Subject: LosCon AAR March '98 Howdy friends, Wow! What a time! I think it's safe to say that this Loscon was a success all the way around. CHRONOLOGY Thursday night: Kurt arrived and set up his Weasel Lair. As usual all the net goes up flawlessly. The big thing we did Thursday night was to propagate all the appropriate new patches, maps, and releases on all the machines. The big thing we did Thursday night was install the new Paint ball mod for Quake and test it out with Kurt, Nat and myself. Quite a blast. After Nat went to bed Kurt and I logged online and played some net paint ball on one of the gamespy servers until 2am. Friday: Wake up at 10 and dunkin' Donuts run. General fiddling around on the computers checking out various maps to see which will be good for the group. We left one machine connected to one of the gamespy paint ball server all afternoon and took turns hopping on and playing. Late afternoon and Bob and Todd arrive from Michigan. DoKtOr ChUd arrives in the house. We set more computers up on the net. We quickly showcase Paint ball. John and Mary show up and this precipitates and 6-7 player Q2 CTF match that goes on for an hour or two. The Korean Pizza guy arrives much to his happiness (Note to Bundy: The Pizza guy is a budding pilot and Bob and Todd are USCG chopper pilots). After pizza and Babylon Five we commence DM operations until the wee hours of the morning. Saturday: 10am wake up followed by the usual D&D run. Most of the afternoon is Deathmatch on the new 64 maps, or paint ball. (A little CTF also). Mike and computer arrive and are hooked in. During downtimes Dr. Chud plays final Liberation. JB (Morbius) arrives. Just before dinner we have some intense paint ball matches. The strange and wonderful Tyler appears dragging along some cannon fodder. Then it's over to Andales for a big dinner. After Andales it's time for some serious deathmatching on the new Q2dm levels. At this point we have 9 machines plus the dedicated server going! This goes on without mercy until probably 1 am. Very serious fragging. Save for the Tyler crowd, everyone here is an accomplished Quake player, and the fighting forces everyone to a higher level of accomplishment. We end the night watching old reruns of Southpark. Sunday Early 8am wakeup and D&D run followed by an unusual early morning Q2DM by those with hardy souls. Then comes what IMO is the piece de resistance. A solid 2 hour 3v3 TF on 2fort4. (At first with bots added but they were sort of porked so we restarted after 20 mins) Then insued very close match to 250, with each side staying within one capture of the other more or less. Talk about anal-clenching excitement! Man what teamwork and what fragging. This to me was the essence of what we are doing here. Then came our obligatory Glenwood dinner trip for a "dog and a french". Upon return we launch into a 2 hour Paint ball match. A different temp as each match ends after a minute or two, but with one shot one kill, you really are forced to a higher level of teamwork. At this point we broke out the last six of very rare RC Draft reserve and enjoyed it with some jerky as we contemplated the future direction of LOSCONs. Then it's a break for Chinese food and Kurt's gunsmith cat's video During the afternoon during lulls, we reviewed the quake tapes we recorded during the weekend (with Pure 3d video out) and remark on this or that tactic. (BTW we had the video out going all weekend for bystanders to enjoy Quake action in the living room. We recorded like 12 hours of Quake! (With Mike and Dr Chud alternating between watching Nascar and racing CPR.) After dinner it was time for one more round of Quake2 deathmatch. We did like 5 levels, no bullshit, which probably saw the fastest pace high quality DM action. Wow. by 10:30 We began breaking down the net and Kurt and Mike were on their way home by midnight. Todd and Magic remained Over Night and left at 9am the following morning. TECHNICAL ISSUES I feel that things went pretty well. We had 10 machines hooked up. Sometimes it took a while for this machine to connect, however all eventually got in. The paint ball networking code being a little bit more unstable than regular Quake2. It's probably time to get a hub for the upstairs gaming room also. We have the capacity to keep two live feeds going out to VCRs the whole time but we just kept one. Bob will be duping copies. time for some new BNC cables for the video pass from downstairs to upstairs though. Plus we need to get Mike to replace that Jaton card with a real Monster 3d. I felt the notebooks did a great job as game machines. I spent all Saturday on one to give up one of the 3d machines to someone else and was still kicking ass just the same. One thing we might do next time is run all the games through LAN quakeworld. CD burning went well. We put together two more Deathmatch audio CD compilations pulled together from MP3s on the net and stuff from other audio CDs. Very cool music. Also the smut cds were updated to latest release. BILLETING AND LOGISTICS I really can't say enough good things about Nat. As billeting officer she carried out her duties to the letter. Everyone's needs were met and everyone was fed, billeted and watered. We had 5 people sleeping over which is pretty much the limit we can fit in at the Savoy without hot bunking. Of course we also had to keep the place reasonably clean as well as baby-sit Miles. Unfortunately this meant that Nat did not get the amount of trigger time she was hoping for. Not that you would notice, given her deadly performance during the Quake matches. Some logistics tidbits. We went through: 2 cases of sarsaparilla, cream, and root beer. 1 six of RC Crown Draft. 2 sixes of Weasel Ale Almost a case of other beer. At least a pound of Jerky. 4 large pizzas $180 tab at Andales 4000 megawatts of electricity. 4 VCR tapes 2 packs of blank read write CDs. 20 diapers GAMEPLAY Again, wow. People took turns winning various maps so it seems with quality having attained parity, people's styles are matched up with certain maps. It was good to see Coggs, Mike and JB and Nat up there two. As for DoKtoR Chud, considering that this is a guy that doesn't even own a computer, I would suspect that he will be kicking our ass constantly when he gets one. (But remember: We taught you everything YOU know, we didn't teach you everything WE know. (G)). In Paint ball and TF, it was clear that the side with the greatest communication and teamwork would win. (this is not necessarily the side with the highest numbers. There's a lesson in there. SUMMARY: Again, this was a classic get together of friends. An experience to be remembered. I'd like to thank everyone for making it a success. The future holds many fun things in store. I'm sure we'll be having another con over here sometime in May after Nat takes her finals and I get back from Africa. I also see a Magic-con in the works late June early July. To top it off we are still researching a week long Loscon at Bob's Dad's house this summer. Now that would be something. Take care and Thanks. Los Back To The After Action Index Back To LoneRanger's HomePage