FAQ and rules for rAge 2009
Hi
“This thread hasnt changed one bit in the past 6 years :-P”
That, and having a busy schedule delayed this post.
Here is the overview of the most important aspects that you need to be aware of for rAge 2009. Posts that stray from the topic will be deleted. If you have a question that you are sure has not been covered, please post it.
The three main features:
1) rAge Exhibition
2) Open LAN hosted by VC (More commonly known as the NAG LAN)
3) Telkom gaming event hosted by AGASA with the support of VC
I am not in a position to clarify questions regarding AGASA presence at rAge, competitions that they host, fees etc payable to them. So please refrain from posting AGASA questions on the NAG forum as AGASA staff do not monitor this forum in the same capacity as their own forum. I will address some basics items regarding the Telkom event as far as entrance etc is concerned.
In the NAG Open LAN area you can play at your leisure, bring your own computer and pretty much do your own thing based on what servers VC and/or the community will have up and running. This is simply a LAN, much like any other except that it is being held at rAge and consists of 1800 players.
What will be played in the NAG Open LAN, basically anything that you want that does not cause a non-willing participant any harm. Any communities that want to organize any formal competitions for a specific game, please feel free to contact me. Do keep in mind though that there will be no trips to Korea, France, America or Disney Land in the NAG Open LAN. No sponsor banners or related advertising will be allowed, not even if they sponsored you to attend from Finland.
When is rAge: 2 October – 4 October 2009
Open time: 10h00 Friday 2 October 2009
Closing time: 15h00 Sunday 4 October 2009
Entrance fee: Cost is R250.00 per person. Tickets go on sale 1 August from Computicket. Please ensure that you collect your ticket from Computicket before the event - no ticket, no entry. Telkom/AGASA players will use a separate ticket system that AGASA will manage.
If your girlfriend, boyfriend, friend just wants to see what the weekend is about, they need to buy a day pass (R50) or weekend pass (R80) for the expo at the expo entrance. Regardless of whether gamers arrive on Friday or Sunday the price will remain the same.
Anyone who arrives with a computer will need to have a valid Computicket that is still 100% intact. No valid ticket, no entry. (Laptops are computers too)
Entrance fee to exhibition is included. Details on what is happening at the exhibition can be found at www.rageexpo.co.za
Seating arrangements: First come, first serve. Thus you will not be able to reserve specific seating. We have allocated specific space for the Telkom competition managed by AGASA, this is however in a totally different area and utilizes a separate entrance.
IP Addresses: Static, sticker on table
Parking area: Secured Public Parking Area opposite main entrance. Follow road markings. Telkom/AGASA parking is in a different area, AGASA will inform qualified teams of the specific parking and entrance to be used.
Off-loading area: Not applicable, since the entrance is separated from the parking area. Thus you park your car and bring your stuff from there.
Distance to carry pc: 100m to Reception, bit further inside depending on where you intend sitting.
Noise: Yes lots
Entertainment: Open LAN, exhibition and the rest is up to you!
Is it going to rain: Not the faintest idea, but do keep this in mind. Bring the odd plastic bag to cover up if needed.
Chill area: Yes, two upstairs
Sleep area: Nope. No tents etc. Please keep in mind that we are now partly downstairs and we cannot have three-day-old gamers stench emanating from their body bags. I know this seems harsh, but the Dome have rules to comply with. So if you collect your thoughts upstairs in the chill area on the mezzanine level and happen to think better with your eyes closed, I am sure nobody will disturb your deep thoughts.
What to bring:
PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, headphones, power cord to pc & monitor
Please note that your power cord needs to have a red plug with the flattened earth pin. Without this red plug type you will not be able to plug into the power grid. Each multiplug that we supply is meant to have two PC’s plugged into it. So if you and your buddy only use two plugs because you have a power lead with multiple points, it does not mean you have two additional plugs to use for whatever. The power is calculated according to the PC’s, and deviating from this might cause power failures. Since nobody likes power failures, if you cause one due to ignoring our request and abusing the power, you will leave the event. I take this quite seriously, so please don’t test the waters on this.
What NOT to bring:
No Speakers
No UPS’s
No Multiplugs
No Double Adaptors
No Switches Or Hubs
No Additional Devices Requiring Power for e.g. Fans, Cell Phone Chargers, Etc
Power test station: PC’s will be tested for power at reception. You plug your PC and Monitor into the supplied power cords. You start to boot. If both your monitor and PC start without tripping the power, you can switch them off and carry on through to registration.
Two-pin Adaptors: Please note that due to the fact that we use the red plugs, two pin adaptors won’t work. External drive users take note.
Security: Yes there will be guards. The safety of your equipment is however still your responsibility. So don’t leave your cell phone, mp3 player or camera on the table while you go for lunch. This will lead to unnecessary temptation. Take your mouse, headphones etc with you when you leave. Ask a buddy to keep an eye. No PC’s or monitors will enter or leave after 22h00 at night. Registration opens at 8h00 on Saturday morning. Laptops also count as PC’s.
Will there be viruses: Most certainly, the likelihood is very high. Therefore patch your systems, get firewalls, and get anti-virus software. We will have trial versions available, but that might be too late.
Hacking, Port-scanning: Will not be taken kindly. If you do, you will leave the event. If you need to copy, use normal network browsing. If the PC’s don’t display in your network neighborhood, read up on our website at the LAN on how to fix it.
Food and drinks: Food and drinks will be for sale inside the venue. No take-out food may be brought into the venue.
Will there be patch servers?: Patches required will certainly be available. We will however limit the available bandwidth from this machine, so that somebody does not decide to grab 6 Gigs of patches from the machine, compromising the availability to other players.
How do I know what servers are up and running?: Servers hosted by us will be up for the entire duration of the event. Whether people will join them, remains to be seen. So we will not advertise general servers on the big screen.
Common sense:
- Please ensure that your PC has the latest service packs installed (SP2 for Vista and SP3 for XP)
- Please ensure that the virus pattern file is up to date.
- Do not share anything if you do not want it to be copied
- Remember to bring any software, serial numbers that you may require. VC will not install a custom Linux onto your brand new machine that you bought the day before and forgot to bring your drivers along. We do not have drivers available at the event.
- Make sure your Shares are Read-only if you need to share
- If you find anything wrong with the event, please let someone from VC know at the event so that we can try and rectify it. If you do not give us the opportunity to rectify the problem, do not complain afterwards.
- The Dome is a non-smoking area. No smoking inside the venue will be permitted
- Neither NAG nor VC will make sleeping arrangements for anybody attending rAge. This is your own responsibility
Checklist
- This might serve you quite useful at the LAN:
- Drivers for all your hardware
- All the serial numbers that you require in case of re-installing
- Screwdriver
- Eye drops
- Headache pills (Panado seems to be working)
- Something warm to keep the bones comfy
- Charged Cell Phone
- Computicket ticket for Entrance
- Money for sustenance
- Medical cards etc you may need in case of emergency
- Reservations if you booked a place to stay
-Enough money for petrol back
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Monitor
- PC
- Headphones
- Power cord from PC and Monitor to supplied Multiplug (Red plug required)
- Contact details of buddies that you are planning on meeting at rAge
- And most importantly a good spirit to come and have fun and enjoy your weekend.
No provision has been made for any consoles. Thus you cannot bring your X-Box and swap it out with your PC if you feel like it.
Most anti-virus and firewall software these days have some form of activity display. It should serve you fine with getting a quick glance on what is open, what is attacking which port on your machine etc. Thus to have a program that scans other PC’s open ports would not be allowed. This activity report is one of the things that can become problematic in software like Norton etc. with an intruder popup. These popups disturb the gamers when playing.
Scanners also cause a lot of traffic on the network that kills the bandwidth. If you are not 100% sure about the software, ask us at the event and we will have a look.
Last year people did leave the event because of scanning and hacking, don’t spoil your weekend, play nice.
Some General Questions and Applicable Responses
“I need more than two plugs, If I only use one plug can I plug “whatever” into the other plug?”
There may only be two PCs per multiplug. If you only use one plug, the other is not for additional devices. Power has been calculated at two PC’s per multiplug. If you need to plug in an additional HDD, you will need to be able to plug into the dedicated plug, and they do not accommodate two pin plugs or adaptors. Personally I would prefer that you keep the HDD in your machine instead of external, solves a lot of issues regarding security.
“What comps will run.”
Competitions are not run by VC since we cannot allocate the resources to do so properly. In addition we have always felt that by enabling the different communities to host their own competitions you will have enthusiastic, dedicated people that should know the game well and in this we will support the growth of people that are able to handle the pressure and responsibilities that come with the job.
“May I host my own server”
Of course you'll be able to host your own servers. The NAG Open LAN is pretty much like any other LAN, except there will also be dedicated servers for the more popular games, to help speed things up and keep things uniform. But if you want to jam some Freelancer or Diablo 2, that's entirely up to you. It also implies that the server needs to be hosted on the machine that you have a ticket for. Do not bring along additional machines without having tickets for them.
"Can I charge my cellphone and will it be safe."
I prefer that you do not. If you must, and I honestly don’t know why, then use a USB charger. No chargers may be plugged into the power grid that we supply. If you have had luck with leaving your cell phone in the shopping mall in a public place and returning the next day to find it where you left it, you don’t have to watch your cell phone since luck is your partner.
“Can the first guys can 'hold' seats for the rest of the group”
This is not really a problem during the early stages of the event. The problem comes when you are keeping 5 seats on Friday night, and a group of 3-5 buddies arrive. Strictly speaking, there is no reason why they can’t take the seats that you are keeping. This always results in very mature discussions sprinkled with mutual respect and a desire to please others above yourself. Thus in short, keep a space, but remember that if I need to resolve such issues, I will use the “first come first serve with no reservations” logic.
The red plug if you are lost courtesy of one of the forum members.
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/1930/plug001hh2.jpg
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/3639/plug002fs6.jpg
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/5374/plug003mz7.jpg
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/7712/plug004bw8.jpg
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/9339/plug005hv9.jpg
“So since we'll need the special red plug to use the power, my question is: my mouse needs to charge (and it is a required gaming peripheral) and it needs a 2 point plug .... what are my options ?”
The best option would be to borrow a mouse that does not require a charger. There are no adaptors to two pins from the red plug type that I am aware of. We also do not want people to plug in their homemade concoctions or additional multiplugs etc. Thus vague yet clear?
”Hey i just wanted to knw if i can bring along a Ps2 console, so that me and my buddies can jam sum games.and any1 that wants to play along can join in on the fun for an ass whipping..lol “
Unfortunately not. You may only bring a PC.
“Oh, and one question: Why use the special plugs? Just to force people not to plug in other devices? There's nothing special about the special plugs, 'cept for the front tip that's "sawed off".”
From a functional point of view you are correct, is has no super powers. I can assure you that I would not pay three times the amount for the dedicated multi-plugs than I would pay for the normal ones just to complicate my life and get people to chat to me on forums. It has to do with legal requirements.
“What about those of us using Vista? Would it be better to rather have XP on for the event?”
You would need an operating system that you are familiar and comfortable with. We have no preference or requirement.
“What kind of exclusive content (ie not straight off of gamespot) can we expect?”
This is up to the exhibitors and we cannot guarantee anything and therefore prefer not to comment. You may get a glimpse if you read NAG.
“In an unrelated question, will there be a DC++ server running? “
Not officially. Lots of good reasons why it should, still not officially.
”Last question, I'm left handed, and use my mouse with my left hand. Will the stations for our pcs allow me to do so comfortably?”
Normal trestle table like at the flea markets. Two people per table should allow for enough space.
“i just want to know 1 more thing can i bring along a Oka Pipe(Bong) and blaze inside the dome? no funny stuff juts flava”
I think it is in the first couple of lines of this post, no smoking venue. What you smoke outside I imagine is up to you.
“Will the staff REALLY be able to constantly monitor 1800 pc's for three days to ensure no "illegal" contents is copied?”
There are always ways if the reason justifies it. I think that the 800G of sharing kind of screams against what rAge is trying to accomplish. So be considerate and think about your actions. Although VC or NAG will not be checking anything, we make no guarantees with regard to other legal entities allowed so by law.
“And lastly, will there be GigaLan specific hubs for those who can support it, or will we be limited to 100mbts?”
rAge is mostly past the hubs stage. The switches will only be 100 since no games require more bandwidth. The uplinks to the backbone are Gigabit.
“I also have another question will people who have pirated games be allowed to play on the servers? I got a buddy who is going and I know some of his games aren't legal?”
Some servers will have anti cheat software and run as pure servers. They will however not validate copies since we have no internet connection.
“Do we have to carry our bloody PC's down stairs again (say it ain't so!) this year when we enter? This box of mine is heavy...”
Yes
”And will the gofers be there again? Will they carry our crap down the stairs (if there are) to the testing station and actually earn the tip someone might be compelled to give them? At rAge last year I did more carrying than the bloody people who were meant to be carrying my machine for me.”
There is a possibility that there will be gofers, although this has not been confirmed yet. They will however not carry anything down the stairs. This is a free service should it be available, and will then only be available on Friday between certain times. Again, none of this has been confirmed though so expect to carry your stuff yourself.
“The day tickets do you buy them at the door and how much would they cost?”
Yes you buy them at the door. R50 for a day pass to the expo.
"Will a 'visitor' with a standard rAge day pass be able to come up to the BYOC area to look around/meet up with people?"
We do not allow people to come and look around, its a security thing. If they meet up with you however, have a daypass, then you may accompany them inside. Use the main entrance for this, not the link to the expo.
“my headphones uses an external power source, two point plug”
The two pin is a problem, if you can fit it with a dedicated three point plug, there you should not have an issue. Remember that you are only allowed two plugs on the multiplug.
“Oh and whats the policy on usb cell phone chargers?”
What you plug into the orifice of your USB adaptor is not really a concern of mine.
“So how's the weather inside the dome at night?”
Very seldom have I seen the weatherman making predictions correctly, thus I will not try. General rule is always come prepared; we might have snow or a heat wave. Generally though the Dome is not cold, maybe a bit chilly in the morning.
“Is the dome a 3G/HSDPA area so we can connect to the internet from our cellphones?”
The Dome is a hotspot and you can read up on their service on their website. This service is however not free and we are not in control of these services, so we cannot guarantee anything.
” Does the smoking area (the place near the LAN entrance) remain open at night or is the whole dome locked up for security?”
PC equipment get locked down, people don’t. Thus you may come and leave as you please, your PC and monitor have curfew times.
“Lots of patches”
Goes without saying. Do keep in mind though that if a patch is required and we don’t have it, share it with us to upload. We assume that most people are fairly up to date and do not hunt down very old patches.
“more or better food for your money or cheaper food”
You should know the answer by now. There is a mall across the road with lots of fast food places. We do not control or allocate the food stands. So either accept the prices or take a short stroll across.
“Switch off the lights at night. I like gaming in the dark”
The top of the LAN is darker (usually). There are a lot of different reasons for the lights as they are. Try and choose a spot that will suite you better during night. Most of the LAN will be darker this year according to current planning.
“one central communication place, so that ppl know what games are being played”
Chat server should be up in one form or another.
“maybe some more informal comps through out the weekend”
Comps are planned. Do keep in mind though that you need to make the effort. We will have the info on the website, but you need to make sure that you know what, where and when according to the rules of the comps. Because of the fact that the area is so huge, nobody will go looking for the team that needs to play in the finals. Please keep in mind that VC will not run any comps themselves, we only assist the community to get comps up and running as efficiently as possible. Since we don’t manage these comps, you need to resolve rules with whomever is organizing the comp.
“OPEN LAN COMPS : Please give those guys their own marked tables”
Any areas that are reserved will be indicated on the layout drawing at the entrance. We do not mark each table individually. So have a look as you come in, and there should be no hassles. The way that we approach reserved seating is that people try and sit with their friends, and we respect that. First come first serve will however prevail. So if the seats are not reserved on our layout, they are not reserved period.
“Food is always expensive when you are buying it , pitch up with a cooler box with prepared food, hot dogs, 2 minute noodles, anything fast and light in plenty. so its unhealthy? so is sitting on your ass for 14 hours straight...”
Just a comment to avoid confusion, you are not allowed to bring in cooler boxes, drinks and fast food bought outside. If you buy something inside, eat it inside or finish it outside before returning.
“prehaps a place to shower(lol).”
We were planning on putting walk through showers with topless booth babes to assist but my mom complained. It has thus unfortunately been cancelled. I think there is a Virgin Active gym next-door so if you have membership, it may be an option.
“Please can there be a CoD 4 TDM and FFA as well as all the game types”
We try and host most game types and games depending on the servers made available to us by Intel.
“why dont you guys get like ea games or something like that to sponser new games or prereales modles for everyone who attendse rage to try out and give feed back on it”
Cool idea, now if only we could convince them that they would actually get worthwhile feedback and it is not just a trick to score freebies so that we may complain afterwards about buggy code forgetting that it was pre-release.
“How about running a competition in the magazine for people living in other parts of SA ie Cape Town to win tickets to Rage as well as air fair etc... I wana win it, I wana go”
I can see what is in it for you, now you just need to explain how rAge will get back on their investment. rAge is not a charity event, it is a world class expo.
“They should give us more free stuff at the lan's entrance”
They do actually. Just very little is left after the VC team has taken the best stuff. The leftovers are not worth the energy to distribute so we just generally dump it.
“Load Shedding”
Obviously we cannot guarantee anything, and as such we are looking at options to accommodate any lost time gaming should it be an unfortunate reality. We are looking at the Dome generators, but I still have a concern about the regulation abilities of the source to ensure that we do not cause failure with PC’s being quite sensitive to power surges. We are also considering extending Sunday should there be a power failure to try and compensate. Do keep in mind though that we do not consider extending Sunday for any other reason whatsoever.
“I'd like to know if there will be some kind of setup where people SCAN THEIR PC's for viruses..”
There will be free Anti Virus software on the VC website at the event. Although most will be trial it will allow those that do not have to install and clean/protect their PCs. We cannot make scanning compulsory, or there will be no lanning time left. So the advice is protect your own PC and you should be ok.
“Maybe not having to close the doors at some times at night.”
The doors never close. Only PC’s have curfew times. No PCs enter or leave between 22h00 and 8h00. You may however come and go as you please.
“hook up several Playstations”
This will certainly not happen in the LAN area at this time, not sure whether any exhibitor has such plans.
“best Anti virus”
Whatever takes your fancy as long as you have the latest updates. You should have anti virus on your machine currently, and if it served you well up to now, no reason to change.
“If i have a external HDD can i bring it to rage?
why i want to know is the power it needs(2 punt plug)
and if i may whats the limit?(1-2 ?????)”
People do bring external HDD. Personally I would prefer that you not bring them, since you will have difficulty with their power supplies. 2 Point plugs won’t fit in the dedicated power points that we supply. Thus if it does not fit, you won’t be able to use it. Please keep in mind that you only have two plug points that you may use, they are dedicated and you are not allowed to add additional multiplugs or similar adaptors.
"those with the plastic ground thingy and just break off the plastic bit so it would fit"
If you break off the plastic earth pin then the adapter will not open because the mechanism requires the earth pin to be inserted first. Although we still had some of the old adapters 2 years back we finalized replacing all of the adaptors this year with the required dedicated ones which means that you wont be that lucky this year.
"It took me about 10 min to get my plug in with a lot of force"
The current quote for the red dedicated multiplug is R154 excl VAT. Should I find that you purposefully damage any equipment, you will cover the replacement cost or your PC will be used to recover the cost. I am not kidding.
“Will there be a floor plan for the seating arraignments on the website or here? Or do we have to wait for the day we pitch up at the dome to see where we can sit or not?
And will the reserved seating be marked at the table?”
There will be a floor plan at the event. Should we reserve any tables it will be indicated on the drawing, not the individual tables.
“Are their a event created on facebook about the rage expo 2009? If yes can I plz have the link? Want to invite sume of my friends so they wil go... “
There are a few Facebook groups relating to rAge - here is the event link from one of the groups
http://www.facebook.com/editevent.ph...id=77166286351 Or do a search for rAge 2009 or NAG LAN @ rAge.
“I heard a rumor that rAge is possibly coming to CT. Any truth behind this? “
Not at this point in time.
“How big is rage this year? has it increased at all?”
1800 gamers in the NAG LAN and the same amount of floor space for the expo.
“A pipe should be available whereby players can purchase cap to have Internet access for their IP address/and/or UID and pwd.”
Unfortunately we won’t be looking at this as an option yet.
“If it's a dumb question, please excuse, but is there an age restriction for the NAG LAN? I'm planning to bring my 7 year old son along, he's quite a gamer!”
Nope. Bring grandma and the kid.
“Would I be shunned, laughed at if I can with a laptop. It's not a fancy gaming laptop, but can play games like cod 4 and tf2, and is better than my pc.”
If you play and are happy, so are we. PC or laptop does not make a difference. No consoles however. Also remember the dedicated plug.
“Can I buy a extra ticket and then take me and my mates server box with us? As then space will not be a problem at all.. Ive wanted to do this before but always when it comes down to it, I think I am going to steal another guys place which would have wanted to go...? Any thoughts on this.. “
If you want to bring a separate server then you will need a separate ticket. As long as you have a ticket for every PC all should be fine.
“Does anyone know where i can buy competitive gaming tickets for Rage 2009”
Computicket Tickets are for the NAG LAN, which some might consider competitive. The Telkom gaming event will not require tickets as they are sponsored by Telkom. AGASA league participation is a requirement for this and as such AGASA decide on who gets these tickets. These tickets cannot be bought.
“I saw that there were 16port 10/100 desktop swithes with no gigabit uplink, so if you take the 15 available ports for people to use, and the 1 uplink port. The 15 people need to all run through the one 10/100 port, and if all the people are downloading, its no supprise that my DotA was very laggy. 15 people divided by 10MEGS is simply not enough bandwidth.”
Short answers. There were no switches used without gigabit uplinks. I am not aware of lagging on the network. Do keep in mind that if you host a game while leeching or being leeched to death you might experience less than ideal performance. So will the people that join your game. If you feel a game is lagging, try a different server and ensure your PC is not grinding to a halt due to other factors such as leeching or anti virus. If you feel that the network is indeed lagging, speak to one of the VC guys/gals and we will look into it.
“Are we going to see a decent network layout like other large lans in JHB, that are already using FIBRE backbone, not to mention gigabit network ports for everyone?”
I am sure we can discuss your informed insight into decent, but lets stick to the easier questions. No game that I am aware of requires more than 1M to be played. 100M in my opinion is thus more than sufficient for any game. Also keep in mind that the backbone requirement for Gigabit links to each table for more than 2000 gamers ensuring lagfree gaming and ample leeching bandwidth, is more than most companies have available for lending to rAge for gaming. In addition, you should notice while copying on your Gigabit connection that you very seldom use more than 20% due to your hardware being the bottleneck. Thus 100M it will remain for now.
“For my R250 im spending to get in, I WANT GIGABIT NETWORK with a DECENT BACKBONE on EACH SWITCH!!!!”
It is truly the season of striking and negotiation.
Originally Posted by Scattenjager
