What is Fragapalooza?
Location
Event
Location:
Venue
This year's Fragapalooza is going to be hosted in a new venue. The Northlands Sportex in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The Sportex is located at the following address:
Northlands Sportex
7300-116 Ave NW
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada, T5B 4X5
Telephone: (780) 471-7210
Toll Free: 1-888-800-7275
Fax: (780) 471-8195
Email: info@northlands.com
Website: http://www.northlands.com/
Accomodation
For those of you interested in a hotel room, There are a number of great hotels to choose from as the Sportex is located close to downtown Edmonton. As such, you can play late into the night with the assurance that a comfortable bed is only a short drive or walk away. Here is a link that shows Hotels in the area. Google Map Hotels . Make sure to make your reservation early as these rooms will definitely be in high demand.
Restaurants
Several restaurants can be found within the area, including:
Coliseum Steaks & Pizza Ltd
Hours: Monday to Friday from 10:00am to 11:00pm.
Saturdays,Sundays and holidays from 11:00am to 12:00pm.
Style: Pizza / SteakHouse.
For a complete listing of the restaurants that can be found within 2 km of the event, click here (http://www.edmontonplus.ca/search?type=grid&sort=rank-desc&flavor_id=2&lat=535559&long=-1136063&miles=.62&context=bars_restaurant).
Local Services
Within the facility itself, there is access to showers and there will be a "Tent City" area for participants that wish to stay at the venue.
Parking
The Sportex in its entirety has a capacity for over 6,000 vehicles, but be advised those in the immediate vicinity of the Sportex are usually in high demand and therefore limited. The cost for parking for the 4 days will be $12
Event
Date/Duration
This year’s Fragapalooza is going to be held over the weekend of August 7th to 10th. From the opening of registration at 9:00am on Thursday, the event will run non-stop until Sunday 6:00pm. This means that as a participant you can enter into the festivities at any time and participate for as long as you wish between these two times.
Registration/Cost/payment Methods
Early registration for the event will be available online at www.fragapalooza.com (this website) until June 31th. Early registration will only cost $80.00 for the 4 day event. However, after the mentioned deadline, the registration fee will be $90.00. Although online registration is not required, as you can also pay at the door, it is highly recommended as you will then be able to reserve a seat in our venue ahead of time, and the FP staff will be that much more prepared for your arrival.
Payment at the Registration Check-In on Thursday morning will require the use of cash as we will not have access to debit or credit card systems. For those of you who wish to confirm your registration online, in order to reserve a seat, we have a variety of payment options available which include:
-
- Check or Money Order to the following address:
Fragapalooza
P.O. Box #66097 – Heritage Postal Outlet
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
T6J6T4 - If you are in Edmonton you can make your payments at:
Memory Express
10187-43 Ave
(780)469-4616
(PLEASE NOTE: They will only accept Cash Payments)
-
Seat Reservation
Once the FP Staff has received and processed your payment, your registration will become “confirmed” and then through a login system on our website you will be able to personally select your seat based upon a top down view of our event layout.
Spectators
As Fragapalooza’s events are quite a significant sight and continue to grow every year, with that in mind there is no cost associated with spectator admission into the venue. Every year we have a multitude of spectators who come to our events either to simply take in the sight of such a unique experience or to cheer on their favorites in our official tournaments. As such, all are welcome to come and take part in our event.
The presence of spectators also requires an increased level of security at our event. Due to these concerns, spectators will not be permitted within the venue between the hours of 10:00pm and 9:00am.
Security
Fragapalooza has had an excellent track record in terms of issues regarding hardware, and as such we are striving to continue our efforts in maintaining an environment which is both enjoyable and secure. However, the most effective security system in the past has proven to be that which is carried out by each individual participant. By keeping an eye on both your hardware and that of your friends around you, you are contributing to an environment whereby the sheer number of people occupying the venue at any given time acts to dissuade individuals from theft.
Furthermore, the entrances to the event’s venue will be controlled 24 hours/day by hired Security staff with assistance from Fragapalooza volunteers. This will ensure that during certain periods of the weekend (10:00pm to 9:00am) there will be no equipment (monitors, cases, chairs) allowed to pass outside of the venue. The movement of hardware will also be controlled by an identification system linking your registration with only your monitor and system case that you bring to the event. Other security measures are currently under discussion and, in order to maintain their effectiveness, the information surrounding them will likely not be released until the event begins.
In a situation where you expect that your equipment might be mistaken for someone else’s, we recommend that you label any such items (eg. Chairs, keyboards, etc…) with your name and contact information. Also, it is generally an ideal practice to take lose equipment (Mice, Headphones, CD Cases) along with you in a backpack when leaving the venue for an extended period of time.
We will also have the services of the Edmonton Police patrolling in the venue throughout the duration of the event for added safety and security.
Volunteers
We are actively looking for enthusiastic and responsible volunteers for assistance in the administration of registration, tournaments, and general support. The perks of being a volunteer include early entry for setup, an official volunteer labeled event T-Shirt, and we will also be providing prizes for those who demonstrate exceptional dedication.
The requirements for becoming a volunteer include a willingness to work a minimum of 6 hours during the event, and that you must be 18 years of age or older. For further information, you can email Michael Hollands regarding the details of volunteering at our event. Their emails can be found on the contacts page.
Network/Power
The massive fibre-optic network that will be present at the event will be live from the moment the first participant steps through the door, and will be using a local DHCP Server to automatically distribute IP addresses to each of the systems on the network. The fully switched network will be designed to maximize bandwidth and minimize (or virtually eliminate) ping times.
Along with the live network, access points for power will be distributed before the first participant enters registration and will be awaiting your arrival. However, we do recommend that you bring your own powerbar, and a labeled extension cord in the case that a need for one should arise.
We do request that you attempt to limit the amount that you actively daisy-chain power off of neighbors. As although we are sure that we will have enough power to run our maximum capacity of computers, we would like to limit situations where participants may overload an individual circuit and cause a brief delay in the available gaming time for their section.
With that in mind, it is possible that a power issue may arise at some point in your section, so we recommend that in this situation you use your free time to take a break from the festivities and enjoy a meal with your friends while our FP Staff urgently act to resolve the issue.
Games
In response to a common question that the FP Staff are often asked, we would just like to state that there are no designated games for our event and as such you are welcome to play anything of interest to you while you are participating. Be it multiplayer Tetris, or the high flying Quake series, all that is required is that you can find another person in the event to join you in a game. There will be an IRC server for those who wish find players for any game and we will post any public servers on the Intranet at the event. The Fragapalooza Staff will not be providing any software at the event, and as such we recommend that you arrive with all of your games of interest installed and your system in stable and working condition.
Every year one of the great experiences at Fragapalooza is refreshing your game’s Local Area Network browser and seeing a sea of active servers, all of which you ping under 5ms to. In order to continue that tradition, we urge anyone who administrates their own game servers to bring them to the event for use in our LAN environment. We will have a designated “server farm” setup in a private area of the venue for those who wish to run their server machines along-side the official ones that are operated by Fragapalooza. In order to administrate your server during the event without having to repeatedly access the “server farm” we recommend that you install a form of remote access on your machine before the event (eg. Remote access, SSH, VNC, PCanywhere).
As mentioned above, Fragapalooza will be running official servers for some of the m:ore popular games that are going to be enjoyed at the event, yet it is unlikely that we will be able to run servers for all of the games that people are interested in playing. Thus we recommend that if you cannot find a server for the particular game that you are interested in, that you host a server on your own client, start scouting the event for interested parties with a server that is not presently active, or bring a server machine of your own to the event.
Tournaments
Fragapalooza will be running 3 official tournaments at the event, the specifics of which are going to be reserved until after we have hosted an online poll for participants. In order to participate in the tournaments you are required to be a paid participant at the event, and must register for the tournament at the event in person by the respective time noted under its associated rules.
Tournament matches will be played as per a schedule posted on our official internal webpage (www.fp.com) that will often be referred to as the “Intranet”. Tournament competition, unless designated otherwise, will take place on uniform tournament machines that will be setup in an area separate from the BYOC (bring your own computer) layout and network.
The tournament machines used for competition will be of uniform specifications, but as a competitor you are welcome to bring your own personal input equipment for use during official matches (eg. Mouse, keyboard, headphones, game configuration files, etc…).
Each year, there are often individuals who wish to run tournaments that may be outside of those encompassed by the official tournaments that are hosted. In these cases, participants are welcome to run their own tournament in the BYOC area, but must be aware that as they are unofficial, they will not be receiving any manpower or prizes from the FP Staff. These tournaments must be run completely upon the individual’s own initiative and resources.
Those who are interested in running an un-official tournament should prepare a complete ruleset including contact information and send it to Andrew Weidlich to be reviewed and posted on the event website. Andrew's email can be found on the contacts page.
Giveaways
Among the FP Staff’s favorite parts of the event are the prize giveaways that garner significant amounts of crowd interest and interaction. Each year we arrive at the event with a few new tricks up our sleeves in order to give every dedicated participant a chance to walk away with something. We plan on hosting prize giveaway sessions throughout the event, and traditionally reserve the most significant giveaways for the final day of activity. With random draws, crowd toss ups, and venue-wide challenges there are numerous opportunities for motivated individuals to earn some slick prizes.
As a sample of what is yet to come, who thinks that they could be the first person to race to the nearest 7-11 and pickup 8 Slurpees for the FP Staff? :)
Concession
What to bring
Computer system (case)
Monitor
Mouse and Mousepad
Joysticks/Trackballs
Keyboard
Headphones
Powerbar
Extension Cord
All software that you may require at the event, including games.
Comfortable chair (recommended but not required)
Changes of clothes and Toiletries
A kickass attitude in preparation for 4 days of non-stop gaming!
What not to bring
Speakers (are not allowed at our event due to the potential for excessive noise pollution within the venue, and associated power consumption issues.)
Refridgerators, House Fans, Lamps, coolers will not be allowed. You can keep your coolers in your hotel room or your car. (once again, due to power considerations these items will not be permitted.)
The Sportex will be runing the concession this year. You will be allowed outside food and drink but no deliveries will be accepted. You must meet the driver outside or pick up your food. You will not be allowed to bring in coolers. We negotiated hard to get the "no outside food and beverage" rule abolished so keeping your coolers in your cars.
American Travelers:
Our event is equally open to our neighbours to the south, and for their benefit we have compiled a few useful pieces of information:
Travel Considerations
Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 1.02265 CAD Cdn, thus the equivalent cost of pre-registering for the 4 day event is approximately $78.23 US.
Shuttle service to the Sportex & Suites is available from the Edmonton International Airport.
Temperature Conversions:
centigrade
= (fahrenheit - 32) * 5/9
fahrenheit
= centigrade * 9/5 + 32
For reference:
0.00 degC = 32.00 degF
5.00 degC = 41.00 degF
10.00 degC = 50.00 degF
15.00 degC = 59.00 degF
20.00 degC = 68.00 degF
Metric Conversions:
1 mile = 1.609344 km
