LAN Party Goodness


Today was the first (Annual?) LAN Party in my basement, and I must say - it was pretty damn good! The final roster was 6 people, including: (I've decided to refer to everyone via their in-game names) Boki, Scuz, Mr. Sneaky, Mirage, Templar and myself, Khalas.

The crew started arriving at around 11:30, and the next few hours were devoted to setup. Organizing the tables and plugin availability, setting up network and testing, even doing last minute case work. Naturally, with the world being what it is, we don't all share the same games - but over a LAN, that's not a problem. Transferring 750MB iso files isn't a problem when transfer rates average 85mb/s. It was commonplace throughout the day to see us running through each others network folders, stealing files (that would then be mounted into a virtual drive and run), or just installing straight from the other drive. It's all good though, because I have a few new games to play now :D. Far Cry, Need for Speed Underground 2 and StarWars Battlefront to name a few.

The first game was Unreal Tournament 2004 - Deathmatch. I missed the first 2 rounds because it turned out I had a different version (had installed an update about a month ago), so had to uninstall and reinstall to make sure I was compatible, but after joining I managed to make a good showing by outfragging the competition in 2 straight matches :). We followed that up with 4 rounds of Team Onslaught action, the result was a 2-2 draw.

Next up we played NFSU2, I managed to take first in one race, but the majority were unfortunate runner-up efforts. I'm really impressed with that game though; the graphics are way beyond the original, and it seems to have far, far more depth as well.

Two large pizza's later, we took to the RTS world of Command & Conquer Generals. I'd never played it before, and was quite handily spanked. It was a good time though, I'll have to practice more for the next party :).

A transfer back to FPS seemed in order, and SW: Battlefront was the result. That was a lot of fun, another game I'm impressed with. Nothing really different or special in terms of gameplay - the draw is the SW universe, and that's enough for me. If running around as a combat droid kicking ass doesn't bring a smile to your face, then I don't know what will. We all had a good laugh when on one particular map Sneak and I sat in a huge walker outside the tunnel leading out of the droid base - by the end, we each had roughly 30 kills and only 2 or 3 deaths.

To cap the day off, we turned to WarCraft 3. I was more than happy to get in on this one, having logged plenty of practice hours in the last month. It showed - the first 3vs3 map was complete domination by Sneak, Mirage and myself. The second round was a lot more interesting, with everyone having had some practice and time to readjust. Scuz, Boki and myself took the victory though after a long, hard fought game. By the end, it was Sneak and Mirage against me - all of us out of gold, and Sneak with only a portion of an army left (I'd wiped out his base while they fought Boki.) It took quite some time to win that one, and it was pretty damn close to be honest.

About this time - 3am (15+hrs spent almost exclusively in the basement), we declared that the LAN party was a success, and that it was time to pack up. It was almost sad disconnecting the network cables from the router: so simple, yet the root of so much enjoyment. But take heart I say, because I damn well plan on doing this again!

I'll post a couple pictures, but for now here's just a couple memorable verbal moments...

Mirage: "Hey, we have a router already?"
Boki: "Yeah, I brought one and cables."
Mirage: "Ok, well I have an extra and enough cables for 10 people."
Sneak: "I brought an extra router and cables as well."
(Moments later, as Sneak does some work in his case)
Sneak: "Does anyone have any electrical tape?"
Boki: "I do!"
Sneak: "Aaaah, Geeks are always prepared!! and I have enough spare parts in my car to completely rebuild a computer too."

---

Sneak: "Boki bought the same case as you."
Mirage: "That bastard, can't he get his own style!"
Sneak: "Also the same monitor."
Mirage (To Boki): "If you have the same desktop background as me I'm going to kill you."

---

Scuz: "I can't multitask - I can either shoot or think." - Said while attempting to explain away accusations that he performs poorly in team matches of UT2004.

---

Mirage: "I think it's a good thing we're on a cement floor here, it's a lot cooler for the comps."
- Said during a conversation about CPU/GPU temperatures running under load.
Followed by mom entering the basement and exclaiming "Wow, it's never been so warm down here."