A big "thank you" to all the people who lugged their rigs out to the 2404.org LAN Party at North Idaho College April 9th. We all had a blast, and everything seemed to run smoothly. We had two dedicated servers, one for Source engine games, and one for Unreal Tournament 2004 matches. One of those servers also functioned as a stats tracker for the Source games, although a snafu kept the cumulative stats from being revealed until later in the day.

Unreal Tournament 2004

The UT matches were fierce all around. Most matches started out as a close race, but the sprinters were separated from the marathon runners about halfway through the kill limit. One of our registered members, nthexwn, had the edge in most matches, being kept honest mostly by (.)(.) tim and Atreyu. Out of a three-round deathmatch bout, nthexwn emerged on top by a narrow margin, with tim on his heels.

People wound down from the competitive fighting with a round of Invasion mode in Tokara Forest. This was quite possibly the most impressive Invasion match I have ever watched or been part of. While everyone held their own, Illuminati and nthexwn ended up being the sole pair defending the team from extinction at the end of the final two rounds, clinching a victory. The rocket smoke from the opposing forces trailed in all directions like security alarm lasers guarding some precious stone, as these two combatants double-jumped, dove, and plasma-beamed their way to safety. Illuminati often dove INTO the fray, proving more often than not to be the right decision at the time.

And as a tribute to the awesome UT series, a bit of CTF-Face was played. If you have not played this map, I recommend playing it (try the instagib mutator at least once here....rough!). The team balancing was FFA, so the first round placed tim and nthexwn back to back making for a tough team to compete against.

If a winner was to be crowned for overall gameplay in this arena, nthexwn was definitely in the zone.

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

The competition here was more balanced across the board than the UT battles, and was heavily affected by map choice. We loaded up dm_depot_rc2, an excellent 3rd party map, and had a great time learning the lay of the land. There are MANY objects in the map, making for some impressive gravity gun encounters. Swami hopped in this game, and promptly got worked over, only coming back to break even when he found a perch with the crossbow. Overwatch and SteamLabs were more familiar to players, and again tim and nthexwn rose up to top players. Atreyu and Emrys both found their niche and were not to be overlooked. I found myself frequently dying to various debris flung at me by Maximi11ion, however. Right place, wrong time,eh? And so it goes! When it came time for the official deathmatch EVERYONE put on their best game. Another 3-round bout put tim on top by small but definitive margin. *Swami insists his secondary shotgun blast bounced off tim's face*

Counter Strike: Source

We played classic maps like de_dust2 and de_aztec in all-human matches, and also spent some time in human-vs-bot matches with slightly buffed bot skillz. Despite our best efforts, we still managed only to break even on about 70 matches on a western-style map provided by nthexwn. For a twist about halfway through, we threw in low-grav for a laugh, which did NOT improve our game. :P

A suggestion email address is available for participants to provide feedback on the event, yet those wishing to participate in the future may put in their two cents as well to make this one of the best gaming events in the NW. Suggest here: swami@2404.org