MVE2i

MVE2i 25 February 2026

This release contains 2 years of upgrades and improvements. The main focus has
been improving compatibility, fixing bugs and some new features for admins and
players as well. MVE2i is now compatible with practice-session, start new
multiplayer game, and ofcourse dedicated servers and is compatible across all
436/469 versions of clients and servers.

The release package now contains updated documentation:

• Quickstart.txt - installation/upgrade/troubleshooting -> basic setup
• Manual.html - in depth explanation of various features -> advanced users
• Changelog.html - explains the changes made in each version

Since there is a lot here I have groupped the features, improvements and
bugfixes into their own section.

New Features

• There is a new feature which allows having random gametype and random rule
  selection. If the game mode and rule are both named "Random" then mapvote
  will choose one of the other avaiable options randomly.

• Map overrides can now add mutators for specific maps. For example you can
  run the NoRedeemer on one specific map but have redeemer on all other maps.

• Added a map search feature for the map list. This can be invoked by just
  starting when a map is seleted in the map list or by pressing Ctrl+F then
  after typing by pressing Enter anc Shift+Enter it's possible to navigate
  between next and previous match.

• UrlParameters are now supported by mapvote. This string will be attached to
  the travel string level URL as is. Certain mutators and server actors can
  read this and act upon it for example to load specific settings or enable
  specific options for the gametype.

• Added MainMutatorList and MainServerActors to MVE_Config.ini, here it's now
  possible to add mutators and server actors which would be initialized to
  every gametype. This way commonly used actors and mutators can be grouped
  together and do not need to be copy pasted to every gametype separately
  eliminating configuration duplication.

• Added an ExcludeMutators and ExcludeActors option to each gametype. This way
  it's now possible for specific gametypes to ignore specific actors or
  mutators which are defined in the main list.

• The welcome window can now have a configurable checkbox that players need
  to check. This is part of the welcome screen feature which is enabled with
  bWelcomeWindow=True and the checkbox can be enabled with
  bServerInfoRequiresAccept=True and customized with a custom label by setting
  ServerInfoAcceptLabel to a short message. Players will keep getting the
  welcome window shown until the checkbox is checked. If the player changes
  their name then the checkbox signature will not match and will be re-shown.
  The checkbox can be forced again by server admins by chaning the
  ServerInfoVersion value to invalidate all signatures.

• There is a new experimental feature that allows limiting how often a rule
  can be repeatedly voted. By settings RuleCostMaxAllow=0 and by having
  MapCostPerLoad=3 players need to vote 3 separate rules before they can vote
  the first one again. If the voting player is an admin they will by pass this
  limitation and the map switch is forced as usual.

• The release package now contains a language definition for Notepad++ which
  adds enhanced highlighting to *.ini files. In our experience this helps
  avoiding and spotting mistakes sooner, especialyl since a lot of
  misconfiguration errors in UT99 are silent errors.

• Configuration can now be reloaded when maplist is reloaded. This feature
  needs patched 469d server version to work as it's a new engine feature. This
  allows making changed so MVE_Config.ini using a text editor then reloading
  the map list would apply it to the live server without needing to restart
  the server. This feature is enabled by default but can be disabled using by
  setting bReloadConfigDuringReload=False

Improvements

• There is a new reworked aliases engine inside mapvote which can now
  recursively resolve aliases. So if you like aliases you can now put an alias
  inside an alias.

• Aliases are now resolved for settings, so you can now define an alias and
  use them in settings.

• Map names, player names, mode/rule names can be now copied from the list
  box using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C. I found this to be super useful
  when I want to note down a particular map or a player name.

• In the mapvote window the first or previous option of each list box is now
  automatically selected to reduce the number of clicks needed to vote a map.
  If you only have a single gametype and single rule for example it will be
  automatically selected and players are presented immediately with the list
  of maps.

• The mapvote window is now customized for server admins who are logged in the
  'Vote' button is now replaced with a 'Force Switch' button to reflect the
  dangerous action that is about to happen when pressed.

• Increased screenshot size by a few pixels so that its 128px. If you're
  the dobule GUI scale this will perfectly line up with mip 0 of the texture
  improving screenshot clarity. On default scaling you'll get mip 1 without
  the blurring from texture interpolation.

• Improved the keybinder popup to not be shown again once it was shown once.
  This is part of the welcome screen which is enabled with bWelcomeWindow=True
  So that players who don't want to set a keybind will be left alone.

• Improved the way in which mapvote detects level changes initiated outside
  of mapvote. When this happens the level change is allowed to happen and then
  when the next map loads mapvote will re-apply the mutators and settings of
  the preivous map. This improves compatibility assault and coop gametypes.

• Starting with MVE2i mapvote can cache the map list for each server
  separately. For caching the ServerCodeName is used. So if you're running
  multiple servers and they have different lists, make sure there is a unique
  value for each server. But if all your servers have the same identical map
  lists then use the same ServerCodeName so that the client will share the
  cache between these servers. This value is empty by default and a random
  key is generated on the first time mapvote is launched.

• Added keyboard navigation between the list game/rule/map list boxes. By
  pressing the left and right arrows you can focus on the next/previous panel.

• The mapvote GUI will save the last selected mode and map when closed and
  will try to restore the selection when reopening. This feature can be used
  to re-vote the previously selected map if it did not win or to continue
  browsing the map list where left off.

• Mapvote will auto generate a working default configuration when the config
  file MVE_Config.ini is missing. This is so that mapvote still wakes up in a
  functional state when MVE_Config.ini is lost. This code should only trigger
  if all gametypes are emtpy.

• Improved performance of the map overrides feature

• Skip loading empty aliases, if aliases feature is not used there should be
  no extra load generated by it.

• Changed bOverrideServerPackages to be disable by default. This is a great
  feature but unfortunately it interferes with the expectations of server
  admins when they first set up mapvote. Server admins are know how to set up
  server packages trough UnrealTournament.ini and it's a disruptive change if
  mapvote now suddenly controls them. For simple server setups with not a lot
  of packages it's also simpler that way to skip this feature.

• Improved feedback messages to user commands. For example if someones who is
  not logged in as admin if they try to reload the map list they now get a
  message that tells them they need to log in first.

• When bOverrideServerPackages is enabled MVE2i specific packages will be
  downloaded before others. This better because these need to be downloaded
  regardless of which map/mode is played so it's not a wasted download if the
  map switches while the player is connecting.

• Moved some of the mapvote features to be initialized with a delay to improve
  server load during match startup.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue which prevented the map list from loading when the game is
  started in the "Start New Multiplayer Game" in game. With these fixes now
  mapvote can be used in every mode you can run UT99 in, dedicated or not,
  multiplayer or pratice session.

• Fixed mapvote initialization in server actor mode. Now mapvote in server
  actor mode is compatible with all mutators and server actors and mapvote
  can be safely used both as server actor or mutator. You can just add mapvote
  as a server actor and vote from any gametype. If you needed this feature
  before, please update to MVE2i as it will be much more stable, fix mutator
  initialization and report any initialization error in the server log file.

• If you are typing a chat message into mapvote then when if the window closes
  the chat is moved to the regular chat and can be continued instead of losing
  the partially typed message.

• The welcome screen is now configured to only show the first time when a
  client joins and the if the welcome screen was shown is not stored in the
  user config instead of just in process memory so that if the game crashes
  and the player rejoins the server, they are not shown the welcome screen
  again. This can be invalidated server side by updating the ServerInfoVersion
  to a different value to force showing updates or news that we made to the
  server in the information screen.

• Fix missing song playback for levels that have no song specified the client
  will no longer play the default menu music regarless if they have an older
  version of the game or a patched client. This fix is enabled by default but
  can be disabled with by having bFixMissingSongPlayback=False

• Added a fix to detect when server admins change the order of gametypes in
  the config file, and then restart the server, MVE will still correctly load
  the correct gametype by matching it by name instead of by position.

• Added FixNetNews feature which fixes the master server list for older
  version of UT99 clients that still contain the now discontinued epicgames
  master server in their master server list. This feature is enabled by
  default but can be disabled by settings bFixNetNewsForPlayers=False

• Fix setting tick rate for gametype. There was an issue with the tick rate
  not being set correctly in previous versions of mapvote. You can now set a
  DefaultTickRate which applies to all gametypes by default. Log changes made
  to tick rate as it's an important engine setting and server admins should be
  aware if mapvote is changing it.

• Fix a bug which would cause mapvote to wipe clean the ServerPackages leaving
  the server in a broken state when first enabling bOverrideServerPackages
  if MainServerPackages is empty.

• Fix package name casing in the example MVE_Config.ini which is provided in
  release packages to make it compatible with linux.

• If multiple versions of MVE2i are running they will detect each other and
  only one will activate. This fixes initialization if when mapvote is loaded
  both as a server actor and a mutator.

• Fixed the Assault gametype reset so that the red team always attack first
  instead of depending on the previous Assault match.