Updates from the webmaster, newest first. NEW means we added something. FIXED means something was broken and is not now.
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The bean bag can be sat in
E at the bean bag drops you into the dent. There is a whump, a rustle of polystyrene and a squeak of vinyl on the way down, and you can look around the room from there. Any move key gets you out again, with the same noises in a lower voice. The dent turned out to be exactly your size. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Spectator mode: K-Rad and n00bslayer play DOOM against each other all night
The two at the PCs against the right-hand wall have stopped fragging nothing in particular. They boot DOOM, find each other over IPX, play to eight frags, look at the scores, load the next map and go again, and they have not stopped since. Each CRT shows what its own player sees: stand behind K-Rad and you watch his match, stand behind n00bslayer and you get the same fight from the other end, with the frag message, the red screen and the body on the floor. Three maps, medikits, ammo and one gun. Switch the lights off and both tubes light the wall in the colour of the fight. It is a lookalike for the demonstration and not the shipped game, so the walls are flat and nobody has a face. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Voice chat, with a microphone
Press Y, let the browser use your microphone, and anyone else who has joined voice can hear you. They hear you from where you are standing, or sitting: loud beside you, fading as they walk away, and gone by the far wall. Y shuts the microphone and opens it again, and Shift and Y leave. Nobody is linked to anybody until they join, nothing is recorded, and a player in voice can see the network address of the others in it. A strict office firewall may stop a link from forming. Typing still works. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Cans now open, and then get drunk
Taking a can of Volt Cola from the crate used to be silent until the hiss. It now has the tab lifting, the pop, the hiss, and then two swallows and a breath out once the can is up. Nobody has complained about the noise. Several people have complained about the swallowing. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Game cartridges, left where they were dropped
Somebody brought a bag of cartridges for the console under the TV and has not taken them home. There are grey ones on the TV stand and the shelf next to the console, one in the slot, and more on the coffee table, under it, and on the carpet in front of the screen. A few have found their way onto the PC tables. Six titles, all of them made up: Hover Rally, Snow Dash, Puck Smash, Dino Dig, Sky Pilot and Block Brawl. Mind where you step. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
This site has a front door
Everything in this browser can now be read outside the basement as well. What's New, Games, How to Play, the Guestbook, Links and Dazza's page each have an address of their own, such as lanparty1998.com/news, and they open in any browser without walking down the stairs. The news can be filtered the same way, at /news/new and /news/fix. The old .htm addresses still work. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The CRTs show the game being played
Sit down at a PC and start DOOM, or any of the others, and everybody else in the basement now sees your game on the glass at your desk instead of the stand-in picture. Walk up behind someone and watch the run. With the lights off the tube lights the room in the colour of the level. It is a small, soft copy sent about five times a second, so it is good for watching and bad for reading the status bar. Stand up, or hit a blue screen, and the glass goes back to the stand-in after a couple of seconds. The picture is only sent while somebody else is in the room. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The CD-ROM drives have a working eject button
Every PC in the basement has a CD-ROM drive in the front of the case, and the button on it works. Press E at the button to push the tray out or pull it back in. Three of the machines were left with the tray out and a disc sitting in it; those now close like the rest. The CD-R burner in PC-04 is the drive above, and it still only wants to burn. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The pizza box has a lid, and it moves
Press F at a Pizza Shack box to flip the lid shut or prop it open again, or press E at a shut one to lift it before you eat. Some of the boxes in the basement were already open when you came down and some were shut, and the pizza guy brings his either way. The regulars lift the lid on a shut box before they take a slice. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The pizza place has a name
The pizza place is now Pizza Shack, which is on the phone book, the menu and the magnet by the wall phone. Every box in the basement has a red band round the walls with the name on it, and the lid has the roof, the chimney and the promise of thirty minutes printed inside. The driver turns up in a red Pizza Shack shirt with the roof on the chest, holding the box shut. The garlic bread is still a mistake on his docket. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Shout me a Volt Cola, any time
The Volt Cola button used to live in the welcome window and vanished the moment you walked in. It now sits on the taskbar, between the open windows and the clock, in bold with a can on it, so you can shout the webmaster a $5 Volt Cola from anywhere in the basement. Press Tab to free the mouse and click it. The button in the welcome window is bolder too. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The front door has been rewritten
The welcome window now says what the night actually has in it: a PC you build yourself, the pizza guy, the two phones, the lights, Snapster, Internet Explorer and the rest. The key list gains G for garlic bread and the other things E now does, and the window scrolls if your screen is short. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The pizza guy knocks
Order a large pepperoni on the phone and the driver now turns up about eight minutes later and knocks on the basement door, three raps at a time, until somebody lets him in. Open the door and he hands over the pizza, a can of Volt Cola, which you drink on the spot, and a garlic bread in foil that was a mistake on his docket and is yours. Press G to unwrap and eat it. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
A mobile on the couch
Somebody has left a Nokka 51 on the middle couch cushion, next to the DESCENT box. Press E to pick it up. It has a menu, a phone book, keys that beep, and Snake: 2, 4, 6 and 8 or the arrows steer, the walls are fatal, and a bug turns up after every fifth bit of food and is worth more the quicker you get it. It rings the same numbers as the wall phone, and Mum. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The wall phone has a dial tone
Pick up the phone on the wall and you get a dial tone until you choose a number or hang up. Choose one and it dials with the keypad tones, then rings twice before somebody answers. Hang up early and it stops. The pizza place and Dazza are still the only two who pick up. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Internet Explorer opens bigger
The browser now opens at a decent size, not a postage stamp, and is scrolled past the banner to the news when you walk in, so the latest few updates are in front of you before you have touched anything. Smaller screens get as much window as there is room for. Drag a corner if you want it larger still. All the news. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Build your own PC, then set it up
Walking in now starts at the computer shop. You have $1500 to spend on a monitor from 14 to 19 inches, a Pentium, memory, up to three hard disks, floppies, a CD-ROM and a CD burner, a network card, speakers or headphones, a keyboard, a mouse and a mat. Then you carry it to the back table, between PC-01 and PC-02, and unpack it from the outline. Press E at the back of the tower to plug in the video, keyboard, mouse, power board and network, then press the button. It runs its memory test, starts Windows and joins the LAN. A BNC-only card will not talk to the hub when it arrives, and nobody warned you. |
| 7 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Duke Nukem 3D has come round
Somebody brought the shareware episode on a floppy and it is now on every PC, with a box on the shelf. Sit down, press the Game button until it says DUKE NUKEM 3D, and walk around a cinema that has seen better days. For a network game, host and joiners both pick the network game in SETUP, as the manual says. All the games. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The console has a prompt
Press E at the TV and the console boots to a C:\N64> prompt on the glass. Type OPEN to point it at a folder of cartridge files on your own drive, DIR to list them, and a number or a name to run one. Nothing is supplied: the slot is empty until you bring a cartridge. Esc brings the prompt back, KEYS shows the layout, and the file never leaves your machine. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The lights have a switch
There is a light switch on the back wall by the stairs door. Turn the ceiling tubes off and the room is nearly dark, and the monitors become the light: each one glows on the keyboard, the table and your face, in the colour of whatever is on it. Teal for Windows, green for Solitaire, grey for DOS. The switch has a small orange dot so you can find it. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The yellow extension lead
The front wall is on the dryer circuit, so PC-04, PC-05 and PC-06 now run off a yellow extension lead from the back wall, across the aisle. Trip on it and all three go dark: shares gone, and a CD in PC-04 is a coaster. Press E on the lead, or F at a dead PC, to plug it back in. Expect a POST and a lot of fixing. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Power points and boards
The walls now have power points, and every PC is plugged into a power board behind its table instead of floating in the air. The fan, the TV and the hub are plugged in too. Nobody has labelled any of the boards except with masking tape. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Boxes all over the place
Sixteen more game boxes have come off the shelf and are lying around: on the tables, the snack table, a chair, the middle couch cushion and the carpet, a couple stacked. Nobody owns up to leaving them. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The games, in their boxes
There is a shelf on the left wall by the front corner with a box for each game on the PCs: DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, Quake and Descent. The pictures on the front are ours, not the real covers. Turn one round for the system requirements. All the games. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Speakers and headphones
Three PCs now have speakers and three have headphones on the tower. Whoever is at a speaker PC is playing something, and you can hear it from across the room: shotgun blasts, imps, the odd rocket. At a headphone PC you put them on, and it is quiet. Some people turn up wearing a pair already. N turns the noises off. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The regulars talk about their games
K-Rad, n00bslayer, xX_Ghoul_Xx and the couch now chat about what is on their screens: rocket jumps, missing keys, a ship stuck in a wall. It shows in the channel and in the bubbles over their heads. Sit down with a game and they bring it up. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Snapster, the file-sharing beta
Start > Programs > Snapster. Search the regulars for songs, double click one to get it, and watch it crawl in on your 56K line. Every band and title is made up, and nothing is really downloaded. File > Disconnect if the hub gets crowded. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
The browser opens on the news
Walk in and Internet Explorer is already on this page. Close it with the x, and bring it back with H or from the Start menu. |
| 6 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Internet Explorer, and this site
The basement has a web browser. Start > Programs > Internet Explorer, or press H. Back, Forward, Favorites, History and Search all work. You are reading this in it. |
| 3 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Resize any window
Notepad, Paint, the MS-DOS Prompt, Help and mIRC can be dragged out from any edge or corner, maximised (button, or double-click the title bar) and restored. Calculator and the games stay their size. |
| 1 Feb 1998 | NEW |
Six more posters
Game boxes IRON HYMN, RICO RAMPAGE 3D and VOID HARVEST, and film one-sheets DEEP CORE, CHROME SHIFT 2 and BUS STOP BANDITS. All six are made up. |
| 31 Jan 1998 | NEW |
LANamp plays your own MP3s
ADD DIR scans a folder and every folder below it, reads the ID3 tags and adds the files after the built-in tape. They play straight from your drive and are never uploaded. |
| 30 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Solitaire and Downhill
Klondike (draw one or three) and an endless ski run with a bear after 2000 m. Both are under Start > Programs > Games. All the games. |
| 30 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Documents folder
Ten files in Start > Documents. None of them open. Do not ask what is in Resume_FINAL_v7_REAL.doc. |
| 29 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Quake and Hexen
Quake 1.06 shareware (Multiplayer menu over IPX) and the Hexen 4 level demo (IPXSETUP deathmatch). The Game button on the seated bar cycles DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, Quake and Descent. All the games. |
| 28 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Heretic and Descent
Heretic 1.3 shareware, with IPXSETUP deathmatch like DOOM. Descent 1.0 shareware, with a pilot made up for you so it gets to its menu. |
| 27 Jan 1998 | NEW |
A bean bag
Back left corner. Faded teal vinyl in six panels, with a dent. Nobody has said where the dent came from. |
| 27 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Citrus Zap and party cups
Green two-litres on the snack table and by the couch, plus a sleeve of red cups. E pours a Zap: +18 caffeine. |
| 27 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Cheez Curlz, and crumbs everywhere
A second snack on the desks and the coffee table. Loose chips, curls and cheese dust on the keyboards, the chairs and the carpet. |
| 26 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The lounge
Plaid couch, a big CRT TV on a stand, a console with four wired pads and a coffee table loaded with cans and pizza. The TV loops a four-player brawl until you sit at the console, which takes cartridges you bring yourself. The pads are for show. |
| 26 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The regulars dance
They move to the music, each crowd in its own way, and work through pizza, Nachoz and Volt Cola every ten seconds or so. |
| 25 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The desktop
A taskbar, a Start menu and windows you can drag: Calculator, Notepad, Paint, the MS-DOS Prompt, Minesweeper, Disk Defragmenter, mIRC and LANamp. Press Tab to free the mouse. |
| 25 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Idle screens and a screen saver
PC-01 sits on the defragmenter and PC-06 on a game of Solitaire. Any free PC left alone for five minutes starts a starfield. |
| 24 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Speech bubbles and noises
The regulars talk in Windows 98 bubbles: burps, whose socks smell, your mum. Some of it is spoken aloud. N turns the voices off. |
| 23 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Faces
Everyone has a face now: ears, a nose, brows, eyes that blink, lips. Arms and legs are round. Mouths open for pizza. |
| 22 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Shout me a Volt Cola
The intro window has a button if you want to shout the webmaster a Volt Cola. Share buttons are there too. |
| 21 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Disks, discs and trestle tables
Floppies and CDs on the cases, the tables and the carpet. The tables are proper 6 ft trestles, five end to end. Four band posters went up: Wet Cement, Cold Furnace, Diamond Fang and Bass Cadet. |
| 20 Jan 1998 | NEW |
#lanparty98
An IRC window (I toggles it) where the regulars tell dumb jokes, roast each other's frag counts and laugh at the result. Chat (T) shows up there too. |
| 19 Jan 1998 | NEW |
LANamp
A music player with eight original tracks, two each of hip hop, drum and bass, EDM and rock, made live in your browser. M shows or hides it. Z X C V B work the transport. |
| 18 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Pizza
A menu, a delivery, half-eaten boxes on the tables and a man taped to the ceiling. He was there when we got here. |
| 18 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Everyone gets a 90s look
Goths, surfers, hip hop kids, ravers, grunge kids and nerds. Your look comes from your handle, so it is the same on everyone's screen. |
| 17 Jan 1998 | NEW |
More posters
DUKE NUKEM 3D (the name only; the game is not here), a Y2K countdown, a 56K modem poster and an adventure game with a pixel treasure chest. |
| 16 Jan 1998 | NEW |
A door
In the back wall, with a landing and a staircase up to the rest of the house. E opens it. Mum is upstairs and says so. |
| 15 Jan 1998 | NEW |
File sharing, and you are the one who fixes it
Every PC starts with Windows file sharing broken. Press F at a PC and walk it through the settings. About 19 seconds, and it fails a lot. It comes undone again every few minutes. The night's chores. |
| 15 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The night's schedule
Doors open at 7:30 PM and the room wants shooters until midnight. Then somebody puts StarCraft on, and any PC with under 32MB says "Not enough memory". |
| 14 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Cheap RAM from Singapore
Macca is off to Singapore and will bring back 16MB SIMMs at $35, not the shop's $75. Cash first. He is gone about fifteen minutes. F at a PC fits a stick, up to 64MB. |
| 14 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Overclocking, a pedestal fan and the blue screen
F at a PC moves the jumpers to 100MHz, or 112MHz with extra volts. The fan keeps them alive. If the fan goes off, the overclocked boxes blue screen. Any key restarts, with the case still hot. |
| 13 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Tripping over cables
The cat5 and the coax lie across the floor. Each time you step on one it is a roll, worse after a few cans of Volt. Trip and the lead comes out of the back of its PC. |
| 13 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Network upgrade path
You start on 10BASE2 coax, where one loose T-connector takes down the whole segment. Order an 8-port hub for $45, then ring Dazza for a borrowed 16-port switch. It goes back at 6:00 AM. |
| 12 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The 2x CD burner
PC-04 has the only CD-R drive. A 74 minute disc is a 37 minute write. Blanks are $4 and mates pay $10 for a MIX CD. Sit at PC-04 while it writes and you make a coaster. |
| 8 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Multiplayer
One shared basement. Any free PC can be claimed, and seated players can host a DOOM deathmatch for 2 to 4 over a virtual IPX network. Everyone sees everyone walking around. How to play. |
| 7 Jan 1998 | NEW |
Contact address
[email protected] is on the intro window and the 404 page. |
| 4 Jan 1998 | NEW |
The basement is open
A 3D basement with six beige PCs, a hub and a snack table. Sit at a PC and DOOM boots on it. |