steo on 10/2/2011 at 17:22
Myself and a few friends have recently overcome the necessary bureaucracy to form a computer games society at our university.
Given that this is associated with the university and they are gracefully allowing us use of a room of 20 computers equipped with E8400 processors and mid-range Quadro cards for three hours per week, everything needs to be on the up and up. As such, we're looking for games that we can play legally with minimal financial investment.
We are therefore wondering if it is a necessity to purchase or otherwise legally acquire one copy of the game per person playing, or whether we can have multiple people playing over LAN on a single copy of a game.
If this were legally possible, it would open up huge avenues of games that we could play, but otherwise we're limited to free and open source games (thank you Enemy Territory) and games that we can agree on making a sizeable investment to purchase. In particular, I was thinking that 20 second-hand copies of the original non-steam Half Life (since I very much doubt we'll be able to put steam on these machines) would be relatively cheap and would let us play TFC, CS and DoD. Another option we are considering is getting in touch with local games outlets and seeing if we can strike a deal on PS3 rentals, since the room also has 20 PS3s and we could arrange to rent 20 copies of a single game for a few hours weekly.
Advice and insight is greatly appreciated.
van HellSing on 10/2/2011 at 18:00
Older Blizzard games have the spawn function that lets you install a multiplayer-only version of the game for such purposes.
steo on 10/2/2011 at 18:02
Yes I recall seeing such an option on Diablo, perhaps Diablo 2, but we're really looking for games that can be played with a large number of people... This does somewhat rule out RPGs.
lost_soul on 10/2/2011 at 19:52
Don't forget Urban Terror! It is lots of fun to play. There's also the free multiplayer version of F.E.A.R., which I've yet to try. I've been meaning to play it eventually. Quakelive is fun too, but it just doesn't have the lasting fun of Urban Terror IMO.
If you feel like going real oldschool, there's always the Doom shareware too. Remember, it was released in a time when shareware consisted of more than just half a map to play!
Koki on 10/2/2011 at 19:52
Is 8 a large number of people? Because, you know, Starcraft.
"computer games society"... oh man
Kuuso on 10/2/2011 at 20:39
Sacrifice has the spawn function as well, so you only need one copy. It's a bit of a tricky game to play though. People who haven't played it before might be puzzled. Also the netcode is fucking horrible and I don't know how it works (making it work online is a complete bitch, but I think LAN is way easier).
Quake 3 Arena is always good and simple.
june gloom on 10/2/2011 at 21:16
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Remember, it was released in a time when shareware existed
fixed that for you, you backwards nitwit
Al_B on 10/2/2011 at 21:44
Quote Posted by steo
I very much doubt we'll be able to put steam on these machines
How much scope do you have for installing any games on the machines? Most recent games have quite high resource requirements and I would suspect they'd want to control what was installed.
Quote Posted by lost_soul
If you feel like going real oldschool, there's always the Doom shareware too.
If you want to really go old-school then (
http://jsw.ovine.net/) jet set willy online is fun for a laugh.
steo on 11/2/2011 at 01:55
We have very little scope for installing games, but it should be possible to get the necessary dlls into the system32 directory to make games work, and in my experience, most games will work without installation when provided with the required dlls - at least as long as they don't require crap like Games for Windows Live and Steam etc...
Starcraft does sound like a good idea, we can always get some kind of a tournament with multiple games running at once such that everyone is involved. Will also have to look into Urban Terror...
Renzatic on 11/2/2011 at 02:05
Why has no one mentioned Unreal Tournament yet? :mad:
It's the perfect LAN game, runs on everything but the oldest of old computers, and you can get it on GOG for 10 bucks.
Have a ball. And you're welcome. :thumb:
