ArenaMaster, Team ArenaMaster in UT2Vote

ArenaMaster and Team ArenaMaster is a custom gametype modification written by the guys at the A!M clan. (referring here to TAM version 2.40 and UT2Vote v4.9)

The team version is sort of a cross between Team Deathmatch and Last Man Standing, with some UT Comp customization thrown in. You start with all weapons and shield, and your team attempts to have the last guy alive, which wins the round. Something like 10 rounds wins the match. They've tweaked it so that balance is key and it's hard to run away with a match -- the more rounds you win, the less health and shield you spawn with, making it tough to finish off the opponent.

Anyway, it's a fun gametype, and I've got it up and running in UT2Vote, with the exception of some sort of confilct between UT2Vote and the mod's round time limit feature (everything else seems to work fine).

You can set a time-limit to the round, after which players receive a specified amount of damage at specified intervals. This creates a tense incentive to find and finish off the opponent, and goes a long way toward keeping games shorter. It is this feature which I cannot get to work right.

What happens is one of the following:
1. If I specify a time-limit in the UT2Vote gamestring, I get the damage at the prescribed time. However, the round will not change to the next round, even if one team has already won. So we're stuck with dead guys spectating, and live guys running around with nothing to do but eventually take damage...
2. If I remove the time-limit command from the string in UT2Vote entirely, the mod inserts a 20-minute round time-limit, which is its maximum (even though the default is 2 mins., the number I want).
3. If I call up the mod's menu in-game ("menu3spn" in console), specify 2 minutes as round time, tell it to restart level with that setting, UT2Vote steps in and does that double-restart with server disconnect, enforcing the default game settings for the mod, thus erasing the time I just put in.
4. If I set the time-limit in the UT2Vote gamestring to zero, the rounds change fine. BUT, now there's never any damage, because there's effectively no round time-limit.

I've been doing #4, since that way the mod is 95% working right, and playable. But I'd like to find some way to get UT2Vote and the mod to harmonize about who controls the round time.

You can download ArenaMaster here.
Their forums with some R&D discussion are here.
Some discussion and see it played on these guys' server.

Thanks in advance for any help, I appreciate it,
Da Kril

Yay, thanks so much

Yay! Thanks so much, you guys. My clanmates will be thrilled to get this thing fixed up and running right.

Er, at the risk of giving you too much to solve at one sitting, I've just realized there is another incompatibility between AM/TAM and UT2Vote v4.9.

Running the game type with UT2Vote, you can respawn if you are killed in a map by anything other than a person. For example, if you die from falling damage, or an elevator smashes you, or you jump into lava, fall off the map — you can respawn from all of these, and you come back with the health you had at the start of the round. This creates an unfair advantage for someone low on health, making it desirable to suicide in order to get back health points.

Running the game type without UT2Vote, dead is dead. There is no respawning in a round, ever.

(I would've mentioned this earlier, but did not realize it was a bug. It kinda made sense that you'd have to be eliminated by a person. Whoops.)

Thanks again for your help,
Da Kril

I am using 4 for max lives in AM, and 10 for max lives in TAM. However, I don't think these matter, as I've had other numbers in there, even zero, with the same results. I don't believe there's a corresponding parameter in the AM/TAM game type — they just use number of rounds. (I have no idea what I'm talking about, I assure you, but this may be the source of some of the confusion between AM/TAM and UT2Vote. Or I could be all stupid and wrong, too. Whichever comes first.)

All the stock game types are intact (edited a smidge, but all there). No game class is duplicated.

Hope this helps, and thanks for your time,
Da Kril

Imaginos is da man

Imaginos put me on the right track with his post.

DOH! There doesn't seem to actually be a bug between UT2Vote and AM/TAM. Just a certain critical setting that explains all the weird behavior.

(I could swear on my mother's eyes I'd already tried this, but...) Properly setting the 'maxlives=' parameter in the UT2Vote gamestring solved BOTH of the problems discussed in this thread. Maxlives MUST be set to '1' in both the AM and TAM gamestrings -- no other number will do.

Apparently, the rounds not ending is because UT2Vote thinks you have more lives if maxlives=0 or any number other than 1... and the odd thing where you suicide or die from falling damage, or from a lift, or lava, or jump off the map -- same thing. UT2Vote is granting you further lives based on this one key setting.

So, sorry for the confusion. However, I highly recommend you 3SPN A!M guys specify this critical setting in future read-mes and documentation. (I think I initially got maxlives=0 just from copying other UT2Vote gamestrings. And AM/TAM doesn't discuss it.)

Hope this helps folks,

Da Kril

OK, here is my working AM/TAM UT2Vote gamestring.

In the Team ArenaMaster example, Friendly Fire is enabled at 40% (.4), and Reverse Friendly Fire is turned on. This means if you shoot a teammate, the damage (at 40%) is inflicted on YOU. In the ArenaMaster example, the number of rounds has been changed from its default of 5 down to 3, simply because we found those matches lasting too long. (ex. 7 or 8 guys playing, 3 have won 3 rounds, 2 have won 2 rounds, 2 have won 1 round — you've played 15 rounds now and are still several rounds away from deciding the winner.)

Thanks everyone — sometimes it just helps to talk stuff out,
Da Kril

Note: Watch out for added spaces (forum bug) in that code. Do not simply copy/paste.