Mutator against map change spam

[Silv]

This is a server-side mutator that increases the time between map changes. It works via the existing cooldown mechanism for map related votes (restart/change/surrender) per team. The mutator adds an initial team cooldown of 15 minutes upon match start and after a member of a team has proposed a map related vote there is another 15 minutes cooldown. Because the existing code works per team it's still possible to get two map change votes in quick succession, but people can't just keep spamming until a vote passes.

There is a pity mechanism for teams that are losing. When a building is destroyed and map related votes are on cooldown for more than 3 minutes the cooldown is reduced to 3 minutes.

Note that there's also an already existing personal map related vote cooldown which prevents individual players from proposing a map change more than once per minute. This mutator doesn't change that mechanism. When testing this mutator it's easy to confuse the personal cooldown with the team cooldown, the personal cooldown is checked first and results in a green text whereas the team cooldown shows up as a message near the center of the screen.

Installation

The mutator is supplied in source form. Extract the "AntiMapChangeSpam" folder to the "Development/Src" folder of a Renegade X SDK installation. Add "+ModEditPackages=AntiMapChangeSpam" to the "[UnrealEd.EditorEngine]" section of "UDKGame/Config/DefaultEngineUDK.ini". Then run compile.bat. The mutator can be added to a server like any other mutator.

Configuration

The mutator can be configured by creating a configuration file named "UDKAntiMapChangeSpamMutator.ini" with contents (these are the defaults):

[AntiMapChangeSpam.AntiMapChangeSpamMutator]
; Time between successive map related votes, per team.
MapVoteCooldownSeconds=900
; Time since match start before the first map related vote for a team can be made.
InitialMapVoteCooldownSeconds=900
; Upper limit of how long the map related vote cooldown can be after a
; building of the team is destroyed.
MaxVoteCooldownAfterBuildingDestructionSeconds=180

Note that setting a value to 0 is equivalent to setting it to the default. Use a value of 1 to effectively disable a mechanism.

AntiMapChangeSpam.zip

[NodSaibot]

Great job using the serverside only flag in upkg, this is a perfect use case for it.

[Silv]

And thanks for the tutorial for making server-side mutators. Otherwise I wouldn't even have known I could.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Silv