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documentation: using ALP at your LAN Party
documentation: seating map
documentation: configuring the GD library
documentation: setting up ALP satellites
installation help
post installation help [faq]
Q: why the hell would i need your software to help me run my party?
A: ah yes, our software. well, after all these gamers show up to your lan party, it will be pandemonium. even if things are running smoothly, you'll still have pandemonium. the greatest weakness lan parties have is lack of communication. that's where our software comes in. having a centralized medium for communicating schedules, announcements, tournaments, etc is essential to a non-pandemonius lan. set our software up on the network. give gamers the ip to your web server, and away you go! in the words of the famous, talented, and ingenious food product inventor Ron Popeil, "Set it and Forget it!".
Q: what the hell kind of tournaments can your software coordinate?
A: currently our software supports single elimination, single elimination free for all, consolation, double elimination, and round robin tournaments with virtually unlimited teams and virtually unlimited players.
Q: what the hell do i need to run your software?
A: basically, you'll need a webserver (apache is preferred) running PHP and MySQL. those are all free downloads, so get them again to make sure you have the newest versions. you'll need to set up the server on the network so that it has a static ip (either by specifying the ip in the network settings, or having a very long lease time on your dhcp server) to ensure that gamers will be able to reach the server at the same place throughout the party. then you'll go through a series of steps to set up the software. successful completion of setup yields you with a headache free lan ahead.
> apache web server (windows and linux versions)
> php web scripting language (windows and linux versions)
> mysql database server (windows and linux versions)
Q: what the hell can your software do?
A: check out the features page for a full summary on ALP and what it can do.
Q: why the hell doesn't this work with some sort of forum software?
A: we here at nerdclub felt that there is a happy medium of good communication at lan parties. we felt that integrating some sort of forum software into alp would take away from the lan party. you don't want people to become too busy with the intranet page that they don't get up, walk around, and socialize with some of the other people there. that's why a lan party is fun. you don't want them to talk on the intranet page when they're sitting two tables away. there is a shoutbox integrated into alp, and hopefully that is enough to satisfy opinion sharing from the gamers.
Q: i loaded up ALP, but i'm getting all these include errors! (oh hell)
A: you didn't run the install script. edit your _functions.php, then go to install/install.php and configure your database.
Q: why the hell am i getting "undefined index" or "undefined offset" errors?
A: due to ALP's current 'beta' status, some of the code is imperfect, but it does still work properly. your php installation currently has the error reporting higher than the default. go into your php.ini and edit the error_reporting variable to have the value E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE.
Q: what the hell kind of php.ini variables are required?
A: with version 0.97, magic_quotes_gpc is required. register_globals and short_open_tags are not.
Q: my seating map isn't working! what's going on?!?!?!
A: the seating map (for speed purposes) now utilizes the php GD library. in order to use the seating map, you must have the gd library configured properly. go here to read a blurb about how to do it.
Q: my schedule and/or gaming rig statistics aren't working... WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MY SERVER?!?!?!?!?
A: these scripts use the UNION MySQL syntax, which was introduced in MySQL 4+. you need to upgrade the version of MySQL on your server and it should work fine.
Q: i don't know why but my ALP still isn't working after reading through all this bullshit! what the hell!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?
A: you probably have an outdated version of PHP or MySQL. i strongly discourage using any sort of all-in-one-installer. they tend to be buggy and/or very outdated. the headaches you probably have from trying to use it have negated any sort of time convenience intended from that kind of thing.
