School LAN Gaming Club...

[hotwired007]

Hi All

 

i'm planning on setting up an after school gaming club at my school... any tips hits?

 

what games should i buy? issues with licencing? age restrictions?

 

what do you do if you have one?

 

thanks in advance...

[Scruff]

As the Quake 1,2 & 3 clients have all been GPL'd for a while now there have been some great community enhancements with respect to network play and user created content.

 

It also helps that it great originally

 

Free is good.

[hotwired007]

Shockingly enough i have never played quake....

 

i always played halflife, which i know is based on a 'heavily modified quake engine'...

 

i take it i would need a host pc/server for the game as well as the clients...

 

I have been looking at:

 

Age of Empires 1 & 2

Midtown Madness 2

Halflife

Battlefield 1942

Starcraft

 

Any other good games that would be good for a 50min session?

 

Plus they have to be able to run on SIS 730 GFX cards

 

PC's themselves are ok ranging from Athlon 2800+ M to some sempron 3300+, all with at least 512mb ram... most 1gb...

[CyberNerd]

- = World of Padman = -

 

Truecombat Elite - An Enemy Territory Modification

 

Welcome to wz2100.net | Warzone 2100 Resurrection Project

[tech_guy]

We used to have Enemy Territory battles at lunchtime but some of the staff deemed that it was 'too violent' and we had to stop it.

 

:-(

[CyberNerd]

We used to have Enemy Territory battles at lunchtime but some of the staff deemed that it was 'too violent' and we had to stop it.

 

:-(

lol, padman is more cartoony - but much of the same

[Jona]

I think I'd be tempted to avoid first person shooters, and concentrate more on mini-games or strategies -

 

startopia?

civilisations?

red alert?

total anniliation?

 

anything from the worms series...

puzzle bobble

[phreak]

We used to play Decent back in my day on our school computers. It was only the demo but it did let you play multiplayer and had a few levels to kick ass at.

 

Otherwise Quake is always a good option, Age of Empires or Starcraft if you want strategy games.

[hotwired007]

Most of the kids want a first person, a strategy and a racing game...

 

i'm going for Halflife or Quake/age of empires/ midtown madness 2

 

Is there a way of installing these on a share on a server and then getting the kids to play from there? (basically so i can stop the games from being played at other times...)

 

i know its possible with aoe... its what we had when i was at secondary school lol!

 

just can't figure out how atm... any ideas?

[Jona]

Half-life has a BBFC rating of 15, are the students who are going to play this 15? I know these ratings are voluntary, etc but is this really good practice.......

 

Several of the quake titles have ratings as well.

[hotwired007]

Half-life has a BBFC rating of 15, are the students who are going to play this 15? I know these ratings are voluntary, etc but is this really good practice.......

 

Several of the quake titles have ratings as well.

 

i have been thinking baout sending a generic letter home with the students asking parental permission to play the games...

 

its a tad annoying when kids yr7s come in and ask if we can play CoD4 though....

[jamesb]

Original Neverwinter Nights might be worth looking at, multiplayer with co-operative or competitive, and you can adjust the 'gore' content of the game. Plenty of modules available online as well.

[MK-2]

At the moment we have the original Unreal Tournament installed in two rooms that is used for after school gaming.

If you do go for quake, then NQuake (i think its called) is a good one now. It comes prebuilt with a bot, quakeworld server, loads of little enhancements, gl gfx.

 

As for security, we have a 'gamer' login that has redirected start menu to links to the games. that way they cant copy the shortcut from start menu to their home area as the login is different. that login is also time restricted so they cant logon during school hours.

if you want added security, i suppose you could always modify the games exe permissions to only allow 'gamer' or whatever to run it, not the other kids

[hotwired007]

At the moment we have the original Unreal Tournament installed in two rooms that is used for after school gaming.

If you do go for quake, then NQuake (i think its called) is a good one now. It comes prebuilt with a bot, quakeworld server, loads of little enhancements, gl gfx.

 

As for security, we have a 'gamer' login that has redirected start menu to links to the games. that way they cant copy the shortcut from start menu to their home area as the login is different. that login is also time restricted so they cant logon during school hours.

if you want added security, i suppose you could always modify the games exe permissions to only allow 'gamer' or whatever to run it, not the other kids

 

Thanks both of these sound like a good idea... i like the idea of a separate gamer logon... i can also restrict what PC's this has access too...

[Inbir316]

At the moment we have the original Unreal Tournament installed in two rooms that is used for after school gaming.

If you do go for quake, then NQuake (i think its called) is a good one now. It comes prebuilt with a bot, quakeworld server, loads of little enhancements, gl gfx.

 

As for security, we have a 'gamer' login that has redirected start menu to links to the games. that way they cant copy the shortcut from start menu to their home area as the login is different. that login is also time restricted so they cant logon during school hours.

if you want added security, i suppose you could always modify the games exe permissions to only allow 'gamer' or whatever to run it, not the other kids

 

 

a classic! have you thought about medal of honour allied assault and add on packs? old school doom or duke nukem.

[MK-2]

ive thought about doom and duke yeah, but unfortunately its what the kids enjoy playing, not me.

i'd love allied assault but i love playing the team style games, anything where team play is needed, but it seems kids nowadays just like FFA games where you can go all rambo and don't need backup from other people.

thats why i loved team fortress, it relied on teamwork. especially the teamfortress classic (HL version) built around 'hunted'....where one person just has an umbrella as a weapon, and hsi team have to protect him, while snipers try to kill him. amazing teamwork and great fun if played LAN

[Inbir316]

i can see your point. how about something along the lines of ghost recon or rainbow six in terms of teamplay? you cant run out all guns blazing in those types of games

[dhicks]

what games should i buy? issues with licensing? age restrictions?

 

Does the new SimCity game have a multi-player / network option? There's also Spore, in a similar sort of vein. More vaguely educational. I know I looked at Stronghold a couple of times to see if we could actually use it as part of the curriculum. Same might go for a World War I simulation.

 

--

David Hicks

[hotwired007]

Does the new SimCity game have a multi-player / network option? There's also Spore, in a similar sort of vein. More vaguely educational. I know I looked at Stronghold a couple of times to see if we could actually use it as part of the curriculum. Same might go for a World War I simulation.

 

--

David Hicks

 

Thats what i thought about battlefiend 1942... there's a lot of historical battles recreated and quite a lot of information at the start or every battle about the real event...

[Joedetic]

I'd start by finding out which kids have steam accounts and get a bit of a survey on the go as to what games they've already purchased.

[MkII]

We ran unreal but not ideal as the school could look bad even going against an advisory restriction.

 

Easily hosted by any client tho' and we just added the shortcut after school, and removed it at the end of the session. Same with our racing game..

 

Trackmania Nations - completely free and suitable for all ages - great graphics and insane gameplay that's also challenging. You can build your own levels too and race them with your group. Some amazing community tracks out there too.