Most popular LAN games

MeatProduct

Originally posted by Jimeatsmenu
Please come to Dublin.

We need them high spec machines.

Who knows what may happen a year or two down the road..... who knows.....

Nick

Gerry

nvidia based cards are better supported on linux, though ati are improving their support. This would be something you need to check again closer to purchase time.

Señor Juárez

i wouldnt be so sure about those radeons, they are overheating sacks of shit. and the nvidia FX cards have really dropped in price...


as for the Athlon 64's, i would go with that alright, youll also be future proofed for the 64bit games. Savage is 64bit compatible. youll want to think hard about the licencing though, afaik 64bit XP isnt available off the shelf as of yet, so you may have to go with 32bit XP. which means upgrading your licences to 64bit, which means shelling out.

MeatProduct

Bloody Windows. To be honest it's looking like Linux at the moment. Just too many costs involved with Windows and it doesn't really have the huge gaming advantage I once thought it had.
I'm a bit concerned about the Radeon overheating issue posted above. Does anyone else have an overheating problem with a 9800Pro?

Nick

Señor Juárez

if you decide to use them, just be sure the cases are well ventilated so as they are allowed to cool.

i do know a couple of people who have been unlucky, but some people do love the 9800's etc.

careful now with the linux, it scares the Joe Soaps

MeatProduct

Originally posted by marclar
if you decide to use them, just be sure the cases are well ventilated so as they are allowed to cool.

i do know a couple of people who have been unlucky, but some people do love the 9800's etc.

careful now with the linux, it scares the Joe Soaps

We plan to ventilate well. We are going to circulate the heat generated from the computers around the rest of the building. There'll be some crazy cooling going on. 2 x 120mm fans to start with, 1 intake and the other is the exhaust.

All the latest games are likely to make the computers generate a whole lot of heat though.

About the Joe Soaps, I'm hoping to target those folks directly. Try and get it across that there's nothing to be afraid of. Might do some free Linux awarness days to promote it.

Nick

MrPinK

There's a 64-bit, native Linux version of UT2004 on the way. Once the 64 bit drivers and compilers mature a little, it would run like nothing else on earth on those machines.

careful now with the linux, it scares the Joe Soaps

Joe Soaps just want to browse the Interweb and check their mail. They probably won't even realise the difference

Señor Juárez

Just set the background to the XP "bliss" and theyll never tell the difference :P

quank

you should have a free LAN on the opening weekend etc.... ye know... to get your reputation around.....
:rolleyes:




and btw; plz make it dublin

MeatProduct

64bit UT would be very nice indeed!

There'll be lots of crazy free stuff going on at the start. A free gaming weekend is a good one though, might just do that. Thanks.

Well, Dublin could be a possibility if a good market share potential could be shown. Nothing will happen with Dublin for at least 6 months though, just don't have that kind of money. Only have enough for 2 at most. For Dublin it would need to be a very large internet cafe indeed; 80 or so computers me thinks. As well as a well fast internet connection.

Nick

Winters

Originally posted by MeatProduct
Well, Dublin could be a possibility if a good market share potential could be shown. Nothing will happen with Dublin for at least 6 months though, just don't have that kind of money. Only have enough for 2 at most. For Dublin it would need to be a very large internet cafe indeed; 80 or so computers me thinks. As well as a well fast internet connection.

Thing is about Dublin, as long as you have it along a DART or BUS route you are connected to the whole city in some way or another. You dont have to have it in the center where the outrageous rent prices can be. Something so specialised as a gamer net café would attract gamers from all around Dublin who would actually be perpared to take a couple of busses to get to it.

Also if your looking at being able to handle 80 -> 100 people you would be perfect for even renting the place out for large gaming nights and tourni's. You could nearly have two fill 64man Battlefield servers going too.

Mentioning of servers. Just a thought but.. If you were to have a few old PCs. Set them up as dedicated BF/HL/COD servers etc. You would always then have a local game running.

Just dont price yourself out of the competition too much, and lets not forget fridges of coke and red bull. A few mars and snickers wouldnt go amiss too. And offer the latest patches etc. for people to burn onto CD or whatever.

MeatProduct

Hi Winters,

Some good comments there. Regarding the gaming servers; in you experience how practical is it to run a number of dedicated game servers off the one machine (2GHZ Athlon + 1GB RAM)?

I'll suggest the Dublin market to the investors and see what they think but I seriously doubt anything will happen for us with Dublin in the short term. Unless something mad happened

Nick

tman

if you are thinking of getting warcraft 3, it'd be worth grabbing a few copies here.
€15 cannae be beat tbh

(play.com should be paying me ffs)

not sure if it's been mentioned already. but a decent set of cans would be nice (seinheisser or somesuch...)

MeatProduct

That's a great site, so much cheaper. I'll need to compare those prices to some wholesalers.

Nick

tman

yep, well worth checking out for some of the new games such as unreal tournament 2004 (a definite essential purchase for any gaming net cafe). £17.99:eek:

Winters

Originally posted by MeatProduct
Some good comments there. Regarding the gaming servers; in you experience how practical is it to run a number of dedicated game servers off the one machine (2GHZ Athlon + 1GB RAM)?

You wouldnt need any sort of top class machines. Throw in a good but of Ram and you should be able to host a 32man BFV server on a 1ghz. It is possible to have 2 games running from each server, would create a bit of a load but would run allright. You wouldnt need a server for each game too. You could have just, say two dedicated servers running all the time. A Counter Strike and a Battlefield/DesertCombat/Vietnam one. During lan nights, if you have a food few people all wanting to play againset each other its best to have them all running off a dedicated server isnted of one persons PC. Less load on the PC and also if that person quits/goes back to men/crashes .. the game will not go too.

Hated when that happened. Big lan game and someone goes back to change one of the controls and the whole game pauses...

But, you would only need one or so dedicated servers. Should be able to have a couple of games running off that one.

MeatProduct

Hi Winters,

Might go for 2 of the following:

Dual Athlon motherboard
2 X Athlon 2600+ MP CPUs
1.5GB PC2100 ECC RAM
120GB HDD

I wonder how important hard disk performance is for serving games. Would a RAID 0 setup be beneficial?
Should be able to run a good few games off those servers.

What would be the best games to serve to the public? Will have about 4MBits upload bandwith available.

Nick

Jim

Just a thought.
In case you missed the Lan Parties board. Might be helpfull for research purposes.

MeatProduct

Originally posted by Jimeatsmenu
Just a thought.
In case you missed the Lan Parties board. Might be helpfull for research purposes.

Yeah, I had checked that out before, there's a good thread there about setting up a net cafe. Very useful.

At the moment I'll be going for these games:

Linux Native:
Unreal Tournament 2004 64bit
Quake 2
Quake 3 + true combat
Doom 3
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Return To Castle Wolfenstein - enemy territory
Americas Army


Runs in WineX:
Counter Strike
Battlefield 1942 (not Desrt Combat or Vietnam since they don't run so well presently)
Red Alert 2 (Generals doesn't work on WineX)
Warcraft 3


Unsure:
Call of Duty
NeverWinter Nights


Are there any good LAN car racing games. Would they be played in the cafe?

Any comments on the above is much appeaciated. If there's anything that shouldn't be there or if I'm missing an important game please let me know.

Many thanks,
Nick

Edit: Actually I'm not sure I would want Americas Army as it is supporting the US military. Any thoughts?

quank

lol, tis only game, doubt anyone would care

emmm, sorry for being a newbington, but i always used windows
how wouldja play CS on linux?

im so ashamed!

if my opinion matters at all

the games i would play (on windows )
counter strike
battle field

i know i know.... im boring

Caliden

need for speed underground can be played on a lan with a special lan patch about, played it at galway lan 8 and i have to say twas pretty good, would have been better if i brought my steering wheel tho :rolleyes:

MeatProduct

Great, I'll check out NFS then!

About CS on Linux: I'll be getting a bit of software called WineX made by Transgaming. This allows for certian Windows games to be played on Linux. Thankfully CS and Battlefield both work on Linux using WineX. So I expect to see you here when/if we open!

Nick

quank

is the game the same though
like the menu and stuffamijig? controlios?

anywho... keep us updated abhoot it... and the chosen location :)

MeatProduct

Originally posted by quank
is the game the same though
like the menu and stuffamijig? controlios?

anywho... keep us updated abhoot it... and the chosen location :)

The menu should be the exact same. Actaully, everything should be exactly the same.

I'll keep you uptodate on the progress. Might be able to reveal the location in a week:)

Nick

Señor Juárez

well do you really think that your gamers are going to up shot and join the american army?

nevertheless, the game is free, so it should be a net café owner's friend, no money wastage on licences.