OK, I get the Quick Session philosophy, but I still want a way to pick the first map that comes up from an Advanced Session when I start it so I don't have to wait for a map to load and then select another. The reason I don't use Quick Session is because I like to have all my maps available and I tend to randomly decide what to play next while the scoreboard is still displayed. Having to go back through Quick Session and change settings again just for the next map seems a little counter-productive for a "quick" setting, don't you think? With Advanced, I always have my bot ratio set up as I like, my mutator list applies, game rules apply, etc, and I can browse all the maps from the client menu ingame. The only thing missing is a pregame map selector for Advanced, from my perspective.
I guess from my point of view, having your Session Map List shuffled and picking the first map, are two somewhat mutually exclusive concepts, ie if I choose to have my Session Map List shuffled, I dont' want to know what the next map will be - even the first map. However, that's just my interpretation.
There are some MapMixer console commands that may help you out with what you are trying to achieve.
It actually sounds like you should be using the Manual Switch method combined with the "Auto Create Map List" option, available in the Advanced Session Menu. That way you create a list of Map Sources (in your case these will be entire gametypes) that will be available and manually switch between them in-game using the Client Menu. When using Manual Source Switching, a drop-down-list will be available in the Maps Tab in the Client Menu that allows you to switch between Map Sources (or gametypes in your case). Using this method means that you are utilising the Advanced Session Lists to determine the parameters of each match in your session.
Often people don't realise the broader concepts that have to be taken into account with designing mods for mutliplayer games such as UT3. The Server-Client relationship must be taken into account from the very beginning (as it is with MapMixer). This in itself imposes certain restrictions on the way things are accomplished. For example, not every person playing in the game will be playing locally on the machine that is running the game - this means that they won't have automatic access to all the gametypes, maps, mutators and factions etc, which are available on the server. This means that all that information needs to be replicated to the Clients on-demand when they need them. This is the core reason why, for the moment, the Quick Session Menu is only available on the local host that runs the game, whereas the MapMixer Session Map List *is* replicated to MapMixer Clients and available to priviledged users (ie admins). I'm just mentioning all this because this whole concept often places restrictions on the way you do things - or means you have to do extra work in order to support certain activities. So it's quite important and the base reason why multiplayer functionality can almost never, and should never be, an afterthought when designing mods for UT3.
And about the password, no I know the difference between game and admin passwords (and I love the auto-admin feature by the way), but my friend has to actually join from the console with MapMixer because of this problem. From the Friends List, when he clicks Follow Player on me, it tells him he needs a password and it never lets him enter it (the game password). Once he joins the game (via 'join <ServerIP>?password=<GamePassword>'), he can then auto-admin just fine and choose maps from the client list, etc. But Follow Player doesn't seem to work from MapMixer, yet it does from the main UT3 menu.
These are, of course, minor complaints at the end of the day. Very very minor considering all the extra features and how useful they are
Yup, I know what you're getting at but you have to realise that the whole process of connecting to a game is something that is not handled by MapMixer. In fact MapMixer has two basic features it brings to the game.
- Setting up the next match URL and passing it to a UT3 function that launches this match, and
- In-game features such as Client Menu, Session Map List Replication and Player Count Management, etc...
In the first step, MapMixer is simply compiling the URL that will launch the game. That's why it's always a first step, when having problems, to look at the Launch.log file and see what URL parameters the match was launched with.
In the second step, MapMixer only enters context in a match via the Mutator interface.
It is entirely a function of the Game Engine that provides the facility for a client machine to connect to a server. This means that MapMixer takes no part in the connection to a server - it only exists in-game when the gametypes' InitGame() function invokes the mutators supplied on the game url. This is why you will always see "MapMixer.MapMixer' specified in the mutators section of the URL.
The "GamePassword" option is used by the Engine.AccessControl class, and while I don't use the function myself. I believe you can set the value for it in the UTGame.ini file in the [Engine.AccessControl] options.
Most of the time you will just leave the GamePassword option blank in the Server Admin List for MapMixer - unless of course you want to deny access to people joining your server that don't have the password.
Hope that makes sense.