Early registration for the event will be available online at www.fragapalooza.com (this website) until a posted date (may vary year by year for each event, check the current event news for the exact date). Early registration will have an Early Bird cost for the 4 day event, and come with benefits besides a reduced price, such as early bird seat reservation. However, after the mentioned deadline, the registration fee will increase. Although online registration is not required, as you can also pay at the door, it is highly recommended as space is limited and only PAID participants will be guaranteed a seat.  Paid participants will also be able to reserve a seat in our venue ahead of time.

Payment at the Registration Check-In on Thursday morning is CASH ONLY 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:

• Electronic Fund Transfer
• Drop Off Locations
• PayPal

Once we have received and processed your payment for the event, your registration will be complete and you will be able to select and reserve your seat based upon a top down view of our event layout.

Bring

• Computer system (Case, Console)
• Monitor
• Mouse and Mousepad
• Joysticks/Trackballs
• Keyboard
• Headphones!
• Powerbar/Surge Protector
• 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!

Don't Bring

• Uninterruptable Power Supply: UPSs draw an increased amount of power that puts excessive strain on our power setup.
• Speakers: Speakers are not allowed at our event due to the potential for excessive noise pollution within the venue, and associated power consumption issues.
• Refrigerators, House Fans, and Lamps etc.: Items of convenience and luxury that draw significant amounts of power are not permitted.

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 games 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.

Are you a bit competitive? Think you got some skills in your favorite games? Or do you just want have fun and see how far you get? Our official tournaments are open to all participants of any skill. Tournaments run during the event starting the Friday afternoon and finishing up no later than Sunday morning.

Is your favorite game not a part of the official tournaments? We will help you run a tournament of your own in whatever game you want. Fragapalooza staff will provide you with a platform to announce your tournament and help you get as much participation as possible. You will have use of our PA system and advice from our tournament staff. Just be aware that we won’t have the manpower to run it for you or the resources to provide prizing.

Among the FP Staff 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? :)

Fragapalooza has had an excellent track record regarding issues of missing hardware. We fully intend to continue our efforts in striving to maintain 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 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 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 check out our Volunteers section regarding the details of volunteering at our event. Their emails can be found on the contacts page.

The gigabit network 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.