Archive for August, 2006

Game Night Sept 1

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This night will start our regularly scheduled first-friday-of-the-month night. I also may not send out any emails this time. Simply add a comment to this post by Thursday night (Aug 31) if you plan to attend.
Update Aug 28: We just received David’s soccer schedule and he has practice this Friday from 5 to 6.  So we’ll push back the starting time to 6:30.  We’ll order pizza. Please bring $5 a head ($10 max per family).

PostMortem:060818

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What a night. We had 6 XBOXs! At one point 7 but the 7th (Billy’s 360) simply replaced Eric’s (360) since Eric had to leave early. We had 2 XBOX’s in the front room, 2 XBOXs in the Living room, and 1 each in David’s room and the Office. We never had more than two player’s per XBOX, which was great, and some had one to themselves. Two people rotated in. There was a wide diversity of experience. 5 were basically new to Halo2. One game, we had Ed and Matt take on all the boys. They won easily. Something rediculous like 50 to 2. Matt in a vehicle is virtually unstoppable and he obviously shows no mercy. That’s ok. The kids will only get better! Then we tried a rematch. This time Ed and Matt were not allowed to use vehicles. The kids won something like 50 to 27.

We had 8 kids playing:
Conner
David
Eric
McLean
Hunt
Charlie
Joey
Grayson

And 5 adults:
Billy
Ed
Matt
David
Paul

I didn’t even get to play. With some of the parent staying for a little party, I was running around playing host. If it weren’t for Clay, Eric’s Dad, we would have been eating crisp Hotdogs and Brats (I get easily distracted).

I think next time, we’ll most likely have two games going on and split up the experienced players from the inexperienced players. It’s really hard to come up with balanced teams in one game. Using numbers to make even teams doesn’t always work because the experienced players simply have more targets to shoot at and can run-up their score faster.

Next game is in two weeks. Let’s see how 1st Friday of each month works. I’d be willing to play more than once a month but I’m sure activities are going to get in the way and we also don’t want to get sick of XBOX!

As always, I encourage all attendees to leave a comment and let me know what you liked or didn’t like about the evening. This way we can improve the experience for everyone.

Second XBOX Night

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Before school really gears up, we thought we’d have our second XBOX night this Friday (Aug 18), same time, 5-9 (come late, stay late, no problem). We would like to have a standing night; we’re thinking the first Friday of every month. We’ll make an official announcement soon.

I will be emailing the same group of people that attended the first night, however I’d like to move away from email and use this site exclusively. Anyone that has attended in the past, has been invited by someone, or simply has heard about it, is welcome. They can simply leave a comment on the post confirming the next gathering. People are welcome to come even if they don’t RSVP, but they aren’t guaranteed a player’s spot.

First night a success

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We had a great night last night. We had six kids total and three adults. First, all the kids played a free for all to see how they ranked against each other. The standings were:

  1. Joey 25 kills
  2. Talon 19
  3. David 12
  4. Mickey 10
  5. Eric 5
  6. Tommy 5

The next game, we paired the boys and the result was:

  1. David & Mickey 25 Kills (David: 22, Mickey 3)
  2. Talon & Eric—-10 (Eric 7, Talon 3)
  3. Joey & Tommy -9 (Joey 5, Tommy 4)

Later on, the three adults Alan K, Alan C, & Matt took on ALL the boys. It was a bit disorganized with some of the boys getting used to determining who was on their team and who wasn’t. There was also some betrayals. Half the boys came downstairs complaining they were booted from the game. I learned that if you get betrayed from a team member a second time, you have the option of booting them from the game! And that’s precisely what happend! Needless to say, the adults won easily.

Take aways:

  1. Make sure the game you create has friendly fire turned off to disallow betrayals.
  2. Expect delays as newer members learn how to join games and learn how to recognize team mates from the enemies.
  3. Even with X-Link in the same house, it’s fun to use headsets

If you were there that night, leave your own comments to this post.
Another adult Billy joined us late with his XBOX and we had for XBOXes going at once with only 1 split screen. The network in the house worked flawlessly.

First night tonight!

Our first XBOX Night is tonight 5-9. We have 6 kids scheduled, and one or two interested neighbors may stop by. I have three XBOXs configured in three seperate rooms. We’ll most likely play Halo2 though I am prepared to play Halo and Crimson Skies as well

Getting Started

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Get started by Inventorying your XBOX game collection.   I recommend creating a free Google Online spreadsheet here.  You can send out invitations so that other people can view it.List the games in Alphabetical order by name, and include the columns found on my spreadsheet here.

Technical Specs

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XBOX units can use a TV, or can also use a PC monitor with a special adapter, for their display. Ideally you want each player to have his own screen to maximize the display size. Two players on one screen isn’t too bad but once you go to 1/4 of the screen it starts to feel cramped. Our goal is to have each person have his own screen (1 person for each XBOX) and a maximum of two people per screen/xbox.

Naturually, having an even number of players is ideal. But due to the different levels of play of the participants, this isn’t as important. David always goes against 2-3 other players in our home and he always wins.

Initially 8 players will be the goal using a minimum of 4 XBOX’s. 8 XBOX’s with 8 Screens would be the ideal setup; but we can mix and match 4-8 XBOX’s with 4-8 screens (combination of TV’s and PC Monitors).

I have 5 scan converter boxes (great demo sale going on) that allow an XBOX to use a PC Monitor and 3 TV’s that can be conveniently setup. All I really need participants to bring (if they own one) is their XBOX’s, 1 controller and the RGB & Power cables.

We can play one of two ways. We can play an XBOX Live “LIKE” network game using the free Kia XLINK software. The software connects XBOX’s that are signed up for the service, on a “virtual” network to setup XLINK games as if the XBOX’s were connected on a network in the same room.

Or we can simply connect them directly to each other and play a true XLINK network game. In the future if the number of participants grow, we can setup multiple sites and use Kia XLINK to setup a private game.

XBOX Night

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Welcome to XBOX Night. A site to keep you informed of our monthly XBOX game night in the Lake Pointe neighborhood.

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