Arena: Respawn is a custom gamemode for Team Fortress 2. Like Arena mode, Arena: Respawn has no respawn timers. Unlike Arena mode, players can be respawned mid-round if a teammate captures the central control point.

This simple rule change has led to a ton of interesting gameplay, as mentioned in the Official Team Fortress 2 blog. If you'd like to try it out before installing, hop into a server near you and give it a spin.

1. A dedicated server running Team Fortress 2. (Installation guide)
2. MetaMod/SourceMod. (Installation guide)

Once SourceMod is installed, you're good to go. SourceMod is the only MetaMod requirement to run Arena: Respawn.

This plugin will function on all official Arena maps and most community-made Arena maps. It contains the vanilla gamemode itself and nothing extra, although you can add some extra stuff if you want later. Download the plugin here (wgettable link) and drop it in your addons/sourcemod/plugins folder.

That's it! Arena: Respawn will automatically replace Arena mode. If you're interested in extra configuration or other cool stuff, read on.

Arena: Respawn comes with a bunch of configuration variables that you can set in your server's server.cfg. They're automatically set to sensible defaults, so you don't have to set these unless you want something other than the gamemode's default behavior.

Default value: 0
Recommended tournament value: 0

If set to 1, Arena: Respawn try to treat every map as an Arena map. This can be useful for testing out maps that haven't been converted to Arena yet, but is too buggy and silly for regular play.

Default value: 1.0
Recommended tournament value: 1.25

Approximate amount of time (in seconds) that it takes for a point to be captured. This value is multiplied by the number of control points present on a map squared.

Default value: 3.0
Recommended tournament value: 1.0

How long to flash Uber on a newly respawned player.

Default value: 14
Recommended tournament value: -1

Number of active players required to enable First Blood (5 second critboost on the first kill in the round). Set to 0 to always enable First Blood or -1 to always disable it.

Default value: 8.0
Recommended tournament value: 8.0

How long (in seconds) a player death on the opposing team will grant the Last Man Standing a minicrit boost. Set to 8 seconds by default to match the minicrit boost time of the Cleaner's Carbine and Crit-a-Cola.

Not all Arena maps are entirely plug-and-play. Some custom maps have made design decisions based on the rules of standard Arena that just don't work in Arena: Respawn, such as the train arriving late in Ferrous, the spawn doors shutting in Hardhat, or the point exploding and killing everyone in Blackwood Valley.

Fortunately, the excellent Stripper: Source tool allows you to apply on-the-fly custom map fixes as the map loads. Install Stripper: Source and copy the appropriate files into your addons/stripper/maps directory.

Note: We have deliberately avoided working these special, per-map cases into the plugin (and will not accept merge requests that do so) for the following reasons:

• While all per-map problems can be eventually be solved by SourceMod, this often involves tearing out elements of the map to do so. The Stripper: Source configuration files leave the map alone and modify its functionality instead of playing butcher to the hard work of a mapper.
• Stripper syntax is closely related to entity keyvalue data, which most mappers are familiar with. This allows a mapper to write their own Arena: Respawn modifications without having to learn an extra tool in the process.
• Large amounts of special case code are not just bad practice, but downright nightmarish to maintain.

You'll need smlib and the source files provided under addons/sourcemod/scripting. After installing SourceMod, change directory to addons/sourcemod/scripting and run compile.sh arena_respawn.sp or compile.exe arena_respawn.sp. This produces arena_respawn.smx in the addons/sourcemod/scripting/compiled directory.

If you create a modified version of Arena: Respawn to run on a public server, you must release the source of your modified code under the terms of the AGPL. This way, Arena: Respawn remains an open gamemode that all server owners can benefit from, instead of a select few keeping potentially new and interesting changes to themselves.

Arena: Respawn has always been intended to be a plugin open for the entire TF2 community to experiment with, so play nice and keep it that way.

The "IT'S ALIVE!" October update of Arena: Respawn introduced a series of class-specific mechanics, such as a global sentry damage reduction and tying Medics' heal rate to damage done. These are will be available in a separate, standalone plugin, as they can be applied to Arena: Respawn and standard Arena alike.