Our thanks to everyone who helped make it happen and especially to the most important people - YOU
We would like to know exactly what people think etc.
One question I would like answered, would people be willing to pay a slightly higher price to enable us to provide a higher bandwidth internet connection (same speed but lasts longer). This would not be a huge increase, only £0.50 to £1.
Anyway, over to you, lets see what people think etc.
£1 is a small price to pay for internet.. i think you shouldn't have a problem with that..
other then that.. LAN was awesome, lots and lots even with the "non gaming" stuff
only thing i was unhappy about was Saturday night.. the stage set up was awesome.. its a shame you couldn't keep it up for longer.. letting people that were not in the color bands to have ago.. i wanted to perform on a set up like that.. looked awesome! but i can see that "other" stuff had to be done.. UT2004 and TF2 games had to be played
I personally think its good not having net access, I think people will just get distracted even more if there is net access, its hard enough already pinning people down to play matches.
I had a really good time at the lan only downsides were the obvious power outage, and the amount of time dedicated to the rockband tournament as it took up almost the whole of Saturday.
D3TH wrote:only thing i was unhappy about was Saturday night.. the stage set up was awesome.. its a shame you couldn't keep it up for longer.. letting people that were not in the color bands to have ago.. i wanted to perform on a set up like that.. looked awesome! but i can see that "other" stuff had to be done.. UT2004 and TF2 games had to be played
Glad you see why we couldn't keep it going the whole night. The orientation was geared to encourage a proper audience from the rest of the LAN. Once it served its purpose for the official tournament, we had to get it back else it would have been too much of a distraction from the rest of the LAN. We wouldn't have got any Call of Duty games going if we hadn't.
I would also suggest preventing net access as you might find people start using it for things they shouldnt and use all the DL limit up instantly. 2 hours of formula 1 qualifying on the BBC iplayer on my PC took up 300 mb so it wouldnt take too many users to blow the limit visiting youtube etc.
Then no steam access which was a right pain by the sounds of it.
I wonder if it would be better to have smaller tournaments. I think the 32 limit on unreal suffered a bit because people were a bit coerced to signup and then didnt bother with the lower tier rounds. Thats what happened to me anyhow. a 16/24 player limit might exclude people but then its up to them to signup sooner rather than later. It would also make it simpler / quicker to play the round.
I prefer the idea of trying to find games that isnt any teams specific choice ie not TF2 or COD4 so that it levels the playing field and removes the problems around expert players vs non players dominating which isnt any fun. Difficult to find I know but what about simple games that everyone could play like a 4 v 4 on armegatron or something like that. Audio surf looked good shame I didnt really know what it was till we got to the LAN and then it was a bit late.
Rockband was good, the stage at then end was excellent, but again a bit dominated by people who were experts at it and that didnt leave much room for noobs ie me.
I would bring back the specific timings to play tournaments as well. The free timing stuff just seemed to end up with different teams playing whatever they wanted at certain times leaving it difficult for the bigger games ie TF2
The general scoring system seemed much fairer and would be something that should be carried across to future LAN
Dont want this to sound negative, I had a good time, just my ideas
After re reading my post it sounds very negative, and thats not what I intended, while the rock band thing really wasn't my cup of tea fair play people really got into it, and I was suprised how well it went down, for me the problem was that all day saturday it got in the way of everything else, every time we tried to get a Cod game done or a cnc or even a tf2 it couldn't happen because one of the members of one of the teams was practising for rock band or competing in rockband.
Also was not overjoyed by the promod in Call of Duty, it completely gimps the graphics and takes all the realism out of a game that is designed to be more realistic than the likes of css and UT.
Also as far as the size of the UT tourney went while I agree that having to encourage people to join was a factor in it over running I think it would be a shame if people who wanted to take part had to miss out so maybe just introduce by's next time I know its not strictly fair but then its just pot luck if you get a by thru the first round.
Thanks for the input chaps. I think some of the guys who played in the covers and finals were rock band newbies too (myself being one, having only ever touched it once before for a couple of hours at CD's once. ) It just happened that whoever was getting half-decent scores at the tracks took up those positions - but I think that's what'll happen at any tournament - whoever gets to score the most gets to play officially. But I enjoyed the work you did during our warmup even if it wasn't on public display. But we're glad that the show was considered excellent. I'm eager to see the video footage on LG's Disc 2 (Blue, Green and Yellow's official final performances).
as for net access, I just want to clear up what I mean by that
People will not be able to browse etc, but steam will be working along with imap and pop3. So internet usage should be minimul. the problem with steam updates will be avoided next time as I won't open the http block at all next time (learned my lesson on that one ) I'll also make sure I am familiar enough with smoothwall to be able to fix it from the command line if the web interface goes tits up (which is what happened on Saturday when we had to shut down for the power reset).
I agree on the tournament timings etc being enforced more rigorously etc, that is something we will be working to improve.
Ah cool that makes sense.
I do appreciate how hard it is to get the balance between having a relaxed event and keeping it organised.
Thanks for all of your hard work to get these events together.
All in all i really enjoyed the LAN - best one i've been to this year by far! (Including a StratLAN & I-series!)
It was a shame that Joosebug & I couldn't get a proper game of UT going on but steam being fail meant I couldn't get into UT2k4 and use my own configs, next time gadget, NEXT TIIIME!
I enjoyed Rock Band a lot and full appreciated all the effort the guys put into the stage setup for Saturday night, although I can see evilgangsta's point that it took others away from matches that needed to be played!
I would be happy to pay some extra for an internet connection so my steam wouldn't fail me at a critical moment but all in all, It was great and I really enjoyed myself....
Same that most has said really, My second LLamaLan and loving it just as much as the first, the rock band was really good fun and gave us something to prepare for and took up some time, The stage setup was amazing I was really suprised how you got the amps and 4 screens all working together really awsome and I cant wait to see the vid
On the gaming side, it was a shame but the steam issues I beleive were caused by a steam client update on the Friday causing people to have to update but due to the speed of the connection it didnt always complete it just let us play for a little while then screw around again, So that hampered the L4D games I wanted to play whch was a shame,
I did miss the organisation that we had a last lan of "we are doing this big game now please get in" Like we had with UT Before.
The internet I really wouldnt mind a price increase to keep this going, I do feel it would be good to allow messenger as well as steam but I can see the reasons you do it and thats your choice
Other than that exellent lan guys and I will see you at 12
I guess that it's time for me to throw my hat into the ring and add my comments to the mix ...
... I was in a peculiar situation at this event, I .went from being deeply involved in the planning and preparation to being a regular attendee a mere week before the event started, and whilst I continued some input for continuity since there were some things only I knew about and had plans for, I deliberately tried to take a back seat where I could, but in some cases it wasn't possible.
Personally I quite enjoyed it, and am looking forward to totally kicking back and enjoying the experience completely from the other side of the fence next time. I enjoyed the Rock Band and feel that the hour practicing and qualifying didn't take too much out of the day, and the performance would, with 20/20 hindsight, have benefited from a sound check, a brighter projector, and a few lights on the performers, but sometime we can only work with what we have and I think we did the best we could.
Tournament wise ... loved the Go!Go!Gadget! especially with the updated graphics, so thank you ProjectorGames, DJArcas and Golem for that, always hugely enjoyable, even those who initially didn't seem interested popped over to give their advice when they realised what fun everyone was having on stage. AudioSurf, an annoying addictive game and a great way to listen to your music collection, striving for perfection with a very peculiar and varied selection of music. Unreal Tournament 2004, out after two games as per usual, but still good fun for those two short games and glad that I took part. CnC3, I really should practice some more so that we give our opposition a decent run for their money, although we only played two of our three games before we ran out of time and opposition. TF2, well that for me was the biggest shame, but somehow it never really got of the ground.
Bizarrely the tournaments shouldn't have taken any more time than before but a combination of the hour of the power cut and the general lack of enthusiasm for the tournaments means that I think that we should go back to the all v all big games and less or no team or clan tournaments next time, somehow, there seems to be a small but vocal community asking for them, but without the majority of the community to provide opposition then there doesn't seem to be much point, we might as well just organise an informal scrim amongst those who want to play.
The venue served us well ... right up to the point when the electrics failed for half the attendee, but that was relatively quickly sorted out ... it's a shame the fridge has shrunk and it's even more of a shame the quantity of washing up left for Golem and Kanonfodda to do, absolutely shocking.
All in all a better than average event with many more high points than low points.
Congratulations to Golem, Kanonfodda, Kryton, LittleGem, and Zodiack on a great event and good luck with the preparation for October.
Thanks for the constructive comments CD and for helping out in a big way despite not officially being on the staff list for this one.
evilgangsta: A sinkful of washing up was left for us to do. Look out for changes to the player agreement (i.e. rules of taking part in LlamaLAN) as a result.
The orientation was geared to encourage a proper audience from the rest of the LAN. Once it served its purpose for the official tournament, we had to get it back else it would have been too much of a distraction from the rest of the LAN. We wouldn't have got any Call of Duty games going if we hadn't. 
