steo on 14/2/2011 at 19:48
TF2 won't work because, as I said, we can't put steam on these machines. Also, at £14 per copy, it would be fairly expensive to get our hands on enough copies. We did Enemy Territory last week, our first meet, which was fun, but only one person of the fourteen or so we had had ever played the game before, so it took us a while to get to grips with the objectives. I'm thinking we'll probably try nexuiz this week, and possibly Urban Terror, with ET to fall back on if we don't like them or can't get them to run.
I can't stress enough that any game we play needs to be legal - while it would be probably easy enough to get one copy of a game and put it on 20 computers to play over LAN, I'm guessing most games forbid this in the license agreement, and we'll get shut down the minute we're found to be doing anything illegal on the uni computers. I'm thinking it might be worth asking about the legal details in a LAN cafe, since their setup will probably be legally identical to ours.
Nameless Voice on 14/2/2011 at 20:09
If you were allowed to run Steam, it wouldn't really be a case of having to buy copies for each computer anyway, it'd be a case of everyone who wants to play would have to buy it for their own Steam account and log in using that.
Also... £14? Nah, wait for a sale, I bought it for €6.50.
But, as you said, no Steam. I'd really suggest trying to get them to unblock Steam from those computers, it's worth a try!
Some of the TTLG kru used to play Soldat years ago. I never really got into it, but it's shareware, so you can play it for free.
Also, a lot of people seem to love League of Legends, which is a full game made around the concept of DotA custom maps - but, again, I haven't played either League of Legends of DotA myself.
Hesche on 16/2/2011 at 06:31
What about Battlefield 1942? Quick check on (German) Amazon says 1,89 Euros for a used copy. Battlefield 1942 is a decent Multiplayer game and used to have a large mod community. Back in the days when I was into Battlefield 1942 I´ve seen Starwars mods, modern warfare mods, reality mods...
Also funny to see the words "legal" and "uni network" so close together. Being forced to use legal copies in a uni network is like... like rain on your Wedding day.
lost_soul on 17/2/2011 at 01:19
Then of course there's the slew of games based on the Quake 3 engine that are free. I used to be quite addicted to Tremulous. (aliens vs humans)
There's also "Smokin' Guns", which is a standalone version of Western Quake 3. This also has great music.
gunsmoke on 17/2/2011 at 02:31
I get the desire for the whole free thing, but man if these fellows are down to LAN it up, have them vote on one or two games to buy. Make them $5 or $10. Pick a game to buy every 3 months (a good MP game should last you at least that long). If they aren't willing to at least buy themselves a $5 game, why are they there?
You are really limiting yourselves here. Get creative. Ask the uni for $. Look for a sponsor. Anything. Free games...you tend to get what you pay for. Some are awesome, but really, for the most part even an older bargain bin AAA game will destroy a free game.
Zerker on 17/2/2011 at 22:28
Don't forget you can get Unreal, UT or UT 2K4 from GOG, if you wanted to pick something for everyone to get. I'm sure UT 2K4 would last you folks a LONG while.
june gloom on 17/2/2011 at 22:33
Not to mention UT2K4 opens you up to mods like Alien Swarm.
Renzatic on 18/2/2011 at 18:12
Or Alien Swarm Source. It's free on Steam.
And I'm still backing up Unreal Tournament. UT 2k4 is also a good choice, but I'd still recommend the original over it.
steo on 21/2/2011 at 15:46
Well last weeks session was a success, but I missed most of it because of a deadline. We played Nexuiz, which was a pretty big hit, and people got the hang of it pretty quickly, unlike Enemy Territory, so thanks to NV for suggesting that. We do all agree though, that while free open source games can be good, they never have quite the same quality of successful commercial games.
To that extent, we're trying to decide on games that are worth investing in, which I hope will get sorted out this week. We're also pushing for steam accounts, but we're having to wade through a hell of a lot of bureaucracy. At the moment we're working on getting society-specific user accounts set up that are only active when we have a meet scheduled and have access to a permanent directory with all the games in - at current we only have access to a temp directory which gets wiped after the session, so we have to copy the game back onto all the computers before we start.
There have been some good suggestions for games to buy, I'll have to see what the rest of the society think, but UT2k4, Battlefield 1942, Starcraft and Half-Life/CS/DoD (non-steam) all seem like good ideas. If we can get Steam accounts set up as well, then we'll have a world of opportunity.
Al_B on 21/2/2011 at 18:07
I've not tried it myself, and it may be too slow, but have you considered running (
http://www.ehow.com/how_7293173_run-steam-thumb-drive.html) steam from a USB drive? It would hopefully prevent you having to re-install the games each time and may be more palatable from the University's point of view.
