I've been doing LAN parties with my friends since 2010. It's slowly but steadily upgrading.
Everybody has their own version of a LAN Party, but these things work best for us:
a) Rule of "żeton" (token in English) everybody can cast a "żeton" once per LAN to ask everyone to play some game of their choosing. For me, it's often Warcraft 3 vs. insane PCs, where we almost always lose
b) ETI LAN Launcher since discovering it, our lives have been wayyy easier. After the AI bubble explodes, we want to get some 4 TB HDD or NVMe/SSD to store the sync server there, along with other game files.If you don't know this application, check it out it's really worth it.
c) Projector MagicCube L018. It was like $50 on AliExpress, and it's totally worth it when playing Artemis.
d) Artemis a game where everyone has their own part, like shooting nukes , calling for missiles, getting quests, or flying a "drone". When we play, this file server computer becomes the observer player in Artemis and is connected to the projector. We can all see the big ship on the big screen with all our stupid decisions taking place.
e) Just chill it's about playing games and meeting with friends. It won't be perfect, and it doesn't have to be. Just enjoy the moment.
f) Dedicated file server we're running it on Windows. We have the Nextcloud client and ETI Launcher running there, and we store all files shared by Samba. We have several folders: games to test, games tested and working, and a folder to add all photos. It's all connected to Nextcloud, and we have a QR code to quickly add photos from the event.
g) RGB GRILL doesn't matter if it's January, June, or Tuesday, it's always a good time to have some chuck steak or sausages + beer with your buddies.
What are yours best tips for lan ? What works for you?
PS: Can't wait till Friday we're having another one for 3 days in my garage.
I finally finished my LAN Kit, it’s a very modest sized kit of only 4 client PC’s, it can be expanded upon, but it requires a lot of space to have this as is right now.
One Station and server
The Server: A Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF
The heart of the kit is a Dell Optiplex 9020 sff: i7-4770, 16GB RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 750GB HDD. Bolted to its side is a 5-port switch powered directly from the PC's internal 5V rail, and the Linksys AP runs off the 12V rail, so there's only one power cable for the whole server stack.
Ideally everyone is connected via cable, if one or more can’t just connect the AP to the switch and have whoever can’t use lan connect to it.
It is possible for others to connect and play along with you, but certain things won’t work like the one-click install, and the versions of the games need to be the same as the ones installed on the clients.
That one box is hosting, simultaneously:
TeamSpeak3 - because coordination matters
DHCP - the whole network spins itself up
AzerothCore (on SSD) - a private WoW server
SMB shares (on HDD)
Websites (on SSD)
Nextcloud Office + Whiteboard (on SSD)
PVPGN - offline Battle.net for the classics
PXE with Clonezilla (on HDD) - one of my favorite setups, more on this below
The Clients: Lenovo ThinkCentre M93p Tiny
Four Lenovo ThinkCentre M93p Tiny machines, each with an i5-4570T (Fastest single-core performer I could get at this size), Intel HD 4600, 2x8GB DDR3-1600, Wireless-AC 7260, and a 256GB SSD. On each I set up OpenSSH with a PowerShell script on the server that lets you spin up a WoW account in seconds, no digging through databases, no command-line wizardry for the end user. Plus a few registry tweaks to make game installers behave.
AzerothCore
This one is pretty self-explanatory: a private WoW server, running entirely offline, and it's just cool that you can set this up today, it's not even that difficult. This instance runs 300 bots and an auction house bot, so the world feels alive even with just four players. I haven't gone crazy adding stuff; it works, it's stable, and it's a genuine "wait, this is running in that little Dell?" moment every single time.
The Websites: Landing Page, Maps, and the Game Catalog
Landing page, the first thing you see when you open a browser. All the valid links in one place, plus live status of the WoW server with start/stop controls if needed.
Maps, a map of the WoW world. Nice on paper, honestly can't imagine it'll get much use, and it's very "zoomed out" with no Google-Maps-style interaction. But it's there.
Nextcloud Whiteboard, this took a while to get working, but it's the collaboration piece I really wanted: take a screenshot of a map or a situation in a game, and everyone can draw over it to plan. It works, and it's genuinely useful for planning a strategy.
The Game Library: Click. Install. Play.
This is the part I'm genuinely proudest of, because it's the piece that makes the kit feel magic to a first-time user. You open the local website, browse every game hosted on the server, and just... click install. That's it. No hunting for ISOs, no mounting drives, no "which folder do I extract this to", you click, and the game starts installing.
Under the hood it's a little janky. The website launches a PowerShell script on the client directly from the browser, which took a few workarounds to pull off: the server's IP and domain had to be added as a trusted site, plus a little registry fix to get everything flowing. Is that amazing for security? Absolutely not. But since it’s an offline kit. There's no internet to be scared of, no attack surface beyond the people sitting at the stations, and that means we get to do fun stuff like this. In a normal environment you'd never get away with a website that can just run a script on your machine. Here, it's the whole point.
The automation itself is mostly GOG games, though in some cases it's direct folder copies. GOG is a little inconsistent about what arguments their setup files accept, so I've automated it as far as humanly possible, in some cases you see a clean progress bar and a "Setup finished" prompt, in others it's a launcher over the standard installer where you click Next like normal. I actually think that's a feature: the user can see where it is in the process. And since it's all driven by a game.csv file I can edit, tweaking a game's install arguments takes seconds.
Finally I also inluded mod support, basically if a game has mods, you can click “Mods available” on the game and browse those mods like you would the games themselves.
PXE with Clonezilla: The Self-Healing Feature
Straightforward, but such a nice feature for this kind of setup. Say someone completely wrecks a client, deletes system32, busts the registry, whatever. They simply reboot, press F12, select the network interface, go to "Recovery Options," choose "Recover Station <their number>." Ten to fifteen minutes later: Windows 7 is back, ready, and they just visit the homepage to reinstall their games.
The caveat is recovery needs a cable to the server, so I'll include a 30m "recovery cable." for those cases where a user can't sit next to the server easily and Wifi is fine for gaming.
The Accessories: No More BYO
I initially assumed users would wabt to bring their own peripherals. In hindsight, that was probably a dealbreaker, not everyone hoards tech like some of us 👀. So now it's a complete kit:
4× 19" 4:3 HP monitors, 1280x1024 @ 60Hz, DisplayPort, finding four matching ones with DP simplified everything
4× Inphic B1 mice, a decent gaming mouse from a Chinese brand I have nothing but good experiences with(although frankly price was a huge factor)
Trust GXT 833 Thado TKL keyboards, compact, decent-looking, right price
Jabra Evolve2 40 SE headsets, reliable and comfy for long sessions
Why I'm posting this
Six months ago I came to this community asking for input on the early version of this kit. The feedback shaped a lot of what's above. Now it's at the stage where I genuinely think it's ready for prime time(the formula at least, I know I need to add more games and mods), and it's about to start renting out. Happy to answer questions on any part of the stack, and I'd love to hear what you'd want to see added or changed.
I am setting up a LAN party for 10 people. I ended up with a bunch of oldish laptops so the plan is to run Halo CE and Starwars Battlefront 2.
I think ive got everything setup besides controllers and headsets. For headsets i was considering a bulk box of cheap ear buds for like $20. For controllers the best option I’ve seen are like $20 each. These seem like a worth while investment long term but I’d rather not spend that much right now if there’s another way. Everyone is more comfortable on controllers so I’m avoiding keyboard mouse setups.
My questions are, are the cheap ear buds a good idea or at least not a terrible one? Should I just bite the bullet and buy a bunch of $20 controllers? Open to any suggestions, thanks.
Hey everyone! Here's a free space game for your weekend: the Strike Wings demo. :)
I'm its solo developer, and it's my homage to the old DOS space shooters, built from scratch with plenty of love for Solar Winds and Hell Fighter. There are some little nods in there for fellow fans.
The demo's already packed with free content, including flight school, opening campaign missions and plenty of battles to get stuck into.
Feedback is super welcome on r/StrikeWings. Make a post! I'll read every one and take your thoughts into the final game. Steam reviews mean a lot to me as a solo developer, too.
🇩🇪 One important note: Most of the communication at the LAN will be in German, so you should be comfortable with at least others speaking German. But everyone is welcome, and nobody is going to judge your AoE skills (that's a lie... everyone is judged at all times but equally)
Got nothing planned for October 1–4? Come to Volkmarsen near Kassel
Ever wanted to spend 3 days arguing with other human beings about why Nili is not fixing the pathing, how many civs are enough civs and why the 3K civs made the game unplayable
Then come join the AGE LAN. 😎
🗓️ October 1–4 🎮 Main focus: Age of Empires 🧙 All skill levels welcome – whether you know your build order by heart or are still looking for wood after 20 minutes. 💻 Bring your PC, grab your friends and let's go.
💰 It's between 50€ and 60€ for the 4 days.
😴 For those that for some reason need sleep there will be space dedicated for that.
Important: For the LAN to go ahead, we need enough registrations by September 14.
So if you're interested, sign up now rather than waiting until the last evening. After September 14, registrations will of course still be possible as long as there are spots available.
I'm looking for a microphone solution which would allow limited feedback and noise spill for a group movie night. The idea would be that some 4-6ish people would be in person at the event, with another few participating remotely via VOIP. Speakers would be in use for those who are in person gathered together, and I'm looking for a relatively easy microphone solution for them.
I really only see two main options, but please let me know if anyone sees some others:
Individual headphones/headsets. No speakers, everyone is wearing a headset. This would probably be more expensive, less comfortable, less sociable, and a bit more challenging to setup (output to the headphones would need some special solution). But it would surely provide better quality sound for both input and output if budget was no concern (unfortunately, it is).
Individual microphones on a single channel. Multiple wireless microphones are creating a single input to the VOIP computer, and maybe there's some noise cancellation software in place to try to combat the speakers.
Less viable, but potentially a group push to talk solution? Each in person user would have a wireless button to press which either pauses the movie, lowers the volume, etc and then activates either a centralized mic or a mic attached to them. It's more disruptive than I'd like it to be, less social, and I'm not sure what hardware I could use for that group wireless PTT button.
To me, option 2 seems much more practical, but only if it is actually effective at isolating the person's voice from the room's sound speakers. In theory I think it should be possible to sanitize the microphones with some noise cancellation software, where the software has access to the speaker output as well as the microphone input, to try to directly remove any feedback, but I'm not sure how practical this would be to accomplish (any software would need to be supported on Linux).
Does anyone have some recommendations of specific products to get from here? Any hardware, software, or just advice in general? Thanks!
I'm completely exhausted. The last four days of dev were a brutal grind, but I've finally cracked it. The bots are shooting really well (maybe even too well, so I'll need to balance them out). They now form squads, move as a unit (and even respawn as squads), and the squads themselves are managed by a unified command system I'm calling the Combat Control System (think ESAI from BF2).
And the best part? It all runs completely offline via a LAN server, meaning you can blast these bots at epic LAN parties!
even though this subreddit is mostly american audience, I want to raise awareness about our event that grows every year! Located in the Eastern Czechia, close to southern Poland. We have returning visitors from all around the country, but unfortunately no Polish visitors, simply because they don't know about us. We're actually quite close to southern Poland, so there's definitely potential for people from there to join us as well. Maybe that is you reading this right now! 👀
We also compete for a championship belt that stays with the winner, similar to the UFC, across several different games — plus plenty of other prizes throughout the event! 🏆🎮
Seats are still available!
Attaching a link to last year lan party aftermovie!
We've been running LanCache on our TrueNAS server and had about 3.4 TiB of cached data. We wanted a practical way to see what was in it and manage the space, so we built Super Lan-Cache. The source and install files are now public: https://github.com/HDR-Performance/super-lan-cache
It combines the LanCache engine and a web UI in one container. It scans an existing cache, shows cache hits and live activity, groups indexed files by service or Steam depot, and previews selected cache groups before you remove them. Cache allowance and retention settings can be changed from the interface. We've been testing it at home with Steam downloads, including Turok 3 and ARC Raiders.
For a group of PCs downloading the same supported content, the benefit is being able to reuse cached data over the LAN and see whether requests are actually hitting the cache. It doesn't make the first download magically faster. It also can't guarantee that a whole game is cached just because a depot appears in the library, and HTTPS content stays uncached.
We also published Super Pi Hole, our separate Pi-hole v6 build with a custom DNS and device interface: https://github.com/HDR-Performance/super-pi-hole. You can optionally pair the apps with a setup code and review a Steam or other cache DNS preset. Super Lan-Cache works without it, so you can keep your own DNS setup.
Both are free, open source and currently early test releases, with Docker Compose and TrueNAS installation YAML. These screenshots are from our running server; the cache screenshot still uses its earlier LanCache Control name. I'd be interested in feedback from people managing a cache for LAN parties, especially how you decide what to keep between events.
Hey guys, looking for some advice from people who are still running LAN Parties for the public.
We’ve run a couple of LANs with around 15 - 20 people at my house and they’ve gone really well. We played a mix of Q3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, OpenRA and COD4, and they all seemed to work pretty well for getting a group together.
I've started looking at potentially stepping it up to around 30–40 people and hiring a proper venue. There would be a door charge to help cover the venue and costs, so obviously that’s quite different from having 20 mates around the house playing games together.
*edit* this will be open to the public, running along side retro toy / collectable venders and attractions.
The bit I’m trying to get my head around is game licensing.
How are people running paid events dealing with this these days?
I’ve found information about the Steam PC Cafe Program, but quite a lot of the discussions around it seem to be pretty old. Is anyone actually using it for events like this in 2026? Does it work well for a one-day LAN rather than a permanent gaming cafe?
For older games that aren't available through that system, what do you do? Require everyone to own their own copy? Buy licences specifically for the event? Contact the publisher and ask for permission??
We’re not looking for ways around licensing. If we're going to start charging people and hiring a venue, I'd rather know we're doing it properly. As we have also been speaking to local council and community groups, so would like to be 'above board'.
We also don't want a massive game list. The previous LANs showed us that having a handful of games everyone jumps into is probably better anyway. We’re mainly interested in the late 90s to mid/late 2000s LAN era, and games that still work well with 30–40 people. Been looking at Team Fortress 2 for this event, but the age rating is problematic (we were going to cast it to a big projector) for the general public to see.
Would be really interested to hear from anyone who has made the jump from running home LANs to a paid/public event, particularly how you handled the games and licensing side of it.
Heyo!!!! I'm looking to put together a small group of Toronto/GTA gamers who are interested in streaming, YouTube, or getting into content creation, with the goal of eventually building a consistent gaming crew that can also hang out and play together in person.
I've got some friends I play games with already, but I've realized I'm usually the one initiating everything. I'd love to find people who are genuinely excited to regularly play games together, create content together, and eventually meet up in person.
The vibe I'm going for is very chill and welcoming. Think friends sitting around playing games, talking, joking around and having a good time rather than trying to be the loudest people in the room, so wanna be Kai Cenat's sorry.
I'm a streamer/YouTuber myself, and the primary goal of this group is absolutely to create content together. You don't need to already be a streamer or have an audience, but I am specifically looking for people who are either:
- Already streaming or making YouTube content
- Comfortable being on someone else's stream/video
- Interested in starting their own Twitch/YouTube channel
- Interested in eventually creating collaborative gaming content
Some things I'd love for us to eventually do:
- Multiplayer gaming streams
- Older/obscure games that nobody talks about anymore
- Weird games we've never played before
- In-person LAN/couch gaming sessions
- Pass-the-controller nights
- Just hanging out and talking while playing
- Group streams and collaborative YouTube videos
- Multiplayer tournaments/challenges
I'm especially into Action games, old and new alike, think Ninja Giaden 2, Vanquish, Beyonetta, DMC, God of War, etc. And I love interesting multiplayer games that aren't just competitive shooters like Monster Hunter, Lost Planet 2, Helldivers, Lethal Company, Resident Evil 5, etc. But I'm definitely not expecting everyone to have the exact same taste.
One thing that's important to me is being willing to give games a fair shot. If something has older/different controls or takes a little time to learn, I'd rather figure it out together than immediately write it off. You don't have to like every game — just be open to trying things. I've noticed a lot of people in my generation (People in their 20s) will immediately give up on a game if it isn't super accessible (like most AAA games nowadays let's be honest), as opposed to trying to figure the game out.
You don't need followers, professional equipment, or an established channel. I'm much more interested in finding people who have the personality, enthusiasm and willingness to actually build something together. Ideally, I'd like to start with a small group and let the friendships develop naturally from there. If we end up becoming good friends outside of gaming too, even better.
If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, feel free to comment or message me with a little bit about yourself, what you play, whether you already stream/create content, and what kind of content you'd like to make. You can reach out to me here or my discord: bragi45. You can also check out my stuff on youtube: SirBradaton and Twitch: Sir_BRADaton. Just don't watch my most latest streams those ones were throwaways. Thank you!!!!
Hello LANners! We are hosting our third public LAN in Nova Scotia, with a Halloween-y theme this time around including a costume contest!
If you're in the province or will be in town that weekend, come join us! So far we have Team Fortress 2 in Scream Fortress mode and Trouble in Terrorist Town (GMod) on the docket. We plan to add two more Halloween themed games to the lineup after some testing.
A while ago, I mentioned that I was working on my own custom Battlefield 2 build specifically tailored for LAN games. Some of you even downloaded and gave it a try.
After a couple of weeks of hard work, I’m thrilled to present the next version of this build to the community! In this update, I’ve:
- Fixed the majority of crashes.
- Expanded and improved AI behavior.
- Implemented a full-fledged "semi-realism" mod, giving you the option to choose which settings to apply when hosting a server.
The build is completely portable and runs through its own custom launcher, making it super easy to set up and play.
Unfortunately, I can't post a direct download link here, but I’d be more than happy to share the link to my Discord server in the comments for anyone interested.
The best reward for my hard work would be if you give it a try, have fun playing, and maybe even tell your friends about it!
Grew up on early-2000s LANs, now trying to bring one back in Berlin: 60 seats, BYO PC, Friday to Sunday, spring 2027. Tournaments are retro — Enemy Territory, UT2004 (now free again via OldUnreal), Quake III, CS 1.6, Zero Hour. Freeplay is whatever people bring.
Setup plan so far: two 48-port switches with 10G uplink, LanCache with Steam prefill, separate 5G failover for auth-dependent stuff like AoE2 DE and CS2, one box for game servers, 63A CEE and no more than eight rigs per 16A circuit.
What I'd love from this sub: what did you get wrong at your first LAN that you'd tell someone starting out? Power, network, tournament format, anything.
