Modern LAN Parties

[Barracuda]

    So when ever my friends and I try to LAN a game like CIV4, Diablo2, AOE, i end up wanting to offer up a sacrifice to apease the LAN gods, so they can make all the games work together. I will end up wasting hours fixing things like patches, firewalls, router errors, installing games and excersising all the voodoo magic.

 

   Anyways i was wondering what if any solutions there are to fix this. I had one idea to have these games installed on one of those wireless harddrives and have everyone play off the drive itself. I have had people play D2 and Civ4 directly off of external drives before but have no idea if its possible to use it with more people (up to 4). Would this trick even work on wifi? would I need multiple copys of the same game on this drive? Am I absolutly crazy?

 

  Each and every piece of advice would be much appreciated, Thanks!

[typetheed]

That's part of the LAN party experience! At the LAN parties my friends and I set up (about 5 to 10 pc's) there's about one to three hours of troubleshooting, patching, and setup that we do before actually playing.

 

Don't hate it, love it! Joke about it! And definitely don't do it alone. The best advice I could give is to keep a journal with notes about setup, cable wiring, and LAN settings at the house that's hosting the party. It helps when somebody doesn't remember how you guys set up last time.

 

Also, nothing will ever beat using good old ethernet cable through a switch. Wifi will always have setup issues.

[noc]

 

Also, nothing will ever beat using good old ethernet cable through a switch. Wifi will always have setup issues.

^^^^^^ This.... Forget wireless for LAN parties, it just causes headaches. As "typetheed" said, get yourself a switch and some cat5 patch cables, and your away. Not only is it more reliable, but much faster than wireless.

[Judahnator]

My solution:

 

(i have used this for up to 15 users, and it has presented NO issues)

get a 24port switch (i use a CISCO 3500XL), and about 150ft worth of CAT5 cable. Works flawlessly.

[5lay3r]

I would recommend cat5e or cat6 cables, as for games call of duty 1,2 and 4 can play multiplier locally all off the same CD key and can just copy paste the files assuming every one has directx installed. I also like to play supreme commander(the original) at lans but everyone will be required to buy their own copy. Trackmainia nations is also a fun game to play at a lan trying to beat others scores. Hosting your own tf2 server is also a good idea and now that tf2 is free its even better.

 

Edits have been adding game recommendations to the list