SeptLAN
SeptLAN
September here we come!Dates: 10am - 10pm 9th of September 2006
Venue: StMarys Community Centre
Attendance : 85 / 120
Overview
This event was very very well attended with issues at all with power, network etc. Internet access was once again featured and we trialled 'training bibs' to help distinguish teams in the team based tournaments. Both internet and tournament revisions were excellent supplements to the event.
Taliskhans Write Up
In short:SeptLAN has been one of the most successful and enjoyable LANs we've hosted in quite some time. Thanks to all who attended, we hope that a good time by all.
In Long:
Leading up to the event, regos were looking fantastic and so we knew we were in for a big event! Big numbers attract more people. More people mean bigger numbers which attract more people. As you can see it’s exponential. This is why registering, apart from allowing us to plan the day well, is ever so important!! We entered the event with 106 people registered and about 87 confirmed. Through out the event we had about 85 individuals attend!!! HUGE!! It’s also an excellent 'confirmed' to turnout hit rate which means that people taking the confirmations serious =) We'd really appreciate it if people who confirm, who then find out that they will not be able to make it cancel their registration. Especially now that we do things like the BBQ, obviously planning this sort of thing relies on us having an accurate idea of numbers.
Network and Power:
Power was solid and so it should be for the price paid for it.
No one bar the staff who was helping set up on Sat morning would be aware, but at about 9 am we discovered that the switch stack that we’ve used for the last 5 events or so decided that it didn’t want to boot probably for a simple reason that will be simple to fix. However at 9am, there obviously wasn’t time to trouble shoot it so after 1/2 an hour of trying to get them to boot and messing our pants, the executive decision was made for me to race home at light speed and grab a whole separate stack that we managed to get up and running at about 10:02 *phew* I knew that stack of 18 switches in the lounge room was a good thing. =)
That was pretty much the end of our network problems!! Some people get inclined to whine about the speed of DC++, please understand that there are many factors surrounding DC that are beyond our control eg, someone allowing 30 people to connect at the same time will probably get the data to you slower than TCP over Carrier Pigeon.
Gaming:
One of things that all the staff noticed was the dramatic increase of gaming to leaching ratio!! The CS:s server had a consistently solid number of players outside the tournament and the BF2 server was full at one stage. This did wonders for the atmosphere of the event. It was good to see appropriate amounts of SMACK TALK and good, healthy RAGE (looks at Straz - note: Fragfest takes no responsibility for damaged hardware through lack of self control). We will continue to work on the BF2 servers as our knowledge and experience with it increases.
Tournaments:
Tournaments this time round were very successful minus 1 or 2 indiscretions. We did however have our schedule anialated.
MASSIVE thanks to Ze German who basically controlled our CS tournament. His experience with CS and how it’s run in popular internet competitive gaming communities was most valuable. Also congratulations to Ze German and his team "Nubz" for winning, quite convincingly, the counter strike tournament. Also thanks to Ze German for accepting a challenge for their spot in the tournament from a team who arrived late and missed the registration process.
The DOW and NFS tournaments both ran cleanly and without incident. Thanks to all participants for your cooperation. Both of these games are peer to peer meaning that we cant run a pre configured dedicated server, meaning that the participants need to get together, agree to who is going to run the server and complete the match. Participant cooperation is essential to this process and as long as these tournaments run the way they have been, we'll be happy to have them. I can’t remember who won, dean may like to update this post with the winners. (dean - chappy won DoW... again, suicidalpancake won nfsmw)
UT FFA continues to be the easiest to run and most enjoyable. It’s really not unlike a FFA server that we run through out the day other than we have a set sequence of maps with a few modifiers for flavor and ppl can come and go from the game as they like. Obviously, the more time you spend and the more maps you complete the better your chances of coming out on top. I can’t remember who won, dean may like to update this post with the winner. Congratulations to Zypher who won the UT2004.
ATTENTION ALL POTENTIAL TOURNAMENT PARTICIPANTS. We like to post details of the proposed schedule for the day. While we may run behind schedule, we try not to. If you want to participate in any of the scheduled tournaments you must be there WELL before hand in time to register. If you arrive late and the regos are full, we can’t help you. Even if you’ve expressed interest prior to the event, we can’t hold up proceedings wondering if and when you'll arrive.
BBQ:
The BBQ was tops!! Big thanks to Ben for cooking it! Also thanks to Red Bull for showing up and helping out. The Red Bull girls helped on the bbq for about 2 hours and shouted Red Bull cans for anyone interested. We weren’t expecting them, apparently they're roster just said something like "Attend computer gamming day - St marys" good to know were generating interest and that word is getting around.
Shoutout Re-Iteration:
Again big thanks to:
Ze German for helping out on the CS:S Tournament.
Ben for cooking the bbq and providing logistics.
Red Bull girls for coming and hanging out helping on the BBQ and giving away free red bull.