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Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

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I wasn't quite sure if this qualified as "Show HN" given you can't really download it and try it out. However, dang said[0]:

> If it's hardware or something that's not so easy to try out over the internet, find a different way to show how it actually works—a video, for example, or a detailed post with photos.

Hopefully I did that?

Additionally, I've put code and a detailed guide for the netboot computer management setup on GitHub:

https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty

Anyway, if this shouldn't have been Show HN, I apologize!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638

I think the thing that I’m most amazed by - and this setup is truly amazing - is the fact that you’ve got a group of friends to enjoy this with. Good for you; this looks like a blast, and I can only imagine how fun that’d be, compared to years of purely solo gaming.

5 days agoby LakesAndTrees

As the former proprietor of LanParty.com (which I mistakenly included in a sale to IGN) I must salute you. The absolute genius of the provided lan equipment and particularly the management thereof is an inspiration.

I think the lack of any standing offerings of variations of Quake is a glaring mistake but easily rectified. :)

It's really heartening to see lan gaming continued and offered in such a way that the amount of hassle and setup is minimized and the gaming is maximized. We spent far too much time in the 90's and 2000's dealing with driver issues, etc etc. Bravo.

5 days agoby Multiplayer

That's a sweet LAN setup you've got! The only few things that rub me the wrong way is the choice of peripherals and the lack of headsets. Must be pretty noisy in here!

The tabletops also seems a bit too thin and wiggly for my taste, but, honestly, for LAN parties with chill people you personally know — it's ok

As for the actual host setup with a singular disk image — great job! LAN gaming centres do something similar with their setups, with some differences (a lot of centres either use Windows-based diskless solutions that mount vhdx files as drives remotely over iSCSI, or use ZFS-based snapshotting, which is my personal favourite)

But all in all, seems like my dream house :)

I own a chain of LAN gaming centres, so the feedback is definitely skewered into the business perspective quite a bit

5 days agoby asn007

> I've never heard of anyone else having done anything like this. This surprises me! But, surely, if someone else did it, someone would have told me about it? If you know of another, please let me know!

I never had the tenacity to consider my build "finished," and definitely didn't have your budget, but I built a 5-player room[1] for DotA 2 back in 2013.

I got really lucky with hardware selection and ended up fighting with various bugs over the years... diagnosing a broken video card was an exercise in frustration because the virtualization layer made BSODs impossible to see.

I went with local disk-per-VM because latency matters more than throughput, and I'd been doing iSCSI boot for such a long time that I was intimately familiar with the downsides.

I love your setup (thanks for taking the time to share this BTW) and would love to know if you ever get the local CoW working.

My only tech-related comment is that I will also confirm that those 10G cards are indeed trash, and would humbly suggest an Intel-based eBay special. You could still load iPXE (I assume you're using it) from the onboard NIC, continue using it for WoL, but shift the netboot over to the add-in card via a script, and probably get better stability and performance.

[1]: https://imgur.com/a/4x4-four-desktops-one-system-kWyH4

5 days agoby RulerOf

What an incredible setup! Really wonderful house overall, to be honest.

Aside from all of the extremely epic technology and whatnot - I have got to say, the elevated view and outlook of your place is sensational. Congratulations on putting together such a terrific place to raise a family.

Oh and worth mentioning; I sincerely appreciated and enjoyed reading your comprehensive Q&A section beyond the images (which themselves, had really awesome annotations included). Thanks for sharing!

5 days agoby findyourexit

I did something like this at my last house but somewhat more covertly, with monitors going into storage but having VESA quick mounts hidden near the Ethernet hubs, a few on articulating arms that could pop out near couches etc.

My setup only supported 12, but was designed in a way where you could have 3 teams of 4 or 4 teams of 3 that got their own private area so they could more easily conspire against their opponents.

I think my most interesting design choice was that I had half the machines routed from the attic and half routed from the basement. Part of this had to do with retrofitting my setup into a house over 100 years old, but I thought it also worked very well. If I were to do it again, I'd probably mount all of the computers in the basement, since it would provide extra heat (for the house) in the winter and stay cooler (for the computers) in the summer when under load.

I have since moved, but haven't bothered to make it happen again. Life with kids is too busy, and I've largely abandoned the hobby because I believe it would not be a positive influence given the particular quirks of my children's personalities. Slowly easing back into the waters with board games, though.

4 days agoby IggleSniggle

This is so cool. But the keyboard disturbed me, wouldn’t you at least want a mechanical keyboard?

> Keyboard: Logitech K120 Wired — The world's cheapest keyboard at $13 a pop. Works perfectly fine for all gaming needs.

I can’t imagine playing stuff like overwatch on a membrane office keyboard for $13 when having spent more than 100k on the setup. Especially when cheap mechanical keyboards are not that much more expensive either.

5 days agoby echoangle

This is neat, but as a $NET shareholder and someone with another ~$1m in net worth that can't afford to buy a house for at least another 6 years this makes me think we should significantly increase taxation.

5 days agoby laidoffamazon

If you are doing lan-parties , this opensource AAA Game is the best . https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/ It is Command and Conquer Renegade , RTS + FPS Game with frontend backend opensourced rebuild from scratch in Unreal 3 . Needs a lot of teamwork and strategy to win and all gameplay is according to CNC Rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VHennwBhG8

Source code

https://github.com/TotemArts/Renegade-X https://totemarts.games/forums/files/file/7-renegade-x-softw...

Game Client

https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/downloads.html

They have a New game working in Unreal 4 Which have full build building and production RTS mechanic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzZ3GMerz4

They would use some help from you guys to spread around, they are fully self funded and voulenteers working full time , to build a game that is fun for hardcore playerbase.

4 days agoby v3ss0n

> Jade and I needed a bigger house, but we really could not afford to buy (much less build) anything bigger in Palo Alto.

I’m really surprised about this, really shows how ludicrous the housing market is in the Bay Area. How high does your income need to be to afford a bigger house?!

5 days agoby syntaxing

Wow, this is beyond badass. Not only is the LAN and home network setup top-notch, that location is excellent too - what a view! Congrats on the amazing LAN setup and such a fun place to enjoy some gaming with your friends & family. Truly worthy of some envy, that's for sure :) Looks like it was a good chunk of work, but 110% worth it!

5 days agoby amatecha

First of all, great article. I loved how you added all images with captions right upfront without adding boring descriptions that no one would read. At the end you added all the faqs, i loved this format l. Also i loved lan parties in early 2000. I used to run acm chapter at my college andwe used to have lan parties in college.

3 days agoby cryptozeus

We also have two friends with dedicated LAN party basements. But it's way more casual. They have 10 old office PCs each that were available for pretty much free. We meet around every two months to play old games. Stuff like Half Life 1 DM.

I,ve also started playing with Linux and Lutris to pre-install old games. Still need to figure out the netboot part.

Also regarding the Steam / Epic situation: Steam has a PC Café program where you can buy licenses which then can be used by people with their own steam accounts while they are in your local network. I set it up once and it is a neat feature.

4 days agoby Farbklex

I doubt it took 30 minutes for that Maine Coon to map the place, figure out the cat doors, and hang out above the upstairs hdtv.

No crowds tho'. They steer clear. Probably why it doesn't show up in any of the multi-player photos.

But the upstairs photo of Kenton was prime for the cat to make its way along the back of the couch, gradually step down one paw at a time, and join him nestled at his side.

I don't consider myself much of a cat person. But Maine Coons are terrific animals.

5 days agoby johnohara

> [High AC cost.] Perhaps we have too many windows letting in too much sunlight...

My office has automatic blinds that open and close according to some climate control system. The blinds are within the double glazing, so they can't be damaged by weather (or cats). The nice version for a home would be something like [1].

I'm sure the owner could program the automation so they only change position if no-one is in the room. There's no point having sunlight streaming into an empty room.

[1] https://www.betweenglassblinds.co.uk/

5 days agoby Symbiote

This is truely living the dream, well done mate! It is indeed crazy that cabinetry costs the same as the technology.

How does the cat restroom exhaust work? Always on or does it have a sensor?

Do the cat doors prevent sound getting into the kids' rooms from the living room?

5 days agoby teruakohatu

I love the catwalk that's actually for cats, the little cat doors and cat restrooms. Nice to see some cat-friendly architecture. Very cool.

5 days agoby grose

This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like that?

5 days agoby srbloom

Where is the guy duck taped to the ceiling?

5 days agoby stringtoint

All this is truly, truly outstanding, except for one bit:

> Cat doors allow cats access to bedrooms when human doors are closed.

Kenton, you have made a grave mistake.

4 days agoby appel

It’s one thing to build a house like this, if you can actually host a LAN party with friends and max out occupancy at every game station you are rich in life.

5 days agoby deadbabe

Those cat corridors are cool as shit. I love little doors and hidden hallways, it's almost victorian. I would only worry about "noise" leaking out of the bedrooms...

5 days agoby pistoleer

> but it's still a disturbing amount of energy usage and something I'm trying to debug

As someone who is deeply frustrated with their HVAC this stood out to me. A new home should have exterior insulation. Plus the solar panels plus "efficient heat pumps". I would expect it to perform very well.

I'm curious to know the square footage and how much power is being used. Did you have a blower door test done when the home was constructed?

4 days agoby cma256

The amount of thought that's gone into that cat lavatory really makes me envy your belief in yourself. Here I am rewriting my dB schema 4 times.

5 days agoby written-beyond

How did you deal with the length of the USB and display cables? I thought after 5m or so things would start falling apart. Are there active extenders and can they can handle 240+ Hz?

5 days agoby r1ch

LAN party game room by night, Cybersyn II by day?

But where are the ceiling duct tape hammocks? http://octanecreative.com/ducttape/walltapings/images/german...

5 days agoby 082349872349872

That's frigging awesome!! I really admire the thought and attention to detail that went into this. Must've cost a good fortune, but what better way to spend it having fun? Your friends seem like a blast too.

And also, thanks for Cloudflare Workers :) One of my favorite tech tools of all time.

5 days agoby solardev

Man, This looks really awesome! However I have some questions. 1. Do you plan CPU overclocking of your gaming rigs? I'm asking because on so many PCs it doesn't seem realistic, so why did you go with 13600KF CPU instead of cheaper 13500/13600 non-K CPU? Also, If you don't plan overclocking didn't you through about going with cheaper B760 Motherboard + 10Gbit/s NIC? 2. Why did you choosed so slow memory? These i5 can benefit a lot in gaming from fast memory such as 7200MT/s+. 6000MT/s CL30 would probably be at same price as your kit, while providing nice performance boost in games. 3. How does Key rollover work for you on K120? Can you use Shift + W + 1 key combo for example? Just asking, because some people on Internet say such combo won't work on later batches of K120.

In this setup what I really appreciate is that you didn't go with Virtualized PCs route (that causes a lot of problems with modern video games) and so much amemities for your cat :)

3 days agoby the4anoni

Wait, why do you have the same living room as Bojack Horseman?

5 days agoby w-m

I think these are cool and seeing the NetBoot + CoW setup for gaming is fun.

Thanks for sharing!

5 days agoby hed

Extraordinary home! Great design. Especially love the cat stuff. I have to say, it’s wild that something “moderate” like an i5 / 4070 build is so powerful these days. It’s middle of the line in this era but it’s enough to play practically anything.

Also, this is a classic example of the power of leverage. $200k down on a $1m home, home goes to $2m gives you a $1m profit on ~$240k. Accidental, in this case, but nice.

5 days agoby renewiltord

Given it's only 20 pcs, I might have just opted for fully local machines with a basic disk overlay software with exceptions for where Steam and Epic live. Course, engineering a centralized solution can be fun, but locked-down PCs are just simple. Having built corporate RDP and VDI solutions I'm just biased towards keeping things simple these days and pushing admin work off myself.

Going off the local PC only idea, you could script just your rebuilds of them in the off chance something goes south, along with maybe a disk image with the majority of common games loaded. This is just thinking along the lines it's friends and family, not the general public. I'd probably use gigabit Internet (or more) which makes updates you're missing fast, while Steam lets PCs on a LAN share updated files and save bandwidth.

Did you consider patch panels or things like PatchBox to organize those UTP cables or allow for changes in your switching later?

5 days agoby 9x39

Sweet setup!

I used to play games over LAN with my brothers when we were teenagers. We played every year or two, and every time we'd spend hours fiddling with the networking in order to get things to work. This was annoying. It left me dreaming about a LAN cafe where the proprietor has lots of games pre-installed, and you can just sit down and play with your friends, or make some new friends and play with them.

This could be especially good for cult classic games from previous decades that are even more difficult to get working with modern OS+hardware. I'm thinking of the game Moonbase Commander in particular. https://store.steampowered.com/app/254880/MoonBase_Commander...

5 days agoby 0xDEAFBEAD

Not gonna lie, this is really dope! Can I be your friend and drive from Houston for a LAN Party?

5 days agoby viiralvx

Amazing build, and even better, a set of long time friends. You and your wife are rich in all senses.

I was wondering what the maximum power draw you have seen. Do you monitor your energy usage during normal use and during a party with all machines buzzing.

5 days agoby sriram_malhar

my favorite part is the cat walk with the doors to the rooms, how cool! treehouse vibes.

5 days agoby chipweinberger

I’m surprised people still have LAN parties.

My lan parties were more adhoc. Plan to play at some dudes/gals house, bring pcs/laptops/consoles and other gear, run cat5 cable between rooms, hook them up to some shitty switch and go to town. Many hours of sweaty gameplay. Piss off the neighbors. Trip a few circuit breakers.

This “lan party” has such a corporate feel to it. Almost reminds me of a typical work office. Just what I need after grinding it for 5 hrs and commuting home for another 1-2 hr — to experience the work environment again!

I’m actually more interested in the dedicated cat walk and doors that lead into various rooms.

5 days agoby xyst

I assume this is also a CF PoP?

5 days agoby anotherhue

That’s awesome, a pretty neat setup! I also strongly advise you to buy a projector - they became so good that’s nuts. Makes a much bigger screen and there are almost no cons.

4 days agoby ibaikov

This is amazing. In today's world, I'm not sure what's more prohibitive though. Finding 20 friends who play video games and would be into LAN parties or being able to pay for this kind of setup.

5 days agoby Sakos

This is amazing! I’ve been into LAN parties since the 90s but stopped going after the early 2000s, so seeing this brought back a ton of memories. The 2011 photos hit me with nostalgia—so much of it feels like the LAN parties I remember. The 2024 setup looks awesome too, though the vibe has clearly evolved. It’s incredible you’ve kept this tradition alive for 30 years! A photo series of your LAN parties over the decades would be fascinating.

Hack the planet!

4 days agoby patrickhogan1

Do you run Linux or Windows?

5 days agoby lostmsu

> The machines all boot off of a network drive based on this image. Each machine gets a copy-on-write overlay on top of the main image, so that guests can make changes to their machine which won't be seen by any other, and will be deleted at the end of the party.

How do you deal with Windows licensing/activation in that scenario? I didn't see anything in the Github repository, and I can't imagine that not being the worst PITA.

5 days agoby mschuster91

That is an awesome house and a great story. I'd be really curious to know what the people who bought your house in Palo Alto did with the house (and did you leave the gear with it? It looks like you bought all new computers for the new place so ...)

I'm curious too how the planning folks reacted when you got the permits. I would expect Austin to go more smoothly than Palo Alto but that would be interesting to know about too.

5 days agoby ChuckMcM

On a more serious side - with WFH now very common, perhaps new builds should contain office-like spaces with plugs everywhere, integrated desks, etc.

Maybe companies could rent these for team building weekends that mix social and work.

Perhaps friends who all work for different companies could spend a working vacation in a house like this?

What starts as a fun idea can often become a serious business!

4 days agoby fire_lake

You're living the dream, man.

5 days agoby GauntletWizard

> The cabinetry around the game stations cost a similar amount to the computers powering them. Think about that! The cabinetry is just a bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges.

As a person redoing a kitchen, I am disappointed that each cabinet costs something like a thousand dollars. They've gotta be doing something wrong. The prices make no sense to me; this is centuries old technology, and wood is abundant. How can they not optimize it?!

5 days agoby esafak

This is an extremely clever setup and certainly looks wonderful - but to me LAN parties are only LAN parties when people bring the computers with them (in much the same way that Champaign is only Champaign when from a certain place in France). That being said it looks wonderful and I hope it gives you and your community many years of enjoyment.

5 days agoby aeturnum

Awesome! The fold up mechanism is a great idea to make it look clean, when there is no party and it also saves the hardware from dust :D

5 days agoby seg_fault

Random thought: would a gaming streaming service like GeForce Now achieve a similar result for a lan party? Assuming you have the network bandwidth, I am curious what the difference in input lag/quality would be, and if, when doing a blind test, anyone would notice.

I guess you could even test this, by running GeForce Now on all computers vs native.

5 days agoby XCSme

The biggest surprise for me was seeing the desks with no mouse pads (or if you wanted to build it into the cabinet you'd probably want to stick down a desk pad).

But I also in my circles everyone takes their own keyboard/mouse/pad/headphones as those are the things it's hard to adjust to - admittedly my priorities could be completely different.

5 days agoby eertami

What DDR pads are those? Are they custom made?

5 days agoby jgeralnik

damn if I had this kinda money I'd do something crazy. like pay off my parent's mortgage.

4 days agoby keb_

The amazing thing about gaming is, if you build for it, everything else works.

Due to high specs and amazing connectivity, video meetings, coding, dev work all run great. Sure some xeon or threeadrippers would be better but still. Networking is key, use cables whenever possible.

5 days agoby heraldgeezer

Only thing I'm surprised about is the intel+nvidia combo not an AMD/AMD or AMD+Nvidia combo

5 days agoby ikt

I'm building a game that I think would do quite well in a LAN party setting. If I ever finish it (big if) I'll be sure to get your attention and see if you'd give it a try :)

Thanks for sharing all the details on this, looks like an incredibly fun and nice house.

5 days agoby bschwindHN

> Normally, maintaining twelve machines used by random guests would have two huge problems:

Maybe you did this with your other house but I would have thought guests would bring their own computer to a LAN party. All you have to do is provide the space and network capability?

5 days agoby hk1337

Dumb question but what are you using to transfer gaming quality video and usb signal over long distance like this? I tried a fiber cable from Infinite Cables earlier this year for a similar situation but couldn’t get it quite working.

5 days agoby hokumguru

Amazing setup, thanks for the write-up! My dream house if I was rich would have a LAN party room like this (plus a mini fridge stocked with Bawls Guarana). Stretch goal would be a movie theater like Brandon Sanderson has in his lair.

5 days agoby frakkingcylons

I love this idea so much.

Lan parties were probably the best part of my teenage years.

Also, the terrace part is amazing.

I miss the good old days of playing DotA (the old one) the whole night while drinking coke and eating pizza with friends.

5 days agoby lucasfcosta

A PC bang in your house?[1] Why not?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang

5 days agoby Animats

Looking at this I was making noises like Homer Simpson looking at donuts.

5 days agoby Daub

Thanks for the backstory to your career success! While I see the money as awesome, just working for CF at such a level must be great. I hope to get a job with them one day!

5 days agoby hehehheh

Has anyone done this on smaller scale? Say 4 or 8 stations?

We have space in our basement. And with our kids getting into pre-teen/teen years, I think it'd be fun to have a place for lan parties.

5 days agoby wdr1

I salute your commitment to fun and friends, this is awesome.

5 days agoby michaelhoney

Extraordinary and beautiful house, thanks for sharing.

Do you worry about the upgrade cycle on the hardware? Can't be fun replacing the CPU in lots of machines :D

5 days agoby djhworld

Nice work mate. I hope it all makes you happy!

5 days agoby brink

Hahaha, the anecdote about the subcontractor is great.

What a thoughtfully designed space for your family and friends! I feel like going this custom is pretty rare, and you’re clearly getting the value out of it. I also love that you did the math on the cable runs making essentially no difference.

Thanks for sharing :)

5 days agoby jameskraus

Sweet setup! I'm curious if you use the machines for anything when it isn't being used for a LAN party.

5 days agoby zipmapfoldright

Awesome build. I also really enjoyed reading about you. Wish you both all the best :)

Cheers, to many GGs at the LAN parties.

5 days agoby babyent

Damn... I read those profiles and I feel sick. I wasted my life on reddit, youtube and forums.

5 days agoby heraldgeezer

> I miss the old MX518.

Truely the peak of mouse design.

5 days agoby valzam

> RGB: None

I chuckled.

5 days agoby frazar0

Love the creativity and dedication to the project. And really cool house.

5 days agoby lukevdp

Beautiful. All of it. I love it when tech brings people together.

5 days agoby ata_aman

Younger me thinks this is really awesome. This was my DREAM during Halo 2 years. Kudos. The design, the hardware, the room itself. The house is beautiful. The pictures and write ups are fantastic.

Feel free to ignore the next part of my comment:

Current me with lived experiences and knowledge of the world thinks it’s a little disgusting. I don’t think it’s your fault, or you’re intending to do that. I don’t think YOU’RE disgusting. Just flaunting wealth in your own nerdy gamer way which many wealthy people are wont to do. I don’t blame you. If I could afford a 7 figure house and 150k for an adult playhouse I don’t think I’d say no. The computer hardware alone being outdated and turning into e-waste soon enough while people including children sleep and starve in the streets just rubs me the wrong way.

Anybody remember Rich Kids of IG?

Anyway. I wouldn’t feel right with myself if I didn’t say something. I don’t think you did anything wrong, you are a product of your environment as am I. I won’t check responses to this comment just putting it out there is enough for me. Enjoy your LAN parties dude!

5 days agoby latentcall

The 22 game machines (including monitors, cables, and peripherals) cost about $75,000 in total. The house overall was a 7-digit number. Sorry, I'm not comfortable being any more specific than that.

5 days agoby calvinmorrison

No mention of air conditioning? That basement is going to reek with so many sweaty nerds in there grinding and stinking away on their gamestations for hours on end.

5 days agoby vuckov

i really enjoy seeing and reading content like this. the way the process is developed and worked on by the team

5 days agoby cannibalXxx

This. is. awesome!

3 days agoby z3ncyberpunk

Invite LinusTechTips now!!!

5 days agoby heraldgeezer

So we have an ongoing debate in the white collar world - work in the office or work at home. I am firmly on the “teams work better in physical proximity camp” but there are still many better ways to arrange that physical space

And this - the hideaway desks that fold down to become a table top gaming session, well that could make much more flexible office spaces. (Don’t get me started on offices with one or two desks and doors that shut !)

But yeah, I like it, even if my house has that many people in I would probably just hide in the kitchen all night

5 days agoby lifeisstillgood

This is super awesome, congrats!

5 days agoby xfalcox

It's a tangent but I think two white collar workers being able to afford this and having this lifestyle is why Trump won.

5 days agoby kitsune_

how do I join? :D are you guys hiring at cloudflare per chance?

5 days agoby mclightning