UT2003 provides a simple list of mutators for you to use in the current game. MapMixer allows for two extra ways of selecting mutators. You can still use the standard UT Mutator list but you may prefer to let MapMixer handle your Mutator selection.
The following two basic types of Mutator lists can be used in conjunction with each other.
Just like custom map lists, these provide a way of saving lists of custom mutator selections. Before you start a new game, you can select a pre-customised list of mutators to use from the MapMixer Configuration.
There is also customised mutator list available for each game type. Therefore, instead of manually selecting a specific Mutator List, you can tell Map Mixer to use a special list per game type.
Sometimes you may want a specific set of mutators for a map played in a particular game type. For example perhaps a certain map works best with the LowGrav mutator or one map really works well as an Arena map. Map Specific Mutators provide a way of customising mutators for each map in a game type, so each time it loads, it appears with your favourite mutators for this map.
MapMixer allows you to specify a "state" for each mutator. Possible states are:
Enabled
This means the mutator is present. This is the standard behaviour in UT2003 when you add a mutator to a match.Disabled
If you specify a mutator as disabled then it takes out that mutator if it was previously added (ie Enabled). This is useful when you consider that there is a serious of steps that MapMixer goes through to determine mutators for a match. So if a mutator was enabled in one step and then disabled in the next step then it does not appear for that match, unless there is another step in which the mutator is then enabled again.Random (%%)
This works the same as the Enable state, except that you specify a percentage probability that the mutator will be enabled at random. In the later case, this does not mean that the mutator is in the Disabled state.
For example, lets say that you just love playing Vampire mutator and you have it on all the time, either in the game menu or via a MapMixer custom mutator list. But perhaps there is one map where you think it messes up the balance of the game play. In this case you can have MapMixer Disable this mutator for a specific map if it was enabled either by selecting it in the game menu or via a custom mutator list.
MapMixer can apply mutators from a possibility of four steps, as follows (in this order):
1. MapMixer applies standard Game Menu Mutators
2. MapMixer applies Custom List Mutators (or Game Type Mutator lists)
3. MapMixer applies Map Mutators.
4. MapMixer applies Custom Map List Mutators.
Lets say that you have the Vampire mutator enabled in the Custom Mutator List you are currently using. The Vampire mutator can be disabled for a special map in step three by setting the mutator as disabled for that map.
You may also set a mutator to Random Enable mode, where the mutator will be randomly enabled for each match. Note that this is determined when each map is switched and there is no historical reference to the state of the mutator in the map list, so if you go back to that map in the list, you may or may not end up with a Randomly Enabled mutator. If the mutator is not randomly enabled then it is not disabled, it just does not appear, unless overridden by another process.
When
UT loads mutators, there is no way of knowing which order they will be added in, for
this reason, MapMixer may have problems disabling mutators on the
first map - this being the one that you chose from the game menu.
MapMixer will do it's best on the first map to enable/disable mutators and it might even work correctly but at present it can't be
guaranteed to disable all mutators on the first map: after then it can do its
job reliably. One good way to get
around this is to take out all mutators except MapMixer from the UT2003 Game
Menu and use MapMixer Custom Mutator Lists and Map Mutators. This method works
well.
Every mutator in UT2003 contains a hidden, optional Group Name. Only one mutator of a particular group can be enabled at once. This avoids such confusion as having two Arena mutators enabled at once: the authors of the arena mutators simply give them group names of "Arena" and UT2003 does the rest. MapMixer adheres to this procedure and if you try to enable two mutators of the same group then the new one gets activated and the old one gets deactivated. However, you can apply more than one "disabled" mutator of the same group in MapMixer.