Despite how good you may believe you are online, it is difficult to flawlessly transition from online to LAN play without knowing how to do so. In this article, I will discuss the preparation required to achieve consistency in a LAN setting. This includes optimizing settings and making sure that your LAN setup mirrors your home setup as close as possible.


Physical Preparation

Preparation for LAN includes everything about your setup and your settings. When it comes to LAN, consistency is crucial. Most inexperienced players do not even realize how comfortable they are at home until they attend their first LAN. This is because most players do not realize that there are many variables that can change the appearance and feel of your game. Below I will outline some of the most important settings that you should have memorized (or written down) before attending a LAN. This way, you can be absolutely certain that your CS appearance at LAN will be just like your CS appearance at home.


Settings

Windows Settings
Anti-aliasing
Anisotropic filtering
Image settings
Vertical sync
Digital vibrance
Brightness
Contrast
Gamma
Monitor refresh rate
Mouse sensitivity

Most of these settings are crucial in replicating your Counter-Strike settings on another computer. However, some computers (and monitors) may have different values and ranges for brightness and gamma (as well as some other settings). Therefore, it’s important to discover how you prefer your settings – go into a server and see how dark the darkest spot of a map is and how bright the brightest spot of a map is in order to help gauge this. Also, be aware of what each of the settings do to your monitor as well as your game. Although I won’t go into detail about what each of these settings do and how they affect your game, a simple GotFrag search will answer most of your questions about these settings.


Steam Settings
Launch option commands
Sensitivity
Zoom_sensitivity_ratio
Brightness
Gamma
Resolution

When it comes to Counter-Strike, consistency is absolutely necessary. While some players may switch around a setting or two, most great players tend not to change their settings too often. The launch option commands in Steam are some of the most important, yet overlooked when it comes to attending a LAN. Also, even though all your settings may mirror your home settings exactly, the "feel" of LAN can be completely different – this is natural for most people attending their first tournament. I recommend gauging your sensitivity by how many turns you can do while dragging your mouse from one side of your mouse pad to the other. Make sure you do it before you go to the LAN, and then do it there as well! That way you will be able to get a much more accurate measurement of your sensitivity and you will know whether you need to lower or raise it slightly.