oLANpics

Dates: 8pm - 8pm 7th - 8th of July 2000
Venue: Penrith High School Hall
Attendance : 55 / 60

Photos

Overview

oLANpics was BONGs birthday lan. 1 year in the making. With a turn out of over 50 people we did well. Thanks to AWoL our network was essentially full switched, making pings stay around 30 and keeping file transfers very fast. Diablo 2 featured prominantly, having been release days before, and as expected Half-Life CounterStrike was the game of the day.

Penrith Press 08/08/2000

Fudds Bits

*Rego Process- 4
Firstly I apologise to everyone for the Registration. From my end of things it was rather funny I mean we can say stuff like "Oh back in O-LAN-pics we caused traffic to pile up on High Street. But yeah it was Davo's fault : P don't let him tell you otherwise : ). The delay was our fault completely and we were not ready inside so I had to wait for a while till I was given the green lights, we will take from this LAN as far as rego goes experience and regret. We can only promise that we will try never to see that happen again. I would like to thank everyone for their patience that night, especially that cool old guy who told me off cause he had to go somewhere, forcing me to use my brains. I'd also liked to thank Splint and Kaboom who are newly initiated rego crew due to their excellent work with the situation given.

*Tagging- 9
We used a new kinda tagging system this will be further implemented in future with the intralan, me thinks. Tags at this LAN worked well since they could be removed and reused easily. Next LAN tags look like the way to go and for pre paid and/or preregistered they can be printed off before hand.

*Tourneys- 6
It's not my scene so I won't say too much. I know we promised more but oh well. You all have to make a fuss about it on the mailing list for games that weren't considered. The CS tourney was a little drawn out. I quite liked it this way, gave you chance to chill out and do stuff. The intralan will be tourney central when its up and running properly.

*Jukebox- 8
Once again a great idea, there were changes since the last LAN, i.e. only 2 requests per person not 4, and max play list of 20 [then changed to 10] instead of 40 I think from lanzac. With hope and persuasion Dean can organise an upload feature so you can play songs that you have and we don't, and also some sort of download feature. Perhaps one upload and download per hour, this will ensure you only get what is really hard to find. There was some abuse of the Jukebox I know I waited for a while for my song to be played then when it finally did some staff took it off. For the next LAN only finny will have rights I'm told this is good since his tastes are broad and he appreciates all types of music, but I'm sure he will still moderate it, i.e. cut the 6 minute remix of Brittany Spears down to 3 minutes of airplay. Also some unknowns got some play as well, notably some Defualt and Dj Cheese songs.

*Dj- 8.5
I have to say the Dj was a brilliant idea it really set the mood for the introduction of the LAN. The lighting was really good and with the lights off to begin with was a good idea. It felt like a proper LAN. The atmosphere was really good and there was no hassle for picking jukebox songs. It was nice to sit back, set up and relax. I hope it wasn't too hard to set up with the lights off.

*Staff in General [helpfulness, friendliness etc]- 8
I think staff in general did a decent job. I know we at rego stuffed up a little and should have handled the delay better, but we did what we could. The tech people did alright I guess I didn't see them do anything since I was rego'ing in the beginning, but there was a few people with problems and they came to me first, that's god but alas I can't help you as much as these tech people can. Should we had a proper into as we normally do we would have introduced everyone to all the staff so they can easily approach people. Tournaments were in their own world : ) and I'm sure they handled everything fine. I know a lot of people who aren't staff stay back and help out al the time. I'd like to thank these people now, it makes a job much more fun when your doing it with your mates.

*Food- 4
Well its really not fair to pick on our food service we don't supply food, no. We're sorry but there is a lot around us. Even if we have a BBQ must people would probably go for macca's or some supermarket action from Duffy's, Penrith plaza is down the road. Well, lots of food around so we don't actually provide it. We normally do organise food runs. But I didn't see any food action so yeah. We did have basic breakfast supplies like cereal and milk and we do provide hot water for all your 2-minute needs. Next LAN we will inform you all totally of all food info and with the intralan you'll be able to order your food for the run online [so to speak: )]

*Parking- 7
Parking went well. There were lots of spots. Only 3 problems.
1. Caffeine left his Rent-a-Car lights on. Luckily the security guard spotted it and told us.
2. There were some people who actually parked all night long in front of the trees. You know who you are and as I said before its courtesy not law. So no one will in-force it, please don't do it next time, or we'll be forced to fill your mouth with shaving cream while you sleep : ).
3. There was a bad situation in the beginning where the gate outside was locked and there was a pile upon high street. Kinda my fault I confused Davo, sorry. If you all bite our heads off we would understand. It was touch and go for a while and we shut the doors so no one would until we were ready, not a bright idea : ). Those who came early thanks for coming early you enthusiasm is noted. But we need that time before hand to prepare, in the past we usually sneak the really early people in so they don't have to wait for ages outside in the rain and stuff. But please don't make us push the starting times ahead for expectation of early comers.

*Security- 8
That security guard is absolutely a champ! He is the nicest guy and . . . . errr I mean he is butch and no one should mess with him ! He was telling us cool war stories and stuff. Sure he may not do much but what he does is cool. I think he deserves a pimp !

Maverick Security and Protection Services
Ph: (02) 47226151
"No Job too big, No thug too stupid!"

He's looking to join the police force soon so we wish him luck

*Lights On / Off in hall- Lights ON- N/A
Lights were off at the beginning for the Dj. They mainly stayed off until some time when it was morning and Davo whipped out his video camera and was capturing stills. I think it went back off during the evening. IMHO we should keep it off I like it darker. But alternating it is a good idea also. Keeps the masses happy. Switching it off towards the end and when we want to finish up we make an announcement saying its like 15 minutes till time, thanks for coming say goodbye before you leave. And keep the lights on to remind them.

*Prizes [lucky door prises VS Tourney prises (good or token prises)]- 6
I think the people who won the tourney for Counter Strike kinda left before we could award it to them, too bad they should talk to dean to arrange for them. I believe we should have token prises for tourneys I mean its good to win a prize for all your hard work in a tourney but lets face it there is more to being reward for being a good LAN attendee than mad skills. In the past we have had lucky door prizes and tourney prises that were of equal value-ish. I think we should continue that and that tourney winners should be rewarded enough by their brag factor and a memento to savour the win in the losers faces : ) This is a topic worthy of the mailing list.

*Servers- 7
I _think_ we had a fair amount of servers. But there were too many CS servers sitting idle that could be running some basic mods like firearms or just ask the people at the time, what do you want? There was an aq2 server that was good, it was like some kind of resting area to chill out from all the serious gaming and do some careless shooting. I had a few complaints saying like the CS server was a little laggy for the number of people on it. This will be fixed for next LAN. If we had known at the time we would have fixed it up no questions asked.

*Non gaming activities [like badminton : ) or any non gaming service we can provide for social reasons ie fussball table?]- 0
How about a Fuddball table?
Mike Fudd ball is an invented sport : ). The current winning team is Fudd United. It's a complex game where there are upside down triangle goals and there is 3 teams at a time, the idea is only one type of sporting equipment on each team i.e. one team may only consist of one tennis racquet, one hockey stick, one baseball bat, etc. and the idea is get the ball in the goal using whatever means necessary! Its lotsa fun : )

I think we need some sort of non-gaming activity. Something where if you don't feel like gaming you can just do. Maybe your download of 3 gigs of mods may take you a while or you just wanna stretch your legs. The tradition used to be when we were smaller we would set up a badminton court in the back of the hall and play that : ). That was good fun. But if anyone has a Fussball table they can bring or know where we can hire one? That would be a great idea. Especially for the longer lans.

Fudd
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Please feel free to copy paste any of this to the mailing list to discuss it.
Where Fore Art Thou Rowie !

ZoRt!s Rundown

oLANpics was all together a good lan. Notably for me was the lack of network problems which can most likely be attributed to centralised switches. I was pleased by the calibre of behaviour. All the usual things went down, file swappig, listening to music, socialising, eating, yelling *pweeeeened!* and of course phat gaming. We missed alot of regulars which was unfortunate, but we also got a lot of new faces and with around 50 people attending, attendance was still good.

The only area i can really fault is tournaments, although they ran comparably well, they are still not at the level i am aiming. Im still thankfull for those who ran then (serialben, slaad, finny, seph.. etc) for an excellent job. Hopefully intralan will be the savour im thinking it will be. I was pleased with setup, especially now that we have all our own power gear, which no doubt helped to keep things as neat as they were and as problem free. I dont recall anyone being kicked out of the powerboard or otherwise accidentally unplugged. Leads didnt get hot (unlike last lan...). With the excess from oLANpics well be getting more gear which will help to make our next event "WinterWonderLAN" even better. Hopefully we can get more sponsors on board also, hopefully someone to supply network gear. Thanks to AWoL for helping us in this area also!!!

Id like to thank everyone who came, everyone who helps out, AWoL for the gear and of course, our sponsors who come through with the good freebies to give away... Erm, in conclusion... Is LAN, is GOOD, is support our sponsors! *ug*

Other Past LANs