[Zenebatos]

Small little picture to start off the post:



Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to go ahead and introduce myself for all the new members of the club.

My name is Marcos Velazquez, I'm a Computer Science major(currently a junior) here at UCF, and my gamertag is Zenebatos (also known as "feeder", "kill-stealer", and "prolly the worst BH I've ever seen"), and i'm currently running for Vice-President of the club.

I've been an active member of LanKnights for almost 2 years, and I've held some temporary positions in the club, including Quartermaster(I still have your cables Gamma) and a member of the setup team that gets the lans up and running by the starting time.




I've seen the club go through some rough times(voting system or bust), some good times(BUILD MORE WALLS!). I've seen it lose some members(HoN Rage) and I've also seen it get members(exponentially in the case of Starcraft II). But above all I've seen a gaming community grow, expand, and mature to something I feel is unique here in Central Florida.



We all joined this club because we all have something in common: We like games. And we like playing them as a group. Whether it's hosting a Team Fortress 2 server and having a blast for a couple of hours, hosting an in-house L4D2 versus round, or hopping on Empires and just building walls to no end, we all like doing this together and having a blast.. But, why are we limiting these to our LANs?

The club used to have game servers and these were used... for a time. Then everybody forgot that they existed. The servers remained up, but nobody played on them. Also little to zero management was performed on them. And when we needed an admin, we rarely found one. As such, this is one of the things I'd like to work on: Obtaining both the necessary hardware and the necessary permissions to host our own managed dedicated server. I'd like to make sure that the server was managed and administrated on a daily basis, with a trustworthy team, and the current game hosted on the server would be rotated on a weekly basis based on a voting system. Players who spent a certain amount of time each week playing on the server could vote for next week's game.

In-House gaming nights would be awesome to have too, like our Game Night Wednesdays. I remember and I thought I had a lot of fun playing those. I'd like to bring those back, whether on the server or on somebody's godly tubes, I'm pretty sure we can find a game worth playing each Wednesday.

Those are two of some ideas currently in my head, but I would be more than glad to hear others from you guys, since the membership are really what make the club what it is.

Please let me know what you think!

Regards,

Zenebatos

This post has been edited by Zenebatos: 27 November 2010 - 12:12 AM

[Whiplash]

win

[Messer]

You have acquired my interest.

How were you planning on maintaining interest in a LK dedicated server? Gamenights are godly fun, but you gotta make sure we don't forget they exist.

[Zenebatos]

Messer, on 27 November 2010 - 01:03 PM, said:

How were you planning on maintaining interest in a LK dedicated server? Gamenights are godly fun, but you gotta make sure we don't forget they exist.

The main idea is that instead of having multiple servers and dividing the community, we have one server and one game each week. I think that, as long as the server is managed and new content is added on a weekly basis, people will keep their interest in the game. I'm pretty sure most of you want to play PL_Minecraft anyhow

With regards to game nights, we just have to see when people are available. I really want to be flexible with the days since I know some of you guys work, have classes, or do other stuff some days. The LK steam group is pretty big right now, so I'd like to make sure that new members join the group so we can use that to announce events.

[Oen386]

We still have multiple servers, besides the LAN server. I just didn't feel like maintaining them myself. For a while we had L4D1, L4D2, & TF2 etc.. but when LAN events came we just played on local servers... so didn't see a reason for them.

Our most popular server.. with roughly 35 people at it lowest, and over 100 during some nights.. is the Mumble server.


So what is your position on VoIP/Mumble? Also why not run for president if you are handling the cables and setup?

[ibfreeekout]

Oen386, on 27 November 2010 - 03:08 PM, said:

We still have multiple servers, besides the LAN server. I just didn't feel like maintaining them myself. For a while we had L4D1, L4D2, & TF2 etc.. but when LAN events came we just played on local servers... so didn't see a reason for them.

Our most popular server.. with roughly 35 people at it lowest, and over 100 during some nights.. is the Mumble server.


So what is your position on VoIP/Mumble? Also why not run for president if you are handling the cables and setup?

Cables and setup is my job... Seem you forgot about that already XD

I do like the idea of the servers and having them rotate every week. My largest concern is this: Are you going to be able to actually make it to the LANs? Every time you go to one you always leave early because of work and I feel that a VP that isn't involved is not worth it. I know work is really important and everything and I'm not trying to devalue it in case that idea came across.

[Zenebatos]

Oen386, on 27 November 2010 - 03:08 PM, said:

So what is your position on VoIP/Mumble? Also why not run for president if you are handling the cables and setup?

I like the Mumble server, I've been in there a couple of times and I see a lot of groups have made the server their home, but from the looks of it the majority of the club isn't even aware it exists. On top of that, with games including built-in voice chat(TF2, SC2), other VoIP applications(Vent, TS3), it's a bit hard to put the server out there for people to use. If anything, I'd like our Membership to be more aware of what the club has for them. Even though some people have others in their Battle.net, or Steam friends list, nobody has everybody(except Gammasts's 9000 page friends list).

Honestly I myself would afk in the server whenever I'm on the computer and talk with whoever is there. The club is a community and a VoIP server would be good to have so we dont spam the shoutbox that often

Regarding presidency, I like how gammasts handles the club and the work he's done, so I don't see myself running for president this year.

[Zenebatos]

ibfreeekout, on 27 November 2010 - 03:42 PM, said:

My largest concern is this: Are you going to be able to actually make it to the LANs? Every time you go to one you always leave early because of work and I feel that a VP that isn't involved is not worth it.

While I understand your concern, I also feel that the community has more to it than just the LANs. We have a website, a shoutbox, and forums. You can be involved without going to each and every LAN and being there all the time.

Dont get me wrong, I'm actually not happy at all that I wasn't able to stay for many of the LANs this semester! My friend, Rmmm', who hasn't been to a lan because he's been in videogame denial for ONE FREAKING YEAR actually went to the Starcraft II practice session while I didn't (;_; ) . I'm taking measures currently to see to it that my saturdays are free next semester, so hopefully I'll show up for a whole lan this spring.

This post has been edited by Zenebatos: 27 November 2010 - 06:43 PM

[ibfreeekout]

Zenebatos, on 27 November 2010 - 06:24 PM, said:

While I understand your concern, I also feel that the community has more to it than just the LANs. We have a website, a shoutbox, and forums. You can be involved without going to each and every LAN and being there all the time.

Dont get me wrong, I'm actually not happy at all that I wasn't able to stay for many of the LANs this semester! My friend, Rmmm', who hasn't been to a lan because he's been in videogame denial for ONE FREAKING YEAR actually went to the Starcraft II practice session while I didn't (;_; ) . I'm taking measures currently to see to it that my saturdays are free next semester, so hopefully I'll show up for a whole lan this spring.

Sweet!

By the way, didn't mean to sound like an ass, just showing an honest concern.

[TerranUp16]

Mumble has been quite awesome for DoW 2 because GFWL sucks and Steam out-of-game chat is a horrifically inefficient upload bandwidth whore (scaling of it is exponential it seems). Mumble, no such problem.

[Oen386]

TerranUp16, on 27 November 2010 - 06:55 PM, said:

Mumble has been quite awesome for DoW 2 because GFWL sucks and Steam out-of-game chat is a horrifically inefficient upload bandwidth whore (scaling of it is exponential it seems). Mumble, no such problem.

I vote for people with this kind of opinion!

[Zenebatos]

ibfreeekout, on 27 November 2010 - 06:52 PM, said:

By the way, didn't mean to sound like an ass, just showing an honest concern.

Haha it's all good. No hard feelings

[Zenebatos]

For anyone who doesn't know yet, the election resulted in a tie between Dr. Brain and me. It's been decided that we will be doing elections again come our first spring meeting. If you didn't vote this time around, make sure to go to our next meeting in spring! I'll hope to see you all there

[Thunderg0d]

I didn't vote...Brain wins!

[SniperX]

I cast my vote in absentia for brain.