CherryPopper

I recently got back from a trip to Queenstown (New Zealand) where my girlfriend Andi and I went snowboarding for a week. Here are a few hightlights:

• Once we boarded we were able to play with Emirates awesome inflight entertainment system which had heaps of movies, music, tv shows & games some of which where even multiplayer. You could create a multiplayer game then request someone in another seat to join you which was awesome because of the multiplayer games was PONG!!! Oh yeah hours of block fun.
• First day snowboarding on The Remarkables was great fun but i was more assboarding than snowboarding
• Third day snowboarding on Codrona was great blue skys and some decent lessons saw me now resembling something like a snowboarder
• Fifth day snowboarding on Codrona I can now link turns both toe & heal side and can stay on my feet all the way down the green runs

One Small Step for Chatto, One Giant Leap for Chatto Kind

The snow & mountains are just a sight to behold i was just blown away by the sights.

Codrona Lift

Codrona View From The Top

Snow Angel

This is Part 2 of what goes into running MonsterLAN behind the scenes. I've already covered what happens before the MonsterLAN events in Running the Monster - Part 1. So following on from that this is part 2 of a 3 part walk through of what goes on behind the scenes of MonsterLAN. Part 1 will cover what we do before the doors open, part 2 will cover the running of the event and part 3 will be the aftermath of the event.

The Event

Once the admins are happy with the venue setup, we run around and check the venue from a safety point of view making sure cables are covered & taped down, signs are up and all power is connected correctly. The last thing we need is to hurt anyone at an event, the paper work would be a nightmare!!

There is also the fun job of making sure the toilets are open and filled with toilet paper as we have come close to running out before, not being able to relieve yourself after stuffing yourself full of pizza is a sure fire way to annoy your gamers into leaving. Who said gaming LAN's were just about gaming!

The doors are then swung open to the masses of eager gamers awaiting the awesomeness that is MonsterLAN. As they all file into the venue we're starting game servers for public play so the first people in will have something to play from the second they are connected. We also ensure that at least two of our Admins are roaming around making sure everyone is getting on the network okay and to help any first timers that might not know what to do or where to get all the info they need.

The friendly face of a helpful admin is an important part of any event especially a Gaming LAN event where its not always the most structured of events. First time gamers popping their Gaming LAN cherries are always a little lost as to how an event such as MonsterLAN actually works. They need some help so having people roaming around looking for that "I've got no clue" looking face, ready to help is the best way I've found to ensure everyone enjoys themselves. It also helps to have a slideshow on the projector that displays the most important info like website of the Intranet site, tournament times & other info to save you answering the same question hundreds of times.

It also helps with the people having issues like all the power plugs being taken by someone with every electronic device known to man plugged in or a network cable that was taken by someone at the end of the table instead of using the one right in front of them. There are always random odd things that happen when the masses walk in so its best to be close by to help fix them before it becomes a real issue because they have "attempted" to fix it themselves by re-routing all the power via an extension lead from the emergency exit sign or plugging the network for that row into a 10mb hub someone had with them.

One thing I will say is you have to be prepared for anything as they keep inventing a better idiot every LAN event we run. From people bringing toasters to microwave ovens, 2 gamers having the same wireless kb & mouse set to the same channels controlling each others PC without knowing what was happening and even people being total idiots by rocking up drunk. Keep your mind open as the possibilities are endless as to what idiots will do at your event.

Some of the big issues you will have to contend with are normally related to power. Hopefully you will have worked out the power layout before the event so you know how many PC's each circuit can handle. MonsterLAN runs 8 PC's off each power point (14 PC's per circuit). Its also good to have the ability to move a row to another circuit if you do run into issues as we have done in the past because of some gamer with a power hungry rig.

While all this is happening there are the smiling admins at the desk collecting your money and enabling you onto the MonsterLAN network via our custom DHCP server (aka LAN NAZI). This allows us to do a few things as well as restrict the network to only those who have paid. Our LAN NAZI system also lets us know how many people we have at the event, if any of them have a network bound virus like blaster (not so much an issue nowadays) and if they are attempting to disrupt our network. We can also quickly kick these people off the network to ensure the event runs as fault free as possible.

Once everyone is settled its normally time for the first competition and this is where your preparation comes into play. If you have put a lot of time into setting up and testing your game servers then starting them up should be simple and you can concentrate on the painful part of getting gamers into the correct teams, servers and on time to start each round. This is where I wish we could wire up all the seats with some sort of electric shock device as it seems no matter how much yelling over the PA or slapping of gamers heads there will always be some people in the wrong server, wrong team or totally missing because they went to KFC just as the tournament was starting. This is where most of the time will be spent in the tournaments and not having your servers ready to rock at the click of a button just means it will take twice as long to run a tournament.

Its also good to try to limit the amount of time a tournament goes for as people will get bored if they aren't into that game or get knocked out in the first round. If your tournament takes 3-4 hours and your not just a Counter-Strike Source Gaming LAN then you need to find a way to shorten it so other tournaments can be played to keep things fun for everyone, not just the CSS players. Finding the balance is the hard part but talking to your community about these things helps keep everyone happy, ok so almost everyone. Shortening things like round times, score limits & map times helps keep the tournament to a respectable timeframe. At MonsterLAN we aim for around 2hrs for each tournament with the expectation that noobs could blow this out to 3hrs at the most.

While the tournaments are running don't forget that not everyone will be in that tournament or wont be in it till the end so be sure to run some public servers to keep them entertained and to practise during round byes. We have also found that having some consoles hooked up to a big screen helps in this area & gives the gamers a reason to socialise a little away from their PC's. They are also great just for the spectacle part of gaming as having a crowd around you oohh'ing and aarrhhh'ing as you hit the notes in Guitar Hero really gets the fun factor into gaming and helps create a great vibe for the event. At the larger events we have even hired an arcade machine like sega rally to help give gamers something else to do that's a little more social. Remember they can sit at home and play games without all the pain of packing up their PC's so you have to make it worthwhile to rock up to your event for something they can't easily do at home.

By now the event should be kicking along nicely and now its time to organise the pizza run and ensuring everyone has ordered & paid for their dinner. We use a pizza ordering system on the Intranet as in the past we have had gamers forget what they ordered, said they have paid when they haven't or just totally forgot they ordered pizza and got food elsewhere.

Next up is the major prize giveaways and at MonsterLAN this normally means someone is going to look like an idiot and most of the time its me, even when I don't mean it. We have tried lots of different ways to giveaway prizes from gameshows to paper plane making and even piggy back races (which ended in carnage for the admins). Its silly things like this that make an otherwise boring event have a spectacle part to it where everyone stops to watch & win something, or throw ML balls back at me. It might seem lame to some but we have gotten some of our best feedback from the silly non-gaming related things we have done, plus us admins enjoy it most of the time. We have even done things like "Lupin's Loons" movies of funny pics put to music to enjoy over dinner, the ML movies I have done of previous events and just the random youtube videos put on the projector at various times to keep the event fun for everyone.

As the event goes on the other tournaments are run, random "Big Organised Games" are run to fill in the downtime between the tournaments, more prizes are given away in crazy ways the admins just thought of and the gamers start to settle into the event. One thing that can happen if your not on the ball is your event starts to slowly die and doing the random things like prize giveaways or funny videos on the projector help keep the events great vibe going into the weeeee hours.

Its about now that the admins adrenalin is all pumped out and we need to let some grab some sleep as we still have to pack the event up at the end. The graveyard shift is hard to do as your already tired but you don't want the event to die a boring death. So having a few things planned for the early hours always helps as we have even run dodgeball at these times to give everyone a kick to get them through till the morning.

One thing I haven't touched on yet is keeping your admin crew happy throughout the event. If they aren't happy then the events vibe will die quickly as the gamers wont have fun with grumpy admins. Doing things like feeding them & making sure that all of your admins get a chance to game helps keep a big fat smile on their face so that they will be having as much fun running the event as your gamers do attending it.

After the last gamer has fragged his last frag and left its time to packup & some tired admin discussion about the event.

Part 3 will be on the aftermath of the event. Stay tuned.

One of the main assumptions about running a LAN event no matter how small is there really isn't that much to it. While this maybe true for your little house LAN where all you need is room enough for 5-10 people, tables & chairs, a switch & some cables and a few power boards with pizza huts number on speed dial for one awesome weekend its a whole different beast running a MonsterLAN.

I've already covered how I got into running MonsterLAN in a previous post. So following on from that this will be part 1 of a 3 part walk through of what goes on behind the scenes of MonsterLAN. Part 1 will cover what we do before the doors open, part 2 will cover the running of the event and part 3 will be the aftermath of the event.

Before the doors open

There are a lot of things to organise before even one gamer steps into the venue, a lot more than even I first thought of when I ran my first event. I mean who would have thought you would be checking the toilets to make sure they had enough toilet paper when you running a Gaming LAN event?

The first thing that happens is the admins pick a date for the event. While even this may seem easy, finding a date that works for all the admins & making sure the venue isn't booked can be very painful. We try to book 12 months in advance as the venue does get booked quite early sometimes.

Once the date & venue are sorted the admins start chatting about what we would like to do for the next event. This is where some of our more deranged and possibly dangerous crazy ideas have come from. Some of the more memorable ones are the infamous Search for a Smacktard, Lupin's Loons and everyone's favourite Dodgeball where born.

Then comes some of the boring stuff like ensuring VicLAN have enough PLI (Public Liability Insurance) for the number of gamers we are aiming for and the VicLAN equipment is available on the date of our event. We need PLI because if someone trips and hurts themselves and they sue us we don't lose our shirts because of them. We run the events for fun and really don't want us to cost us everything, plus most large venues wont let you run a public event without $1,000,000 in PLI... yes folks 1 million dollars!!!

With the all the major stuff out the way we now start to advertise the event on the website. Now for those who have been with us from the start will know our little website has seen a lot of change since the early days. MonsterLAN.com grew from just a small site where no one posts in the forums but me to the massive 5 posts per day it is now!!! We also made it easier to register for events and put up more information about the events for newbies.

Now it comes time to start to hit up the sponsors for freebies. Which I'm sure you all think is the easy part, just shoot of an email to all the major companies like Nvidia, Intel, AMD and watch the thousands of dollars worth of prizes roll in.... ok so maybe not. Most sponsors are a pain in the ass, they give you fuck all and expect the world in return. We've had a certain sponsor, *cough* katech *cough* wanting to only allow food & drink in the venue if it was sold by them! In return they offered $500 worth of prizes. Needless to say we quickly told them where to put their prizes.

Good sponsors are hard to find but luckily we have a good reputation in the Gaming LAN community and some good sponsors found us when I had given up hope. They only ask for a few basic things like a sponsor banner on the website, banners/posters hung up at the events and pictures taken of both the event & the prizes been given away. In return they give us some pretty awesome swag sometimes. THQ are quite good when they have games coming out and will load us up with lots of goodies including collectors editions of new games and other goodies. Thermaltake are also great in sending us a box full of stuff that cools, glows and purifies the air!! They also love to send us a case for our larger events. Without this type of sponsorship support the prize pool for MonsterLAN wouldn't be as kick ass as it is, big thanks for THQ & Thermaltake.

After the tournament survey has been completed its now time for the most important part of the pre-event setup, servers. Without these puppies running like a well tuned engine your LAN will die quicker than if it had the blaster worm. At MonsterLAN we use an all in one Uber Linux Server that basically controls the LAN event and then 2-6 dedicated Windows game servers. Each one of these game servers can run 1-4 game servers at a time depending on how many players & what game it is. This allows us to run as many servers as there are matches (i.e: 10 teams = 5 matches = 5 servers) so we get the tournament finished in a decent time frame.

There is a lot of testing that goes into the game servers before the event, this is one of the most time consuming things I do before an event. We make things as simple as possible to run on the day so we can get things running quickly. Pre-configuring maps, game settings and round times ensures things run smoothly on the day. Rogue has developed a bunch of scripts that make starting a game server easy so our monkey admins Boxy & Holmsy can even start a server! We also use any tournament mods for the games we run to make running the tournament as easy as possible for us & the gamers. For those that are interested in setting up your own game servers can check out our MonsterLAN Wiki for more info.

The Uber Linux Server was quite a bit of work to get where it is today. Initially it was just a web server for us to use to host game patches but it has since grown into being the most important server at MonsterLAN. It does the following:

• Tunez - MP3 Jukebox
• Squid Proxy Server - Internet Sharing/Limiting
• DNS Server
• LAN Nazi DHCP Server Allows only paid gamers on the network
• MRTG Monitoring of switches, Internet and Servers
• Internet Gateway/Firewall
• Teamspeak Server
• Ventrilo Server

• Web Server ML Intranet site

Which includes:

• Tournaments Administration and Registration
• Patches and other files
• Game Server List
• TeamSpeak Channels
• General Event Details
• and more...

Finally it comes time to actually rock up to the venue and start to setup. The fun part about the venue is they play hide & seek with their tables. We use every table they have for the large events and hunting around the venue finding them is just soooooo much fun, because I really have nothing better to do. Laying carpet, lugging tables and chairs is also not what I started running events for but its a necessary evil that must be done. Once the heavy work is done then its time to lay power & the lifeline of the LAN event... the network. MonsterLAN is setup in a star network topology (every switch has 1 uplink to a backbone). Each uplink to the backbone is 1gbit and the ports gamers plug into are 100mbit. This is more than enough for gaming & the leechers can go leech somewhere else. That being said we haven't yet hit the maximum throughput of the switches or uplinks & I know this due to me setting up monitoring, so don't blame the network

Once its all setup, tested and the event is ready to rock the admins finally have some down time to get ready for the onslaught of gamers that are just waiting to stop playing with themselves and enjoy another MonsterLAN event.

Part 2 will be on running the event and everything that goes with it. Stay tuned.

I got booked to do a small gig for an upcoming band called Armen Firman. They have a few catchy songs, the new single Porch Dweller is quite good and the guys make it rock hard live too. There was one guy who came up mid show and yelled at me "are you doing the lights?" now normally the punters are dumb and think I'm just the audio guy or something and the lights are automated OR they are going to complain at me for the lights being in their face and they can't see the act.... fucking just move. But anyway back to the guy who yelled the question at me, i said yes and his response was "your fucking awesome" and while i know this generally it was great to see someone else enjoying my work.

Here are a few pics from the night.

As some of you know i do lighting for bands as a side job and this time i got sent down to Apollo Bay's Music Festival for 3 days of rain, cold winds and the occasional great band that made it all worthwhile. I was on the B stage doing the lighting there for all the acts that played, no rest for me.

It kick off on Friday with a few boring acts but then Skipping Girl Vinegar popped onto my stage and impressed me with their catchy tunes. One song sounded great but listening to the recording on their site it didn't quite capture this songs "vibe" that well, the song was "Sift the Noise". The rest of the Friday was pretty boring.

Saturday kicked off early with my stage staring at 10.30am with Bonjah with their unique sound. The song that caught my attention with these guys was "My Patience" grooooovy little tune. Pretty boring to light but it kept interesting enough to keep me awake before I had time for my coffee.

Next up was one of the big acts of the festival, Kate Miller-Heidke. Apparently she has been on Ch7's sunrise a few times but I never get up that early (anything before 10am should not exist). I started off pretty mello but her songs all had a bit of a funny story to tell which kept it fun to light. But the main reason I remember this act was their cover of John Farnham’s You’re the Voice. Now while this wasn't too out of the ordinary it started off slow and then out of nowhere gets very rocky and totally caught me off guard to their audio mixing guys amusement... having me scramble to kick off a faster scene with the lights only to have it slow right down again until the next chorus. But her little stories out side of the songs were also quite funny with one story about having to sign a kids dirty jocks only to have him ask who she was after waiting 2hrs in the line!!! Kate also has an amazing opera type voice.

Dallas Frasca busted her way onto my stage later that day and she's always a lot of fun to light & very random. She loves to jump into the crowd to the dismay of security who have to protect her. I've also never seen someone have absoulty no respect for a stomp pad (pad you stomp on to make a drum beat). Great live act though and man can she sing, i don't think she needed the mic at all.

I had been told that there was a rock band coming up on my stage which after a few country and shit boring acts was a welcome relief. Electric Mary crashed onto my stage and boy did i love it. FINALLY a band i could sink my teeth into. They came out loud and kicked the crowd's ears... I came out bright and kicked the crowd in the face with my lighting show. After a day of pent up lighting i let it all out on one band and blew the crowd away. Strobe's, fast movements silhouettes and much more... even I was impressed with my work. I love rock & roll, it so suits my style of show. The band loved it too with them & a few of their friends coming up to say that fucking ROCKED, great work. Its times like that i love doing lighting.

Overall it was a great festival even if it was a little boring in parts. After freezing my ass off for the entire festival i was glad to get home to a warm bed.