Lomac Lan Report January 2004 - by Dan "CRASH" Crenshaw - Page 1 of 2
It has been a LONG time between
debriefs for the 100th AFW Buddy Boys. We are aware of that and thank those that have enjoyed our
debriefs and asked us when our next one would be posted. Well, it is
time. Our past few LAN meets have had us testing LO:MAC and since it
was not released and our NDA's did not allow us to say a lot about it, we
felt that it was easier to skip the debriefs and wait until we could tell
about the entire meet again, and not just small portions of it.
Last meet we were testing the release
candidate for LO:MAC, this meet we had the actual release plus the first
patch to play with. The issues with LO:MAC on release have been well
documented (or beat to death by people that don't even own the game yet)
all over the web. Most of the reported issues appear to be trying to
run full tilt graphics on a substandard system. For years I have
said "Minimum specs on a game box means what it takes to get into the
UI ... if you actually want to play the game, the recommended specs are
the bare minimum". LO:MAC proved to be no
different.
We like to spread the love around so
we decided to head up to Dusty's house for this months meet. We
purchased a "traveling hub" a while back in the event we did not
have it at CRASH's fully networked pad with the 12 ports in the garage
dedicated to LAN play. We also wanted to make sure we had a good
broadband connection (Dusty's is the second fastest in the group) for
reasons you will see later. Due to some logistical issues, only 4 of the
100th AFW Buddy Boys would be attending. We were determined to make the best of it
... the last few meets have been a little frustrating and a bit of a let
down for all of us, we wanted ... NEEDED a good session.
CRASH's Aimsworth pit is a bit
difficult to move around, so he put together a temporary traveling rig. He
figured since his home set up is so huge, he would make this one equally
as small.
Of course we had to work around Dusty's OBVIOUSLY well
used weight machine :cough sputter:
Nice place to hang the garbage bag!
The group was all assembled by about
2:30 PM Friday and completely set up and connected by 5 PM (we are certain
that the beer slowed us down a little). At 5 or so, we decided to
connect up and try a few missions Griff has been working on (soon to be on
our Downloads Page). We have learned that the Internet settings in
LO:MAC seems to work very well in a LAN environment and seems easier for us
to use. Also, since CRASH is making a huge 8 human campaign, if he
makes it for Internet, everyone can fly it. Also we have been
testing missions on line between meets. At this point, we cannot
really see a reason to run LO:MAC in LAN in anything but Internet
settings.
We connected up pretty easily and the
first couple of missions worked extremely well as we flew into the
evening. CRASH was not too sure how cold it would get up in Dusty's
neck of the woods, so he picked up some thin cotton gloves to wear in case
... he brought enough for everyone, but only Griff seemed to be honest
enough to admit the extra warmth would be welcome. Everyone gave
CRASH a bad time and the Michael Jackson jokes started flying - there was
a fully concerted effort to embarrass CRASH. While they did not
embarrass CRASH, Dusty did manage to produce a rousing rendition of Billy
Jean (yes, he actually knew all the words) and Griff showed off his moon
walking skills for us ... oh, to have had a video camera ... then true
embarrassment could have been dealt. That night we did learn a
valuable lesson. When Dusty's wife tells you the steaks he plans to
feed you are nasty ... BELIEVE HER! I won't say they were terrible,
but a heavy dosing of hot sauce could not even save them for CRASH and
when Evenstrain offered his to the dog, the dog was not even too certain he
wanted it. Thank god for pizza parlors that deliver.
CRASH and Griff
Things were going well enough already
on a Friday night that we flew till well past 1 AM in the morning (well okay, we did
stuff a little Operation Flashpoint in so that we could get shot to pieces
by the Russians which allowed us to feel less guilt for wiping out their
air force and army in LO:MAC) before calling it a night.
This would come back to haunt us Saturday night when we all got so tired
we called it off a little after midnight, much earlier than normal for a
Saturday night.
Saturday found us back in LO:MAC. A
friend of Dusty on IRC, Muttley Crombie, offered to make up a few missions for us
for the weekend so that none of us knew what to really expect. TIP:
If you have made a mission in pre-patch LO:MAC - open it and save it
before flying. We found that some odd anomalies that were occurring
seemed to get fixed once we did that. One particular mission, we all
did VERY well in a air battle. It was a GREAT mission, but we noticed a
few ... um, odd "non-happenings". CRASH went into the mission and
discovered why we had some weirdness (and popped Dusty's blusterous air
combat bravado .. THANK GOODNESS) After a few "adjustments" we
re-flew the mission. This time we lost Evenstrain in the most amazing
fur ball I have seen in a game in years. Yankin' and bankin', radio
calls for missile launches, locks, launches, some near miss flybys with
Su-27s canopy to canopy with our F-15Cs, "guns guns guns" ...
"Iost him" ... "check 6 - BREAK RIGHT NOW" ... "
keep pullin', just a little more and I've got him" ... "are we
clean" ... "anyone see anymore" ... "damn my arm
hurts". But through all of that and the real life heavy
breathing we still succeeded and did
exceptionally well. Unfortunately, Dusty's blustering returned ... for a
while anyway. Honestly, those two missions worked so well and were
so much fun that we were stoked for anything now. CRASH went through all
the missions and make some minor edits and resaved all of them before
continuing. We worked our way through most of these missions during the
day, with a quick trip back into OFP to keep us humble. We also set
up a few 4V4 to practice some wingman tactics against the AI.
It started to get dark and light
through the garage door windows was scant. CRASH asked Dusty if he had a small lamp or
something he could keep his X-keys lit up with (at CRASH's place they have
red lights on so everyone can still see and not have screen glare, of
course Dusty is a bubba out in the sticks and I think we were fortunate to
even have electricity). Well Dusty, ever eager to be a gracious host
went and got his very own night stand light to help CRASH out. One of his
vast selection of Strawberry Shortcake collectables!
(Actually thanks to Madison for letting me use her
light. She is a cutie and very helpful.)
We were all
anxious for the evening for a couple of reasons. First after the
steak debacle the night before, we were excited for Dusty's wife's famous
chicken enchiladas (and we also found out she was baking a cake ...
everyone thought more meets could be at Dusty's ... NO PROBLEM!). The
other reason was CRASH had a plan. The 100th AFW Buddy Boys use
Internet TCP/IP protocols in LO:MAC for LAN sessions. Since we used
Internet settings why couldn't someone from the Internet log into the same
game and fly with us? CRASH had set up 7PM PDT as the time. YODA, one of
our members that could not attend planned to try to hop in. We also
invited our sort of adopted sister squadron the 32nd Arctic Knights from
the frozen north of Minnesota. At a little after 7 PM (we all had
seconds of the enchiladas ... sorry guys) the Ventrilo server we use for
comms on line (and may consider it for LAN as a back up for our CB radios it
works so well) lit up with YODA, BBALL, DOC and a little later CAT to join
CRASH, DUSTY, EVENSTRAIN and GRIFF at the LAN meet. For those you
unfamiliar with Ventrilo, it is a
comms program much like Roger Wilco, Team Speak and the like. We
have tried them all and have decided to date, Ventrilo is king. Very
little lag, very clean, low overhead ... easy to set up a server for
dedicated comms. We highly recommend it.
