Branch vs branch tourneys?

[Erwin]

Has anyone here ever done a branch vs branch tournament via online
play? I'd like to set something like that up for an SSBB tourney, but
I'd like to see if anyone's tried it already so that I don't have to
reinvent the wheel. I think it would give kids a sense of community
pride and feeling of ownership of their library if they competed
against another branch. My biggest concern is the actual online setup
and broadband requirements for such a thing.

[Eli Neiburger]

Hey Erwin, we've done several branch vs. branch events and we've organized a national online smash brothers tournament for national gaming day for the past few years. It really gets the kids engaged, but it is indeed fraught with technical peril. We had 42 libraries registered for last year's national gaming day online smash tourney and probably a third of them couldn't actually participate due to network trouble. The bandwidth required isn't much; the bigger problem is that you need to basically have your Wii outside any firewalls or have all TCP and UDP ports natted through; which means you need to have a knowledgeable & helpful geek to make sure the network is properly configured to allow the Wiis to talk to each other. Also, if the connection is slow, the match will be slow, and if the connection drops for even a second, your match will quit.

So, the basic rule is to test the heck out of it in advance and consider a USB ethernet adapter to cut the wifi out of the troubleshooting equation. We also schedule practice matches throughout our season which runs July-December, so maybe we can do some online matches against your players too! Let me know if you'd like to talk further about this or test your connection; we've connected to a lot of different libraries and I think I've seen everything that can go wrong!

Good luck with your event!

-eli

Eli Neiburger
Associate Director for IT and Production
Ann Arbor District Library

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[Jenny Levine]

I'll just add that this year's National Gaming Day is Saturday, November 13, so reserve your meeting room now. We'll be posting preliminary information at http://ngd.ala.org starting next month.

Jenny

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Shifted Librarian
but wearing my ALA staff hat

[Erwin]

Thanks for the info, Eli. I guess it's a matter of testing, testing,
and more testing. Might take some time since our library system is in
the middle of unprecedented staffing changes and reduced hours, but I
think it's worth a shot to at least try branch vs branch after the
dust kind of settles. If/when we do get online matches going, I will
most certainly take you up on your offer of our players vs yours!

Erwin

On Mar 2, 12:30 pm, "Eli Neiburger" <neiburg...@aadl.org> wrote:
> Hey Erwin, we've done several branch vs. branch events and we've organized a national online smash brothers tournament for national gaming day for the past few years. It really gets the kids engaged, but it is indeed fraught with technical peril.  We had 42 libraries registered for last year's national gaming day online smash tourney and probably a third of them couldn't actually participate due to network trouble.  The bandwidth required isn't much; the bigger problem is that you need to basically have your Wii outside any firewalls or have all TCP and UDP ports natted through; which means you need to have a knowledgeable & helpful geek to make sure the network is properly configured to allow the Wiis to talk to each other.  Also, if the connection is slow, the match will be slow, and if the connection drops for even a second, your match will quit.
>

>  winmail.dat
> 5KViewDownload

>
> So, the basic rule is to test the heck out of it in advance and consider a USB ethernet adapter to cut the wifi out of the troubleshooting equation.  We also schedule practice matches throughout our season which runs July-December, so maybe we can do some online matches against your players too!  Let me know if you'd like to talk further about this or test your connection; we've connected to a lot of different libraries and I think I've seen everything that can go wrong!
>
> Good luck with your event!
>
> -eli
>
> Eli Neiburger
> Associate Director for IT and Production
> Ann Arbor District Library
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: libg...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Erwin
> Sent: Tue 3/2/2010 3:18 PM
> To: LibGaming
> Subject: {LibGaming} Branch vs branch tourneys?
>
> Has anyone here ever done a branch vs branch tournament via online
> play? I'd like to set something like that up for an SSBB tourney, but
> I'd like to see if anyone's tried it already so that I don't have to
> reinvent the wheel. I think it would give kids a sense of community
> pride and feeling of ownership of their library if they competed
> against another branch. My biggest concern is the actual online setup
> and broadband requirements for such a thing.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "LibGaming" group.
> To post to this group, send email to libg...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to libgaming+...@googlegroups.com.

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/libgaming?hl=en.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -