MicroLAN: Hosting the Ultimate Small Scale LAN Party [Part 1]

Introduction

For the past 4 years now I've been hosting small LAN parties with groups of friends from around the neighborhood. These LAN parties typically have anywhere between 4 and 10 fellow gamers. Not big by typical LAN party standards, hence the reason why I call them MicroLANs.

MicroLANs are a fun way to get together and play the same online games you'd play by yourself, but with others. Because honestly, how much better is it after winning a game that you get to bask in the glorious hatred of the fellow players who are in the same room as you? A lot better (trust me). This is why I've been hosting MicroLANs for the past few years now.

I've typically hosted a MicroLAN twice a year. Once during the summer, and another during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In a few days I'll be hosting another one, which has prompted me to write about it. Hopefully following these few guidelines can help you start a MicroLAN party in your basement sometime soon.

Preparation

Intro

Typically, the preparation for a MicroLAN has the basic preparation of any event. Who, What, When, Where, and Why. But for MicroLANs there's an extra bit of Equipment that should be added to the list. There's no point in attempting to host an event you don't have the equipment to host it with. This will give you a quick over view of all the preparation you should look to do before your MicroLAN.

Who

This is probably the second easiest part of the list. Who are the people who are going to show up and play games with you. They're the n00bs you're going to frag. The biggest problem with the Who part is that they're affected by the subsequent When and Equipment parts of the preparation.

What

This IS the easiest part of the list.  If you don't know what you're doing, then let me remind you. It's a MicroLAN party. Where you'll have lots of fun. Remember now? Good. Let's move on.

When

When is probably the most difficult part of the entire ordeal.  Because you're hosting a MicroLAN, every person who attends makes a big difference. There's a big difference between a 6 person LAN and a 5 person LAN. My advice is to plan the event a month or two in advance. That way people have time to negotiate schedules and ask for time off if they're interested. Try to set a date in stone. Don't move it around because people then get confused or aggravated. If you can, take a general consensus for when people are going to be available. No point in planing it if 3 or 4 people are on vacation that weekend. In my experience, the more time, the better. You don't have to, but I enjoy creating "flyers" like the one below for the MicroLAN to post on social networking sites in order to attract attention. 

Where

Another difficult question. MicroLANs take up a lot of space, so finding a venue with enough room for people might become challenging. Try to keep everyone consolidated in the the same room. If you're playing against someone in another room, you might as well be playing with them over the internet. Being in the same room together, getting to yell at your friend who's sitting next to you, getting to hear your little brother scream expletives as his space ship crashes, this is what makes a MicroLAN more than just gaming. It's nice to find a venue with enough tables, chairs, and power outlets. The latter is extremely important, so you don't end up daisy chaining power strips together. That was a mistake I won't be making again. It's also important to have easy access to internet. Below is a layout used to for a medium size MicroLAN. The room was 20ft x 10ft.

Why

 An age old philosophical question which I will not attempt to answer here.

Equipment

 Another big factor in hosting a MicroLAN is the equipment. By this I mean your networking equipment, your gaming equipment, and your guest's gaming equipment. First let's talk about networking equipment. For a small MicroLAN, you can probably get away with using your good old router at home. But for bigger ones (>4 people) you might want to start looking into buying a switch and some ethernet cables. With everyone wired into a switch, games lag less. This is particularly important if a lot of your friends bring laptops. They should still hardwire themselves into the switch because WiFi is slower than ethernet (depending on what type of WiFi i must say). Also, the more people using WiFi, the slower the WiFi becomes. 

It's quite conceivable that you and your friends all have different types of computers and different level of graphics/gaming capabilities. This starts to become a problem when some people want to play the latest Maul of Duty game and some people can barely run Internet Explorer. I have not found the cure to this problem yet. We still play games published earlier than '05 mostly but we will run into a problem with who can play what. Just be warned of what could happen when people show up with their eMachine from '02. Building a gaming computer doesn't cost an arm and a leg if you want to get by and just play the game and could be spared the 1080 melt-your-mind-mode that a lot of games are coming with today. I just built a computer for my little brother for $304.95 (including OS). 

I'll continue this article later on

Senior Design Project

Soon I'll be beginning my senior year at CSU and that means I'll be starting my senior design project. So I  think I'll keep you guy(s) updated on how it's going and what exactly we're doing. Till then, I'll enjoy the rest of my summer at work. B)

How Geeky Am I?

So, Geeky am I? Well, for starters, I'm typing this on a new mini style keyboard that I bought semi for my laptop which will soon become a permanency docked PC. So, I needed a keyboard to go with it, and this was the cheapest USB keyboard I could get at my local Nerd Store. The Geeky part about that is that I'm typing up this post on this new keyboard for fun! trying to see how well.

Tin Foil Art

This was made by a friend of mine in a few minutes at a burrito joint in Cleveland. We're thinking of exploring this little known art medium further.

Mass Effect 2

So, a couple of friends of mine have convinced me to start playing the game Mass Effect 2.

I eventually bought it on Steam the other day for $20.00, and have been playing it since about Friday. I only have 15 hours invested in the game Steam tells me, but it definately doesn't feel like I have nearly invested myself into the game that much.

I'm not the biggest fan of RPG video games. They seem to lack something that you get from playing the traditional paper and pencil games I can get immersed into. But Mass Effect doesn't have the long and dreary turn based combat, but instead a tactical live action third person combat system.

I like the basic combat system and powers. Taking cover and managing your team is quite entertaining (if you brought the right characters). But I don't seem to like how there seems to be combat just for the sake of combat. It's not really following a story sometimes, just enemies for you to fry. But besides that, I like it.

I like how all the character's abilities are not very complicated to understand as well. Easy to level up and customize gear.

One thing I don't really like in any RPG are cut scenes. They're usually long and complicated, making me think I'd be better off watching a movie than playing a game. Being able to interact with the cut scenes makes it so much more interesting (especially the paragon and renegade options you get at random times. Kicking some one off a building was pretty awesome).

But then there is the one thing that bugs me in the game. The story. It seems to be ripped from parts of different stories and pieced together to for the game. The main story seems similar to a movie I've seen called "Serenity" and the collectors seem eerily similar to the aliens from "Independence Day". Other things such as scenery and vehicals seem to be stolen from the original Halo game and some of it's offspring.

But these all had either good story, nemesis, game play, and scenery. So why would smushing them all together into a melting pot of sci fi RPG not be a good game? Well, it is good. I've been quite addicted to it recently. But I can't call it exactly original.

What makes the game is the characters and their interactions. They seem so much more alive than most characters you find in a game. They're all mostly memorable. Like those select few from other games like Cortana from the Halo games. They're fleshed out and given so much life that it makes them great just to talk with.

So that's all I have for now. I might give another update when I get more of the game done. As I have just bought another game, Formula 1 2011, it might be longer than expected. Also, I am an engineering student, so weekday gameplay is most likely out of the question.

Cheers!

The Fenngineer

So... Fenngineer. What does it mean? Well, Fenngineer is a play on words. Combining the school I currently attend, with my major. That is, Cleveland State University's Fenn College of Engineering with, well, Engineering (mechanical).

So what do I plan to write about? My thoughts generally. Thoughts about what though?

Engineering, video games, technology, nerdy, dorky, geekyness. Stuff I hate, stuff I love.

So why start writing now? Well, mostly, I have gotten a smart phone (or as I like to call them in a story I once wrote, Ultra Super Smart Phones). More specifically, I have gotten an HTC Evo Shift 4G. But, when playing with the phone, I found a blogger app, which I thought would allow me to read the blog I subscribe too. But when I found out that I can use it to write posts, well then I decided that there was a better place to store random thoughts than on Facebook.

So I find my self blogging now. But we'll see how long this keeps me interested and not bored really.

So why start babbling in a blog? Well, mainly so I don't annoy people on Facebook about the random big thoughts that I have. Twitter is great for such random thoughts. I like to think of it as micro blogging. But when I require more explaination, then I run out of options. So here I can put my lengthy thoughts down on keyboard and continue on my day.

I need a place to dump my thoughts before they build up into a kidney stone of the brain.

So a quick background on the Author?

Name's Alex, Intern. Currently studying mechanical engineering at Cleveland State University's Fenn College of Engineering. I've got a Girlfriend (GFy) of 2.75 years who goes to Case. I've got awesome friends, and terrible spelling. I'm a pisces, and my hobbies include everything that will be mentioned in this blog.

So that's the end of the intro.

Enjoy world.