The knockout stages of the Unreal Tournament 2004 elimination tournament have taken place and we now have four finalists to battle it out on Sunday!

Congratulations to:

• Vardy
• Fuzz
• Jobabob
• Draken

The initial knockout stages have taken place, after some technical problems, and we're now down to four players who will take part in the final at 12noon on Sunday which will see epic.LAN and LanOps members in a sword-equipped battle with suicidal ninja robots!

Your Plain Sight finalists are:

• Winbar
• Storm Seeker
• Thorn0
• Deltaphoenix

It's now officially mere hours until epic.FOUR, before you pack away your PC please don't forget to print off the booking barcode.

We'd like as many people as possible to print off their barcode enabled ticket, to ensure checkin happens smoothly and quickly.

If you go to My Bookings, find your epic.FOUR ticket and select "Print Booking".

Some of you were a little confused by the map post earlier in the week which detailed the site layout, so we've clarified it using this handy Google Map which marks on the key event features within the Uttoxeter Racecourse site, how to get from the main gate to our event entrance (useful if you haven't been before!) and a number of other useful local places.

Some of you will soon be packing up for epic.FOUR (the staff have already started!) and as many of our past participants will testify, it's a pain when you turn up to an event and you've either forgotten a major part of your PC setup, like your mouse, or even left all of your clothes behind (not mentioning any names...).

So being kind, helpful types here at epic.LAN, we've put together some advice and a checklist of things you need, to make sure you don't forget anything for the event and also on how to Survive the LAN Party when you have arrived for those new to LAN gaming events.

PC/Games Preparation

Please also remember to ensure that your PC is fully up to date and virus scanned before you leave. Also make sure that all of your games are up to date, particularly those running via Steam. We do have a network connection at the event, but it won't cope with everybody arriving and patching on the first night, so please update as much as possible beforehand.

If you do have to make any major updates/patches at the event, then do remember to check on our new FTP which will be running throughout the LAN. If there's something you need that isn't already on the FTP and it may be of use to other participants, such as a particular patch or map-pack, then let a member of the team know, so they can put it on the FTP for others to share and save the bandwidth.

One of the latest developments to our events was the Big Screen. This web-based application allows us to update event information on our projectors and other devices around the building quickly as well as allowing for the display of dynamic information such as game server live queries.

After listening to feedback from previous events, participants have been looking for ways to communicate their messages to others such as free slots in a game (what happened to old fashioned LAN shouting?). So we've added a new feature to the Big Screen app which allows people to post messages to slides via Twitter using a set hashtag for each event. The application will then monitor those hashtags and display the messages (with some filtering options to limit abuse).

Anybody can view the messages using either the Big Screens, or because the system is web based, you can open your own local copy of the screen on your PC, laptop, phone, netbook etc. You will need a registered Twitter account to post messages to the screen, and avid Twitter users can of course use tools such as TweetDeck to monitor the hashtags locally too.

One of the highlights of the epic.LAN events is our Pub Quiz. By far the biggest 'tournament' of our events, the Saturday night regular feature in our timetable sees the majority of participants take part in a couple of hours of mental activity with one or two beers, giving a welcome break from all of the gaming!

The quiz takes place at 8pm in the main hall and is open to teams of up to 5 players. Each participant pays just £1 to take part and all of the money goes to the winning teams.

We can now confirm the following rounds for the epic.FOUR quiz:

• General Knowledge
• Film & TV News
• Gaming News
• TV Themes
• Current Affairs
• Gaming Themes
• Music
• Gaming Phrases
• And 3 super-secret bonus rounds!

Then after the quiz, it's our ultimate test of a real gamer, the boat race!

If you haven't yet played the fantastic indie title, Plain Sight, then you can win a copy in our epic.LAN Plain Sight Giveaway.

Plain Sight will be featuring as one of our fun tournaments at epic.FOUR next weekend (29th July - 1st August) and if you don't already have a copy, or you want to win one for your friends, then you can join in our free competition to win one in time to play in the epic.FOUR tournament.

All you have to do to enter is answer a couple of simple questions about the game correctly, we'll then pick out the winners at 10pm on the Thursday at epic.FOUR. You don't have to be at the LAN to win, but it would be much better if you are!

There are a number of minor changes to the site layout from our last LAN ready for epic.FOUR detailed below:

• Parking - Please ensure that you park beyond the edge of the Grandstand Building, towards the Railway Bar (Sleeping Hall). There is another event taking place which will be using the hard-standing area directly in front of the grandstand.
• Breakfast Catering - We are using a new breakfast supplier this event after feedback from the past event. These will be serving from a temporary unit outside the gaming hall entrance so you can pick up some breakfast meat on your way from the sleeping hall to your seat.
• Camping - Please ensure that you set up your tents to the left of the roadway in the centre-course area as the area on the right is being used by another event.

You can view the full site plan here, full details will be on the intranet at the event and if you have any questions, you can ask any member of the team for assistance.

The epic.FOUR seating plan will be locked down at 10pm on Monday 26th July to allow us to finalise the event layout. From this time, only new bookings will be able to select an available seat, existing participants will not be able to move.

Please bear in mind that after the lockdown, we may consolidate seating so that only the minimal number of rows are set up for the event. This process may involve "defragmentation" of some seating arrangements. If this happens, we will ensure that groups with the same clan-tag are kept sat together as they are currently and we will only do this if necessary. At this time, we only envisage rows A&B being affected, depending on the number of last-minute bookings between now and the event.

While we do operate a self-service seating plan, we do always reserve the right to rearrange as required for the event.