If you've already read the introduction to this blog you probably already know all of this. I am a student in the Masters of Architecture Program at the University of South Florida and I am a Co-chair of an Event put on by the USF he Residence Hall Association called LAN-O-THON.
I have been a fan of LAN Parties for many years but it wasn't until I got to USF did I get into organizing any. Over my last two years there, I have hosted more than 8 events ranging from 3 people all the way to 150 (however, the BYOC was only 30 seats). For our next event, I'm planning to have a BYOC of 50+ seats.

My favorite LAN party is one where I can have fun and hang out and play a few games. Do I want to play computer games for 10 hours straight- NO! I like to play a little, chat a little, help a little. I'm not fond of LAN parties where the main attraction is one big tournament where you wait for hours till its your turn to compete.

So for LAN-O-THON v4.0 I want the event first and foremost to be a fun event to hang out and have fun. I will be hosting several tournaments (to be discussed in a future article) to challenge and entertain people through out the night but it won't take over the event. There will be multiple game servers going for a variety of games. I hope with 50 people in attendance that we will be able to sustain game play on several servers all night long. I want to attract as many people as possible to attend so there has to be something for everyone.

But Don't take my word for It
I suggest you read more than just my site before running off and organizing your first event. So have a look at some of these other guides.

Toms Hardware LAN How To: Part One, Two, and Three
LANparty.com Guide (The networking part is outdated.

Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Continue on to Location, Location, Location

Weekly Update

2007-05-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

Well I've add two more articles The LAN in LAN Party and Electricity, The real LAN Party Fuel and I have more to do. I also went through and redid the all the tags on each blog entery so they fit better. On Thursday, I went through my list of companies that sponsor LAN Parties and submitted a dozen applications so hopefully well get a bunch of sponsors. Alienware already got back to me and they are going to sponsor us again.

Some of next week I will be away on vacation so I don't know how much I'll get done.

On a side note I got the chance to tour a great architecture firm today and that was a lot of fun.

The LAN in LAN Party

2007-05-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

While electricity may fuel a LAN Party, it needs one more thing- The LAN. What would a LAN Party be without its namesake? So to add this spice, here is an overview of pieces you need. Many of these items will be discussed in greater detail later.

Table Switch
For a small LAN Party this may be the only piece of networking equipment you have to buy. It splits your internet connection into enough pieces for every one at the table to have one. I recommend getting a 24 port switch with at least one gigabit uplink port. For my LAN, I use DELL 2324's. They are fairly cheap and good quality. You can also buy other brands like Netgear or D-Link. At a larger LAN Party (greater than 24 people) table switches just become a small part of the network layout. As tempting as it is, avoid switch with even more ports like 36 or 48. Trying to squeeze more computers on to one switch will create a need for longer cables and an even bigger mess. Keep in mind with a 24 port switch like mine, 24 PCs are sharing one gigabit uplink but on a switch with more ports, more computers are having to share that same uplink creating the possibility for a traffic jam.

Another consideration when buying a switch is to make sure that it is non-blocking. This means that it has the capability to switch all of the traffic it receives. While common today, some older switches don't have this feature. Sometimes the switch's description will only show the switch's switching capacity. To tell if is non-blocking, add up the bandwidth of each port and times it by 2 (for incoming and outgoing). For example- the Dell 2324 has (24 x 100 mbps) + (2 x 1000 mbps) so add this up and times it by 2 to get 8.8 gbps (8,800 mpbs) and if this equals what the stated capacity is, the switch is non-blocking.

If you are on a budget, switches this size are easy to find on eBay for good prices. I have gotten good deals on a lot of my equipment by searching eBay but always check to make sure you only buy from reputable sellers.

Core Switch
At a large LAN Party, you may have several table switches and they all have to be linked together. This is where the core switch comes in to place. The core switch becomes the central component of the network that all the other devices connect to. It is best for this switch to be full gigabit for maximum network speeds and super low pings. In the past, I have used a DELL 2708. I originally picked it because it was the cheapest gigabit switch I could find that offered some management capabilities. I also got this one off of eBay. It has worked well but It's 8 ports are becoming limiting as I have more game servers and table switches to connect to it. For LAN-O-THON v4.0, I'm watching eBay for a used 16 or 24 managed gigabit switch and my 2708 will become a server switch.

Server Switch
This switch isn't necessary unless you are having a large LAN Party you have more dedicated servers and table switches than have ports on your core switch or there may not be enough space near the core switch to place the dedicated servers. The server switch then becomes a offshoot of the core switch, kinda like a table switch but for the servers. It should be full gigabit like the core switch to prevent network latency (high pings).

Router
Often the only internet connection available only supports one computer (like a dsl or cable modem) and you need to intelligently split the internet connection into multiple ports while appearing to be only one machine. This device is commonly called a Router but it is made up of several parts, the NAT, the Firewall, and the DHCP server. The DHCP server assigns each computer on the network its own IP address to use. This help people automatically connect to the network when they plug computer in so no manual configuration needed. The NAT merges the data from all of these unique address into the single address the router uses to connect to the internet. The firewall sits between these two parts filtering the data to provide network security by preventing unauthorized machines from gaining access.
For a small LAN Party (10 or less seats) a household router that you may already have around will work fine. For events in my dorm room, I use a Netgear WG614 but once you add more seats, a more industrial solution is needed.
For my big events I use an old PC running pfSense. pfSense is a highly optimized FreeBSD distro for creating a dedicated router. It can handle 200mbps+ and has a ton of features. The old PC I run it on is 700mhz Celeron with a 256mb of RAM and 2 Intel gigabit network cards and this is more than enough computing power for most events. pfSense s easy to install and setup and I'll create a Install guide in the future.

Cables- The Last Link
To connect all of your network together- your routers, switches, servers and guest's PCs, you use cat5e cable. You can buy this cable ready made or you can buy a roll and make the cables yourself. For a large event, this is often much cheaper and allows you to create just the length cables you need, reducing the tangles of wires on the tables.

There are two main types of Cat5e cable: stranded and solid . Stranded cable has conductors (the individual wires in a cat5e cable) that are made up of multiple thin copper wires. This creates a very flexible cable great for linking your guests computers to the table switches. They typical have ticker jackets making them able to withstand a lot of handling however, the down side is that data can degrade over runs of cable over 50 feet long. This where solid cat5 comes in. Solid cat5's conductors are made up of a single, thicker piece of copper. It is good for making long runs of cable like between your table switches and core switches because data doesn't degrade as it travels over it but is less flexible.

Cat5e's outer coating also comes in several different types: PVC, Plenum and LC (Low Combustion). PVC is the standard and cheapest and what you're probably going to want to buy. The other 2, Plenum and LC are designed for office buildings and data centers where building codes specify their use to prevent fires from spreading when cables are hidden in walls and traveling between floors. These two types of cable both melt instead of burn when exposed to an open flame, while they are safer, they cost 2 to 3 time more and for a temporary event like a LAN Party where all of the cable is exposed it's overkill.

LAN Cables are easy to make. See my guide How to: Make a LAN Cable for step by step instructions.

If your look to buy Cat5e cable on the internet I recommend a site called Deep Surplus. They sell a variety of network related products at great prices. I have bought many items from them and they are fantastic plus every order includes a free bag of candy. Sweet!

Optional Elements

Web Server
Having a dedicated webserver is almost required for a large LAN Party. Running great software like ALP (the Autonomous LAN Party, free) allows you to organize your LAN Party, run tournaments, schedule events, jukebox and more. I also use the computer as a file server for hosting critical game patches and custom maps. For my server, again I use an old PC, this time its a 733mhz PIII with 512mb of ram running FreeBSD but you could you any flavor of Linux or even Windows. My magic 8 ball sees another guide in the future.

Game Servers
Any size LAN Party can benefit from running dedicate game servers. A dedicated box is more stable and easier to fix when something goes wrong. I tend to just borrow a friends computer (who isn't a gamer) to use at the event (just be careful not to cause any ill harm). For my favorite Valve games like CounterStrike: Source and Half-life 2: Deathmatch you can use Valve's free Source Dedicated Server. It is easy to install and setup and runs on Linux and Windows. A guide for getting this setup is planned too.

How it all goes together
Have a look at this diagram....

It basically goes like this Router-> Core switch->table switches. Once you get all of your cables run, like extension cords, it is a good idea to tape these cables down to the floor with blue painters tape for safety. When possible, it is a good idea to keep electrical and data cords 12 inches away from each other to prevent interference. If the have to cross make sure they are a 90 degree angles. Have a look at the picture right to see my setup.

Have a question? Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Electricity, The Real LAN Party Fuel

2007-05-24T18:21:00.000-07:00

What makes a LAN Party happen? Electricity. If gamers can't power their rigs, they can't frag and when their not fraging, they're not having fun. This means that without it, your party is going to miserably fail.

At most LAN Parties getting enough electricity is a challenge and at our event it's no different. For a small event you may have to run extension cords from surrounding rooms to have enough electricity. Even if your location says it has enough power, you may still have to rent power converting equipment in order to use it. Another option for a large event is to rent a generator to provide the necessary power. If you're using local power, make sure you have access to the circuit breaker panel for the space so you can verify that you have enough electricity and reset any breakers if you do trip one at your event. For most small LAN Parties, the only equipment you have to buy are extension cords and power strips.

How much electricity do I need?
At a LAN Party, it is optimal to provide 3 to 4 amps (A) of electricity for each computer. Even though some desktops have 500 watt power supplies, they don't come close to using it. Most computers don't use as much electricity as they think. My very high end Desktop rig with a 650 watt power supply only draws 300 watts (or about 3A) so planning for 4A is more than enough. Use this numbers to calculate how many amps total you need power everyone's computers. Most household circuits are either 15A or 20A, so doing the math a 15A circuit can support about 4 desktops and a 20A circuit can support 5 or 6. At our event, since we have so many laptop users, we take this in to account when planning our power setup so we can minimize the number of extension cords we have to buy. An average laptop uses around 100 watts or about 1A of electricity so on our 20A circuits, we seat 2 laptops and 2 desktops to a power strip & extension cord to maximize the number of computers we can power. It would be better if we had only 6 computers (3 desktops & 3 laptops) on a circuit but in our location is short on electricty. You're probably going to have to run extension cords from other rooms in order to supply enough juice.

The Electrical Panel
The first step is to find out which outlets are on each circuit. This is really easy to do. Look around the space you are using and note where all of the outlets are. Plug a lamp into one of the outlets. Goto the electrical panel and look around to see if the circuit breakers are labeled and find the ones most likely to be for the outlets you noted. Flip the switches on the breakers, off and on, one by one until your lamp turns off. (see the diagram left for reference) Check the surrounding outlets and mark all of the outlets that no longer have electricity. All of these outlets are on the same circuit. Back at the panel, look and see how many amps the circuit breaker is rated and write this down. (see picture right) and turn the breaker back on. Continue this until you find all of the circuit breakers for all of the outlets you want to use.

The last thing you have to take into account is the total amount of electricity coming into your building. To find this, look for a number like 150A, 200A, 300A, etc stamped in white on the larger breaker at the top center of your electrical panel (the one for the panel in the picture above is in an adjacent box). This is the total amount of electricity you have to work with. Often the sum of the amps little breakers below the the large one will be greater because under normal conditions, none of the breakers work at their max. Add up the sum of the amps of the breakers you are going to be using. For example : LAN (3 x 15A) + LAN (2 x 20 A) + AC 50A etc for a grand total. If this value exceeds the total amount you are going to have, you are going to have to either reduce the number guest you invite, move to your party to a venue with more power or rent a generator. For reference, a 20A circuit can theoretically carry 2400 watts of electricity (calculated by using watts = amps*volts) but most will trip when they reach around 80% load (about 16A or 1920 watts). Proportionally, a 15A circuit can theoretically carry 1900 watts but typically can only carry 12A or 1440 watts.

Extension Cords
Almost always the outlets you want to use are out of reach of the power strips so you have to use extension cords to bridge the gab but you have to take into account is the number of amps that a power strip and extension cords can carry. 20 amp power cords and power strips are expensive so we split them over 2 separate power strips and extension cords carrying 10 amps each. As the length of the cords get longer, the less energy they can carry. A 25ft cords can handle about 14 amps but a 50ft cords may only handle 12 amps and as you can in the picture left, if you use even longer cord, the number of amps drops even more. So before you go out shopping get an idea of how long your extension cords need to be when you are out purchasing them. Usually you will need to buy 2 extension cords for every 5 computers your hosting.

Power Strips
On the tables, power strips divide the electricity from the extension cords giving every guest a single outlet that they can plug their own surge protector into. To prevent overloading, I assign each seat an outlet and tape over any extra. When you're shopping for power strips note that there is a difference between a power strip and a surge protector. A power strip doesn't provide any sort of protection from surges. Power strips are a cheaper alternative especially when guests will be bringing their own surge protectors. Make sure you tell your guests to bring a surge protector. Again, usually you will need to buy 2 for every 5 computers you're hosting.

Hooking It All Up
Only run as many extension cords as needed. If you have to run more then two cords on a single circuit, make sure you tape off all but the outlets you're going to use to make sure the circuit as a whole won't be overloaded. When running the cords, try to keep the runs as short as possible and leave any extra cord loose to prevent heat from building up and becoming a fire hazard. For safety, tape down all of the cables to the floor using blue tape because it is easy to remove after your party.

Prevent Overloads
Overloading is the most serous danger to a LAN Party as it not only could it cause a lot of cause a loss of power but it could also cause a fire. While you're at your electrical panel, turn off any circuits you're not using like your oven and cloths dryer so aunt Lulu can't crash your party by doing her laundry.
You should also set some rules beforehand like no UPS's (uninterrupted power supplies), speakers, mini fridges, microwaves and other nonessential items. UPS's while helpful, waste electricity and when you are on a tight electrical budget, these can tip the balance. After the event starts, periodically scan the tables for problems and if necessary, nicely explain why they have to disconnect their hairdryer from their surge protector.

Summary
Here is a quick review...

Circuit 1 is an example of what we use at our LAN-O-THON events. We have 2 desktops and 2 laptops on each of the 2 extension cords we have plugged into a 20 amp circuit.

Circuit 2 is an example of using more than 2 extension cords on a circuit but the circuit as a whole is not overload since it is only powering 12A worth of computers.

Circuit 3 is an example of the optimal setup for an event where guests bring mostly desktops. Five computers are divided over 2 extention cords pluged into a 20A circuit.

Circuit 4 is full of problems. With 7 computers on a 15A circuit it's at almost double its rated capacity and the circuit breaker is going to trip. Also having 16 amps on a single extension cord is a accident waiting to happen because when a cord is overload, it heats up and could start a fire. on a side note the extra outlets on the power strips aren't taped over, so someone could plug another computer in and make the situation even worse.

If Something Goes Wrong.
While loosing power is a major interruption to your event, it can and will happen and you better be prepared. If power does go out, first calm everyone down and announce you're going to try to fix it as quickly as possible and to stop the moaning, you can provide some sort of alternative like a poker game.

Anytime the power goes out, before anything else, unplug all of the computers that lost power. When the electricity comes back one you don't want a power surge to ruin any of your guests' computers.

If the entire building looses power, first check to see if the surrounding area's also lost power. If they did, the good news is that it is probably not your fault but the bad news is you're at the mercy of the power company. If your neighbors still have power, most likely you just blew your primary circuit breaker. Find your main circuit breaker box and see if the big main breaker at the top center of the box has tripped (usually a red, yellow or orange stripe will be visible on the breaker that wasn't before. You did look at the breaker box before your event right?). If it tripped, you don't have enough electricity coming into your building or house to power everything. You're going to have to unplug some things before flipping the breaker back on or it's just going to happen again.

Most commonly though, just a few computers will loose power.

First check to see if other computers on the same circuit are still on. If they are, check to see if the affect guests are all using the same power strip. If not, skip to my next idea. If they are, check to make sure the power strip is turned on and it's fuse didn't blow (may sound stupid but it happens). Then check the outlet that's suppose to be powering it. If it still has power flowing to it, check the extension cords to make sure they are all properly connected and if you still haven't found the problem, try swapping them to see if that solves the problem.

If the blackout is affecting multiple power strips and they are all on the same circuit, check the electrical panel for a tripped breaker (again look for a red, yellow or orange stripe that wasn't there before). If this is true, move some of the computers to a different circuit that's not being used and then flip the switch on the breaker to turn the power back on.

Anything not fixed by the above is harder to trace and could be a compound problem. Treat everything as if it wasn't related to any of the other power problems. Check the breaker box and if everything looks normal, continue to checking all of the power strips and extension cords.
Try connecting the extension cords to outlets on circuits you haven't tapped yet and see if that solves the problem. If you can't find the problem, you may have suck it up and end your event early and call a certified electrician out to fix the problem.

Have a question? Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Continue on to The LAN in LAN Party

Network Diagram

2007-05-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

For those curious about this years network set up for LAN-O-THON, here is a network diagram. The diagram doesn't include any additional servers I may build or borrow for the event.

Weekly Update

2007-05-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Well this is something new. I'm going to try and give weekly summary of how I'm wasting my summer and how thing are going for LAN-O-THON.

I've spent the last week making LAN Cables. I made two more bundles of 12 so now I have enough for LAN-O-THON v4.0. I took some pictures of my methods and I'll post them when I get some time. I also have two more articles almost done- electricity and networking. This week we also got our first confirmed sponsor CPU Magazine. They are going to send us 50 copies of their magazine for us to hand out at the event.

Sponsorships

2007-05-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have started getting several offers for sponsorship which is fantastic. More sponsors will help us make this event even better.

If your company is interested in sponsoring our event LAN-O-THON v4.0, we have plenty of sponsorship opportunities:

You can sponsor a Game Tournament by providing prizes.
You can sponsor a Raffle by providing prizes.
You can sponsor a "Stupid LAN Party Game" like a scavenger hunt by providing prizes.
You can sponsor a game server by providing use money to build a server (about $250), or ship us one that we can return if needed after the event.

In exchange for the above:

We can hang promotional posters you provide on the walls at the event.
We can stuff promotional materials you provide in gift bags we hand out at the door
We can put a text or banner ad for your company on our following websites:

The event site: http://lan.mcdportal.com
Facebook Event for LAN-O-THON: http://usf.facebook.com/event.php?eid=2245372250 (access is limited to only USF Students. A copy of the page can be provided for verification)

We can put your company name/logo on print ads

Small ads hung on every dorm door: text only
Large ads, 2 to 3 on every dorm floor: text/logo (please provide a black and white copy of the logo want us to use)

Other

We can list your company as a sponsor on any other marketing we do such as mass campus emails, etc.

If we print Staff T-Shirts, your companies logo can be on it.
We are open to other ideas too if you have one.

After the event, we can provide photos of the event for marketing and verification purposes. All of the guests will have signed a photo wavier of which a copy can be provided if needed. Please specify an email address to send these to.

Any promotional materials and giveaways need to arrive by September 28th unless other arrangements are made to guarantee any of the above you choose. We also need a letter or statement giving us permission to use and reprint any trademarked names and logos so our ads don't get held up at the printers.

Also I will try to get someone from our school newspaper, The Oracle, to stop by for the event.

Interested? Email me at lanothon AT mcdportal D.O.T com

New TF2 Movie - Heavy

2007-05-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

Valve just released a funny new Team Fortress 2 Video highlighting the "Heavy" class. It shows off Valve's new facial animation system. The video reminds me of the intro to the Incredibles.

[Read More] (steampowered.com)

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[Download] (Fileshack)
[Download] (steampowered.com)

My Birthday list

2007-05-12T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well here you have my 2007 birthday list.

From Ebay

I want 2 of these Light stands (this item expires soon so do a search for new listing by this same person)

A Dell 5224 or the newer 5324 Switch. a price under $200 including shipping is a good deal

A Netgear WG302 Wireless Access Point a price under $80 including shipping is good deal.

From Newegg.com

A Western Digital WD4000AAKS Hard drive

An ICY DOCK MB454SPF-B Mulit-Bay Backplane Module

From Thinkgeek.com

LAN Party T-Shirt Size Medium

Caffeine Molecule T-shirt Size Medium

From Amazon.com

Strobe LightsI would like to have 4 of these

Kill-a-watt

NCIS Season 2

Location, Location, Location

2007-05-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Where am I going to host this thing? This was the first question I asked when I started planning LAN Parties. Was going to host it in my dorm room, a community room or do I need to rent a space. Luckily at my university I have access to a variety of spaces for free. So for me picking location depends on how many people I'm Inviting. If is just my roommate and a friend or two, I'm lazy and throw it together

The old saying for businesses is true for LAN Parties too, location can be everything. Your target audience should determine your location. Is your event city wide or is it a regional event or in my case a small on campus event. The best location is one that is in a centralized area with easy access for guests. For a big event this would be a place on a major road with plenty of parking or in my case a central place on campus. The more popular your LAN Party becomes it becomes a a less important, space and electricity soon become more important and guests are willing to travel further for a bigger event. As the LAN-O-THON event has grown we have had to exchange the most central location I could get with one that had more space and electricity.

We moved the event from Holly J (HAJ on the map) to Cypress E (RCE) so our event could grow bigger which was a necessary sacrifice.

Noise
Noise is another concern with the music cranked up and gamers yelling at insults at each other you need a location that won't annoy nearby people the last thing you want is your neighbors knocking on your door or worse the police knocking on your door telling you to turn it down.

Parking
LAN Party guest have to carry lots of heavy computer stuff into the event so it is a good idea to make sure you have enough parking nearby or have a nice unloading zone so guests don't have to walk to far.

Other
Some more things to consider when choosing a location are space, electricity and cost. These aspects will be discussed in future article.

Have a question? Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Continue on to Electricity, The Real LAN Party Fuel

What is a LAN Party?

2007-05-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

A LAN Party is an event where people come to network their computers together to play computer games against each other. If you're not a gamer, it probably sounds crazy that people pack up their big expensive computer and bring them to a party but events like this take place all over the world.

The most common format is a BYOC or Bring Your Own Computer. For a BYOC, each guest brings their own personal computer to the event to play on. A LAN party can also be many things....

A Nerd Gathering
Just one game genre like FPS or RTS
A computer game tournament
Have console games
A place to show off your case mod
A place to have fun and hang out and make new friends

A LAN Party can vary in size from a just a few friends in a dorm room to several thousand.

The thrill of the Kill
When you play PC games over the internet at home, you have no idea who you are playing against. You can't yell at them and you can't see their face after you pwn them in round of deathmatch. With team games at home you have to use voice chat or type commands but at a LAN Party, all your teammates are sitting next to you and can hear you yell look out win you spot a sniper. The only downside is you can quickly tell who doesn't where deodorant.

No LAG
When you play at home, you could be thousands of miles away from the game server and other other gamers and it takes time for data to travel to travel between all of these computers. While it may only take milliseconds from the time you pull your virtual trigger for the game to register a hit, this delay called lag could be enough time for your opponent to move out of the way or fire back and if their data reaches the server first, They may get the point instead of you. At a LAN Party, lag is no longer a concern because every one you're playing against are only feet away instead of hundreds of miles. In most multi player PC games, lag is measured in milliseconds by by calculating the time it takes for data packets to get from your computer to the game server and back. Games server browsers will list this value as a servers "ping" or "Latency" so you can to find a server that is close to you to reduce the amount of lag you will experience. Playing at home, often a good ping is one that is less than 60ms but at a LAN Party with a decent network, it's common to have a ping that is less than 5ms. So when your in the last round of a Counter-Strike match, that fantastic shot hits instantaneously, preventing your arch enemy from firing back, leading your way to a victory.

So Where Do I find These Awesome Events Called LAN Parties?
There are many places to look on the web. Have a look at this list:

You can also ask around at your school, university or local gaming center because often you can find a nice small event that may not be advertised on the web. Before you pack your backs to go have fun, have a look at our LAN Party Checklist to make sure you packed everything you'll need.

If you can't find a LAN Party near you, you should consider starting your own. It's not that hard and our next guide is all about.

Did I leave something out? That's what the comment box is for.

Continue on to I Want to Host One!

My favorite LAN Party Game

2007-04-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

If you look at the pictures of my past events, it is easy to tell what my favorite game is: Half-life 2: Deathmatch.

The game is cheap to buy on Steam (it is only $9.99) and its also available as part of Valve's Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts if you wish to provide the game free at your event. It is relatively easy to learn and the gaming action is non stop. If you die, you respawn in a couple of seconds rather than have to wait till the next round starts like in Counter-Strike. It is great fun to yell at the person who just threw a radiator at you only to return the favor a few seconds later. It can get to be very competitive as the final seconds of the round approach and there is a three way tie going on only to be broken by the guy sitting next to you. For veterans, there are plenty of great community maps to play on. My only grip is that the game doesn't have any bots for n00bs to play against or fill servers with when there is only one player is on the server. This game has been the center of most of my LAN Parties because of the number of people who enjoy playing it. You can't beet the fun of creaming the next to with a toilet or making someone fly with the RPG.

Over all this is the one game I will always host at my events.

Secondary LAN Party Games

2007-04-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

There is more to a LAN Party than just games. Thats where this list of crazy games comes in to play. These games may also be known as Stupid LAN Party games or Take-a-break-from-your-computer Games. They give gamers a reason to get up from their 20 hour game-a-thon and take a break to rest their eyes and stretch their legs and have a little fun doing something else.

I have complied a list of these games from other LAN Parties...

Poetry Contest (Stompfest) Write a poem about Gaming, the LAN Party or Computers. The best one wins
Stupid Human Tricks (Stompfest) Whoever can do the coolest trick like bend their fingers or fold them self into a pretzel wins.
Talent show (PDX LAN 4.05 ) Gamers show off there singing, musical abilities, impersonations and more.
Find Your Shoes in the Pile (ATI Revolution) Everyone tosses their shoes into a pile and the first person to find and get their shoes on and tied first wins.
Pimp My PC Case (ATI Revolution, LPANE Nor'Easter) Who ever has the ugliest computer case wins a new case and the old one is smashed.
Scrap my PC (ATI Revolution, LPANE Nor'Easter) Who ever has the oldest crappiest computer wins a brand new machine if they are willing to smash their old one to bits (save the hard drive first)
Scavenger Hunt (ATI Revolution) Gamers get a list of items they have to find and the first team to bring all the items to the admin wins.
Sword Fight (ATI Revolution) Gamers battle it out with foam swords in a real life deathmatch.
Mod Contest (PDX LAN 4.05, LanPartyNW, AsylumLAN) The best case mod Wins! Can be split in to Best Custom Case, Best Modified Case and Neatest Case.
Jeopardy (PDX LAN 4.05) Best contestant wins.
Hardware Shuffleboard (PDX LAN 4.05) Can be played with defective hard drives, graphics cards and other hardware.
Video Contest (PDX LAN 4.05) Gamers make videos showcasing the LAN Party.
Drink Chugging (Iron Storm 3)
Surprise Karaoke (Iron Storm 3) Nothing like nerds singing.
Run around the building (Iron Storm 3) Have the participants do it in their skivvies in freezing weather for an added challenge.
Who can hold their Breath the longest (Iron Storm 3) Do it with ice water for bright red faces.
Dare Contest (Quakecon 2005) Contestants perform crazy stunts trying to out do each other.
Head Shaving (Quakecon 2005) Would you do it to win?
Poker (LanPartyNW) Texas Hold'em
Keyboard Assembly (AsylumLAN) Who can put all the keys on a keyboard back on in the correct order the fastest.
Lets make a deal (MultiMayhem) Contestants can second guess them self for a better prize or for a piece of crap.
Eating Contest (ATI EverLAN) Whether it is Peeps or Jalapeños Seeing people eat crap is fun.
Bridge It! (PDX LAN) A real life version of the computer game to build the strongest bridge out using popsicle sticks and glue.

I'm still finding more ideas. If you have one, post it in the comments and if I like it, I will add it to the list.

Advertising your LAN on the Web

2007-04-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

There are several website on the web were you can advertise your LAN Party for free.
Some of these sites are

You'll find LAN-O-THON posted on all of them.

Top Half-life 2: Deathmatch Maps

2007-04-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

I've gone through 200 maps and I've looked them over and scored them. I didn't follow a rubric but the ones I scored high tended to be unique, fit in with the half-life universe and be fun to play on.

The whole list is posted in a Google spreadsheet- original copy and an editable one. Feel free to add your ratings to the discussion panel and I will add them to the chart or I may even invite you to collaborate with me on it.

Eventually I will release a map pack with all of my favorite maps.

Cool Color Tools

2007-04-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

When I was working on the skin for this blog, I found some cool color tools...

Colorjack Studio an interactive color picker
this one generates a color scheme form a picture but i didn't like what it came up with 1 & 2
this one finds related colors

btw. an even better skin is in the works.

It's Done

2007-03-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

Ok It's Done! I finished the new skin. Look it over and give me some feedback. I think it looks a little flat but I'm gonna work on that....

Pardon the Dust

2007-03-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm rebuilding the blog template so it's going to look like crap while I work out the bugs

All About the Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts

2007-03-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

At our past LAN Party, RHA LAN-O-THON v3.5, we decided to purchase Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts from Valve for our LAN party to solve the age old LAN Party problem of not everyone owning the games that are being played. Buying the Temporary Accounts enabled us to give a copy of Counter-Strike: Source, Half-life 2:Deathmatch, Day of Defeat: Source and the back catalog versions to everyone who didn't own them and wanted to play with everybody else.

After reading on Valve site that they offer Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts for LAN Parties, I searched the web for others peoples experiences with them but I googled and couldn't find any information or reviews on how they worked. So now I am contributing my experiences on the process for those who are interested.

Overall the process went smoothly. Valve was fantastic to deal with. Basically after filling out the form on Valve's website, someone from Valve was assigned to my request and once he approved it he sent me the form to pay. A few days before my event they sent me a list with all of the user accounts and passwords for me to check and go over. All of them worked fine so I printed the accounts out on 3x5 cards to hand out to my LAN PArty Guests that didn't own the games.

The full walk through:

The first step is to fill out the Limited Game Tournament License Agreement Signup Form. This form is required anytime you want to have a LAN Party where Valve games are going to be played. Once your application is accepted, it grants you permission to play Valve's games in tournaments and to promote that you are playing Valve's games in any advertisements for your event.

If you are interested in purchasing any Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts, you indicate it at the bottom of the Signup Form and Valve will email you a form to fill out. The Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts cost $2 a day, per account(minimum 2 days and 25 accounts for minimum cost of $100).

After submitting the signup form, Valve sends you an automatic email to confirm your email address.

The link in this email will authenticate your email address.  Clicking on the link below will allow your tournament data to be reviewed by Valve, after which it will be approved and displayed on the Events Calendar, if you have requested this.

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/?eak=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

*** This email is not confirmation that you have been granted a limited tournament license. ***

Thank you!
Valve Tournament Coordinator

Then a couple of days later I got an email from one of Valve's Cyber Cafe Staff with a few additional questions to answer.

Hello XXXXXX,

Thank you for submitting your tournament for approval.

Would you please reply with your answer to these questions:

Q: Are you charging your players on an ongoing basis?

Q: Are you awarding prizes to your players on an ongoing basis?

Q: If you are awarding prizes, do they come from outside sponsors or does that come from the pool of entry fees you charge the players?

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

Arsenio

Valve Cyber Cafe Team

I quickly replied with the answers. The next day I received the Tournament License.

Thank you for submitting your application for a Valve Limited Game Tournament License.  Your reference number is XXXX-XXX. This email serves as confirmation that your event has been approved, and is now displayed on our Tournament Calendar (if you've requested this).

http://www.steampowered.com/?area=tourney_calendar

You have indicated that you are planning to purchase temporary tournament subscriptions.  If you would like to do this now, go to the following link:

http://www.steampowered.com/?area=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you would like to offer Valve posters, t-shirts, etc., at your tournament, please visit the Valve Store:

http://store.valvesoftware.com/

Good luck with your tournament!
Valve Tournament Coordinator

Shortly after I received another email from Arsenio. Nothing like great customer service.

Hello XXXXXXX,

I have approved your tournament.

You had indicated on the tournament sign up form that you would be interested in purchasing temporary tournament accounts.  Temporary tournament accounts cost $2 USD per day.  I have attached a one-time credit card authorization form.  Please complete the form and email or fax it back to our office.

Can you please take a few minutes to provide some background information about your organization / your role in your organization, why you are having the tournament etc.?

Thanks,

Arsenio

So now I had a question for Valve. What was the best way to get the Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts: Fill out the page they linked to in the first email or the form that Arsenio attached in his email? So I emailed Arsenio and he quickly replied:

The link is better.

Thanks,

Arsenio

So I filled out the online form, It was simple enough, all they wanted was my name, address, credit card number and number of accounts I wanted. The next day I got my confirmation email.

Thank you for submitting your credit card information to purchase Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts for your upcoming event.

We will charge your credit card and email you a sales receipt along with the temporary account names and an installation link to download Steam at least 5 days prior to your event so you may have time to set up the software and ensure everything is running smoothly.

We require at least 5 business days before the tournament begins to complete the tournament approval/credit card charging process.  If you are submitting your information less than 5 business days before the tournament begins, we will make every effort to accommodate your request. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.

Best Regards,

Valve Tournament Coordinator

After about 2 days I got another Email. Arsenio was really on top of things.

Hello XXXXXXX,

Thank you for the feedback.

Please let me know when you enter your information for the temporary tournament accounts so that I can expedite the processing.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

Arsenio
Valve Cyber Cafe Team

I replied that I had already filled out the online form and I quickly got a reply.

Hello XXXXXXX,

Unfortunately, there was no credit card information included.

I am attaching a non-recurring credit card authorization form.

Would you please complete the form and fax or email it back to our office?

How many accounts will you need?

What are the beginning and end dates that you will need the accounts?

Thanks,

Arsenio

Unfortunately something with their web form didn't work right So I filled out the form he attached and all was good! A day or two later I got a bunch of emails confirming my Purchase. First I got my Receipt (it was attached as a PDF File)

Please open the attached file to view your Sales Receipt.

To view the attachment, you first need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have it yet, visit Adobe's Web site http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html to download it.

Dear Cafe,

We received your new credit card information and processed your credit card payment successfully.  You were emailed a Sales Receipt as confirmation of this payment.

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,

The Valve Cafe Team

And finally A personalized email from Jennifer, another Valve Cyber Cafe Staff Member who was the person who was going to be setting up the accounts for me.

Hello XXXXXXX,

My name is Jennifer and I work with Arsenio.  I will be setting up your tournament.  I have processed your payment and have the accounts ready to go on the 20th for your 23 and 24th dates.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Jennifer
Valve Cyber Cafe Team

It sounded like everything was good to go and sure enough on the 20th I got an automatic email with list of all of the accounts.

Hello, XXXXXXX. We just charged your card for your temporary Steam tournament accounts for your tournament on *Feb. 23 & 24*. You should receive a sales receipt by email in just a few minutes.

We have issued you *25 *valid Temporary Steam Tournament Logins and Passwords. Each login may be used to access a single Steam Account, which may be used on a single computer station (Seat) at your tournament location. We recommend you test these accounts as soon as you receive them to make sure everything is running smoothly prior to your event. We will disable these accounts after the conclusion of your tournament.

You may use the software programs Valve provides subject to the terms of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. The Steam Subscriber Agreement may be amended from time to time by Valve, and the most recent version may be found at http://www.steampowered.com/?area=subscriber_agreement.

By purchasing these Accounts, you acknowledge and agree to the terms of the Agreements.
__
Steam Account Logins:XXXXXXXXXXXX1 - XXXXXXXXXXXX25

Steam Accounts Contact Email: XXXXXXXXXX@XXXXX.com

Steam Accounts Password: XXXXXXXXXX

We recommend that you change your password as soon as possible.

If you do not have Steam already installed on your computers, please follow the installation instructions below:
__

Steam Installation Instructions

-Download the Steam Installer from our website: http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=getsteamnow and follow the instructions.

-When you reach the 'Create New Account' or 'Login to Existing Account' screen, enter the Account Name and Password we have provided above.

-Check 'Remember My Password'. This will automatically login each new customer into Steam without prompting them to enter a password (which prevents your passwords/accounts from being stolen).

-Click Login

-Time Saving Tip: When your first machine is 100% updated and the system has logged in, go to the « My Games » tab and choose the games you wish to install immediately by double clicking on that specific game. This will begin the download process. Once all the games are « 100% - ready » you can create a back-up disk for install the software on another system by right clicking on one of the game and choosing « Back-up game files

Good luck with your tournament!

Valve Tournament Coordinator

That email was followed by an email form Jennifer confirming that I got the account information.

Hello Matthew,

I have enabled your accounts for your tournament.  Please let me know if you have any problems accessing your accounts.

Jennifer
Valve Cyber Cafe Team

After I got the accounts I created an Excel spreadsheet with each of the accounts and a random password. Then I logged into each one and changed the password to new one. I found that one of the accounts had been VAC Banned and Jennifer was kind enough to quickly correct this by sending me another account

Hello XXXXXXX,

Go ahead and use account XXXXXXXXXXXX26.  Please let me know if you have any further problems.

Jennifer
Valve Cyber Cafe Team

I printed out the accounts on address labels and stuck them on 3x5 cards to hand out to the people who needed a copy of the games. Everything worked out great. We had full game servers all night and had several nice tournaments.

Overall, the process went smoothly. Everyone I came into contact with over at Valve was great and replied quickly to any questions I had. For LAN-O-THON v4.0, We plan on getting the Temporary Accounts again. Thanks Valve!

Cat5e Wiring

2007-03-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

For those who are like me and can't remember the order of wires in a standard ethernet cable, I made this simple diagram (according to the common T568B spec).

Steam Error

2007-03-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

Having problems with a strange bug in one of valves games? try running the Steam diagnostics tool and see if it finds any problems

Update:

One of the most common it reports is that your version of Directx is out of date. This easily fixed by downloading and installing the latest version. Directx is often updated monthly and is not always part of Microsoft's auto updates.

The other common problem is outdated graphics drivers. For desktops, this is easy to fix but laptops take a little bit more work. For desktops just visit the website of the brand graphics card you have such as nVidia, ATI, or Intel. For laptops you must visit the website of the manufacturer of your laptop. The common ones are Dell, Hp & Compaq, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, Acer, Alienware. Hopefully this list will save you some time searching.

Please report any bad links and I will update my list.

The Counter-Strike 1.6 Ads Debate

2007-03-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

As many know, in this weeks Steam update, in game advertisements were taken out of beta and added to Counter-Strike 1.6. This has launched a long debate about in game advertising. For those who haven't played recently, I took a couple of screen shots detailing the ads. Wall ads were added to de_dust, de_dust2 and de_aztec and ads were also added to the spectator view and on the scoreboard.

Wall Ads-

Spectator and scoreboard ads-

As you probably could predict, this has caused huge uproar in the CS community. There is a massive thread in the Steam forums on the subject. We first heard about ads coming to 1.6 a while back and the plans were detailed in an interview by CS-Nation with Doug Lombardi and ever since, the number of hurt feelings has been growing. Users are feeling neglected and alienated by a company growing more greedy. Below I've summarized the debate.

The arguments against the ads are:

Ads should only be in free games.
Valve shouldn't be allowed to put ads in after the fact. (ie. people knew when before they bought BF2142 that it would have in game ads)
Ads interfere with game play
Ads don't fit in.
Ads take away from tournaments and may show ads that conflict with the tournaments sponsors.
Server admins have no control over the ads.

Some of the arguments for are:

Valve can do whatever the !@#$% they want.
People buy a license to play the game, not an actual copy of the game. Valve can change what every they want.
Valve doesn't charge for the server software. Advertising helps recoup the cost of development.
This game is old and valve would like people to buy the newer Source version.
In everyday life there are ads on stuff we pay for like on the subway ride to work, cereal boxes, DVD's etc.

My thoughts:

Valve has the right to do what ever they want to the game but I think it is wrong on their end to make such a major change to game after it is has already been accepted by the community.
It was reckless on their part to release this on their most played game. Valve should have choosen a different game to test ads with.
Valve should give users something in exchange for putting in the ads, such as...

Lowering the price of the game. Knocking a dollar off the price of all of the packages that include CS 1.6 would nice move.
Fix some of the bugs. There has been only one update to the game in the last year. If people saw the revenue from the ads improving the game, they might stop complaining. There is a whole list of bugs that need to be fixed.

Server owners should get a cut of the ad revenue. Its their servers' that are running the ads. Run it like the way Google runs Adsense on Blogspot. Ads should be optional and allow the server admins to enable them on their servers if they would like to make a little spare change. Both parties win.
Valve needs to make the ads fit in better. The current ads are at least double the resolution of the map textures. Reduce the quality of the ads or give the community a nice texture update. Add some wear and tear to the wall ads like some dirt, pealing corners, rips and stains. In other environments, change existing textures like on the vending machines and crates. The Spectator and scoreboard ads should be semi transparent so you can see through them.
Even if I think it was bad choice to test ads on CS 1.6 ad least they were modest in the number of ads with about three or four per map. (Thank god they didn't do this)
As the Server Admin at the RHA LAN-O-THON, I want the right to decide if there are ads on my server. If Valve won't give me the ability to remove the ads at least give me the ability to choose the ads that do appear. At a LAN Party, if I have to show ads, I would rather have it only show valve's own ads and not an Intel or a Shampoo ad.

Valve is losing many customers over this but the million dollar question is will they loose enough customers to make them take the time and rethink the damage they have caused. I can only hope that they think carefully before integrating ads into any of their other existing games. Will people keep playing valve games? Yes! But will the community ever recover? Only time can tell.

Followup
In a recent interview, Gabe Newell (main dude at Valve) answered a few questions related my rant.
You mentioned the need to experiment - something that's been announced in the last week is in-game advertising in Counter-Strike. Why did you choose to do that now? I read an open letter from a server admin who made the point that he's hosting the game, so why shouldn't he expect a cut?

Well we're looking at a variety of ways of funding these development projects and it probably benefits us less than other kinds of developers. We're very successful with the retail model of large-scale projects; we could have just kept turning the crank on that. I think where advertising-supported projects will be interesting is the degree to which it continues, you know the same way Steam hopefully broadens... one of the issues that it solves is broadening the distribution of games like Red Orchestra, which deserve to reach an audience. I think that we're also going to start to see games that would struggle to get traditional publisher funding find that advertising is a great way of finding and developing an audience, and that's why we're putting the effort to make it possible for people to use Steam to do advertising-supported games. So we really see this as another option that we and other developers can use to figure out how to fund projects going forward. What I would hope to see is that small developers can give away their titles for free and garner ongoing development support by generating advertising revenue, and we've done all the work to make that possible through the work that we're doing in Counter-Strike. That's certainly the hope. Another aspect in addition to broadening monetisation options and funding options, especially for new developers, is the possibility of segmenting your audience. So any time you can give people more pricing options, that's always been a good idea. Some people will prefer it one way and some people will prefer it the other way, but it really requires us - especially as the technology provider that a lot of developers are starting to depend on - to do it first and get it out there, work out the kinks in the system so that they can then use it to trial things themselves.

But do you sympathise with, say, the guy in Germany hosting a CS server who wonders why he should pay to serve your ads? Is there a feeling that they could cut in on that income?

We haven't really thought about that. If they want to talk to us about it then they can. I think in general... there are between 150,000 and 180,000 servers around the world, so I think we've traditionally done a good job of supporting those people and giving them what they need to be excited about running and hosting servers. That's why it's an order of magnitude larger than any other server community for any other group. We're certainly always interested in engaging with any server operator to find out how we can do a better job.

RHA LAN-O-THON v3.5 Pictures

2007-03-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

A few pictures from our last lan, RHA LAN-O-THON v3.5.

LAN-O-THON v3.0 Photos

2007-03-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

Here are some picture from RHA LAN-O-THON v3.0 which was 11/06

Pre Registration

2007-03-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

At my last event we did pre registration for the LAN Party online but since the RHA LAN-O-THON is a free event, We had a problem with people signing up online and then not showing up, so this time I'm doing a paper sign up system. I think only people who are serious will take the time to print out the registration form, fill out and drop off to our office.

LAN Party Waiver

2007-03-05T20:57:00.000-08:00

A critical part for any LAN Party is the waiver. It's purpose it simple, it releases the event organizers from any liability if someones computer deep fries at the event. This is important because if there was a power surge or if a computer virus destroyed everyones computers it keeps the Organizers from having to pay to repair all of the damaged computers or from being sued if someone slips, falls and breaks their neck.

Tonight I put together a draft of the Waivers and Registration forms for my event. There are three, one for Gamers, Spectators and Volunteers.

Steam Error "Invalid Steam User ID Ticket"

2007-03-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

The solution to Steam error "Invalid Steam User ID Ticket" is to completely exit out of Steam and delete "steam.ui", "clientregistry.blob" and "steam.dll" files in Steam's directory, usually "C:\Program Files\steam\". Once you finish that, start Steam again.

Web site software

2007-03-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

Every LAN Party needs a web site. Ours is here. I'm a code junkie but the website I wrote for my last LAN Party(a 25 seat event) didn't have the features I wanted and I don't have the time to write them so I searched the web and tried a few things but the best thing I've found is ALP. It has everything I could need. Tournament management, Music management, server listing and more. I'm going to mod to change a few things but so far so good.

Electricity

2007-03-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

At the most LANs getting enough electricity is a challenge and at our LAN it's no different. Larger LAN may use a diesel generator to have enough juice if the facility can't supply it. Even if your location says it has the power you need you may still have to rent power converting equipment to use it. At our lan there is "appears" to be enough electricity in and around the building but I can know for sure with out seeing the circuit breaker panel.

In most circumstances you would go look at the circuit breaker panel to find and mark which outlets are on each circuit but the room where we have held our last 2 LAN Parties, the electrical panel is in a locked closet that maintenance seams to be unwilling to unlock. So we have relied on blind luck not to blow the circuit breakers.

In the room we are using there are several 20 amp outlets characterized by the use of NEMA 5-20R outlets (See the picture, one prong has a T shape) but what I don't know is if each one of these outlets is on it's own circuit or shares with another outlet 5 feet away. A 20 amp circuit can theoretically carry 2400 watts of electricty (calculated by using watts = amps*volts) but most will trip when they reach around 80% load (about 16 amps or 1920 watts)

I'm tempted just to carry down 3 1000 watt microwaves down to the room and plug 2 into one outlet and 1 one in another and have them boil water till I trip a circuit breaker and and after a few minutes if the breaker doesn't trip I will know that they are on separate circuits.

At the event it is optimal to provide 3 to 4 amps for each computer. Even though some of the desktops have a 500 watt power supply that won't come close to using it. Most computers don't use as much electricity as they think. My very high end Desktop rig only draws 300 watts (or about 3 amps) so planning for 4amps is more than enough. Usually you shouldn't have more than 5 or 6 desktops on a 20 amp circuit.

Another thing you have to take into account is the number of amps that a power strip and extension cords can carry. 20 amp power cords and power strips are expensive so we split them over 2 separate power strips and extension cords carrying 10 amps each. The power strips we use can handle 15 amps but the extension cords are different. The 25ft cords can handle about 14 amps but our 50ft cords can only handle 12 amps and if you use even longer cords, the number of amps drops even more.

At our event, since we have so many laptop users I take this in to account when planning the power setup so we can minimize the number of extension cords we have to buy. An average laptop uses around 100 watts or about one amp of electricity. We seat 2 laptops and 2 desktops to a power strip thus maximizing the number of computer we can power.

I'll add some more pictures later. I have all summer to bug the maintenance department to mark the electrical circuits.

Our network

2007-03-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

Our network is made up of
4 Dell 2324 24 port switches with gigabit uplinks for the table switches.
1 Dell 2708 for the core switch.
1- Router/Firewall/NAT: An old HP 700 Celeron running pfSense
1- Web/File server- An old PIII 733: running FreeBSD, Apache, PHP, mySQL, FreeRADIUS, FTP and Samba. (I would spread the load if we had more machines)
2- Dedicated Game servers: the RHA Laptop (Desktop 3.0ghz P4) and My personal laptop (Celeron M 1.3 ghz)
Add to this my desktop and any other loner pc's I get and we can get plenty of server power.

Depending on what I can find a good deal on, I would like to upgrade the core switch to Dell 2716 or a Dell 2724. I like these Dell switches because they are cheep and good quality. They are made for dell by Delta Networking and company that also makes switches for Netgear and other companies.

Stuff I've learned from my past lans

2007-03-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Advertising is crucial. Get it out early.
College students love facebook. Post your event there or people will miss out.
College students don't bring their own powerstrips or lan cables.
You don't need as much power for a college lan as others because over 50% of the people bring laptops.
Have internet or your doomed.
With small lans no one seams to own the same games leading to a boring lan party. At my last event we bought some Temporary Tournament Steam Accounts to hand out to solve this. 75% of our guests used them.

Thank-you

2007-03-01T12:00:00.003-08:00

Thanks for your donation. People like you help keep this blog going.

Introduction

2007-03-01T12:00:00.002-08:00

This blog is an inside look into what it takes to put on RHA LAN-O-THON v4.0, a 50 person LAN Party happening Friday, October 26 2007 for the residence of USF in Cypress E.

I want to share my setup with you so you can use some of my ideas at your events and I can use yours. I want to create a LAN Party Guide that stays up to date as technology and society changes by using the blog format. In the coming months I'm going to write guides on how to install different game servers and plugins, setup a file server, setup pfsense to mange and track users, install and config Freebsd to run a web server to power ALP and other software.

About LAN-O-THON

LAN-O-THON is a LAN Party that was started by The Residence Hall Association (RHA) at the University of South Florida (USF) and has become a semiannual event.

Some History...

v 1.0 LAN-O-THON first started in 04-05 in the Andros Community Room and had about __ people in the BYOC. I'm told it was memorable because one of the lights in the room caught fire or something like that.

v2.0 After the fiasco in the Andros Building the Event was moved to Holly J.

v2.5 The main games were Unreal Tournament 2004 and Warcraft III;

v3.0 This was when I got involved. I ran the network and the main game server. the predominant game was Half-life 2: Deathmatch

v3.5 I planned the BYOC for this one. We had nice need rows and zero network problems. We played Counter-Strike: Source and Half-life 2: Deathmatch;

v4.0 I planned this event to the max. We had a great event. We played Team Fortress 2 and Half-life 2: Deathmatch;

Now I'm working on planning v4.5 and it is going to be bigger and better and I'm blogging every step of the process.

About Me

I am a Architecture major at USF but one of my hobbies is tinkering with computers and the best way to share this is through LAN Parties. I enjoy working with computers, networks and web design. I started the Cypress LAN Party Group in the dorms here at USF and I run a monthly LAN Party in the dorms. I am also on the RHA programing committee and I'm in charge of the RHA LAN-O-THON, the event that this blog is all about.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message or just leave a comment.

LAN Party Guide

2007-03-01T12:00:00.001-08:00

I'm slowly working on a series of blog posts meant to serve as a general information and how-to guide on how to plan, organize and host as successful LAN Party.

What is a LAN Party?
I Want to Host One!
Location, Location, Location
Electricity, The Real LAN Party Fuel
The LAN in LAN Party
How to: Make a LAN Cable
Setup pfSense
Installing and Configuring SRCDS
How to: Setup a Dedicated FreeBSD Web Server
Installing ALP
Budgeting
LAN Party Nourishment
....

Last updated 08/25/07

Starting a Blog...

2007-03-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well I'm starting a blog about planning and running a 50 man LAN Party for the students living in the dorms at USF (The University of South Florida) and all of the stuff that goes in to it.