The purpose of MapMixer is to give you extended control over your game experience. The following is a brief outline of things you need to understand.
MapMixer allows you to take control of many of the aspects of the game and it does this using Global Settings and Map Specific Settings.
Global Settings enable you to change the default characteristics of every map installed.
Map Specific Settings enable you to customise every map in a user created map list.
The first thing to decide when customising MapMixer is what settings you will change globally and which ones you will leave for specific map lists.
Since you can change Game Rules, Mutators and Player Counts in both ways, you might find it useful to apply those settings globally which you feel you will most likely want as static. For example, you may decide that a certain map always requires the Low Grav mutator or that a map's recommended player counts need to be altered depending on the game type
When designing a Custom Map list, you will have complete control over these settings but it would be a pain to always have to specify one component when you could just do it globally.
A lot of the settings in MapMixer are applied in a certain order, giving each a priority over the other. For example, you might decide that globally a map always has the InstaGib mutator but you may not want it enabled for that map in a special map list you create. In this case the mutator settings in the Custom Map List override the Global Settings. In this case you would set the InstaGib mutator as Disabled for this map in the map list. This is a simple example of how it is important to know which order settings are applied, so you can override them when needed.
The following lists the order that MapMixer applies Game Rules, Mutators and Player Counts. The order indicates priority, with the last item listed as having the greatest priority.
(You may wish to refer back to the following information, once you have discovered how they individually work.)
Games Rules
- Game rules chosen from the Game Menu (Play Menu)
- Game rules used in a Game Rules List (Optional)
- Global rules for a specific map of a specific game type (Optional)
- Game Rules specified for a map in a Custom Map List (Optional)
Mutators
Player Counts
- Mutators chosen from the Game Menu (Play Menu)
- Custom Mutator List or Game Type Mutator List (Optional)
- Global Mutators for a specific map of a specific game type (Optional)
- Mutators specified for a map in a Custom Map List (Optional)
- Global Player Counts for a map of a particular game type (Optional)
- Map Player Counts specified for a map in a Custom Map List (Optional)
The main purpose of MapMixer is to take control of the options that are used to invoke maps. Since MapMixer is a mutator, it does not exist in a session until the first map is started. This means that it doesn't get full control until the second map because this map will be invoked by MapMixer and it can thus apply all the options it needs to. Therefore the first map needs to be setup by the user.
To get round this it is advised to use the Reload First Map in Map List option, so when you start the session, MapMixer will ignore the first map you chose to start the game with and reload the first map as specified in the map list. Depending on the First Map option, this may or may not be the map that you started the game with.