LAN Party. All Noobs. Some Questions

[HotSniperGG]

Hello
Soon we will make a LAN Party.
As Surprise: I will decide to play Open Arena.
We will be 12 persons in two rooms. Everyone, exept me, never played Open Arena.

Questions:
1) Which is the biggest DM (all vs all) Map ?
2) Which map is the best for DM (all vs all) ?
3) Which map is the funniest or coolest for 6v6 CTF ?
4) Are there some HD Texture packs ?
5) Can you give us some tipps how this LAN Party game will be even more fun ?

HotSniperGG (Germany)

[Gig]

Thank you for attracting more people to the game.  

I will let other people, who actually play the game more than me, to answer some of your questions, however that's important to know if you only wish infos about "DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Maps]stock maps" only or also including DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Unofficial_OpenArena_Maps]third-party maps (e.g. DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Map_compatibility]third party maps designed for q3).

However "best map" is a very diffult definition, because it depends from personal taste. There are maps which some players love and other players hate.
If you wish to read a numeric vote for each map, in this thread Fromhell (OA project leader) has given an overall "quality" vote to all stock OA 0.8.8 (including the "dummied out" ones, those not listed in the GUI) + OACMP Volume 1 maps... However that's overall "quality" and not specific "fun factor" (again, what is funny for someone can be boring for someone else).

Note: Third-party maps may not be released under the same GPLv2 license of OpenArena, while (DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/OpenArena_Community_Mappack]Openarena Community Mappack maps do comply with it).

About making a LAN Party even more funny, one may suggest to tweak things by using DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Special_game_options]special game options (see DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Configuration_examples]configuration examples for some examples) or by using DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Mod]mods. However, considering your players are noobs, you may risk to confuse them too much, so be careful. Even standard DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual/Gamemodes]game modes can be confusing at first.
Considering you will probably play better than them, you may wish setting an DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Handicap]handicap to yourself or enabling DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Catch_up]Catch up feature.

About HD texture packs, I know about xcsv hires package, but consider that:
- it is not licensed under GPLv2, but under CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 instead.
- it works with OA, but it is designed for Q3, so:
-- Some textures may look a bit strange compared with those near them. Some maps may look quite different than when using standard OA textures. And some maps will be not enhanced by the pack, due to not using Q3A textures.
-- It's not meant as a "q3a2oa compatibilty pack", so some Q3 maps may still show "missing textures". However, also "q3a2oa compatibilty packs" do override some existing OA textures with their own, changing the look of some maps.

PS: this thread seems more adequate to Multiplayer section of the forums, I don't know if it will be moved there or not.

[Gig]

If they are completely new to the game, it may be a good idea to provide them a few hints (printing them?) about base settings, etc.

Trying to quickly sum up (a sort of "OA settings quickstart"):
- Setting controls (SETUP -> CONTROLS).
-- Setting mouse speed ("look" section), you may want to make it a bit higher than default.
-- "Misc" controls settings section, setting a key for "chat-team" feature (example: "y" key).
-- Note: GUI allows to"bind" a certain control up to two different keys.
-- Setup -> Controls -> Shoot: you may want to disable "autoswitch weapons" feature.
- Setup - > Game options: enable "unlag hitscan"
- Setup -> System -> Graphics: you can change your screen resolution. Console command "/cg_drawfps 1" shows your framerate.
- Setup -> Game options: enabling "draw team overlay" table may help a little team cooperation during team-based modes.
- "/cg_drawspeed 1" command allows to see your horizontal speed. You can gain extra speed by "strafe-jumping", continously jumping while running, moving forward and laterally strafing, and moving the mouse in the meanwhile.
- You can customize your name from "Setup -> Player settings" menu. From there, you can also choose your "model" (character). Note: from that menu, setting an "handicap" different than "none" will cause your character to be WEAKER!
- Setup -> System -> Networking, set "data rate" to "Lan/Cable/xDSL".
- While playing, ESCAPE (ESC) key opens in-game menu. "TAB" key opens score table. To open command console, the key varies depending from your system keyboard language (e.g. ~ or \)... Commands must begin with "/", otherwise they will be sent as text messages to everyone.
- A voting procedure can be invoked from ESC menu of with /callvote command. You can vote "yes" or "no" with F1 or F2.

For more infos, you can refer to (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual


Note for you (admin): In case you add some extra stuff (maps, mods) to the server and wish them to automatically download it, you need to set "/sv_allowdownload 1", and they need to enable "automatic download" (setup -> game options)... however, download speed is currently limited to 25 KB/s (may be even lower, depending from "rate" and "sv_maxrate" settings), unless admin correctly setting up an http or ftp service for "http download" (fast download). See DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Automatic_download]Automatic download for infos. Future OA versions may change this, due to a new ioquake3 variable. In the meanwhile, considering it's a LAN, you may prefer to manually copy required extra stuff into those computers, using windows shares or similar means.

For you, for infos about running your server, you can refer to DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual/Multiplayer]Manual/Multiplayer and DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Servers]Servers pages. Set "/g_delaghitscan 1". Set /sv_maxrate to 25000 (maybe also to 0 works the same? Probably, but I'm not sure), and set /sv_maxclients to at least 12 (e.g. 16), otherwise some of your 12 players would not be allowed to join the server (if you start the server from the GUI, just open enough "slots" by clicking on them); considering you're in a LAN, you should not have bandwidth problems. Dedicated server console (oa_ded) does not require "/" before commands.

[grey matter]

To open command console, the key varies depending from your system keyboard language (e.g. ~ or \)

Shift + Esc should work on all platforms.

Set /sv_maxrate to 25000 (maybe also to 0 works the same? Probably, but I'm not sure)

The minimal value for sv_maxRate is 1000, or 0 to disable rate limiting (client userinfo still applies). If sv_lanForceRate is 1 (the default) and the server does not send hearbeats (dedicated 1) then clients with LAN IPs will not be rate limited (rate set to 99999). The maximum rate of a client is otherwise limited to at most 90000 or sv_maxRate if lower.

[Gig]

Set /sv_maxrate to 25000 (maybe also to 0 works the same? Probably, but I'm not sure)

The minimal value for sv_maxRate is 1000, or 0 to disable rate limiting (client userinfo still applies). If sv_lanForceRate is 1 (the default) and the server does not send hearbeats (dedicated 1) then clients with LAN IPs will not be rate limited (rate set to 99999). The maximum rate of a client is otherwise limited to at most 90000 or sv_maxRate if lower.

Are you sure about those values? Years ago, I did some tries... but not having means to exactly meter OA's network traffic usage (or to force the game to create a stable "fake" network traffic to actually require it during gameplay -even if you set "rate 25000", the game will use 25KB of bandwidth only when it needs them-), the only meter I had was to check the "download speed" (just looking at the client's screen while autodownloading a map from the server; lowering rate values slows down old-style UTP DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Automatic_download]autodownload speed[/size]) of automatic downloading^[1], and I did not got over 25 KB/s even when sv_maxrate and rate were both set to 0 or to something higher than 25000 (unless slightly higher values were obtained by tweaking sv_fps maybe?).

I don't remember exactly, years passed since those tests. I don't remember if I noticed any difference by turning on or off sv_lanforcerate... maybe that does apply to actual gameplay and not to automatic download speed, or maybe at that time I didn't try that... What is written DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual/Multiplayer#Optimize_for_LAN]here about "optimize for LAN" is mostly a summing up of a few posts from Sago (and others?) about that option... feel free to integrate it with more infos, if you wish.

^[1] Without using http redirection of course... and with standard OA binaries (0.8.5 back then, maybe?): modern ioquake3's sv_dlrate variable was not an option (DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Talk:Manual/Using_Mods]IIRC, official OA 0.8.8 binaries do not have it either).[/size]

PS: I'm sorry to divert HotSniperGG's thread with such "fine-tuning" tech details which probably will not interest him too much at the moment...

[grey matter]

Are you sure about those values? Years ago, I did some tries... but not having means to exactly meter OA's network traffic usage (or to force the game to create a stable "fake" network traffic to actually require it during gameplay -even if you set "rate 25000", the game will use 25KB of bandwidth only when it needs them-), the only meter I had was to check the "download speed" (just looking at the client's screen while autodownloading a map from the server; lowering rate values slows down old-style UTP DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Automatic_download]autodownload speed[/size]) of automatic downloading^[1], and I did not got over 25 KB/s even when sv_maxrate and rate were both set to 0 or to something higher than 25000 (unless slightly higher values were obtained by tweaking sv_fps maybe?).

I guess it both depends on sv_fps and com_maxFps / rate plus whatever snapshots are generated by a download / the current gameplay. The values I gave above are just taken from ioq3 code, but maybe I missed some rate limiting logic elsewhere. Both game snapshots and old-style downloads should be affected by the rate limits, but I have tested neither.

That being said the defaults should be just fine for both LAN and public servers. If you need to download / provide maps, mods, playermodels etc., use the new-style sv_dlUrl / cl_allowDownload (it's still faster than sv_dlRate which maxes out at ~1MB/s).

[HotSniperGG]

Thank you for all your anwers

our LAN Party was awesome..
We played Open Arena, CSS, Warcraft 3 TFT and Age of Mythology

Open Arena was the Free for all Map "wrack17dm".. but is was really to much chaos with 12 People all vs all
CTF was really fun with our Room vs Room. First Map "oa_bases3plus3", castle vs castle. Our second CTF match was on the "cbctf1" with a lot of jumping ^^

Really funny.
But nobody of us likes the granade launcher.. kinda week.
Plasma Gun and shocker was the most favorite..
And we dont do any "finetuning" :S was to complicated

Bye Bye
HotSniperGG

[Gig]

I fear 12 players are too many for wrackdm17. And probably, for newbies, a space map (where it is easy to fall down) isn't the optimal choice.

However I'm glad you liked your LAN party, and hope you will do more in the future. :-)

[HotSniperGG]

Hey guys, its me again.

I just wanted to show you some parts of our Open Arena LAN Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBjbwPB2Jmc&feature=youtu.be


Thanks again for your answers.

[wing0]

Nice vid, but you ... you ....

You are supposed to play this map like my friend supeR,Sergei here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tISXaai1dVU

[fromhell]

I feel kind of bad when people play my own maps