TO2 Overview

TO2 is an updated version of Team Objective. This mode is intended to give much greater control to map designers through Kismet, while also being easier to work with, and even to allow for greater extendability by mod teams (and by ourselves).

Map-steered gameplay

There are several Kismet nodes that allow Kismet to control TO2. You can manually award victory to a team, change a team's score, change individual players' scores, change the team that wins when time runs out, and so forth.

Modularity

TO2 is a modular game mode. Additional code functionality is provided not by opaque, unalterable code embedded in the game mode, but by Mutators and other new Actors which can be placed directly into levels, have several properties that can be edited within the editor, and have extensive Kismet interaction.

Mutators

Mutators are an old idea from Unreal Tournament, but we've transformed the concept somewhat to use them to provide extra, modular functionality to TO2 maps.

A mutator in TO2 is an actor that lives on the server. Each mutator has the ability to add some sort of extra functionality to your map. You can place mutators in your level as you do any actor, then change their properties to modify their behaviour. You can then activate/deactivate your mutators on-the-fly through Kismet, or create a set of auto-initialized mutators in your MapInfo.

Mutators can provide functionality including

• Automatic tracking of kill targets (e.g. for an objective like the peasant killing one in Stoneshill)
• VIP handling (e.g. for king kill objectives)
• Customization of the way teams work, including overriding the "Attacking" and "Defending" labels, or skipping the team select screen altogether and forcing players to spawn as Mason or Agatha for co-op maps
• Customization of the way scoring works
• Tracking a "special" type of score for each individual player that is separate from their score in the scoreboard; you could, for instance, use this to track "Gold" or "Peasant Kills" or some other stat you want to make up. This number can be increased when the player gets a kill or an assist, or you can just control it manually through Kismet.

Future Mutators

• Tickets/resources tracking
• Spawn blocking / lives
• Pawn forced customizing

Other Actors and Additional New Functionality

Among things:

• You can now create new AOCFamilyInfos and place them directly in your levels. An AOCFamilyInfo is an actor that defines the differences between player classes (Archer, MAA, Vanguard, Knight, King, ...), such as their weapon selection, health, speed, and so forth. You can spawn bots that use your custom AOCFamilyInfo, or override players' classes so that players spawn with your new class (and see the new weapon selection in the loadout screen). No code involvement necessary.
• You can disable automatic scoring handling and handle it all yourself through Kismet, without the use of a mutator if you choose.
• You can manually set the objective texts.
• You can set which team will win when time runs out
• There's a new HUD Marker class that can be attached to pawns
• An actor (to go along with the "special score tracking" mutator, but can be used independently and driven off player Score) that lets you set up "purchases"; fires off a Kismet event when a purchase completes
• A node to switch individual weapons (and do it properly, without totally respawning a player's pawn)

Existing actors

A number of existing Chivalry actors that are typically interacted with via Kismet should slot into TO2 just fine. These include Capture Volumes, the Signal Fire, etc.; just bear in mind that the old Team Objective sequence actions do nothing in TO2; many of the events tied to TO objectives will still work, though. More information on which work and which don't is to come.