MarchLAN3

MarchLAN3

3rd MarchLAN incarnation

Dates: 10am - 10pm 11th of March 2006
Venue: StMarys Community Centre
Attendance : 83 / 100

Photos


Overview

Loads of people once again!

Bloodtalons MarchLAN3 Review

Overview
MarchLAN was a fantastic LAN in spite of the initial problems. Attendance was fantastic, the biggest turnout so far. The new venue worked well despite ZoRt.s initial concerns, Air con a big plus and the carpet & lower ceiling helped reduce the noise level, not to mention increase the comfort. And would you believe that setup was only completed with 5 minutes to spare! It was good to see that people got there early and we had around 80% of our total attendance through the door in the first half hour.

Tournaments
Overall the tournaments weren.t too bad, BF2 being the stand out for. Worst tournament Ever. and DoW for being the surprise success with competitors organising and participating without much prompting and only a few hiccups (on the competitors side not ours ;-)) UT2004 had to be run in a cut down format, which was an unfortunate necessity due to time constraints created by issues with the other tournaments. So only a single qualifying round was run before moving straight into the playoffs. Due to some criticism of this format, a review is no under way, with a possible free for all and 1 on 1 tournament(s) in the near future (totally unconfirmed at the time of writing) We increased bf2 and had 5 teams of 8, which forced a round robin format instead of the intended single elimination. We had some server problems as a result of poor configuration (my bad), however some of this was not our fault with the program itself throwing up some weird occurrences all on its own. The other major issue was the loss of a whole team half way through the tournament. I.ll say this once and only once, if you aren't going to play seriously in a team tournament don.t even bother signing up as when you drop out to do something else everyone who is playing seriously gets annoyed and comes to complain to me, which makes me unhappy and will lead to a ban on all team based tournaments in the foreseeable future. Again this is not our fault as team captains are responsible for their teams. The Tin Soldier Dawn of War Tournament ran really well, we were only 1 competitor short of an even 8-player spread, which was good, but I know we can do better. The uneven numbers caused a lucky competitor to get a free pass into the second round. The tournament ended well with everyone happy and almost everyone coming away with a prize. Looking forward to running this one again, with Tin Soldier providing more prizes and the prospect of a much larger player pool. BF2 and UT2k4 will be revised again for the next event. Dawn of War will also receive a set of rules.

Network
Some problems with slowness reported in transferring files, which didnt effect game play at all. Only 1 dud cable reported. So overall an the network turned out and almost perfect performance.

Power
No Betty. Great misery. Some minor issues with power which ZoRt fixed with some nifty juryrigging.

Internet
Internet is totally unavailable to us at this venue in any way shape or form. This did annoy some people, sadly Internet connection is not part of the 'product' we offer. As a result it is just a perk. We would encourage people to arrange their own Internet connections (through chilli or unwired or any of the wireless ISP.s) if they so desire. Don't even ask about running a long, long, LONG cable from the old venue to the new, the logistics are almost insurmountable and the risk factor involved is just too high. I am talking actual physical risk here people, not merely fiscal or psychological.

Rubbish
We still have some problems with people not putting rubbish away. If the bin is full, please don.t cram more on top, be kind and empty it into the big dumpster outside. And for what we hope is the last time, please dispose of pizza boxes into the dumpster, we do not enjoy picking up old pizza boxes with half eaten pizza that is now crawling with ants.

Game Servers
No dramas other than BF2. Thanks again to Wolfman for all his hard work and stellar equipment

Photos
Koopsta and ZoRt both took photos, which are up in the usual place for everyone to view.