As of Archon v1.2.0, it is now possible to import your own, custom map rotations. These custom rotations are more detailed than any other. A couple of things that the system is capable of:
- Automatically queue maps (obviously)
- Select specified maps based on a set of (optional) conditions:
- When the numbers of players online is within a specified range
- Only at specified times of day
- Only after a specified amount of other maps were queued
- Edit the rotation at any time without having to restart the server
This is what you'll be using to manage your custom rotation. The command itself is pretty simple:
r!rotation- Shows the status of the module and the syntax to all of these subcommandsr!rotation upload- Upload a new custom rotationr!rotation enable- Enable the custom rotationr!rotation disable- Disable custom rotationr!rotation download- Download your custom rotation
However, custom rotations have to be written in a specific format, which gets a bit more complicated...
Custom rotations have to be written in JSON. Furthermore, the .json extension is the only extension the bot will accept.
📦The root tag
┣ 📜int map_cooldown: Global cooldown of how many other maps before a map can be queued again. Defaults to 1.
┗ 📂maps: An array of maps and/or pools
┣ 📜The name of the map
┣ 📦A map
┃ ┣ 📜str name: The name of the map
┃ ┣ 📜int weight: The weight applied to this map when selecting a map. Defaults to 1.
┃ ┗ 📦conditions: A list of conditions
┃ ┣ 📦players: How many players should be online
┃ ┃ ┣ 📜int min: The minimum amount. Defaults to 0.
┃ ┃ ┗ 📜int max: The maximum amount. Defaults to 100.
┃ ┣ 📦time: What time of the day it should be
┃ ┃ ┣ 📜int min: The minimum time, formatted as HH:MM. Defaults to 00:00.
┃ ┃ ┣ 📜int max: The maximum time, formatted as HH:MM. Defaults to 24:00.
┃ ┃ ┗ 📜str timezone: The timezone that is used. Can be a city as well. Defaults to UTC.
┃ ┗ 📜int cooldown: Cooldown overwrite of how many other maps before this map can be queued again.
┣ 📂An array of maps and/or more pools
┗ 📦A pool of maps and/or more pools
┣ 📂pool: An array of maps and/or more pools
┃ ┗ ...
┣ 📜int weight: The weight applied to this pool when selecting a map. Defaults to 1.
┗ 📦conditions: A list of conditions
┣ 📦players: How many players should be online
┃ ┣ 📜int min: The minimum amount. Defaults to 0.
┃ ┗ 📜int max: The maximum amount. Defaults to 100.
┣ 📦time: What time of the day it should be
┃ ┣ 📜int min: The minimum time, formatted as HH:MM. Defaults to 00:00.
┃ ┣ 📜int max: The maximum time, formatted as HH:MM. Defaults to 24:00.
┃ ┗ 📜str timezone: The timezone that is used. Can be a city as well. Defaults to UTC.
┗ 📜int cooldown: Cooldown overwrite of how many other maps before a map from this pool can be queued again.
Simply put, a custom rotation is built out of a pool of maps and/or more pools. You can have as many pools as you want, and you can mention the same map several times throughout your custom rotation.
The below three map objects are all equivelant.
"Kokan Skirmish v1"{
"name": "Kokan Skirmish v1"
}{
"pool": [
{
"name": "Kokan Skirmish v1",
"weight": 1,
"conditions": {}
}
],
"weight": 1,
"conditions": {}
}The same can be said about these two pool objects.
[
"Chora RAAS v1",
"Chora RAAS v2"
]{
"pool": [
"Chora RAAS v1",
"Chora RAAS v2"
]
}Take a look at the below example. In rotation we have Belaya, Fallujah and Gorodok.
{
"maps": [
"Belaya RAAS v1",
{
"name": "Fallujah RAAS v1",
"weight": 4
},
{
"pool": [
"Gorodok RAAS v1",
"Gorodok RAAS v2",
],
"weight": 5
}
]
}Selecting a map is approached pool by pool. The first pool that will be looked at is the maps array. Inside there, we see three different objects:
- Name: Belaya, Weight: 1
- Name: Fallujah, Weight: 4
- Another pool, Weight: 5
This results in a total weight of 10. The chance of a map or pool being picked is its weight divided by the total weight. So in this case, Belaya has a 1/10 = 10% chance, and Fallujah 4/10 = 40%. The other pool has a 50% chance of being chosen.
Lets pretend like that pool was chosen. Inside the pool we see two layers of Gorodok, each with a weight of 1. So both maps have a 50% chance of being chosen, after that initial 50% required to select something from this pool. 50% multiplied by 50% is 25%. This results in the following outcome:
- Name: Belaya, Chance: 10%
- Name: Fallujah, Chance: 40%
- Name: Gorodok v1, Chance: 25%
- Name: Gorodok v2, Chance: 25%
Now, I'm taking the same structure as above but rearranging it a bit and adding some extra conditions. Take a look.
{
"maps": [
{
"pool": [
"Gorodok RAAS v1",
{
"name": "Gorodok Skirmish v1",
"conditions": {
"players": {
"max": 20
}
}
}
],
"conditions": {
"players": {
"max": 80
}
}
},
{
"name": "Belaya RAAS v1",
"conditions": {
"time": {
"min": "14:00"
}
}
},
{
"name": "Fallujah RAAS v1",
"conditions": {
"time": {
"max": "17:00"
},
"players": {
"min": 70
}
}
}
]
}First in the pool we see another pool. This pool has a condition that requires a maximum of 80 players online. If that condition is not met no map from this pool will be queued for the next round. Instead, one of the other maps that meet their requirements will be queued. But for now let's pretend that this condition is met. In that case, we have two layers of Gorodok: RAAS and Skirmish. However, Skirmish has a condition that only allows a max of 20 players. So if we have 40 players online, only RAAS can be chosen from that pool.
If a pool is selected, but then no item in that pool has its conditions met, that pool is simply ignored, and it will look for other maps and pools. In the below example, normally it would pick a layer of Gorodok, but if the playercount is below 50 Belaya will be chosen.
{
"maps": [
{
"pool": [
{
"name": "Gorodok RAAS v1",
"conditions": {
"players": {
"min": 50
}
}
},
{
"name": "Gorodok RAAS v2",
"conditions": {
"players": {
"min": 60
}
}
}
],
"weight": 99999
},
{
"name": "Belaya RAAS v1",
"conditions": {
"time": {
"min": "14:00"
}
}
}
]
}However, if the time is below 2 PM, the conditions applied to Belaya won't be met either. In that case there is no other map or pool to fall back to, and no map will be queued by RCON. Note that when a map invalidates after it was first queued and there is no other map to fall back to that map will still remain queued.
The module keeps track of how many rounds ago a map was last played. This can be used to ensure the same map is not queued too soon after it is first queued. But unlike the other two conditions, this one can be applied in two different ways.
Since the tool can only detect match ends by map change, there has to be a global cooldown of at least 1, which is the default value. You can adjust this value however, by adding the map_cooldown key directly to the root tag, as can be seen in the below example.
Now let's talk about its behavior a little bit more. There are 4 maps are in the rotation. The cooldown completely ignores pools and duplicate maps, meaning that if Gorodok RAAS v1 has a cooldown, Gorodok RAAS v2 can still be selected. Also, if I'd have Gorodok RAAS v1 elsewhere in my custom rotation as well, that still couldn't be selected if it was still under cooldown.
{
"map_cooldown": 3,
"maps": [
[
"Gorodok RAAS v1",
"Gorodok RAAS v2"
],
"Belaya RAAS v1",
"Fallujah RAAS v1"
]
}I still haven't mentioned the second method to apply this condition, which is similar to all other conditions. I like to call this one the "cooldown overwrite", as it is not required but always overwrites the global cooldown when defined. In the next example we can see we have a global cooldown of 3, but for the final map we have a cooldown of 2 for Gorodok v1 and a cooldown of 1 for v2.
{
"map_cooldown": 3,
"maps": [
{
"pool": [
"Gorodok RAAS v1",
{
"name": "Gorodok RAAS v2",
"conditions": {
"cooldown": 1
}
}
],
"conditions": {
"cooldown": 2
}
},
"Belaya RAAS v1",
"Fallujah RAAS v1"
]
}Using this system, maps used for server seeding can be automatically queued. Below is an example of how that could work. This is just a small rotation. Especially for larger rotations it is recommended to mess around with cooldowns as well.
{
"map_cooldown": 2,
"maps": [
{
"pool": [
"Gorodok Skirmish v1",
"Kokan Skirmish v1",
"Fools Road Skirmish v1"
],
"conditions": {
"players": {
"max": 20
}
}
},
{
"pool": [
"Gorodok RAAS v1",
"Belaya RAAS v1",
"Fallujah RAAS v1"
],
"conditions": {
"players": {
"min": 21
}
}
}
]
}