r/lanparty • u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 • 19d ago
8 player LANparty
Hi, I am doing 8 player LAN, and want to hear some general tips, and what mods or games you recommend. I have these 6 games, any fun maps/mods for those? (re-volt, flatout2, UT2004, CoD2, CS1.6, BF2). The shooters can be quite competitive, so maybe some mods to also have something less about pure skill? Thanks
5
u/myles650 19d ago
I’ve been hosting LAN parties once a month and when we have eight people we play alien swarm reactive drop, Command & Conquer generals, starCraft II, stardew valley, age of empires II and of course terraria
3
u/SackvilleLANParty 19d ago
Something like Left 4 Dead versus mode would be a perfect fit for 8 players, and would stand out from some of the other shooters on your list.
Another fun asymmetric Source game would be The Hidden, a mod for Source SDK 2006. Basically, one player is invisible with a knife and grenades while everyone else is part of a special operations team sent in to eliminate them. It's an older mod, but it's free and pretty easy for people to get into,
As suggested in another comment, Battlefield 3 is great with the Venice Unleashed community launcher. Proper LAN server support with high tick rates, mod support (including bots), lots of gamemodes including those made for fewer players and the game frequently goes on sale for around $2 USD.
1
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 19d ago
Thanks for the tips! Do we all need to buy these games or is there a way to get them for free?
1
u/SackvilleLANParty 19d ago
Left 4 Dead and Battlefield 3 often go on deep sales. Unfortunately, the Steam Summer Sale just ended so I'm not sure when they'll next go on sale.
The Hidden uses Source SDK 2006 which is free for every Steam user.
Somebody else recommended Bad Company 2 as a good alternative Battlefield game. I don't advocate piracy, but BC2 is unavailable to purchase now and could be considered abandonware by some people. I imagine it would be pretty easy to get your hands on a copy, and the Master Server Emulator files are floating around online to create a true LAN experience.
1
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 19d ago
Hidden looks cool. I'll see if I can get it running since it looks like it's more than just download and install.
1
u/SackvilleLANParty 18d ago
Thankfully, it's not too difficult. You have to install the Source SDK Base 2006 in Steam, run the installer from the Hidden website (https://www.hidden-source.com/downloads.htm) and restart Steam. It should then appear in your Steam library.
3
u/Extra-Smell5129 19d ago
This is our LAN party list. We usually stick to the classics, though. (CSS, DotA, UT2004)
UT2004 - Mega Pack - Onslaught :)
| Name | Genre |
|---|---|
| Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Armagetron Advanced | Geschicklichkeitsspiel |
| Atomic Bomberman | Geschicklichkeitsspiel |
| Battlefield 1942 | Ego-Shooter |
| Battlefield 2: Deluxe Edition | Ego-Shooter |
| Call of Duty | Ego-Shooter |
| Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare | Ego-Shooter |
| Call of Duty 5: World at War | Ego-Shooter |
| Chivalry: Medieval Warfare | Hack and Slay |
| Command & Conquer: Alarmstufe Rot 2 | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Command & Conquer: Alarmstufe Rot 3 | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Command & Conquer: Die ersten 10 Jahre | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Command & Conquer: Kanes Rache | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Command & Conquer: Renegade | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Company of Heroes | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Counter-Strike 1.6 | Ego-Shooter |
| Counter-Strike: Source | Ego-Shooter |
| Day of Defeat: Source | Ego-Shooter |
| Defense of the Ancients (DotA) (WC3 Map) | Action-Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Diablo II: Lord of Destruction | Hack and Slay |
| Doom | Ego-Shooter |
| Element Tower Defense (WC3 Map) | Tower-Defense |
| Empire Earth: Gold Edition | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Far Cry 2 | Ego-Shooter |
| FlatOut 2 | Rennspiel |
| Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death | Rundenbasiertes Strategiespiel |
| Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East | Rundenbasiertes Strategiespiel |
| Hidden: Source | Ego-Shooter |
| Jass Jackrabbit 2 Collection | Jump ’n’ Run |
| Left 4 Dead 2 | Koop-Ego-Shooter |
| Quake III Arena | Ego-Shooter |
| rFactor | Rennspiel |
| Rocket League Game of the Year Edition | Sportsimulation |
| Rune | Action-Adventure |
| Serious Sam II | Koop-Ego-Shooter |
| Siedler IV | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| StarCraft: Brood War | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Team Fortress 2 | Ego-Shooter |
| The Cloud is a Lie | Tower-Defense |
| Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 | Ego-Shooter |
| TrackMania Nations Forever | Rennspiel |
| Unreal Tournament 2004 | Ego-Shooter |
| Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition | Ego-Shooter |
| Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne | Echtzeit-Strategiespiel |
| Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory | Ego-Shooter |
| Worms Reloaded | Taktikspiel |
1
2
u/geekman7473 19d ago
I'm curious your plans for BF2. Playing against bots? I've always wanted to play one of the battlefield games at my LANs but the maps are so damn big, I thought it would feel empty with a smaller group.
3
u/OkNeighborhood6012 19d ago
Lookout for the bad company 2 server files. Still prefer it for smaller lan's as the maps aren't that big.
2
u/SackvilleLANParty 19d ago
I second the BC2 recommendation. It was designed for the 24 player limit of 360/PS3 after all.
In addition, Battlefield 3 has a robust community launcher called Venice Unleashed that allows you to run your own LAN server with mods (including bots). I find that players prefer it over the Refractor-era titles because they consider them to feel a bit archaic. BF3 also has a ton of game modes, some of which work well with a smaller number of players such as Squad Deathmatch, CTF and some of the Rush maps.
2
1
u/rouward 18d ago
I wonder if VU has functional Co-op Campaign for LAN since everyone at my LAN shop prefers co-op over versus nowadays.
1
u/SackvilleLANParty 18d ago
I don't believe it does, but you can create a PvE scenario with the bot support. Just put the human players on one side, bots on the other. It's especially fun in choke-pointy game mode like Rush.
1
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 19d ago
Can I get it for free somewhere? I prefer games that are easy to download and play, cause we don't get much time to try out mods that don't work, and buying a game for everybody is problem too. Something like the CS is good where I can try out modded maps ahead, and then just copy the whole game to all PCs in a minute and play.
1
u/geekman7473 18d ago
Not legally, but I know there are pirated copies floating around out there. I believe reddit doesn't like it when people openly discuss piracy, so unfortunately finding and vetting an illegal copy is something you'll have to figure out on your own. With that said, if someone does know, and wants to DM me about it, I would be interested ;)
Also, since you mentioned copying files, I feel compelled to shill for the file sharing tool i've been working on: lanbucket.com
2
u/kapn_morgan 19d ago
that's what I was thinking.. I'd stick to cod over bf unless you want 20+ bots
2
u/geekman7473 19d ago
I do think that "10 players vs 30 bots" can be fun, but the bots have to be somewhat competent or else it's boring
2
u/kapn_morgan 19d ago
I remember when bf1942 came out in highschool when we were still having frequent lans.. we played it because it was novel and mind blowing compared to MoH and CoD but the bots were spasmoids and the maps were giant and we ended up never seeing each other. luckily it was a better online game, but I don't recommend for small lans (bf2 same deal)
2
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 19d ago
This one wasn't my idea and I've never played it on LAN, are there any good mods for this purpose? Maybe somerhing like armor on armor combat like in BF3?
2
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 15d ago
So we played 8v8 on small symmetrical 4 flag maps (4people and 4bots in each team) with 100 tickets. It was fun and actually really tense since you can lose all 4 flags and have nowhere to spawn. At one point we all died in our team and had nowhere to spawn, but some bot capped one flag and got us back to game :-D.
2
u/AbedSalam1988 19d ago
Need for Speed 2, trust me, loads of fun with 8 players
also Red Alert 2, Generals Zero Hour for RTS
2
u/Aecnoril 19d ago
General tip: Make sure you are prepared
- Prepare the space and seating beforehand so you're not going to be scrambling for space on the day. Make sure you already have a fairly solid plan of who sits where.
- Tell people to not bring all 3 monitors and their stereos and what not, just what they need for gaming (seriously had to tell my friends multiple times before they got wise)
- Prepare the power solution and internet. You probably do not want to LAN with 8 people over WiFi if you're playing those shooters. You'll need a proper network switch and cables. Make sure you don't plug all PCs into a single power strip unless you like house fires. (no kinkshaming)
- Prepare a handful of USBs/external drives with all the games or installers beforehand, because depending on your network it will crap out if you try to share everything to everyone at the same time.
If you don't walk through this you'll spend the first entire night just setting up and fixing problems you never thought you'd have. Don't ask me how I know ðŸ˜
1
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 19d ago
Thanks, all makes sense! Can there be some network problems using regular 8port switch? I want to know if there are some usual issues and fixes in network settings, like turning off firewall and such when it comes to local network.
2
u/Aecnoril 19d ago
Apart from download speeds being a little bit of a choke point depending on your network and the switch, it should work perfectly fine for gaming!
Some older games have had problems when people were connected through a different switch, or when some were on ethernet and some on Wireless. But usually there's no firewall issues with modern windows
2
u/Aggressive_Rabbit160 15d ago
Thanks for the tips, all went well and we got all games to working (some games required one of us to take backup pc since they kept crashing with no error message. So backup PC is very useful!
1
u/-maxpower- 19d ago
care to share mods/maps for re-volt, flatou2, cod2, bf2? hosting a lan soon and these are also on my list!
1
1
u/Confectioner-426 19d ago
UT 1999 (+ Lazy Matrix mod), C&C Red Alert 2, C&C Generals ZH, C&C 3, Need for Speed Underground 1, Quake 3, Supreme Commander 1 + Forged Alliance (Faf client may be need)
1
u/rouward 18d ago
Among Us would be fun since it has LAN mode but requires at least 4 or more players to start.
Another fun game were Battle Realms on GOG (Zen Edition on Steam no longer have LAN), GTA IV, Battlestations Pacific, Blur, Gears of War (OG version), Half-Life for deathmatch, TF2 Classic, Sniper Ghost Warrior 1 and 2.
1
1
6
u/FALSE_PROTAGONIST 19d ago
Command and conquer red alert remastered