Vacation - from 07/18 to 07/26

Everything is in the title, a little more is in the picture...

I will have a one week break, if you just got here, check out my older articles, I'll be pleased to read some great quality comments when I come back !

Bye!

LAN party time ? no, cheap LAN party time !

Welcome back !
Today I'm gonna talk about something I just LOVE : LAN party !
I used to organise a lot of LAN party with my friends, and for that we did a LOT of research for fun, cheap/free games to play on a LAN party, so I had to write an article to share some of the best stuff we found !  (and yeah I love to write "LAN" with cappital letters !).

So you want to organise a little lan ? For like 10 persons ? your friends don't all have a f$cking alienware and 300$ to put on a lan week end ? Here you go ;)
I'm gonna start with some advices to keep in mind, and then a little cheap and free games selection !

(I just love that pic !)

4 tips to make a great LAN party :

1) You need an ethernet switch + ethernet cables : to be honest with you, I don't know so much about that, the only one I've ever bought was the cheapiest available, with cheap ethernet cables : never had any problems with it. So maybe they are some better switch etc...but really ? Unless you want to organise a 100 persons LAN party, just go with the cheapiest with the number of slots you want ! 

Don't ever try to play a "LAN party" on wifi...it can work, but trust me, it sucks !

2) Then you need a place to setup your awesome cheap LAN party. Here there isn't real advices I can give you. Just make sure that everybody can sit well in front of his computer and that nobody can watch somebody screen too easily !

3) Choose the games BEFORE you LAN party ! If you do so, you'll be able to set up tournaments (1V1, 2V2, 3V3 etc...) and also to install the games on everybody's computers before the LAN party, you'll just earn a lot of time, and then you'll be able to use this time to play HARD !

4) Being an even number of player is always better for playing any games. If you can't, well it can work (I've done it several times, sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's a nightmare...). Don't say "sorry man you can't come to my LAN party, we need to be an even number of players", say "WE NEED MOAR PLAYERS!!!"

Anybody who had already organised a LAN party know about this stuff, so here's I guess the most important part : the GAMES !

So just because I have to say it, here you'll find cheap or free games, that don't require a brand new computer, so it will be easier to find people to play with !

tip : I've tried all of the games here, so they are all 100% compatible for LAN playing

- FPS :

Unreal Tournament (Classic / 2K4)   

Why the two versions ? Well it depends on the computers you have. I think most of the computers can run the 2K4 easily now, it add a lot of the contents such as vehicles, new games mode etc...But the "classic" UT is still a great game, make your choice, it's a classic nervous FPS you got here.

Serious Sam 2

This game is pure FUN ! This is a classic FPS, you run, you shoot and your guns are bigger and bigger ! The real great part of this game is the co-op mode, you can do the entire solo campaign with up to 16 players !! A classic LAN party game.

Alien VS Predator 2

Why this game here ? Well this game is one of my favorite on a LAN because of the scary part of it ! It's a great game to play in the dark, trying to scare your friends etc..When I was young, we used to play it while listening to horror movies Ost...EPIC !

- STRATEGY :

Warcraft 3 (fun maps) / Starcraft

Ok so here it's not really my type of games, I'm more like a FPS fan, but RTS are well recognized multiplayer games. I've only really played Warcraft 3 funmaps and the first Stacraft on a LAN party, they are really cheap and you can find a LOT of maps for free on the internet, you can choose to play some fast games or little "scenario" (in Warcraft 3) to play for hours.

- MISC. :

Flatout 2

Flatout 2 is just AWESOME on a LAn party, I had to say it first because a lot of people just don't want to play games like this on a lan. In fact, you have to know that there is a classic race mode, pretty fun because you can smash your friend's cars, and a "destruction derby" mode, on the last one you just have to smash your friend's cars in arena. That's the perfect game to take a break, since everybody can play it easily !

BONUS : FREE GAMES + LINKS !

 Poker TH : really light and cool poker game, perfect to play some fast poker games

http://www.pokerth.net/download.html

Tee Worlds : nice 2D action game with a lot of skill ! Really small but it can be addictive !

http://www.teeworlds.com/?page=downloads

Bontago : great puzzle game, you really have to try it to see if you like it or not. Very fun anyway !

http://bontago.softonic.fr/

Warsow : you don't want to pay for a quake - like ? This one is free, it really looks nice and it has all you can want from a FPS game ! 

http://www.warsow.net/download/

So I'm done here, I just love to have LAN party and I hope you'll have FUN doing it ! 

Bye!

ps : If you have some more great LAN games, just post it in the comments ;)

Blogging about my blog...

Hi everyone !
Today I'm talking about...well my own blog !

Take a look over there 

..and now scroll down (or up), you'll see my "Usefull links to a better computer experience"

In this article I'm gonna show you a little more about this, if you don't already know it !

- deviantART

this is THE #1 website to find any graphic content. The great stuff about deviantART is that anybody can create an account and post his stuff, so the database is HUGE and you can find here anything : wallpapers, icons, logos, drawing, ...

tip : browse it by categories, you'll see what I'm talking about.

- Zune Software

Why zune here ? Well it's the software I use to play music, I think it is one the best way to play albums with a wonderfull interface ! Check out some videos to see what I'm talking about, but since it's free, you can just check it out by yourself, with your own music collection ! 

- Picasa

(this screenshot is pretty creepy, sorry about that)

This software is just awesome if you want to see your picture collection in a pretty way. The interface is really simple and you can also edit your pictures really easily. I use photoshop also, but I have to say that Picasa can do a real good job if you're just looking for simple modifications like correcting red eyes etc...

tip : use it as you default images viewer, it's really nice !

- RocketDock

For a very long time, I've always been saying that this kind of software are crap, eating your RAM memory for nothing. But I've tried it recently and I have to say that they have done a really great job on that point, it's very fast now, and very light too. If you take some time to search for nice icons, and the right settings for what you need, it can really change your computer experience. To be honest with you I'll say that without this software, I would probably be using a mac today haha

tip : search for icons on deviantART !

- OpenOffice.org

I bet everybody know this one ! I'm just putting this here because I see too much people using Microsoft Office in college...and when you ask them "why don't you use OpenOffice ? it's FREE !" they just tell you that MS office is prettier, with better templates for powerpoint for exemple...

It's sad, you can do wonderfull powerpoint with OpenOffice ! It will just take 10 minutes instead of 2 on MS office...so seriously, why pay for this when it's free and awesome and open source on the internet ?!

Well, I know that maybe you won't agree with me, but I'm just sharing some free stuff here, and if somebody around you ask for a list of things to try on their computer to start, you can take one or two exemple from this list ! 

Byebye!