Your thoughts

[Goober]

The DLPs are all about YOU! And the DLP staff wants to make them better for YOU! So give us some feedback good or bad (make sure its constructive). We need to hear these things that are on your mind or else they will never change!

[Spooner]

Carrots? srsly? I hate carrots and that is all there was. Feel kinda screwed out of some money... I usually only drink 3-4 mountain dews and have just more than a handful of chips. Where does my 10 dollars go? especially since this past LAN had its own entry fee for the tourneys. I assumed the carrots were just brought by some random health conscious attendee not Martin. Fail. If I wanted to eat a pile a veggies I would have been born a rabbit.

[Mogo]

OMG I LOVE CARROTS

[Textbook_Ninja]

I didnt mind the carrots so much. I actually love carrots... and with ranch, I ate lots of them .

Anyway, I can understand that not everyone likes veggies. So I guess not 10 pounds of just carrots, throw like 5 dollars into some chips or something. Snacks though, I cant complain.

Honestly I dont think anything is bad that we are doing. I think a bit more advertisement for our events would go a long way. This was brought up before, but wasnt acted on except for me making a few flyers and reaching out to a few sponsors.

The other thing that would be nice is a schedule or at least using the projectors to let people know what is being played. Everytime a tournament is not going it feels like a game is played for like 30 minutes and then a new game of something else goes up by the time your even ready to start playing the game you just joined.

That frustrates the crap out of me.

Anyway, Im here to help, not complain. So Ill work on some of these issues myself, just wanted to share my thoughts.

[Goober]

The other thing that would be nice is a schedule or at least using the projectors to let people know what is being played. Everytime a tournament is not going it feels like a game is played for like 30 minutes and then a new game of something else goes up by the time your even ready to start playing the game you just joined.

That frustrates the crap out of me.

AND HOW! I try to make sure I have most of the games shared/installed so when we do change games its not that big of a deal FOR ME. But I'm not everyone and I do find it frustrating when games switch over that quickly. Its what the people want? I dunno about that one...

[Static]

I love carrots. A LOT. I probably ate more carrots at that DLP than I have in the past 4 months. And it's not just that they're better for you, but they keep you awake and fill you a hell of a lot better than doritos do.

Chips are good too, but, if you notice, we ALWAYS run out of food by around 2 or 3 AM, and everyone's just like "crap, now I'm starving" but they don't want to leave. Chips last for a decent while, but they're not as filling, so people tend to go all out on them if they are hungry.

Another random food-related thing is, back when I ran the churchlans, I didn't have to pay for the facility nor was I running any tournaments, BUT, I WAS providing what seemed to be a lot more food - I actually bought 2 or 3 frozen pizzas, charged $2.50 for people to get in, and actually ended up making like $5 across the entire course of all of the lans. They're really not that expensive and even just two pieces of frozen pizza is more than the amount of chips that most people eat across all of the DLPs, and so it'll keep people full...

[Mogo]

Yeah, I guess if we're all postulating on snackies, I agree that there should be diversity. Like:

• Veggie platter (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, etc)
• A few pizzas (even cold pizza is very edible, some would argue even moreso!)
• Chipz
• Candy. (Those bucket of Red Vines go a long way, since each strand can last a while if you idly chew on them. Jumbo bags of gummies are also grande mesa. )

As far as games go, every LAN has been different. Some times we underestimate how long a tourney will take and we time it poorly, but I do think we aught to have some freeplay schedule picked out and someone to kind of supervise and keep the schedule moving forward, for example:

• 6 PM to 7 PM - Counter-Strike (always a good opener)
• 7 PM to 8 PM - Dystopia (Or any source mod. But c'mon, we haven't played Dystopia in for EVAR.)
• 8 PM to 9 PM - HoN & Multiple Challenge TD (for those who don't HoN.)
• 9 PM to 10 PM - Modern Wurfurrrr (1 or 2, depending on how many people have adopted 2 by that point. Do a show of hands to determine)
• 10 PM to 11 PM - SourceForts (hells yes)
• 11 PM to 12 AM - StarCraft (Or any RTS)
• ... etc

You get the idea. And using the projector to keep focus is a great idea. I think I'll hook up my second PC to the projector next time and just set it up to spectate in matches. We used to do that a lot for CS and Quake, back in the day...

[Volshok]

Yeah, I guess if we're all postulating on snackies, I agree that there should be diversity. Like:

• Veggie platter (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, etc)
• A few pizzas (even cold pizza is very edible, some would argue even moreso!)
• Chipz
• Candy. (Those bucket of Red Vines go a long way, since each strand can last a while if you idly chew on them. Jumbo bags of gummies are also grande mesa. )

As far as games go, every LAN has been different. Some times we underestimate how long a tourney will take and we time it poorly, but I do think we aught to have some freeplay schedule picked out and someone to kind of supervise and keep the schedule moving forward, for example:

• 6 PM to 7 PM - Counter-Strike (always a good opener)
• 7 PM to 8 PM - Dystopia (Or any source mod. But c'mon, we haven't played Dystopia in for EVAR.)
• 8 PM to 9 PM - HoN & Multiple Challenge TD (for those who don't HoN.)
• 9 PM to 10 PM - Modern Wurfurrrr (1 or 2, depending on how many people have adopted 2 by that point. Do a show of hands to determine)
• 10 PM to 11 PM - SourceForts (hells yes)
• 11 PM to 12 AM - StarCraft (Or any RTS)
• ... etc

You get the idea. And using the projector to keep focus is a great idea. I think I'll hook up my second PC to the projector next time and just set it up to spectate in matches. We used to do that a lot for CS and Quake, back in the day...

Timing is extremely difficult, especially with games like HoN and Starcraft. HoN games can be over in 20 minutes or take an hour and a half. SC is even more random. One of the most insane OSL matches of all times begins with July destroying Best with a 5 pool, 7 minutes in. A following game took over an hour, once Best's macro kicked in. Perhaps consider having some of the precursor rounds during over events, then have the "final" rounds during a set time? Hard to get accurate timings for this.

A spectator on the projector is awesome unless people look up at the screen. Then it get's annoying. No idea how you would combat that however.

[Mogo]

That's why I worded the schedule as free play. I know tourneys are unpredictable. But for the people not participating in the tourney, it'd be good to have someone keeping the flow of games going. And the projector would be best for FFA FPS games or other games where screen watching isn't so important. Otherwise, the spectator could be set to just stare at a large, open, general area of the map or something. Or playerstats.

[minideezel]

So i also would like to see maybe 2 12 packs of Voltage or more, i by far prefer voltage,

then as far as the open gameplay thing goes, i really don't think i would like a structured schedule for gameplay.

So my sugestion is say a list:
Put down a game u want to play and then we can play the games in order

so:
CSS
UT3
TF2
SC
COD
TD
etc

and we just play each game until we vote to move on.

we could have the list on the projector.

Dunno just my input.

[Static]

Eh, idunno, what I think we should just do is see if we can keep track of what games are up. The main reason that games break up is that other people start games in the middle of games already going, and obviously people have preferences so people break off...if people knew of what games are going on a lot more people would play - like I didn't know CSS was going on until it just about ended >.<...

I think, if we can, we should try and also configure the projector so that we can display tournaments in progress so people don't have to gather around random peoples' computers. And because it would be awesome.

Also, if we could put a list of all games up on the projector, then you could always just take a quick glance up and see.

Oh, one last thing: A while back, we had the DLP site - or at least ALP - up on the server, locally. I know it's a pain in the ass to upload/download all the changes going on to the site while it's in 2 different locations...but if we just had a local ALP server, and had people register through that, we could get more peoples' emails and get them more interested in the site itself.

[minideezel]

I see no reason in having a local alp server, we haven't had total internet loss in a while so we can just keep using the online one.

[Goober]

I see no reason in having a local alp server, we haven't had total internet loss in a while so we can just keep using the online one.

I second that. Its very easy to move a db for the night, but I don't want to do that, waste of time because we have internet access, it gets people to go to the site. Plus I have about 80ish emails for DLP kids. When I remember to do the mass emailing it happens.

People ***** and moan to much about changing games, some one is still kick'n ass and taking names while the kid next to him keeps giving out his name and gets his ass kicked. When going to a LAN its kinda expected of you to have a standard amount of games installed or easy access to them. COD, CSS, WC3, HON, SC, and a few others are given games, srsly. Is it my fault you dont have the game installed? Is it Mogo's fault? (pick the obvious question) Its a LAN, you come to play games and leech crap, so come prepared.

I'm not a fan of carrots and yes I did eat some just because they were there.

Local ALP - Nay
Schedule - Nay
Diverse food - Yey

[Mogo]

Lol. Wait, did you just try to ninja-shovel blame onto me, Gooby? ¬___¬

[catgh]

More diversity of snacks. Love the carrots; was worried about the double dipper people (you know who you are). Really miss the Red Vines; you can eat your twisllers

Better announcement of games being played (including a loose schedule) - use of projectors. This allows people to make sure they have the game installed PRIOR to it going up to be played.

I do agree with Goober that people should have games installed prior to showing up. Also, it hasn't happened lately, but I find it interesting when someone shows up with a computer that isn't even working. The spend the whole night tooling and re-installing the O/S.

On a side note, the use of LPEA's facilities is at no cost. It does come with an expectation of proper behavior though - which hasn't been a problem.

[Ryuu]

I can agree. People should have things installed prior to the DLP. What I am thinking is possibly handing out Everything that we might be playing at the lan and have people install it just in case. I mean, I don't have dystopia sense we haven't played it before but it wouldn't hurt to have a small schedule just in case things slow down. I want to have little down time and more game time at the DLP. Hopefully I can get a DLP server up and running to have a few dedicated servers of multiple games going to fit everyones fancy. I mean, there were only like, 5 people playing cod4 last DLP when everyone else were just looking up things on the internet and stuff.
We need to find a way to get more people involved in playing the games that we have. I think we should block wow, aion, eve and all those games for the DLP. It will force people to play games with everyone and have fun.

[Mogo]

Yeah, MMO playing is really no bueno. We could talk with mini about having the ports to those MMOs blocked on the router.

[minideezel]

Ya i can look into the ports shouldn't be that big of deal.

But another idea for the game list/ what people are playing

this might not work just yet cause of the limited invites but using Google Wave would be really cool way for people to collaborate on what games to play and such. I just got my invite today and i don't even have any invites off the bat, i think i get them later. But wave would be really sweet for collaboration

But hell, since they have a full api/ dev for wave we might be able to find/ develop a gadget that would list current servers on the lan and their ips or something sweet like that, i just might investigate that some more...

[hazzardtrak]

Y'know one thing that would be really great is if we actually used the food runs... Honestly all the issues or concerns i've had have been covered in this thread, but usually by the time that I show up ~8pm everything edible is mostly gone and replaced with some type of dorito powder substance, by 2-3am i'm STARVING. What if we had a food run around 9-10:00pm, just before the big tourneys start. We're only 5 minutes from Wal-Mart so it wouldn't be too long of a run, and it would go a long way later in the night to have something to munch on after kicking ass in the tourneys...

[kablaq]

i vote for more pizza *nod*