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LAN History

Date/Time

Saturday 26th - Sunday 27th April 2008 - 10.00 - 20.00

Venue

Caerleon Campus, Newport University

Attendees

[Monkey], Marlb, GrumpyOldMan, Maonayze, b1llyb0b, Hterag, Psycho, Neok, Dreddwales, Converse, Spade, maggots518, mathdoa, Barney, |SNR|Viper-DAI, GrumpyYoungMan, Plasma, EvoGamer, Kiba, HoZKiNZ, Briffy, Tainted, Don Adam, Midir, FAFlozl, crappermine, Mead0s, Vinnie_the_butcher, Leumas, Gr8ter, Cleric, Smudge, Santa, Benn, Mitch, CBG, Almightykuja, Larithen, Robbo, Malo, MilkMan, Shroom, Vitamin, Tryptic, Raptorojo
TOTAL: 45

Games Played

Counter-Strike: Source (inc Hide and seek and Gungame), Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 4, Trackmania Nations Forever, Digital Paintball 2.0, Flatout 2 Dawn of War, Streetfighter II and more...

Write Up

A new venue, a new setup and a new challenge. And with all modesty aside a challenge that I think we completely blitzed! We didn't have much time to prep for this one; the Newport Games Society approached us with little over a month until the LAN date so we were really cutting it close. You probably won't realise how much thought and prep time we put into this event and to be honest you probably won't even care so I'll spare you the details. If you attended the event you would have hopefully seen the fruit of the efforts of that prep time and it will all have been worth it.

Our setup was so slick that it made an oil spill look like a patch of damp sand. Every eFragz admin and eFragz apprentice went flat out to get things in order. As a team we worked really well (as always), everyone had a job to do and got on with it, no slacking, no messing about and nobody stopped from 7am until 9:50am just in time for the doors to open. I was so proud of the guys and gals that if I had been a weaker man I would have shed a little tear and give hugs all round. A pat on the back did the job though.

After the dust had settled we looked up and it was almost 10am, with receptionists at the ready we opened the doors. The meet 'n' greet went great, we really enjoyed ourselves on there as well. It was good to chat to new faces, regular faces and faces we knew but for some reason didn't recognise (sorry Don Adam). After taking in the bulk of the signups I sneaked off for two minutes to take a look at what we'd accomplished. There was a great view from the bar area overlooking the main hall, it gave a nice feeling of achievement but our job was far from over!

With most attendees sat down and starting games we welcomed four late entries, all of them Skynet regulars. Vitamin, Don Adam, Tainted and Tryptic swanned in and setup. We're always cautious of the Skynet guys, being bitter rivals and all :P so we got them setup and made them feel welcome. But within ten minutes of them sitting down disaster struck!!! A power outage crippled most of the hall, it seemed too much of a coincidence that no sooner had they sat down but the power dropped. Vitamin denied it was his fault completely but I saw through his thin veil of lies and knew it was him to blame! Some eyewitnesses said they saw him gnawing and biting at the power cables. I feel sorry for the other three that got tangled in his web of industrial espionage but don't hold it against them though.

Drama aside it turns out that we'd simply overloaded the power circuit. Being our first party in the hall we assumed that with the size of the hall and the fact that it split into different sections there'd be more than one circuit covering it. Turns out that we were wrong, but with some quick thinking and quick cabling from our guys and a friendly security guard on duty we got it sorted in less than fifteen minutes. Not too shabby I think and we'll know better if we can get another event there.

'So what about games' I hear you cry. 'You've gone 5 paragraphs into the write up and not even mentioned a game you waffling ape!' My reply as always... 'What's new?!?' But I'll indulge you for a bit and let you know what went on. CS:S as always was our starter for ten, this time with a Gungame Turbo flavour to it. The server was nice and full with almost everyone who had CS:S in the game. In fact there were a few that didn't have it but bought it through Steam that morning, that's the spirit lanners get those credit cards flying!

Our first big event of the day was the first round of our LANOlympics, shrouded in mystery the curtain was lifted and behold... it was the newly released Trackmania Nations Forever! Although not everyone's favourite there's a strong reason we picked it and it goes like this...

We try to make our LANOlympics a level playing field giving everyone a fair chance at a prize. All too often at LAN parties there's CS:S competitions and it's the same old faces taking the prizes every time. Hardly fun or fair we think. So with the games remaining a secret up until the last possible minute means that no one gets an unfair advantage and get to practice the games beforehand. We also aim for free games or games that we can run on our admin PC's to make things easier. Trackmania fits the free bill nicely and also allows us to get forty or fifty players in the game at the same time.

Rh1no5topper kindly slaved away and made us another custom track, not too hard but just hard enough for it to be a challenge. The fastest sixteen went through to the next round but special mention goes to BennUK for finishing two seconds faster than the rest, no easy thing in Trackmania.

At 2pm everyone seemed to disappear for five minutes, the we realised the sandwiches that the Newport Games Society organised had arrived. Bellies filled and faces wiped (almost) clean everyone got stuck into some Team Fortress 2. More credit cards were flying and Steam should be paying us commission!

On the console side of things the Pro Evo Soccer tournament kicked off, I managed to scrape third place in a close match against Cleric but Don Adam pulled a blinder and managed to win first place in the tournament. Sadly I didn't manage to catch the final because work had already started on round two of the LANOLympics. While others had a blast setting up sentries and putting on disguises mao and I started to round up the sixteen winners from the Trackmania round and get them sorted for round two.

Round two was the shooter round, with another free game taking the spotlight named Digital Paintball 2.0 (a Quake 2 mod that is only 20mb in size). Paintball was different enough that hardcore FPS players didn't dominate it but once they found their feet they got right into it. All of them that is except for our superstar champion Plasma. He really did fail big time on this one and didn't even make it through to the next round. Some pundits thought that now he'd turned eighteen he was over the hill and past it. Either way it looks like we've found his Achilles heel with this one. Out of the two rounds with sixteen players in total the top 4 from each round advanced to the quarter finals.

Round 3, Round 3 and what could it be?!? FlatOut 2... that's what it be! We went for a race and a demolition Derby, driver with most points at the end of the two rounds wins. We split them into two groups of four and let them go at it. The racing was hilarious, I felt especially sorry for Midir who was totally wrecking his car and smashing it off every wall and fence around only to say 'The cars sensitive isn't it.' Sensitive, the poor thing had any sense beaten out of it on the first lap! In all fairness though he did seem to enjoy it and I think everyone loved the derby mode. There's nothing quite like the smash and bash of four cars colliding head on in a mud bowl. Our four semi finalists were Psycho, Rainbow, Crappermine and GrumpyGremlin (no screenshots sorry). It was good to see some fresh faces in the final rounds of the LANOlympics, especially as most wouldn't have even heard about our Olympics or how they work.

After round 3 we had a much needed break, I managed to take in some of the Guitar Hero tournament and to be honest they were fiends, I'm sure some of them had an extra finger! All of the admins took a much needed break on the patio area outside while most people kept on fragging on the inside. Refreshed it was time for the final.

For a truly epic tournament we needed an epic ending for the tournament. And to be honest there was only one we ever considered, everyone's old favourite Street Fighter II. Semi Finals paired off as follows... Crappermine vs GrumpyGremlin and Psycho vs Rainbow. At around 11pm everyone was gathered around the projector, most were full of beer and the four remaining players were full of nerves. The lights were off and as the game was started up the familiar Capcom 'ding' was heard and a thousand fond memories came flooding back as the Street Fighter music blasted over the speakers. It was quite a tense atmosphere, with a lot of noise and excitement from the crowd. Everybody was waiting for a good Saturday night punch up and to be honest they weren't disappointed.

Psycho and Gremlin won their semi's and advanced for the grand final showdown. For the final we played the best of five rounds and it was an amazing match. It was back and forth for ages but Gremlin seemed to have the best memory and managed to pull off most of Ken's special moves. A few hadoukens later and Gremlin was crowned the champ. Rainbow went on to take third by beating Crappermine in the play offs. This was one of our best competitions yet, I think this picture sums it up...

The final left everyone buzzing and got us all fired up for a monster BF2 session, death rained from the skies, the grunts pounded the ground and it was a great way to finish the night. Most people got their heads down for a nap at about 3am, but a few hardcore (or foolish) went through all night. You could tell by peoples faces who'd stayed up the previous night. They had that death warmed up look to them!

8am and I thought I was awoken by Gordon Freeman (a sign of too many games), it turns out it was our friend B1llyb0b who in his infinite wisdom decided it was time to wake up. After a spot of brekkie we got stuck into some games. We had a game of the Hide and Seek mod for CS:S. It took us a little while to get people setup on it and explain what was going on, but I'm glad we did because people seemed to be having a great laugh. No matter how many times you see a bar stool try to outrun a group of Counter-Terrorists it never gets old!

So with the LANOlympics all sewn up we had two competitions left to play, the Dawn of War 1v1 and the CoD 4 free for all deathmatch. We drew names from the hat for the Dawn of War compo and kicked of the first rounds. We left the entrants to arrange their matches and it all went without a hitch. We played another round of matches which gave us 5 remaining players. We dumped all five of them into a free for all match and left them slug it out. It was played on the map Testing Grounds with the annhilate, take and hold and control area rules in effect. It was a great match to watch with everyone employing different tactics. Anouilh (aka Malo) was the most aggressive and steamrolled his way around the map. His first clash was against Milkman which he won and stampeded through his base. Next stop was Converse's forces that also got beaten and were left homeless. But by the time he got through to Psycho his forces had dwindled and so he had to regroup to his base. Meanwhile Psycho and Rainbow battled it out for control of the centre critical location (the person who holds that for seven minutes wins the game). Psycho held the point for ages but with less than twenty seconds until victory Rainbow neutralized it. Sadly he only managed to hold it for a few minute before Psycho regrouped and took it back with a substantial force he'd built up.

Sensing that the odds were too great rainbow cut his losses in the centre and launched an offensive against Anouilh's base to try and grab the second spot. He managed to wipe out his main base but Anouilh had built secondary as a backup. Psycho comfortably held the centre critical point for the seven minutes and ended the game as the winner. A peek at the scores revealed that Anouilh's early demolition work racked him up enough points to earn him second place and Rainbows offensive was too late so had to settle for third.

It was a great final, you can download the full replay HERE.

After a few more games it was time for our Call of Duty 4 final. We run three qualifying rounds with eight people in each. The rules were free for all deathmatch in hardcore mode. The first to 150 points (200 for the final) would advance to the next round. One word. Carnage. We got the competition up on the projector for people to spectate and they all looked like really good matches. We had 9 people in the final which were as follows... Converse, Cleric, Dredd(Wales), Plasma, Anouilh, GrumpyGremlin, Gray, Crappermine, GrumpyYoung.

In the midst of the carnage one moment shone through like a ray of sunshine through the clouds. dreddWales, the old timers favourite was doing well and staying near the leaders at the top of the scoreboard. He came face to face with the leading player Converse and slashed at him with his knife, dropping him instantly. The cheer that went up around the room was amazing; it wouldn't have been louder if he'd won the match. After around fifteen minutes of fragging Converse emerged victorious, Anouilh taking second and the people's favourite stabber, dreddWales taking third place.

At the prize giving ceremony all of our attendees were very polite and gathered around for the prize giving and providing a nice applause for the deserved winners. The ceremony also made us realise how much stuff we gave away ('Shame I couldn't enter the compo's' - Monk) ('Not that I would've won anything' - B0b). Everyone seemed happy with their prizes and they all had that excited 'winners' look about them as they chatted to anyone and everyone close by. Well done lads, you played some storming games and earned those prizes.

So the end of another LAN and the end of another (long) writeup. The eFragz staff we're really pleased with how it all went and I think we did well on our first official overnight LAN party. Thanks once again to everyone who helped us out. From gaffer tapers to network admins, power fixers, photo takers, server admins and loads of other people that I probably forgot.

Our final thanks go to the guys at the Newport Games Society for asking us to host a LAN at their GS08 event. I hope we put on a good show and look forward to working together again.