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Sevnn
Candy Cane King
Joined: 22 Mar 2003
Posts: 7711
Location: Kyrat
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Most modern day computers are more than powerful enough to run as a server for most games that support that type of play. For those without dedicated servers, "listen" servers are when a game allows one player to host the game and for others to join. This is more of an ad-hoc play but usually works well. The biggest issue you'll have is that many modern games don't support either of these multiplayer server setups. Instead they are focused on internet servers. Will you be able to support internet play? If you are considering it you need to make sure you have a solid router for that many users and even more solid internet connection. If for instance you had 100mb/s across 50 players that's 2mb/s per player and good luck playing most internet games on that.
For switch hardware I'd try to find a couple 24 port gigabit switches or a 48 port gigabit switch. Setting up a bunch of smaller switches will be a pain to deal with and will have bottlenecks in performance depending on setup. Cabling can be purchased from somewhere like Monoprice pre-made for about the same price as bulk cable and you won't have to handle termination.
Power for 50 people is likely going to be an issue. You'll need a power strip for every 2-3 players and no more than about 5 players per 20 amp cable. You'll need to make sure each set of 2 power cables is on its own circuit or you'll be tripping breakers. In our previous LAN setup when we had to deal with extension cords we had 2-3 large ice-chests for just the power and network cables, and that was for 20 ish players. At 50 players we were using 5-6 crates of cable.
How are you handling tables? Are you providing chairs? What type of facility will this be in? Will you have enough A/C? The ability to make the room dark?
Continuing the internet thing, if you are going to have it, you need to make sure to provide some way to install the games and patch them. If you are planning to have players play Steam based games you need to make sure they go into Offline mode before they pack-up from home or they might not be able to authenticate their account.
You'll need to plan something as DHCP but this is easily handled with a basic router or have the server handle it.
If you are providing internet, assume that someone or couple people will hoard your bandwidth. It might be torrents, streamed video, or an unintentional virus. Any one of these can bring your internet to its knees. Per client throttling and some form of per client monitoring can make a big difference. You can port/service block at the router and that helps. If your router doesn't handle this there are a few windows/linux router software setups that can handle it for you. You'll likely need dual nics in your server to do it and have to play with the configuration. We did this when we were at the ELG and it worked well.
Setup a chalk/white board for information sharing. Having an intranet site helps but not if people can't connect. Having a shared board you can throw up addresses, times, games, etc can help a lot with a big LAN.
Something like TF2 should play well in tournament format. I would try to stay on the side of free-to-play or have the games otherwise available. The new Unreal Tournament reboot, if it has a private LAN server option, would be a ton of fun.
If you are going to try something like Unreal Tournament (assuming the new one is like the old one) and setting up your own server, make sure you setup an HTTP redirect. UT (at least in the past) would give users custom maps but it was SLLLOOOOWW. If you have an HTTP server (IIS, Apache, etc) locally setup, you can configure UT to tell the user's computer where the maps are location and they download much faster.
Sorry for the long post, hope this info helps spawn some thoughts and help you avoid issues.
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Fri Apr 22, 2016 10:59 pm
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Pwnzornaut
Sand Filter
Joined: 22 Apr 2016
Posts: 6
Location: OKC
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First off, thanks a ton for your replies, I knew coming to you guys would be a good first step.
Trying to use the Listen server in TF2 always results in crashes every 20 minutes or so, so I definitely would need a Dedicated server. Sorry, I don't know what DHCP stands for.
The LAN will be at the Tinker Club, good point about the power, I will definitely need to spread everyone out and verify which outlets go to which breakers. Does anyone have a recommendation besides TF2? The Free UT ran terribly when I tried it a year ago, I will definitely revisit it. I will verify if it lets you host a game...
You made an excellent point about sticking to F2P, but there are precious few good F2P games out there that new players have a fair chance at. I was also considering Tribes: Ascend...
I can get LOADS of jerky! When/where/how could I borrow this switch from you?
I will check if the Club has wifi (doubt it). As long as people turn their steam to offline mode before leaving home they should be able to play LAN, right?
Thanks again guys, I'll be bothering you lots with updates as we get this party started. Is anyone interested in me looking into acquiring guest passes so you could attend?
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Sun Apr 24, 2016 1:07 am
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Drix
SEAT #ASS 10
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 1773
Location: Norman
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Sevnn wrote: ...The new Unreal Tournament reboot, if it has a private LAN server option, would be a ton of fun.
If you are going to try something like Unreal Tournament (assuming the new one is like the old one) and setting up your own server, make sure you setup an HTTP redirect. UT (at least in the past) would give users custom maps but it was SLLLOOOOWW. If you have an HTTP server (IIS, Apache, etc) locally setup, you can configure UT to tell the user's computer where the maps are location and they download much faster...
It (Unrealtournament.com) does do LAN games and servers, same as UT2004 (the previous proper version), but their launcher needs some minimal internet to authenticate per user, just like Steam. I don't think there is an "offline" mode for it just yet. They're still in beta with their launcher, and the game itself, while available is still in pre-alpha. _________________ Advocating the end of the world since July 1995.
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Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:45 pm
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