Configuration examples

Here you can find some particular server or client configuration examples, to enable particular gaming styles or smart tweaks to your configuration. About servers, you can create your own cfg files mixing these examples with the standard configuration you can find in Servers#Server config example.

Remember! Your own map rotation script can be used to change A LOT of things between matches! Not only map, but also fraglimit, timelimit, capturelimit, players' speed, dmflags, instant-gib option, etc. etc. etc.
Warning: changing gametype directly via console or using callvote breaks map rotation scripts, while changing gametype directly from the rotation script works. It has been this way since the original Q3A game. Changing map manually via console or via g_autonextmap breaks map rotation scripts, while changing map using callvote (or the map rotation script, of course) does not cause problems.

Explanation

About servers modes

You could find them useful when playing offline or when starting your own server. They require you know a bit how to use the game's console commands, and how to manage custom configuration files (you can create such files with a plain text editor, give them a name -for example, test.cfg-, place them in your baseoa folder, launch OpenArena and execute that configuration with \exec <filename> command -for example, \exec test.cfg-... for from your Operating System command line, like OpenArena.exe +exec test.cfg under Microsoft Windows).

In case you exec an "A" file which in turn execs a "B" file, when B ends, A continues from where it left.

Please read Manual/Multiplayer and Servers pages for more informations about how to start a server. They could be a good read, before trying the particular game styles you can find here.

The main example of a server configuration is the one you find here: Servers#Server config example. It should be updated for the latest OpenArena releases, and cover all the main settings, like the server name, the maximum and minimum pings allowed, etc.

In these configuration files, we suggest to set the variables using set (usually) or sets (to have them shown in the server status), because some of them (like g_elimination) could not be recognized until you start a match. Typing \g_elimination 1 in console directly from the main menu could give "Unknown command g_elimination" error; typing \set g_elimination 1 everything should work correctly.

When you add a new example to this page (please use a sub-page of this one for each example. Of course, you can put more variants of the same concept in a single page) to show a nice custom configuration, please remember to explain if that server configuration is "complete" or it talks only about the settings really related to the specific customization, and the user should integrate that configuration with the values he can find in the main server config example. The second one needs a little more work for the final user, but is advisable because it removes the need to update that generic configuration parts each time also here, other than in the main example. It would be a nice thing to include also a section to "restore standard configuration" to allow users to create a separate custom configuration file to execute to undo the changes previously applied to variables that are stored (for example, if your example sets g_elimination 1, it would be nice to have another cfg file that sets it to 0 -its default- again)^[1]. If you know that some functions do not work (or behave differently) with some versions of OpenArena, it could be a nice idea to write it. You can also suggest to the users some names they could use when creating the cfg files copy-pasting the text from your examples here to their text files.

You can mix various Gametypes with various Special game options.
You can also write a configuration to use with a specific mod instead of baseoa: in this case, please be sure to specify the mod name in the name of the page you create here (for example "Configuration examples/Capture the Flag under Insta-RJ mod" could be a clear page name), and remember to specify the mod's version in the page, and to add a link to the mod's page that is under Mods or ModCompat section (and you can add a link from the mod's description page to its configuration example here, too).

Hint: Are you bored to play always the same sequence of maps? Do you wish to play on various maps, without having to lose time creating your own map rotation scripts, or without manually load each map? Are you searching for a way to play on randomly-picked maps? G_autonextmap feature (introduced with OA 0.8.8) may be what you are searching for!
Warning: Please notice that g_autonextmap would ignore your map rotation script, so if you planned to use the rotation script to automatically change some settings (e.g. gravity or Elimination mode starting ammo) between matches, that would not work when "auto change map" option is enabled. Settings that are not part of the map rotation script will work normally.

About client tweaks

You may find interesting the following pages:

Here we may include some examples of interesting stuff you may do with your client configuration.

Your configuration will usually be in your q3config.cfg file, or you may place additional stuff in a configuration file named autoexec.cfg (which, as the name suggests, will be run automatically), or in additional configuration files which you may invoke with /exec <filename.ext> command -.cfg is the default extension-).

User-defined variables created with "set" command will not be stored in your q3config.cfg file on closure, which is instead the case if the variable did already exist or you created it with "seta" command. See Command console#Set variables for more infos.
Key bindings changes are stored to your q3config.cfg file in any case, so you may wish to manually delete them if you don't need anymore. See Command console#Key binding for more infos.