I am currently on vacation (hence no me at Mt Hamilton this year ) and upon returning I should be able to finish up wiring my house with 14 ports of gigabit. This is also why I haven't really been around much... bought new house, started doing house projects like re-wiring screwed up circuits I inherited, and wiring up the house for modern media distribution.

After I'm done, I want to have a LAN party with some 8-16 people or so. I haven't had a LAN party since I was in college (7 years now) and I'm itching to do it again. I'll probably finish in the early to mid August timeframe.

I need some help with a list of games for multiplay that I need to purchase and setup on the dedicated server machine (linux), as well as download and archive all the patches, maps, etc... needed so people at the party don't have to download crap like that over 1.5 mbit, and can instead grab it off the server at 100-1000 mbit.

I currently have Battlefield:1942 and Battlefield:Vietnam, and I can set those up no problem. I'll probably grab UT2004 for a different style FPS game.

So what else? I think that's enough FPS. I need an RTS or two to round out the offerings.
Keep in mind that the dedicated server of whatever game you suggest needs to be able to play with up to 16 players on my server box:
Athlon MP 1500+ (one processor only)
512MB ECC PC2100
currently running Mandrake Linux 10.0 community
I will NOT install another OS on this computer right now, so the server for whatever game you suggest must be able to run in Linux, I'm using a 2.6 kernel.

I haven't played any RTS games online since Warcraft II / C&C Red Alert. Maybe a few games of Starcraft, but I never really got that serious about Starcraft, so that tells you how behind the times I am on RTS games.

So current list is:
BF:1942
BF:Vietnam
UT2004 (pending purchase)
Starcraft: Brood War (pending purchase)

More suggestions?

 

Umm, no. No CS.

You might convince me to open up the free copy of CoD I got with my video card and set that up, but nobody is going to convince me to update to the current version of CS and play that game, let alone figure out a dedicated server setup for it.

Ghost Recon I could setup if there is demand, but it has one of the same major issues CS does, people sit around and pick their *** half the round. I am inclined to nix it just based on that, but I like Ghost Recon better than CS, so I won't immediately can it.

I'm not against Starcraft, I just know there has been some development in the RTS area in the last 5 years, so was interested in finding out what might be in demand for a dedicated server if I were to host.

I will certainly be open to inviting some i-club people, but will cover that later, once I get closer to having a date nailed down. A guest list is an easy thing compared to the prep work for being able to setup and run a server for 6 different games.

 

Or both

 

By D2 I'll assume you don't mean Descent 2 , though that would be fun, I haven't been able to make it run on a Win2000 machine. Diablo II, I gave away my LOD discs, but I still have the DII discs. Diablo at a LAN party has some inherent problems:
- To play from start to finish takes a LOOONG time
- Player's characters are not all going to be at similar levels
- no dedicated server, I'd have to dedicate a second machine for hosting.
It would be one of those things that if people brought it and played it that would be great, but there's not much I can do from a hosting standpoint.

All these requests for Starcraft sure are making my life easier, I can get a new copy of starcraft for cheap, and there is no dedicated server for Starcraft, that I know of.

 

True, but I want to be able to spend some quality time with learning the dedicated servers for the games I plan on running with one. Even though it's been a while, I know that if you don't have your ish together on setting up the server, half the time available can be spent dicking around with settings or changing settings, etc...

Getting things ahead of time I can learn what settings I want to use, get familiar with the various interfaces and get some GOOD non-standard maps too.

i-club will probably comprise ~1/2 the guest list, and I don't know for sure which i-club members would be included in that. As I know what the other people are into (the FPS games I listed) I actually was kind-of asking people who will be there, some of the people who have responded were already in-mind as invitees.