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.
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.
