LAN Party Semantics

Keith Gable — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:56:00 -0600

I once assumed that everyone just “got it”, but after last night’s LAN party, I’m not too sure. So, I’m going to go over some of the semantics of LAN parties:

Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC). How could any club afford to get a computer for each member? That’s like, $800 a person. We can barely afford to keep the servers going, which brings me to #2:
If everyone else is on the game server, and you have problems getting on, there’s a 90% chance it’s your problem, and not the game server’s. The other 10% of the time is either the server needing an update that just came out or a configuration problem nobody else sees for some reason.
When you do have these problems, please ask the unpaid sysadmin nicely to help you. Do not insult his operating system choice, his dislike for Vista, and/or his choice of game mode if you intend on asking him to help you to get the game to run on your Vista machine.
OpenGL-based games like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal Tournament 2004 do not run well or at all in Vista due to the shoddy and/or nonexisting OpenGL support (at some point, NVIDIA and ATI added their own OpenGL layer, but hey, it still doesn’t always work, particularly when the game probes for 3dfx features).
If you don’t like the map or mode, tell us, don’t go play something else.
Give the unpaid sysadmin some respect. Use your brain. Read. Don’t be lazy. If the LAN organizers put up documentation, read it before asking how to do something.
Play the same game as everyone else! You can play on a public Internet server any other day of the week.

So anyway. Maybe people will understand this. And yes, I hate Vista. Not because it’s not Linux, not because it’s new, not because I can’t run it. Because every time I use it, something new and exciting pisses me off about it. It can be something simple and dumb, like the fact you can’t right click in (My) Computer and pick “Map Network Drive” (is “Add Network Location” the same thing?).

Also, and this is completely seperate from the rant, but widescreen in Q3/RTCW-based games is actually easy:

Bring up the console (~ key)

Type:

seta r_customwidth "1680"
seta r_customheight "1050"
seta r_mode "-1"
vid_restart

ENJOY!

"LAN Party Semantics" by Keith Gable

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:12:42 -0600

Well, Ducky currently has the list of attendees that he forgot to e-mail to me, but I’d say we had 20 people at the LAN (three new people or so) and like 10 people for Guitar Hero III related stuff.

And, yes, people did show up expecting us to provide them with a computer. I understand as the flyer doesn’t say bring your own computer, but geez. It’s not rocket science. Computers = expensive.

"LAN Party Semantics" by Veggievampire

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:14:44 -0600

So how many people showed up to the first LAN of the new semester?

"LAN Party Semantics" by Keith Gable

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:50:57 -0600

Heh. Yeah.

"LAN Party Semantics" by Meshy

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:34:19 -0600

Hey Ziggy, Just wanted to let you know that I have a lot of respect for what you do with the servers and everything. If it wasn’t for you the LAN party wouldn’t have turned out as good as it did and the LAN last night was one of the best we’ve had in a long time. And yeah, vista sucks.

The Ignition Project: LAN Party Semantics

LAN Party Semantics

"LAN Party Semantics" by Keith Gable

"LAN Party Semantics" by Veggievampire

"LAN Party Semantics" by Keith Gable

"LAN Party Semantics" by Meshy