h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You and who's funny blue plasmary thing?

You're mighty brave in cyberspace flame boy!

Adam

P.S. Why am I sooooo last at HL?

*Nods*, my setup is almost exactly the same except a PII 233... bought about a year and a half ago now, it's lasted pretty well...

I'm getting a new PC to go in my room, though (just a cheap Celeron 400) - and if my brother thinks the Voodoo II is staying in the family PC he's got another think coming .

Speaking as someone who's been to (and hosted) loads of LAN Parties (check out my entry )... the best way is to hang around with a group of friends at school who are lucking for imaginitive ways to avoid doing revision during their GCSE exams... it worked for me, anyhow .

Also, start small - we did. Actually, we didn't intend to - but the first LAN party we had ended up with only three computers connected - one Pentium 130, one without a mouse (due to the use of a serial cable) and one amazing PC which some b***** hogged the whole time (actually, that was me , hey it was my PC, I wasn't about to let other people use it when I could have a massive advantage and end up looking good).

Has anyone played Tribes? One of the most amazing multiplayer games ever... but you need about six to eight people as a minimum to have a decent game.

This is slightly off topic, however..
I just got a deal on a voodoo 3 card... that after a $30 rebate... will only cost me
$32!!!!!
I'm so happy, I could plotz!
And this, on the same day that my wife told me she was sick of AOL and we can move to another ISP
Huzzah! I say... HUZZAH!

Wonder how much better Freespace will look on the new card?... ohh i'm happy
I love the net+value america+ebates=cheap stuff (every now and again)


sorry about the rant.
Random

*Chuckle*, good for you... friend of mine just got a new PIII-500, wiv a Voodoo III and everything... *goes green with envy*... I'm going to have to persuade him to come to a LAN party then kidnap his computer when he's not looking .

You wrote a QBasic program to do that?!?! It says in one of the forums somewhere, written by the team ..

I hereby give notice that my Athlon 500 MhZ with Voodoo 3500 and 128 megs of RAM is now up and running.

Be afraid.

In the meantime, I'll just have to be happy with utterly thrashing the rest of the office at Q3 and UT.

Aaaaaargh, I spent the whole of yesterday trying to play on line and it dont work!

I've got an AMD K6/2 400, 64MB RAM, Voodoo2 and a 56k modem.

Quake 1 connects but only thru q95 (win + gl and normal quake cant find anything). But the lag is unbarable (20 seconds between pressing forward and moving).

Quake 2 connects but after a roapy few min it looses connection, sort of. I can't get any movement out of it (even my view is stuck) but I do get to watch people passing me grenades. I've got the latest version (3.20).

Half-Life wont connect saying my version is out of date (v3.13) and the auto update cant find any updates for me!

My computer works fine at LAN playing and browses and downloads at a decent speed (4-5 k/s).
I've got 2 accounts one with AOL and one with freeserve(setup after my first few attempts at gaming to see if that helped).

Can anyone help me? PLEASE!

ReapeR

I used to have this kind of problem... I could never get a decent ping (time delay between you and the serve), and my connection way always pretty dodgy for downloads, too... it turned out to be the fault of my phone, which was connected to the same line.

I suggest that you unplug everything other than the modem from the phone line, and use the shortest amount of cable possible... this should help quite a bit.

Alternatively, it could be problems with your ISP... in which case it might be worth checking out various free services until you find a good one - this has the added advantage that you end up with loads of e-mail addresses to impress your friends with.

As for the HL auto-update... not sure on that one. It's either your connection, in which case some of the above may help... or their servers are down, in which case try again at various times of day.

If none of that works... it should be possible to find the upgrade patches on the internet; www.planethalflife.com is probably a good starting point.

Hope some of this helps!

Chears
I'll try unpluging the phone, but my downloads are quite stable, still worth a go. Any suggestions for a good ISP?
I think the problem is the bloody long cable needed to get to my room, it goes round the whole house (a big slab of a bungalow) from the drive. The fact that I live down a chalk track probably doesn't help (crappy weedy little cables half dead with rust is my theory).

Any more hints n tips appreciated

ReapeR

Just a thought ReapeR, but why not stop sulking and go to a LAN party (or are you still recovering from last time).

Slight subject shift, but does anyone have a tip for a good free ISP preferably in damp and dreary England.

As to Half Life, this is possibly one of the best games released but the networking code is rubbish.

Regards Silencer.

I do go to LAN parties, you should know that (KILL THE BUNNY!!!!!), but I want to kill random people on the net as well (some people just can't get enough).

About the ISP, next week when I'm back in St.Mags I'm going to try freenet(I think that's the one), It's supposed to be made with gamers in mind. I'll keep you posted but if anyone else has any recommendations we would all like to know.

See you in cyber hell,

ReapeR

>As to Half Life, this is possibly one of the best games released but >the networking code is rubbish.

Agreed - it's a bastard to get working. It doesn't seem to have any idea of consistency... it'll work one minute, and not the next. Still, the upgrade patches have made some improvements... and TFC is amazing.

It does, however, pale in comparison to the might of Starseige Tribes, which is undoubtedly one of the best LAN Party games ever.

Is anyone out there in the Warrington area? I'm having a LAN party at my house Saturday...

Anyone here played Unreal Tournament? I was promised that I would be sent a free OEM copy, but no sign of it yet...

I've played half life on the internet and on LAN and had no problems what so ever, the game is kick ass. I just wish you could get Barney in the multiplayer.

As for Starseige Tribes, I've played it online and it rules, but I can't get LAN to work. PS have you tried the renegades patch for Tribes its excellent.

You can get Barney in the multiplayer. Just download the model.

Ahhhhhhhh i c, I'll do that

If it all goes massively tits-up, then the download is at
http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/idgames2/planetquake/q2pmp/barney.EXE

It's an EXE that installs the model.

Cheers for that

I've played the UT demo; it's got good maps, well designed levels, decent network code, and a clever interface.

It is also (apparently) reviewed as having an extremely good single-player game, considered the fact that it is, or will be, in direction competition with two multiplayer-only titles: TF2 and Quake III.

Both of which, incidentally, are probably going to be great.

The day of the LAN Party without arguments about which games to play is upon us...

I'm setting up a games page on my homepage on h2g2, its gonna have reviews and downloads and anything else that I feel relates to games on it, anyone wanting to take a look or help out can pop on over to my homepage by clicking my name!