Rogue

*phew* That's another MonsterLAN in the record books, and a fantastic ML it was too. We had around 130 people sign up from our 168 max, and it felt like at least 115 of those people showed up as well. Good times.

Follow up:

We had three major game tournaments this time around which were all run; Call of Duty: United Offensive (5v5 TDM), Unreal Tournament 2004 (5v5 CTF), and Battlefield 2 (8v8 Conquest).

I'll be glad when CoD2 comes out (hopefully before Dec) as it will mean we can drop CoD. Just like how UT2004 meant the drop of UT2003 and CSS eventually got rid of CS1.6. Even though this is only the second time I've run a CoD tourney, I already have niggles about it which I don't like. For starters it's very finicky about how it boots. If you don't format you're defaults of your maps perfectly then it reverts them to deathmatch - a fact I only picked up when the comp servers were booting for the tourney. Some frantic research rewarded me with a workaround (trigger a maplist rotation, then the declaration in the maplist will work) but I shouldn't have to do that.

UTCTF was quality as expected although I was dissapointed by the scores. Every match seemed to end in either a 5-0 or a forfeit. Everyone was rather excited when each match ended though, as I was regularly surrounded by peeps laughing and loudly reliving the matches they had just played - great stuff.

Battlefield 2, this was the one I was worried about. The sysreqs for BF2 are intimidating and being 8v8 means more than the average war-load of players. Luckily Homer pulled out a win for us again, bringing over 4 PCs for my use in the tournaments. That meant I could put each comp match on it's own server which resulted in excellent, lag free, serverage for the players. Lots of yelling and screaming from the floor during this one, and due to dodgeball being announced earlier than I anticipated all the players were drawn away from their PCs when I wanted to start. That meant I had to chill for an hour or so longer before starting (in addition to an extended meal break). Strangely this worked out really great since about half a dozen people came up to tell us they thought it was better stringing Battlefield 2 out into the morning since it delayed porn'o'clock. So as it was the last games finished around 0300 on Sunday.

Then CP handled some Dodgeball comp action while I had a rest for the first time since 0900 the day before.

Overall the tournaments went on hitch-free. I was so busy stressing out that I didn't get a lot of sit down time to really soak in what was going on, although I did get to walk out on the floor once or twice and everyone seemed happy and gaming at those times.

Also in an upside I got to game! *yay* CP, Lupin, and a couple of other lads fired up Q3 on Sunday for some first-to-200 DM carnage. And I get to gloat that despite missing out on the first 10 minutes of the match (while I was leeching the game) I eventually overtook everyone on the board (-1 who dropped out). Score!

The big downside about the whole thing was that I really wanted to play in the BF2 comp but the teams were so packed that no one really wanted to pick me up.

And the other little stress ball I got to toy with was that on the way across to ML from SA, my case was left behind by the bus company (fucking lamers). So it ended up being forwarded on a later service which got in 12 hours after I did. Luckily Lupin, being the total champ he is, gave me a lift across to Melbourne to pick it up Friday night. Thankfully after plugging it in, everything worked perfectly.

Trip home was uneventful (albeit long) and my rig made it through without even a scratch.

Enough spammage though. In summary;

The people are happy, the admin team are knackered once again, I'm proud of the team and what we accomplished, yet am dreading doing it all over again in a couple of months time