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Any problems with the BYOC and freeplay area?
end3r
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was the main network admin for the BYOC and freeplay computer areas. I didn't really make myself known or available during the event, but were there any problems that people had during the event in these areas, or ways they think it could have improved? There is a pretty much a guarentee that LanPartyNW will be running these areas again next year (possibly with the help of BLE) and I'll probably be doing the network admin work again. Feedback is good mmmmkey?
I was told there would be no math....
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The LAN website (pax.lan) seemed useful, though with 30 mins I didn't use it nearly as much as a BYOC guy.
With the bigger venue next year I hope there's a big freeplay room where you can justt walk in and sit down for whatever length of time
The line was bullshit, but that had to be done because of the bigger problem, the freeplay "room" wasn't a room at all, it was a freakin' hall. I had expected something along the lines of the tournament room.
Hopefully this will be rectified with the new venue next year.
Next time I want to have some dedicated tourney systems as well. UT tourneys can be done throughout the tourney on a set of 5 or 10 systems, and the same systems could be used for the CS stuff, one match at a time. Problem is that there will most likely be more people wanting to play the matches than there was this year and it would be difficult to get all the tournaments completed in time. With ohter lan events it is no problem, as everybody is bringing a PC anyway so all the gamers have their own system. In order to open the tourneys up to the non PC bringing folk, we have to use some donated system from somewhere.
I'm not sure what you mean by a 'hall'. The freeplay area was the same room as the BYOC area. It was just a BIG room. The reason there was a line for freeplay is there was a limited amount of systems donated for freeplaying. The 400 person LAN events I've helped admin are in simliar rooms, although slightly larger. It seems to work well, although I'm curious as to what you think could be improved by the room itself.
The computer area was run fine, so far as I can tell. Nice job.
but it was done well with what there was.
ps :what were the specs on the PCs?
Gripe: Security was nearly pointless. I walked in and out with my laptop without being stopped and we cleared out all but one piece of our equipment on Sunday without anyone questioning us. They seemed to enforce entrance into the room a bit better, but I walked in unquestioned repeatedly. Also, because the freeplay and BYOC areas were in the same room, it was trivial to pass between the two. I walked back and forth during the UT2k4 tourney (as did others) and no one cared. In my mind, it was the lack of thieves that made it work out OK, not security. (My friend did get his BF2 CD #1 stolen though.)
Suggestion: Either don't bother with security or make it hard core. And if you give people the option to check a piece of equipment, then it creates an impossible situation on check-out. You have to decide what you want to track and what you don't care about and force everyone to abide by it.
Gripe: The guys on the mic announcing freeplay was over got really fucking annoying on Friday. Imagine how pissed we were by Sunday. It was just repetative, loud and sometimes very mean sounding. (There was a guy late Sunday who was real nice and a bit more soft spoken about it. That was refreshing.)
Suggestion: With separate BYOC and freeplay rooms, it eliminates the issue. If not that, make the announcement, but do it politely and at a reasonable volume. Then, have someone physical sweep the aisle(s) to get stubborn jerks to stand up rather than yelling over the mic.
Gripe: I know you're going to take issue with this one, and it may not matter next year, but it was the biggest downer of PAX. WORLD OF WARCRAFT. We were told that it was a bandwidth issue. I can appreciate that. But we were also made to feel like we shouldn't even want to play it, as though we were bad to desire it. That made me want to deck the guy who treated us like shit. We bought the BYOC spots to have something to do between PAX events. And it worked... we played BF2 and UT2k4 a bit and enjoyed it. But with so few people there, those games weren't always enticing. So, we ended up playing single player stuff at a LAN party. When we looked across the room and saw literally 15 other gamers in the room, we couldn't understand the WoW restriction.
Suggestion: Solve the bandwidth problem. That's a technical hurdle that can be overcome. Also, I wonder why it was made out to be a big deal. I'd like to see how much bandwidth WoW really uses, and how that was so much worse than the web browsing, emailing, file downloading, etc. that was allowed.
Gripe: Out of, what... 255 spots?... I never saw a BF2 match greater than 45 peeps... and a great deal of the time there were no more than 20 people playing in the room total.
Suggestion: I have no idea how to handle that. People sign up, but don't play? Whatever...
It was fun nonetheless. I had a good time and it was in great part due to the BYOC room. The running BF2 servers were appreciated and the www.pax.lan site was pretty neat.
Thanks for running the show. The biggest thing I've ever done was put on a 45 man BF1942 LAN party. I know how hard it is, even though it looks easy. You guys did an overall great job.
I'd like there to be an annoucement for game of the hour and shut down the other servers, force some people to get together. The way it was everyone was playing something else and the biggest BF2 game I was in was 37 people and that only lasted 30 minutes until freeplay was up.
I would REALLY like to see a projector showing the current game, maybe the scores and other tourney type info. Basically I felt that I was just there with my computer, no interaction.
Also WOW would have been nice but I understand that would be very hard on the bandwidth.
After all those complaints I'd say the servers were rock solid and pax.lan was great and all the LPNW guys were cool. Thanks for putting this on!
As far as the BF2 cd goes...I know this is hardly any sort of solution, but rumor has it that if you acquire the iso of the dvd version, mount it with Alcohol (installed via expert installation with renamed drivers), you won't need the cd to play. Again, I recognize it's not a real solution to the problem, but just thought I'd throw that out there.
This is perfectly reasonable.
Eek, I hope it wasn't me (tall guy, wore sandals, sounded like a dying seal from Saturday onward, dashingly handsome). This was a big issue with a lot of people, and I probably should have seen it coming beings as it doesn't take a genius to know that World of Warcraft is a big game with Penny-Arcade.
Unfortunately, I can't really explain the issue here as I don't play WoW nor have I ever had it played at our events....perhaps End3r can be of more use on this. All I can say is I talked to our server guy from www.pogolinux.com and he said there simply wasn't any way to make it work given the Internet connection we had at our disposal. And sadly, the connection we had was considerable and also came at considerable expense.
The main problem is steam authentication. That was the top priority...if you come to a lan party, you're going to want to play CSS, almost without exception (which I count myself among, you heretics). If our Internet connection gets owned in the face by Warcraft, then steam decides everyone wants to play Minesweeper.
If it was just an issue of, "oops, now you can't surf the web anymore" we would have tried it, but for mission critical stuff like CS we've got to be very careful. But again, I do understand where you're coming from...it's a big PA game, and it's completely reasonable to expect it to be available at PAX.
The only thing worse is to see people reading books at a lan party. =(
That number was actually the maximum capacity of the lan...more or less. Or rather, it was an approximation of the maximum capacity according to a computer geek that has an affinity for the number 255.
I'm glad to hear it. Comments like these will go a great ways in making PAX '06 a better show...as I'm sure you know, it can be very difficult for admins to get a feel for how much fun the participants are having...it's easy to get so caught up behind the scenes that you never get a chance to see the play the way it was meant to be seen...to stretch the metaphore beyond comprehension.
If anyone's got any thoughts on DJBreslin's analysis, you'll have no shortage of people interested.
The back doors to the BYOC area were also not locked. A few people walked straight out them thereby passing the doorman.
I concur with the suggestion of a game of the hour thing. It needs to be made clear to people, perhaps with a projector displaying server stats for the currently selected game or just a logo of the currently selected game.
It also needs to be made aware to people what needs to be brought. This not being a cybercafe or Lanwerx type envrionment nor a local LAN left me and many others wondering if we needed to bring ethernet cables, power strips, and/or monitors, as it is a more unique LAN and not having gone to PAX '04. Also there need to be longer LAN cables. I brought a broken cable, and needed to use one of the six footers. Luckily I was able to move close to the hub, but this could create a problem if there is not enough space and only short lan cables.
I also liked the idea of pax.lan, but don't think it was used to its potential.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
Yeah, that got annoying quickly. Next year will have a much more friendly atmosphere around the freeplay stuff.
We didn't watn to seperate the two, as the freeplay used the same server and network resources as the BYOC stuff. _MY_ goal was to treally try to get the freeplay people to play with the BYOC people more. With a better structured game of the hour that will help a lot.
Ok, here is the deal with this one. WoW isn't a lan game. A Lan isn't a place to bring your PC to sit next to someone and play on an internet server. If I could have arranged for a local WOW server, maybe, but maybe not. Even Tycho told us that not allowing WoW was a good thing. LANs are much more about playing LAN games. This is a touchy subject with a lot of people but it's the stance we've had at 400 person events as well and for the most part it goes well. Next year Tycho wants to put a lot more emphasis on the BYOC area and arrange for ways that people don't have to leave to see stuff. We're going to pipe whatever happens in the theater into the BYOC area on the big screen as well as the audio. Also with more structure on what games are being played it will keep people from wanting to wander off and play single player games. THere has been discussion of maybe a mod contest for certian engines... everybody on the lan plays through some mod entries and votes on the winner and stuff like that.
Again it was structure. Us LPNW guys didn't get into the planning stage until really late, and then we weren't sure how much yarn we had to run with. That has been cleared up and next year we will be a much more visable force and structure the BYOC area a lot better. Tycho expects to come up and play for a good chunk of time at next year's PAX. That alone will guarentee the BYOC area fills up in a hurry.
Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it!
Next year there will be a good info sheet on what to bring. Something will be mailed to the BYOC people with a checklist on what they should bring, what they should do to their PC before they get there, stuff like that.
A) you need to wait in line.
C) you can't bring your own games period.
D) yes, you can.
E) no, you can't.
F) you can't bring your CONSOLE (but maybe games are OK).
Keep in mind that we learned one of these "rules" about every two hours.
This could have been solved lickety-split by a simple post on the PAX site!
PS. I would appreciate a classic gaming room - I appreciated the guys who let me throw down on Typing of the Dead. If there was an option, I was going to run a Rez demo but we didn't have a PS2. The problem? The DoubleTree made them RENT THEIR OWN TV, and took it away between 11 and 1. Yargh!
But I think it's the right call to leave them connected. It just wasn't obvious to me at the time and it explains a lot now.
BTW, I don't think the PAX BYOC room == a normal LAN party. A LAN party is typically dedicated to one or two games and everyone plays for the whole thing non-stop. But the PAX BYOC room is a diversion. Something to do between PAX events. So I think applying typical LAN party thinking to it is flawed. So, a statement like "A Lan isn't a place to bring your PC to sit next to someone and play on an internet server." seems out of place to me. That's the point I'm trying to make. It is a correct stance at your 400 person LANs when that event is the event... but it doesn't fit here, IMO.
This is good feedback for the people running the console freeplay. I'm looking for feedback on the PC freeplay and BYOC. Sorry for the confusion.
Thats just it, Tycho would like to see it MORE of a LAN party and LESS of 'something to do when I get bored downstairs'. Next year will have a big focus on making the BYOC area a HUGE lan. We're shooting for 600~800 gamers if not more.
I also wanted to bring an irc window on the front page itself..integrate it with the Intranet site, but sadly I wasn't able to make it work in time.
What tycho wants doesn't matter if gamers have different expectations. The expectations were not clear. FWIW it was called the BYOC room not the lanparty room. BYOC makes gamers think they can bring their game and do whatever they want on it gaming wise unless you set other expectations.
I think you guys are wrong about wow though. Getting everyone who wanted to play wow together and having them roll up alts on a server and have a bunch of fun one day could have been really cool. Or everyone could have transfered their 60's to the test server and did some big ZG / arathi basin thing together. Even if you just limited WoW access to saturday afternoon or something.
I also did not know about the website (apparently pax.lan).
I didn't see the security problems the others saw other than saturday night. I left with my bag of junk saturday night and no one was really around to check it out (i left my PC and monitor and just brought my bag back sunday). I was definitely checked when i left with my PC/monitor though.
Perhaps we can work something w/ Blizzard for a WOW presense next year. A good seed of thought.
Yeah, more emphasis on "This is a LAN" and less assumption of "This is an internet garden in which you can plug in your PC and do whatever you want".
Speaking of, we should try and get some vendor to supply laptops or PCs or something for an email / internet garden. Kiosks that people can use to check something out or look something up or just get their e|webmail fix.
It makes the game soooo much better when your entire party is in the room with you.
Freaking owned.
A list of games you plan to host dedicated servers for would rock as well. Suggested server rotations etc would be sweet. We probably didn't have the players in the BYOC room to do that this year, but maybe we would have if everyone knew that 12:00 was going to be BF2 map x, and 3:00 was going to be CS map X etc. With the people we had CS and BF2 competed with eachother a lot and most of the time this meant there wen't enough people in at least one of them to have a fun game. I switched games several times just because playing BF2 with 4-5 people blows pretty hard.
Good input. The pax.lan intranet page was listing what servers were there, bu tnot map rotation times. Some games rotate on time, or wins, or on admin's whim. We can list what maps are THERE, but not when it will rotate. We can also pre-advertise what games we plan on hosting prior to the event, as a means to draw people into BYOC that are interested in said games.
Yah anyway, only small things you could really improve on. Overall i had a ton of fun in the BYOC room. I managed to get locked out of changing my name in CS 4-5 times since i was mucking with it after every round or two.
Was pax.lan written anywhere? I'm curious as to how everyone seems to have known about it but me.
BIGGER.
and my only perceived problem with a BYOC is a person with a shitty computer. where's the love? how can he get a chance to play?
i've never been to a LAN party or an EXPO.
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He can use the freeplay computers.
well, apparently there was a problem this year with freeplay comps.
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Did you use them?
I didn't know about it either, and was canny enough to find the site that recommended that I bring my own powerstrips and network cables.
But about my problems? As long as you're asking...
Okay, this is a seven part answer, with an intro:
Intro: The enforcers were outstanding. Give some people a badge and they go freaking fascist on you. Not here. Everyone I encountered was cool and enthusiastic, yet still checked my ID. For the first day, at least. By Sunday I think everyone recognized me so I pretty much walked in with a hand wave. I also liked how I only had to declare the stuff that I percieved as valuable, instead of describing every screw that might be pried off my systems. That kept the sign-in and sign-out reasonably brief.
Problems/Suggestions:
1: Actually, what I missed most was the passersby of last year asking about my computer and talking games. Although security was tighter this year, the social factor was much more diluted. That's a tough one to rectify. As a BYOCer, I'd be comfortable if you let any PAX attendee in the BYOC room, provided they checked their bags at the door and left empty handed.
2: For the small things I might fear being stolen, a locker or BYOC participant bag check would be perfect. That way, I could put my DVD/CD wallet in a backpack and check it behind the desk instead of fearing that another BYOC attendee might swipe all my game disks. If I fail to check anything that might get pocketed while I'm away, I've got no one to blame but myself.
3: I set my computer up under one of the intercom speakers. While playing counter-strike, I rounded a corner to see a terrorist pointing a shotgun at me just as the intercom speaker said "ATTENTION EVERYONE!" I literally jumped out of my seat and nearly fell over. Some kind of musical tone to give you time to brace yourself for the announcers shouting would add years to my life.
4: Never heard of the pax.lan site. I also had all my computers set up to run with designated IPs from my home LAN. Only took a few mouse clicks to fix this once I realized my mistake, but a small paper handout would have solved both problems.
5: Naming or numbering the PC areas would have been helpful for socializing or teambuilding. A conversation I had went like this, "slacktron, you wanna play in the CS tournament?" "sure" "where are you?" "uh, first row, walk a bit. go about halfway down, then turn right." If I could have said, "station 071" it would have been a lot easier.
6: A petty request, but better chairs would have been nice. I arrived after a full day of work and a six hour drive, then gamed for about four hours before my back took retribution on my nerve endings. I should have known better, but something with arm rests would have helped.
7: Coordination of gameplay is a great idea. There are plenty of free games such as Enemy Territory, Tribes I & II, Allegiance, Armegetron, and possibly Quake III (is that free to play now that the source code has been released?) that everyone could download for full-room participation. A scoreboard page like www.splatterladder.com would be icing on the cake.
In all, had a great time, and was glad to meet some PA Forumers in person. Apotheos, Viscountalpha, my thanks go to you for making the four-system setup work, and just being fun to hang with. See you next year, bros.
In retrospect, we definitely should have had some sort of flyer we could hand out to everyone upon BYOC registration that would include all the dedicated server information, intranet address, and maybe a small layout of the room to help find users...I see a lot of really good ideas here, and it's pretty safe to expect to see a lot of this next year.
I'll especially be looking into www.splatterladder.com, thank you for bringing that to my attention!
First off, there seemed to be fewer people who brought PC's this year as opposed to '04. The quick way that people were shuffled through the Freeplay rigs also contributed to the poor availability of good games. If the organizers want to have the Freeplay area compliment the BYOC room, they should have had them limit the time played based on game ROUNDS, not some random arbitrary limit. They were booted pretty rudely, after which they'd simply walk off and leave the game going, but just be AFK, which fucked up the team balance, etc.
I'd like to see a "fun/beginner" and "advanced/expert" category given to games that have 2 or more servers, which might help sort things out.
My crew and I kept getting banned on the BF2 servers because noobs would drive over our mines, run out in front of our vehicles, then punish us. *sigh*... worse still, Doc got banned for SWEARING in the in-game chat.
1. Penny Arcade Expo
2. Retarded swear-word filter that kick/bans people who paid to bring their computer to PAX.
...
one of these things does not belong...
On the other hand, the tournaments went smoothly. After the BF2 tournament, I jumped into the CS:S tourny with a pick up squad and ended up getting to the round-robin match. This is an extremely fair way to decide who is the best team, and I had a great time even though we ended up getting owned. But since it was round robin, we really couldn't complain, as we had a very fair shot.
i thought that especially since the BF2 teams were far fewer, that the round-robin format would have been nice to do for BF2 as well... maybe next year.
Also, I'd like to see the brackets on the projectors as they are happening, or at least showing the preliminary bracket. Also it would be great to have a seeding system for the big tournaments. Just taking note of past tournament wins, CAL experience, matching T-shirts, etc. would help to make a much more exciting tournament since the really good teams won't be knocking each other off until the finals.
Anyways, thanks to all the LANpartyNW guys, Widow PC , and AMD for setting up such a fun place to be.
PS Storm Shadow, what team were you part of? I was one of the CS admins, usually the guy herding people into the tourny area and such. And thanks a lot for the feedback, it makes all the effort worth it to hear that people had fun in the tournament!
I personally liked being able to come and go from the BYOC area as I choose as there where several panels that I was interested in seeing as well as playing in some of the table top areas. Stomping on all the default players did get old quickly but I guess that’s to be expected. All in all I don’t think I saw more then 50 people in the BYOC area and many of those where there watching their friends play.
I came to see the BYOC area over the course of the three days as a place to hang out between other activities as well as the huge amount of stuff going on all the time its surprising the BYOC area was not emptier.
For me PAX was a buffet of gaming goodness with not one single focus leaving me with a strong desire to find a way to slow down time as there was simply not enough time. I am a bit worried by the comment to put more focus on the LAN as I would hate to see the focus of PAX become a LAN party and not a gaming event.
The gaming area was perfectly lit. The announcer for the free play area was a bit annoying but that was the only extra noise that was bothersome given the BYOC location it did not have to contend with the ambient volume of other areas.
The servers themselves seemed very capable of keeping up with what was going on even though the pax web site did not share updated game information.
Was a bit confused at first as to where I was suppose to set up my computer or if it was sort of a free for all.
I came packing heat with my TEAM FUCKING HUGE for BF2, but I also joined up with my brother Tom's CS:S team NSFW just for fun. Good times.
Thanks again, guys!
That concerns me too. IMO the BYOC area should be a place for stuff to do between things, just like console freeplay and table top freeplay should be as well. If i wanted just a LAN party experience i would go to a lan party. Having a lan spot and paying a bit extra for a byoc slot so i have a gaurenteed area to be able to find something to do between other things is why i was in byoc, and, imo that is how the byoc area should be.
I'm also somewhat disturbed at the attitude towards wow, and i dont even play it. I could deal with a technical limitation, but honestly, wow is not that bandwidth intensive and bandwidth for an event like this should not be a hard thing to arrange. The attitude of "its not a lan game so no" is wrong imo. If a group of 5 or 6 people wanted to grab a table in the tabletop room and all play a game of solitare together, i dont think anyone would have a problem with that. its the same thing. Just because wow is not a traditional LAN game, as long as its technically feasible it should be allowed if the participants want it. I highly doubt anyone would go to an event like this and just play wow all weekend, but having it available for people to hop on, kill some time here and there, and possibly get together with some others and do something in wow, or any other game that is not a traditional LAN title, should be allowed.