NovemberLAN

NovemberLAN

Nearly Christmas!

Dates: 10am - 10pm 11th of November 2006
Venue: StMarys Community Centre
Attendance : 87 / 120

Photos


Overview

Big thanks to Wraithlord once again for all the related image work.

This event was another great turn out and a free ride to the Australian Quake3 CPL Finals was on offer.

NovemberLAN Done and Dusted

(By Chris Portman aka Taliskahn)

Now that we are post NovemberLAN, it is time to reflect and review. The LAN was very enjoyable and with the exception of the usual mishaps the event was a success.

Power:

Again, our considerable investment in power provisions did us proud with no power issues what so ever. We also managed to pay off the debt incurred by installing the dual 3-Phase outlets that runs the trust power distribution box (Betty) that has supported us well for a number of years.

The new power outlets on the desks, you would have had the pleasure of using them if you attended, made their third appearance at NovemberLAN. They have proved again and again that the concept is a great improvement both in terms of power reliability and set up/pack up over the adhoc ‘extension cables and double adapters with power boards hanging off them’ solution that common and was used previously. We aim able to construct a few more of these before the next event so that the remaining table blocks will be able to marvel in their magnificence and simplicity.

Network:

The network core came online without incident and stayed solid throughout the day. This contrasted the shaky start (prior to opening) at the last event which resulted in me having to do a dash home to get an entire new stack of switches! - we had no such issues this time. DC++ transfer speeds were right up there (although I didn’t spend as much time on it as in the past) and gaming performance was, as usual, outstanding and flawless.

Tournaments:

...An area we continue to refine.

  1. Quake 3 ran reasonably well after some server map issues were ironed out and politics regarding seeding were dealt with. Once under way though, things were smooth and participants were co-operative which we much appreciate. Congrats to those who went to Perth for the Australia wide finals.
  2. Dawn of War and Need for Speed ran well as usual. This can be contributed to excellent participant co-operation and that minimal admin overhead is required because these games are peer-to-peer.
  3. Battlefield 2 apparently had a few issues that will require a policy fix to iron out. This has already been topic of much discussion and a solution is already decided and will be tried at the next event.
  4. Counter Strike… oh dear. This game was fraught with problems all day. It seems that Valve put an update out the night before that changed the buying system and broke the server part of the game. We eventually worked out that if you started a server without the network cable plugged in it would start the server and then you could put the network cable back in and play. That is however until the server changed maps and then it would drop its bundle again. Eventually we did manage to run the tournament (albeit very late) on a single map for the entire duration of the tournament. Despite these issues, the tournament ran very well once started.

Hopefully the efficiency of tournaments will get better with time. Unfortunately, games seem to be less and less engineered with LAN gaming and structured tournaments in mind these days and more towards the unstructured style that your used to on the internet.

Conclusion:

NovemberLAN was another success with a lot of fun times to be had and a few learning experiences as well. The next even, SummerLAN, is to be held in the usual spot on the 27/1/07. We look forward to see ing you all there ready for some gaming action.