Hi. Me and some friends are going to have a LAN Party in June in a house in a friends town where there is no phone, let alone internet conexion Now my question is how we can manage to install NS in our computers without Steam. Some of my friends will not even have HL installed.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Not possible with NS 3 I am affraid.

To play on LANs with Steam-Based games you need to have first connected then closed steam without loging off. Then play as normal.

So if you cannot do this, you cannot play the LAN game.


However, it should be possible to dig up an old Ns2 installer and use that on a WONID installation. This does not require internet access. You can still use the new maps too, but various weapons/balance changes won't be there. It still makes for a good game though.

Note that the server is the only pc that needs the 2+ patches, and these are optional anyway. The biggest difference I remember is reducing rine rts from 20 to 15 res.

You should be able to find a copy of the NS installers, and you only really need one copy of half life between you on a LAN game. Of course, this is naughty, and you should feal guilty and go buy 6 copies.

Don't laugh. I did. (Second hand off eBay for ?2 each. A cinch.)

Feel free to PM me with any questions.

BTW, if your friends are bringing their own pcs, make sure they know exactly whant they need to bring and what you provide.

Notes:
>Power adapters are like gold dust in lan parties; have spares at the host's house.
>Tell your friends to label any property of theirs that may become confused with someone else's.
>Dont bring speakers if you are all playing in the same room. Headsets cause much less confusion.
>CRT monitors dont lend to being dropped. Take Bubble wrap or use an LCD screen.
> LAN CARDS! Not all motherboards have them built in. Not much use having a PC without a NIC in LAN games.
>Allow at least one hour for setting up. Nothing works first time.
>Win98-WinXP on WonID lan games is a pain. Win98-win98 is ideal, if not, xp-xp. Do not allow windows ME pcs into the house. Just don't. It's morally wrong.

HTH!

technicaly, you can do v3 with out steam.

it will still require every one to have HL installed.

once this is done, I sugest having your NSP folder burned onto a CD and simply copy it over to each HL install.

This SHOULD work, but I would suggest that you have BlueNovember's idea waiting in line.

I suggest my idea simply b/c it should be faster then actualy installing NS2.0x on each machine


gl

Thank you for your help. Thats what I thought since the NS installer asked for the Steam files when I installed it.

And thank you for your advices with LAN parties, but I dont think we're going to have many problems since this is the 6th time we do it We do it every summer after exams.

Thansal, I tried what you said in my computer. I copied the nsp folder in HL. Then run HL as normal (without using steam). But when I try to run a server, the game crashes and goes back to desktop. I'll try again with all the tricks I can because, as you, I think it should work. Oh, btw, no need to burn it to a CD, we'll be in a LAN, remember

In any case, I'll look for an older version of NS in case we cannot play the last beta.

I alse have read about an "offline Steam" or something like that in some forums. It seems like a cracked Steam that do not needs to connect to internet. I'll check that also.

Any more ideas are welcome! Thanks!

F*u*c*k Steam!! It works!! I reinstalled NS, then just copied nsp folder into HL folder, run a LAN server... and it works. Now the mod is called nsp instead of ns but thats all. The problem is that I have no way of knowing if other players doing the same can connect to the server... but it looks good so I think it will work.

Side Notes:

1) This will only really work for LANs (as there are about 5 WON 3.0 servers)

2) There might be unforsean consequences.

What I ment is (2) is that thaere are good posibilities that pieces of the game could very well break. There has been alot of optimisation for Steam, and I don't know how Steam and WON differ (however it is large enugh that NS originaly barely ran on steam, where as it now runs perfectly fine).


so, be forewarned (and ready to boot up UT2K4) NS Might not work.