Galway lan 15 reviews

Sniipe

Its the day after the lan, what did you make of it? I had a terrible time, my legs are aching from running up and down the stairs getting people. I played 2 games of quake 3. I got knocked out in the first round of CS. But Doodee(JP) had to leave so I took his place in his game and won the comp. That was my fun for the lan.

Too many people had difficulty with games. This really ruined the lan for me. If everyone had the newest version of the games they are to play it would make life really easy for me.

On the upside I was talking to a lot of ppl and they enjoyed the LAN.

I'll do a bigger review later.

But for now I want your valued opinions.

Rory - Sniipe

Fobia

Mon Review

As you can see I had a good time, but I suppose what you're looking for is things that need to be changed, so though I have a pretty bad reputation as a moaner, I guess I'll give them.

1. Servers. Guys, I can understand for the qw server as I'm the only one who knows how to run one, but I don't know anymore about q3 servers than ye - you need to get them setup and ready to run on the servers before the LAN.
2. Tournis. All of these were left to Sniipe. Though he did a great job of flying up and down the stairs getting things organised, at the end of the day you need more people running them.
3. General admin stuff. I understand that ye're all busy, and have good reason not to be present at the LAN some of the time so I can't fault ye on that. So instead, why not appoint a few techies/gamers to run that side of things on the day. For techies maybe electrofelix or Ronan|Raven (though he wasn't there much), or someone else suitably 1337. For gaming, someone who isn't biased (ie not me, if I was game admin there wouldn't be anything but quake played), just to keep the schedule and whatnot.

There's more, but I can't think of anything.

Sniipe

Hey Que, thanks for that. That is exactly what I am looking for, constructive critism. I feel that this lan all the admins were busy one way or the other. I was home only for that weekend, and had girlfriend duties. Doodee had girlfriend duties also at some stage. Syxpak had his graduation and Asok was busy. Someone to help set up the game servers would have been nice but perhaps we will have that sorted at the next event.

po0k

I'm going to be having chats with a few people, have an 'global niceness' type idea.

Just need a box with a wedge of bandwidth

Asok

Ahem.

Sniipe

hey Danny??
Story with the comp winner pics?

sAid

yeah sniipe did a great job with the tournies
,but yeah like que was saying maybe have the servers set up before the lan starts ,and maybe even try something new with the tournies like cs ,instead of trying to get it done in one day maybe have it as a league over the weekend or something

Sniipe

2 ppl have said they thought the lan was poo and wouldn't come again. By any chance was that you tonkpills and the real B-man? I'm really sorry that you left when you did. The lan really picked up on Saturday at 4pm and sunday. All you got to see imo was a poor setup at the start and q3 all the time. We had battlefield, COD, CS, Warcraft 3 on after you left. If it wasn't you guys that voted poor performance, I'd like to know who is was please. I left the polls private, so ur not obliged to answer.

Said, the tourney servers will be sorted at the next lan I attend. Weekend tourney of cs... could work if the timing was right.

Dundhoone

Well my first experience of a Lan party was good. Everyone was nice and chilled out and helpful. (except for snipe and Jp, who were a bit stressed but still helpful!)

Saturday was a really good days gaming, the BF2 and COD were great crack. Only downer was the confusion on friday night but that was down to my own noobness and we soon got a few folks for a couple of rounds of bf2 anyhow till things got going.

Hmm, methinks the way people broke up for a smoke or pint between games was a better setup than having a specific "break time".

Anyways hopefully I wont have to bail out so early at the next one !
Missed out on the DOW comp which I was quietly confident about!!!:)

Caliden

knives?

Anima

Gone West

Sniipe: either edit your original thread or get john to edit it to make the poll public. then you can change it back, if you wish.
From dave's review, I can't understand why 3 people would vote it as being bad. It sounds like any other lan party sounds like tbh.

Peter

sAid

i voted "poor and not coming again "and you can delete the other one because i made it by accident when i created my new account

anyways maybe it was a bit harsh cause i did have good fun on saturday but i voted poor and not coming mainly because of teh 3 reasons quetzal said above.When you are paying 30/40 for something you want what you pay for like,and not blaming sniipe at all as he did a really great job with the tournements but like hes only one guy,and a bit more could of went into the organisation of the lan maybe before it started rather than during it...

now don't get mad its just my opinion towards having a better lan....

NeoSlicerZ

mmm, didn't have the same "get in and start blasting the crap out of someone" feel as my previous GL... felt v.slow .

strat

I thought it was a great lan. I enjoyed my self for the most part, great to meet up with all the lads I hadn't seen in a while. There were times when it was a bit flat but its hard to keep it at 100% the whole time.
When we got the majority of the players playing one game at any one time, like those few games of CoD, there was defiantly lots of fun to be had. I feel the lan being split between two rooms took from the atmosphere a bit but I know this often can't be helped and is just down to the logistics of the location. Finally the proximity of the bar and adjacent smoking area was a definite plus point

DRakE

Needed ALOT more Alan on the Friday..

po0k

sAid wrote:

i voted "poor and not coming again "and you can delete the other one because i made it by accident when i created my new account

anyways maybe it was a bit harsh cause i did have good fun on saturday but i voted poor and not coming mainly because of teh 3 reasons quetzal said above.When you are paying 30/40 for something you want what you pay for like,and not blaming sniipe at all as he did a really great job with the tournements but like hes only one guy,and a bit more could of went into the organisation of the lan maybe before it started rather than during it...

now don't get mad its just my opinion towards having a better lan....

Mail the developers and publishers of your favourite game and demand they properly support their dedicated servers. Doesn't matter if they're linux or windows, often dedicated servers have no documentation or remote admin facilities, nevermind stable and fast builds for linux (how can local lan events afford Microsoft license fees?).
The organisers do this in their spare time. Trying to keep track of versions of 8 or 9 games, their respective servers, configs, map-packs, mods and in some cases remote access services is a real headache. Even with 3meg NTL, it's a pain in the arse going around to various sites trying to download all this crap.
Also, a disk died in one of our servers taking everything with it. I only managed to get a replacement a few days before the lan - was up into the early hours on thursday night reinstalling the server.
Sniipe and DooDee were absolutely brilliant, considering they had to setup the equipment, tables and patch leads before I managed to get down (I had my degree conferral on the Friday - sorry).
On top of all this, we'd just gotten hold of two new gigabit switches for the lan and hadn't had a chance to mess about with them beforehand. I am the only one of the 4 organisers living in Galway, therefore I have the responsibility of minding alot of the kit - which takes up alot of otherwise valuable space in my bedroom and apartment which I recently moved into. I don't have a car and a few bits and pieces were in my family home 20miles out the road so I had to rely on a family member bringing them into me.
As much preparation and organisation was done before the lan as was possible, but when things go live, trying to get people into competitions (when some people can't show up till various later times) is akin to herding cats into a swimming pool. We had a sign-up thread on this forum weeks before the lan, we had mails sent to all the people on the attendees list reminding them of various dates etc. and it all seemed a bit pointless in retrospect. The sign-up threads can only be used as a gauge because we can't know who'll be actually there ready to play until the day and it's a futile waste of effort to form teams beforehand.
Considering the obstacles that the organisers had to overcome while under the usual stress of running a lan with all things going right I'm kinda pissed off that people are complaining. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but only when it comes from people who actually stayed for the whole thing.

I can understand people feeling a bit píssed off, I'm angry at myself for a few reasons, but I hope I've given ye a little insight into what actually goes into a lan and how really fúcking hard it is to get everything right all the time

Sniipe

I hate making excuses; but here are some. I must have started this reply about 20 times so far and still I'm not coming up with the right words. Sorry.

The next lan that I am involved in will have every game tested on a server for load, will have all patches availible. Oskar brought up a good point bittorrents for big files.

All of this should imo be done before the sign ups begin. That way there is no excuses. I don't like the intranet site, its nice for the tournament but really thats about it. I know a bit of php so maybe I'll alter this. But I am in my final year. I really don't know when I'll have time. Maybe we really missed Danny/Asok at this lan. Maybe Syxpak didn't have enough free time with his graduation, maybe JP didn't have enough free time. Maybe I should have put in some serious time with one of the servers.

Said, I can understand why you are annoyed at the lan, and Queztal I whole heartly agree with you.

On the flip side the lan was enjoyed by a good few people. I don't know anything about the finances Said so I can't add anything about price of the lan. Believe me the money didn't come to me. AFAIK it will be re-invested into Galwaylan.

Galwaylan is getting more difficult to organise because the games are becoming more difficult to install and with different versions floating around it makes it more difficult than past lans. Games were smaller, fewer versions and they were up and running in no time.

More effort needs to be put into the lans to come imo. I said this the last time aswell and didn't see an improvement this time round. Best lan for me was the Menlo park lan. We could see everyone and tell them what to do and ppl didn't dissapear as much... because there really was no where to go

The two switches never had met before, and this was a cause of pain for a short while. I'd say this is resolved for the next galwaylan and won't need re-investment for quite some time. Except we need to check the current cables and mauybe purchase a few more. There were a good few dud cables that needed to be re-crimped.

If people bought the games and had them updated to the latest patch I guess we'd have little problems.

Doodee

Firstly, thanks to all who came and enjoyed themselves. I'd especially like to thank those who had games patched and installed before the lan.

Secondly,
All this crap about the organisation. We do not get paid to run the lans. all the funds are being spent on the venue and updating kit. Anything extra is being saved for future purposes. The equipment has to be carried there either the night before or as this lan, the date itself.
Its all well and good to bitch and moan about how badly such was done, but I have a few problems with some people who are doing the bitching. Number 1, The BF2 tournie. It took 3 hours to try get that running, and it was not a server problem or a sign up problem, the end users were the problem.
Alot of people had to download the patches and sometimes even install the game. They were signed up for the competition but then never checked that they could connect to the server until they had been told the tourny was gonna start. 3 people in the room i was in all had issues connecting to the server/even viewing it in the GUI, this was discovered to be their own fault, meddled ip settings and bad installs. they had already signed up for the competition and had not checked any of this beforehand. I had to re-enter the competition and it competitors about 7 times. when people sign up we should not have to go help them fix their machines nor have to re-do any of the team lists.

Thirdly, Server problems.
The only game that had server problems was Quake3. This is for some unknown reason and i honestly believe that my original assumption about lack of opengl drivers on the server would have been irrelevant to the solution. The game just did not work correctly.
It takes a long time to build a system with uptodate games and networking settings, aswell as keep it upto date and then stress test it. I do not have 40 participants will to connect to my home lan and test the machine, so theres no way in hell of knowning just what might cause issues on the end user level.
FTPing: there was no problems connecting to the machine to get patches, nor have i any frustration towards people ftping off the machine to get said patches. however, what i am annoyed at are, like i said above, people who do not have the game ready to go 10 mins before the game and so have to ftp the files. We should not have to spoon feed yee updates or even take your hands and walk yee around the garden when it comes to problems on your machine or signing up to the conpetitions.
FFS! theres one button for joining a tournie, why didn't yee sign up to what yee wanted when yee woke up on the day?

I have read this thread 3 times and only decided to actually post now, the other night i decided not to post a massive reply i had written cause i felt it was too harsh, but my mind has now changed. I really appreciated those who thanked us before they left the event as it did mean that atleast some people were aware of the work done, but its begining to become apparent that less people are actually thankful for Us four organisers to run these events on our own free time, then they are to actually help out.
depending on how the next few lans go i may decide to stop organising them altogether and leave it to others to feel the stress instead of enjoying the games.

The best parts for me were the Games of CoD everyone got involved in, and also the game of TFC that a select few played and made fun. (Thanks strat )

toxick

i have to say great lan, sniipe did a great job trying to orginse all the tournys... Syxpak/Doodee also great orginisng the actual lan(switches/tables/venue)

It wasnt the best Galwaylan i went to but coming close to the second best, the only thing is, you need more help, thats the only thing thats going wrong with the lans, you need help orginsing the tournys, try and get people to help you, ask a few people to show up early and help as well. Get more people on the act to help, instead of getting one person to orginse all the tournaments get a few, get people who actualy like the game and know how to setup a server to orginse it... fair enough, maybe sniipe plays all the games, but he cant orginse all the tournys and still enjoy the lan,

Also try and get all patches onto a dedicated server with only patches on the actual computer, and make it that everyone that wants to play a tourny have these patchs pre hand or else they will forfit from the tourny... fair enough peak did say that a disk died a few days befor the lan...

just try and get more people to help out with the lan, instead of the 3 of you(4 including asok for next lans)

timeout

I'll just say I had a good time at the lan and although there were some problems in general must people just kept on playing whatever game they had to hand, well i did anyhow.

If you need help for the next one I'll offer it now, wether it be an extra server or a car to help bring the stuff to the venue.

Sniipe

timeout, u got some pics for us?

timeout

Yes,only the couple of the winners. I'll have to shrink them a bit but i'll send them on to the :galwaylan:@:gmail:.:com: address. You should get them over the weekend.

ARGINITE

Doodee wrote:

It’s all well and good to bitch and moan about how badly such was done, but I have a few problems with some people who are doing the bitching. Number 1, The BF2 tourney. It took 3 hours to try get that running, and it was not a server problem or a sign up problem, the end users were the problem.
Alot of people had to download the patches and sometimes even install the game. They were signed up for the competition but then never checked that they could connect to the server until they had been told the tourny was gonna start. 3 people in the room i was in all had issues connecting to the server/even viewing it in the GUI, this was discovered to be their own fault, meddled ip settings and bad installs. they had already signed up for the competition and had not checked any of this beforehand. I had to re-enter the competition and it competitors about 7 times. when people sign up we should not have to go help them fix their machines nor have to re-do any of the team lists.

Well I was one of the

3 people in the room i was in all had issues connecting to the server/even viewing it in the GUI, this was discovered to be their own fault

I cant say a game that worked that morning and then stoped detecting the server that you setup MY fault. It was detecting other servers but not the tourni one. I went to the lan with battlefield updated and ready to rock.
Great work by all involved in the setup and runing of it by the way.
But I don’t like being blamed for things outside my control:(

NutJob

sAid wrote:

yeah sniipe did a great job with the tournies
,but yeah like que was saying maybe have the servers set up before the lan starts ,and maybe even try something new with the tournies like cs ,instead of trying to get it done in one day maybe have it as a league over the weekend or something

Might have problems running Mani Admin on the older version of cs but i can help with psychosstats server as i have the DB end working with Mysql

Just didnt have the patience to use is for the web frontend


I have to say it was a good lan.

But some of the poins brought up by syxpack a doodie are valid there was alot of self inflicted casulties with versions patches and balls Ip adresses.

Can i make a suggection that for the next Galway lan that DHCP be enabled on the linux server to stop the ip adress stuff and it will save ye sticking ips to tables(again ill gladly set this up for ye)

Some issues with Cs:Source were Unavoidable as Steam is a pain in the ass
Unfortuantly i got hit by this one as right before the tourni i screwed my copy (Yes im a muppet) and i would like to thank Timeout for allowing me to use his machine instead of trying to re-install in ten min.


most of the problems i saw were simply down to user being un-preped.

Could i make one last request in that next time could we have a dedicated tourni server running an hour before the game commences and a warning that unless you have connected and ensured your ready a bot will take your place(yes a little harsh i know but no excuse then)

timeout

Just wondering did all the people that signed up attend? Did the numbers that u were expecting show up?Are there any banned people?

Sniipe

Dancing priest is the only one I know of off hand that didn't attend; due to a medical thing.

I'd love to know who didn't turn up.

Asok

The dhcp option is something we have been looking into. What myself and john are hoping is that once we launch the new website you can add your mac to your profile and that will allow us to set up all nice dhcp tables so everyone will get their address without having to ask. It will also mean that ip's wont be changing if a person decides to to a /renew. I'll go into more detail when my mind is not as mushed.

Apocalypse101

All this damn complaining.....:(

All this talk about 30/40 euro....
I'm not saying there weren't server probs, patch probs etc...but IMO
The main problem was the constant lack of people,
where the hell was every1
I dont think there was even 1 second when all 40(ish) of us were in the hotel at the same time.....
More ppl = more games/better games

Also, the only time every1 played the same game...
was when sniipe told them to!!

It was almost 2:30 before ppl showed up on saturday
(there were 7/8 of us downstairs)

I dont understand how some ppl can complain about not gettin value for money, when they were only at the lan for about half the time(it was a 49hr LAN...)
i know u cant stay 49 hrs at a computer (we're not korean!:D )..
but excluding sleep time, there's still a good 30 hrs to the LAN.
And as for leaving on Saturday morning.... WHY!??
What's that about?? This LAN only really started Saturday afternoon...
Give it a chance FFS..
(some ppl work till 5/6pm friday, probly weren't in Galway till friday night, and not at the LAN till Saturday Mornin)

This post is a complaint on the complaining(ironic but anyway )
not the LAN. Was a bit slow at times(lack of ppl), but I had a good time...

I wasnt sure how Sniipe was still standing after it....
Then he had to put away tables!!!! He shud be the 1 complaining...
We were really screwed without him...Thx Sniipe
Thx to the rest of ye too.

And..

DRakE wrote:

Needed ALOT more Alan on the Friday..

lol
....
Mega Bomberman was funny sh1t!

Sniipe

I want to ban WC3, Apocalypse101 was clearly too good. but yeah everyone playing the one game? Like that happens...

po0k

Asok wrote:

The dhcp option is something we have been looking into. What myself and john are hoping is that once we launch the new website you can add your mac to your profile and that will allow us to set up all nice dhcp tables so everyone will get their address without having to ask. It will also mean that ip's wont be changing if a person decides to to a /renew. I'll go into more detail when my mind is not as mushed.

And it totally relies on people actually using the fúcking sites and things in the Iirhs gaming community.
If you only login to boards or room101 once a month, don't bother signing up till you do - you're going to miss too much stuff.

And check ye're fecking email. We can't communicate jack **** to ye unless we have current and accurate contact details for you. We won't spam you, but please read what we put in front of you.

Anyways. As Danny said, I have a system in the works. It may actually be implemented in other Irish Lans (doesn't take more than a P100 and some ligh linuxxy stuff).