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Games Entertainment

Dreamhack 2001 296

flagg writes: "One of the world's largest LAN-partys is taking place in this very moment, Dreamhack 2001 in Jonkoping, Sweden. Take a look on this picture and ask yourself a question: Do I wanna be there?"
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Dreamhack 2001

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  • by smaug195 ( 535681 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:26AM (#2640079)
    must be weeping with joy
  • by Vess V. ( 310830 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:27AM (#2640085) Homepage
    Frankly, I don't. For me, the fun of a LAN party is being there pulling an all-nighter with my buddies, spilling drinks, making a mess, watching pr0n, and laughing it up all over the place...

    Going to these hangar Lans with thousands of people just doesn't have that kind of intimacy... it's more geared toward people that just don't have broadband access and wanna get a couple of days of some lag-free gaming in.
    • the real question is : will i have enough storage to leech from 1000 people ? its time to pack those HP Ultrium drives...

      leech on !

    • Speaking of LAN parties, drinks, etc... the last true LAN party I attended was at a friend's house back in Atlanta. 'Twas a merry eve, as we were all sitting around (around 20 people), playing Quake and Unreal, eating pizza, and occassionally taking a dip in yon pool.

      Late in the evening, as we were all sitting around talking, hacking, and whatnot, I made the biggest party foul to date. I'm a smoker, and I couldn't seem to, ummm... locate my ashtray. So, I casually ashed in a glass of expensive scotch, which happened to be attached to my friend's hand. My friend (name withheld, of course) is a LARGE guy, and thankfully took mercy on me. Due to this incredible foul, I had to take a "time out" on the balcony for 30 minutes.

      Note to moderators: no, it's not offtopic, the story's about a massive LAN party for god's sake :).

      Web hosting for geeks, by geeks. Starting at $4 USD per month. [trilucid.com]
      If you're gonna email, use the public key!
      • Frankly, I don't. For me, the fun of a LAN party is being there pulling an all-nighter with my buddies, spilling drinks, making a mess, watching pr0n, and laughing it up all over the place...
      have you ever been to a swedish party? this is pretty much what we do all the time! *g* the scandanavians surely know how to party.. but, unfortunately, wont be any strippers there.. that kinda stuff aint looked upon nicely here (in sweden)..

      • Going to these hangar Lans with thousands of people just doesn't have that kind of intimacy... it's more geared toward people that just don't have broadband access and wanna get a couple of days of some lag-free gaming in.
      um.. most people in Sweden HAVE decent internet connections. and, if you have ever had gaming parties over the sunet.se backbone - you wont complain about lag :) most people run at least 512kbps from their HOME (either cable or ADSL). i dont have many friends who use dial-up..

      and, when ADSL (2.5Mbit) is provide for a measly $25 a month (www.bonet.se)? who would be stupid enough to use a modem?
  • by ultitool ( 319277 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:29AM (#2640092)
    Wonder how many people are gonna be spending the night at the local jail because they're word processor was using an illegal key.....
    • No-one. Using pirated (that's warezed for you l33t people) is not illegal in Sweden.
      Distributing or copying copyrighted works is, but if you download it from somewhere, it's the person you copy it from who's commiting a crime.
      • *BZZZZT*


        You get partial credit, but I'm sorry, that's incorrect, but hey, thanks for playing!


        Using software without a license might not be illegal per se here, but it is a violation of the EULA (You know that thing you never read), which demands you have a license. Thus you're free game for the mean men in uniforms to come whack you over the head



        Sidenote, just a moment ago someone in #dreamhack asked for a halflife serial#, it's a farking $10 game! Buy it! 100 hrs (counting very low) of online play means $0.1/hr...

  • Anybody care to imagine the B.O. that's gotta be emanating from this place?

    No? Me neither.

    On the plus side, there can't be any shortage of munchies lying about this place.
    • I have always wondered why seemingly intelligent people do not understand the benefits of deoderant.
      Geeks wonder why normals don't like being near them...It's cause they friggin stink!!

      Every time I go to a LAN party or computer swapmeet, I just want to put tape on the top(so they are held de-pressed) of a few deoderant cans and throw them around the room like tear gas canisters.

      If only they made deoderant cans that would fit a riot gun.....
  • by LaNMaN2000 ( 173615 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:29AM (#2640096) Homepage
    This is the biggest fragfest outside of Afghanistan!
  • I'd love to be in Sweden, period.
  • ...is not very difficult.

    Hmm, a bunch of geeks in a large room with an equivalent number of Athlons/Pentiums and monitors, heating up the room and bringing out the stank in everyone... do I really want to be there?
  • by Mir322 ( 519212 )
    So i wonder how many peeps there are gonna be sleeping with stuffed Tux's in their sleeping bags ?
    • Re:Tux (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Since it's a LAN party - not that many I'd guess. They're there because they're 31337 gamerz and use Windows. Not that a bunch of Linux zealots (who mostly are converted Windows people anyway) would know a good Amiga/Atari/C-64 demo if it bit them in the ass anyway. Demo parties are dying, unfortunately.

      Fuck Tux.
  • by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:31AM (#2640104)
    That's a lot of monitors running at the same time there. All those computers have to be pulling a lot of juice that has to go through the building's electric wiring. Just getting power for all those computers is a feat in itself.

    I feel sorry for the guy who kicks over the wrong plug in that place. :-)

  • Probably more worms floating around on that LAN than the @home network. err..
  • by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:32AM (#2640106) Homepage
    You bet. I hear these LAN parties usually have a decent internet connection. Since @Home is gonna leave me in the dark any minute now, I'd love to be anywhere else but here.
  • Of course I would like to be there. My question is where is the bathroom!!??! What games where they playing? Just seperate 32 player Q3 games? Or what?
  • by Tack ( 4642 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:33AM (#2640109) Homepage
    A higher resolution version of that picture is available here [dreamhack.org]. There's probably around 1000 people in that one picture. Wow.

    Jason.

  • by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:35AM (#2640113) Homepage Journal
    Sweden? December? Are you nuts!?

    Let me know when they have one in July...

    • I suspect this is so they can actually save on heating (or cooling, depending on how you look at it). Imagine: roughly 6 thousand systems with monitors. Imagine: the heat that gets kicked out by that many systems. Imagine: almost 6 thousand people in close proximity. Speaking from personal experience, a single machine with a monitor in a 8x10 room gets pretty warm, even if the heat is low, during the winter in South Dakota,USA. (often -50F w/ windchill) With that many systems, people, and monitors, it probably makes sense to have it in the winter - if it gets to warm in there, just open a door on either side of the building, and blow out all the hot air.


      My friends and I will have LANfests in a large basement - roughly 10 to 15 of us. The room is generally about half as tightly packed as the pictures of this festival appear to be. It will get to be almost 105F in there if we don't open a window, unless the air conditioning is on in the summer. Even then, it gets fairly warm. (90F-ish?)

  • Chicks? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spackler ( 223562 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:42AM (#2640142) Journal
    All 7 women in the room have strategically placed laptops right next to the door, for quick exits.
  • I mean seriously...there have to be over 1000 computers with monitors there...
  • athlon heat (Score:5, Funny)

    by staeci ( 85394 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:46AM (#2640155) Homepage Journal
    The town that it is hosted in is flooded by melting snow from around the building.
  • Common guys, let's all sit in the warming glow of televisions warming glow.

    I can't even imagine the heat produced, and electricity consumed. Anyone have numbers?

  • I think I see a girl in that picture.. but I'm probably mistaken.
  • I'd go but (Score:4, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <ellem52.gmail@com> on Saturday December 01, 2001 @12:57AM (#2640188) Homepage Journal
    A - I didn't see even one Aqua desktop
    B - I didn't see any BSD Grrls in red latex
    C - I didn't see Heidi Wall aywhere
    D - I can smell that room from the picture
  • They'd need that many machines to survive the current /. effect..
  • by Afrosheen ( 42464 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @01:04AM (#2640205)
    It looks an awful lot like:

    1. An AOL tech support dungeon
    2. Microsoft's BorgCollective Coding Campus
    3. The Star Trek Official Storyline Accuracy Chamber
  • or maybe it is Ascroft's office.

    :-)

    everyday seems weirder than the next,

    virtros
  • by sheetsda ( 230887 ) <doug@sheets.gmail@com> on Saturday December 01, 2001 @01:06AM (#2640211)
    Take a look on this picture and ask yourself a question: Do I wanna be there?

    As pipe is probably saturated with the slashdot effect now, not really. This brings a whole new meaning to "party crashing". Michael must be taking his revenge on them for not inviting him.

  • <STEWIE>Blast!</STEWIE>
  • for Jonkoping, Sweden

    I suppose Jonko means fluctuating and ping, well means ping...

    Or "we own j00, with our l33t ping".

    I suppose any town that ends in ping can't be all that bad. After all it does come down to da king of ping.
    • I'd be even neater if it was located in Linkoping. Seriously, the -koping part is an old word for town, basically. Root word being a merchant, something to do with market town rights. So we end up with a fair amount of cities called, Linkoping, Jonkoping, Norrkoping, Soderkoping, etc etc. For my money, Link-O-Ping is the best one. PS. There's actually an umlaut over the o in koping, making it an -ö- assuming that works on /.
  • a little too big? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Saturday December 01, 2001 @01:13AM (#2640228) Homepage Journal
    Seems a little too big to be a fun LAN party. You'd seriously have to do the buddy system there. At a LAN party, I woudln't trust leaving my computer for the time it takes to instal NetBus or BackOrifice.

    Nor would I trust logging into anything on that network. Probably sniffers all over the place.

    I like 'em small, like at a friends apartment(or a party room) where you can just chill, eat food a few feet away, etc.
  • That picture reminds me of some email sparring a couple years ago:

    "Well, I think of Patrick and Roy in many ways, but dripping in testosterone is not one of them. Patrick and Roy would be better described as radiating a pale glow, sort of like a monitor-tan."
  • Open up some Windows!

    /me ducks and runs.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    That looks really boring to me. I loved the LAN parties back in the BBS days (I suppose they're still going on, but that's when I went to them) just at random peoples' houses with 20 friends or so. Computers strewn everywhere, tripping over cables, screaming at each other, spending hours trying to get the network working and occasionally the kid who would bring beer, and all the "bad kids" who would drink.

    That was fun to me. Playing games against 1000+ other anonymous people seems like it wouldn't be much different than playing online.

    But I don't really play games, anymore, so maybe I'm just lame.
  • Some facts... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Link: 1gbit/s to EBONE with the help from Arrowhead (http://dreamhack.swm.pp.se/)
    98% boys, 2% girls ;)
    40km (we are in sweeden you know ;) TP-cabels
    2km tables

    (Dreamhack is greate, but The Gathering in Norway is way better. (and even larger))

    --
    Quai
  • I'm not sure I see the point..
    I see two reasons that LAN parties at your/friend's housees are better than playing on the internet:
    1. See people you know and test their skills while talking to them
    2. Meet new people and test their skills while talking to them

    However at this large a scale, this seems almost to become as anonymous as the internet. If you join a game, you probably don't know who you're playing against and the transaction cost of finding them would be pretty high. At best you talk to the people immediately next to you.

    Most of them are probably better off playing online from home where at least they don't have to walk a mile to go to the bathroom.
    • The cost of finding them is just asking them "in which row, and in which colum, do you sit", and then walking the manhattan distance over there...

      Last time I visited DH, I actually got to know quite some new people.
  • by Wojtek ( 21973 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @01:40AM (#2640297) Homepage
    dreamhack is a DEMO party. For art, not for playing retarded videogames all night. It's
    for hacking out that great 4k intro with the full
    first level from decent. Or faking that multiple light source "phong" with a picture of your mate holding a coke can. Not for playing videogames.
    I wish people would grab a clue. Gamerlamers used to get chastized or beat up for going to demoparties, sadly this isn't the case anymore.

    I doubt i'll even bother ever going to asm if this is what they have become. There's no thrill in watching some dorks play videogames. There *is* a thrill in seeing the latest wizzbang effects on the screen and figuring out for yourself just how they worked so you can do that plus more in your next demo.
    • Mod this dude UP^^^! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @03:25AM (#2640452) Homepage
      I agree with you - 100 % - I think the most humble I have ever felt was after seeing this intro [pouet.net] - 256 bytes - aggh! - and it still runs under NT!

      Now, I want to see the same intro in Linux - I am not sure if there is a way to make it work and stay that small or not - I am just OK with x86 ASM, but not to that level!!!

      DAMN! I bow before 3 sc hardcore!
      • Sweet Jesus! That proggie is amazing! Definitely the coolest 256 bytes on the net. Why can't viruses carry sweet little payloads like this?!
        • Yeah! It is the ASM code is pretty straightforward, to a good extent - some of the stuff is familiar to me from coding I have done in x86. You can see that he (they?) is using the FPU heavily - but that is too be expected (not likely to create the demo AND fixed point routines in 256 bytes).
    • by W2k ( 540424 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @05:56AM (#2640707) Journal
      It may have been a demo party. Once. Today, those art/animation/demo compos are merely a bit of a distraction from the gaming, although some people (obviously) come for the demos rather than for the gaming. Still, they're quite obviously in minority, and I for one don't care. If they want to spend four days in front of their C compilers, let them.

      But hey, do tell me, if we're only supposed to be programming, why do we have a 1 GBIT Internet connection? Why is Microsoft here hosting Counter-Strike servers? Obviously, neither is neccessary for exchanging 64 kBit demos. The DH Crew are the ones organizing, so they decide what kind of party DreamHack is, at least officially. From the looks of things, they don't agree with you.

      I don't know if we here at DreamHack have the pleasure of having you among us, but if we do, please stand up on your chair and shout your opinion. There are ~4 999 "gamerlamers" around you, it'll be a blast.
    • by redhog ( 15207 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @07:04AM (#2640755) Homepage
      It _was_ a demoparty, and I used to go there, but now, to what reason? Last time I was there, there where gamers there, a lot of them, but they at least had demo competitions... I made a 512 bytes mini-intro (just for fun, there where no matching competition) with a friend...

      Btw, I'l bite and answer two other messages:

      There's no snow at all in Jönköping atm (or in any town in south sweden).

      Sweden is a _long_ country, so this it's-dark-all-winter-and-bright-all-summer doesn't apply that much at all to e.g. Jönköping. But anyway, what does it matter when you'r in a building four days in a row, with ponly the light of thopusand monitors to guid you?

      DH used to be in another, more northern town (borlänge) before, but even there, there where no snow and quite bright...

      Btw, if you want to go to a _real_ demoparty, visit The Gathering in Norway!
    • Today it's more of a combined event: lots of gamers, and a small group of us, demosceners. The demoscene is not what it used to be... more and more people are into gaming than into demos, so when organising such an event, it's obvious you get 80% gamers and 20% sceners. It's not that much fun, agreed, but a fact of life...

      Otis/Infuse Project, coder DemoGL http://www.demogl.com
  • imagine the electricity bill...

    --w
  • I'd love to be there! I've been to Sweden, and it's quite beautiful. I'm concerned though, about which city was chosen for this: Jonkoping is the only strict religious city in Sweden and it's not very easy to get to. I would have held it in Malmö or maybe Stockholm. At least you would have a better night life.... and there's a great university in Lund which is near Malmö. anyway -- just a thought.
    • I love being a software developer. Couldn't imagine doing anything else. But to be in a crowd of {hundreds/thousands} of overzealous geekoids spouting off their latest conquest is not my idea of a good time. It's not even in the top 1000.

      Some of the most brilliant developers I know are mostly reserved about their skills and accomplishments. What discussions do go on, are mostly to aid other members of the development teams.

  • I'm not absolutely sure. That red "X" is rather impressive, however. :)
  • Suprising and pretty cool:

    the dreamhack people have microsoft as their main sponsors.

    how about that *nix people?
  • Take a look on this picture and ask yourself a question: Do I wanna be there?
    [click]

    "This page cannot be displayed."

    Well, gee, if you can't even show a picture of it, I don't think I want to be there!
  • that there is only one fan in the place (bottom right). Also, looking at the traffic graph, what happened at 8:15? Looks like someone kicked out a plug. An almighty groan must have risen from the crowd about then...
  • The website lists an organized tournament of 128 5-on-5 Counterstrike teams. Dear lord that's a lot of people.
  • Dreamhack Net Access (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i just stumbled across this [swm.pp.se] during my usually irc window flipping. Its the dreamhack's 1GB fibre internet connection provided by Arrowhead [arrowhead.dk] broadband


    tsk tsk tsk, and they cant even max it out ;)

  • by iolaire_in_swe ( 540404 ) <iolaire&iolaire,com> on Saturday December 01, 2001 @02:17AM (#2640362) Homepage
    Hi all, I'm sitting in the picture that's linked in the little article.. and it's cool. I recently moved to sweden from the UK (where we have nothing on this scale). A little info:

    1. We haven't noticed any /. effect.. we've got a 1Gbit uplink here (although how they got that to an exhibition center is beyond me).
    2. Wintertime is a GOOD TIME for this sort of thing - it's 27C (80F) here just now. The other big swedish LAN (Remedy) is held in the summer, and it's a real sweatfest by comparison.
    3. Yes, there is a bit of a discrepancy in gender... there are about 20 girls here, out of the 4500 people here (luckily I happen to be going out with one of them :-).
    4. The most popular game here is Counterstrike, the half-life mod. the main tourney is 5v5, 128(!) teams. Q3 is also popular. There's also a history of demos here, and we've seen (and heard)some very cool stuff on the big screen. Microsoft is also here with some Xboxes - and a competition to win them (played on the machines themselves).
    5. You can buy Jolt Cola by the 24 pack slab :] These people know who they are dealing with it seems - very popular. There's also a smattering of hamburger/hot dog/sandwich places around the halls.

    All in all, I'm having a fine time - and so are most other people. Apart from some horror stories with DOA machines, it's all going splendidly.

    You're all welcome to come say hi on IRC - irc.quakenet.org #dreamhack has about 700 of us.

    iolaire (Qnet oper, gamer, blah blah)
  • OH WELL
    • Disclaimer: The following comment is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real world events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental and unintended.
    • Disclaimer: The following comment may contain statements of parody, but does not contain statements of fact, slander or libel. Any statements that appear so are purely parody and should not be taken seriously.
    • Disclaimer: Not responsible for lost or stolen items.
    • Disclaimer: The following comment may include language of an adult nature. Parental discretion is advised.
    Ok... now what the heck was I going to say?! Oh yeah... This looks like the most awesome LAN party ever! In fact, when I first glanced at the picture (I clicked the link and went to a different window--using Opera 5.0 for Linux (but under FreeBSD, ironically) allows me to work in many different windows at the same time, which is very advantageous because I like to do many things at once--I can't wait for version 6 to be available commercially--and then came back to the window with the picture and thought it was the wrong picture because...), I thought it was a photo of a city at night. That's how nuts this LAN party is!

    Copyright 2001, rice_burners_suck. All rights reserved.

    OH WELL

  • Totally disapointed with that pic. I mean when you asked if I would want to be there - and offered up a pick I was anxiously awaiting a nice high res image of some hot swedish women. sadly all I saw was jolt-burp-smell.
  • by CaptainCarrot ( 84625 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @02:35AM (#2640387)
    1. I would love to have the Coke/Jolt/Whoop Ass concession at this thing.
    2. Not to mention the pay-urinal concession. Get 'em coming and going!
    3. But not the condom concession. All those boys, and not a single one of them is going to get laid any time soon. The only use for those things in this picture are as balloons.
  • How many kilogeeks? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rmckeethen ( 130580 )

    OK, I'll bite. Just what *is* the official term for that many computer geeks all in one place? Looking at all those monitors I'm thinking maybe calling it a 'phosphera' of geeks? Or maybe you just use scientific terminology and simply append 'kilo' or 'mega' to the word, i.e. a thousand geeks all in one place would be 'one kilogeek'. Any other suggestions?

    Yes, I AM a computer geek and proud of it, dammit! And yeah, if I lived anywhere near there I'd probably be like, maybe, third from the left in the fifth row.

  • OK (Score:2, Funny)

    by xercist ( 161422 )
    Now look at THIS [dreamhack.org] picture, and ask yourself the same question.
  • Can you imagine the gore, blood, and assorted carnage one could achieve by running through that room with a BFG9000?
  • there are about 5000 people here.. and we're all having a good time. here are some pictures from the floor [han.pp.se].
  • Some DH stats.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by abelsson ( 21706 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @04:21AM (#2640571) Homepage
    40 km ethernet cable.
    15 km electical wiring.
    6 000 chairs.
    2 km tables.
    1.5 Megawatts of power.
    40 000 cans of Jolt cola.
  • Tss... (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by Asmodean20001 ( 540426 ) on Saturday December 01, 2001 @05:50AM (#2640703)
    How many times do we have to tell you... Dreamhack is a DEMO party, hosting competitions in all sorts of areas as 64k DEMOs, Wild Music, and so on. The network itself is not laggy at all, of course. The equipment in here (sponsored by Cisco and other huge network companies) is worth in the > $25.000 range.
  • http://stat.event.dreamhack.org/ [dreamhack.org]

    Quite elite..

    Arrowhead in cooperation with Ebone
    in combination with a Black Diamond :)

    I'm on an ethernet connection in Sweden, 400km or so from Dreamhack, dunno really... Downloading at around 750k/sec from an ftp inside dreamhack... hehe ;)

    Hugs
    // _GNU_
  • this picture [gathering.org] kinda shows what The Gathering is all about .. It started out as demoparty in '92 and is still running hot. These days all 5k of tickets gets sold out in ~24-48 hours, so there's apparently a huge market for lanparties here in norway, sweden and other close countries :)

    Some people has been complaining about "the stench has to be awful" .. well, guess what, since this isnt your average lanparty where people are staying in small, overheated rooms (like most "hey, lets gather over at our house"-lanparties), it works out quite nicely. Most people also shower daily (guess some of you havent heard about that. ;))..

    Ok, for those of you that are complaing about things getting too anonymous .. well, it sorta could be. But that would be boring, wouldnt it? What you usually do is that you go to the party together with your demogroup, your clan or your friends, whatever suits your need. You sit together with the people you already know (5-10-50-100) - and guess what, just on the row behind you, someone you know from IRC is sitting .. and you're meeting them for the first time ever! .. and then, suddenly, the coder of that *awesome* demo just suddenly pops by your row to say 'hi' .. you kinda have to be there to get the spirit :)

    DreamHack looks really nice this year, hopefully there'll be a few good contributions to the democompos and we'll see some nice showdowns in counter-strike and Q3 ..

    .. and to end it all up; go there!

  • The next big party is "The Party" in Denmark, Dec. 27-29. Some 4000 people will be there.

    Their web site is http://www.theparty.dk
  • When I showed the picture to my girlfriend, she thought it was a cityscape :)

    Woz
  • Dreamhack 2001 - Nerds on a hunt for love [passagen.se]

    Funny comic-strip about Dreamhack 2001.

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