Organising online games with Obsidianites

[Humodour]

For those you interesting in multiplayer gaming (whether for Diablo 1 through to AOE2 or NWN2), you'd know that it can be hard to organise teams and just generally round up people through an internet forum. At my university the 1000 or so people at the residential colleges have their own chat network specifically for LAN gaming. It works very effectively for the purpose of organising online games.

 

As such, there is the real-time chat room #obsid on irc.quakenet.org. Join and hopefully we can start organising some Obsidian LAN games!

[Pop]

I'll give it some consideration once school winds down. It's getting to about finals time. No time for dallying.

[Big Bottom]

The Obs steam group has it's own chatroom, but the activity hasn't exactly been skyrocketing since we started it.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

And now, for some reason, I cannot switch the player of the week - but, if anyone else can, Kissamies is this week's "Player of the Week."

[Big Bottom]

Done and done.

 

So what exactly do we need to organise a TF2 (or anything else) game? Should we just gatecrash someone's server? That sounds like the best plan to me, and the one that involves the least effort.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I'm game, as my copy of The Orange Box arrived today...

[Big Bottom]

OK, we need some more candidates....if you have TF2 and are up for a game would you kindly(!) let us know.

[The.Donut]

I think organising games via mIRC would be the most efficient way really...although that does depend on how many people actually have it and use it...

[Humodour]

And that depends on how many of you sods can be bothered to stay and idle so that more people stay when they join. Pfft.

 

Joe enters chat. Sees 5 people. Leaves. The other 5 gradually get bored of this and also leave. It dies.

Joe enters chat. Sees 10 people. Stays. Now 11. And it continues.

 

But how do you get from 5 to 10? I think idling is the best solution.

 

That, or advertise the channel when we get the new member influx from the Aliens announcements to come in the future.

[Kissamies]

So I'm player of the week... How embarrassing since I'm supposed to be busy right now... Nothing like my Action Half-Life binges back in 1999-2000, though.

 

Done and done.

 

So what exactly do we need to organise a TF2 (or anything else) game? Should we just gatecrash someone's server? That sounds like the best plan to me, and the one that involves the least effort.

Yeah, I think getting an own server wouldn't be advisable at this point. First step would be trying to get some arranged playing times and then simply join some suitable server. I've been trying to keep an eye on the friends-list, but ppl on this group are very rarely in game and then it's some far east server I'd get 400 ping on.

[The.Donut]

I think one issue in trying to organise a game here is the time zone difference - it all depends on where people are in the world and, indeed, when people can play. Or, like you said, people playing in a sever that pings a few thousand to people on the other side of the world. Fun times ahead

[Humodour]

Well, I've noticed that for us Aussies, you Americans/Canadians are online from about 8am through to 2/3pm. Bad if you have work or school, but good if you don't. The Europeans are usually on from 10pm onwards.

[Kissamies]

Yes, we are spread out and would need lots of more members to make a viable team. The ping is variable thing. For example, it seems that the best NZ (which is the most "other side of world" for me) servers have better ping than some worse Californian ones. It's a shame that Steam's built in server browser is so basic. I like to check on server settings and stuff before I join the game. Now I have to use Game-Monitor for that and it's a clumbersome thing.

[ramza]

Don't you guys ever play on NWN1 PWs? There's still much fun to be had with these, even though the technology is dated...