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For now, OA support teamplay but only with two teams. Teamplay with more teams was suggested on  DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Wishlist#Team_based]the Wishlist page of th wiki (http://([b) a long time ago.

This is about the different aspects of this idea.

The first of these aspect is the way to implement it. Two possibilites are suggested on the wiki :
* implement it with entirely new gametypes with, for each, a predefined number of teams.
* add a game option defining how many teams there are in teamplay

Implement it like in Cube is also possible but it won't be compatible with all gametypes.

The second aspect is the team colors. There also are several possibilities :
* a predefined list of colors (limiting the number of teams; it work that way in Red Eclipse)
* a predefined list of colors but used cyclically if there are more teams than colors
* a modifiable list of colors but with default values
* only two team colors (one for toself an team mates, an an other for ennemies, like in Sauerbraten)
* there probably are other possibilities...

The next aspect is the eventual combination of this and an other suggested mechanism (for now, not implemented), the team switching one. (actually, it have several names; the way it work with two teams is obvious : when you die, you respawn in the other team)

I suggest this if these idea are both implemented :
* if a player is kiled by a player of an other team, the killed one respawn in the killer team.
* if the player die an other way, he she respawn in an other team, that is randomly chosen.

In this case, for the exact to choose the new team, there are several possibilities :
* the probabilty is the same for each team (except the one the player come from, that isn't eligible)
* a slot system working that way : each team have one slot plus a number of slots equal to the difference beetween th number of player of the team that receive these slots an the number of player of the team tha have the highest number of players (the team the player come from doesn't count; the probabilty is the same for each slot).
* a variant of the previous possibility but based on the score
* variants of the three previous possibilities that also exclude the teams that no longer have any player.
* maybe other possibilities

There probably are other aspects I didn't think.

I think before the coding gets off the ground there would need to be one 4 team CTF map to work with.

For the problems of having more than two teams, I can guess:
- Player models do usually have three skins (default/red/blue), plus sometimes other variations (which are actually used in non-team-based models only, IIRC). Preserving compatibility with existing models would require modifying skin color through some shader trick, and its results may not always be nice... An alternative would be forcing an apposite player model (which would have got more different skins) when playing in such modes.

- Adding extra objective items would be required (e.g. "green flag"), and also more spawning points ("green spawn point"). Also, the "flag" value which allows a certain item to be picked up by a certain team only (usually used with DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Runes]Runes (http://([b)) would need to be updated.

- How to adapt some gametypes to more than two teams? E.G. if green obelisk has been attacked by both red and blue team, who will score the point? The team who has done more damage points to it? Or who shot the "final" hit?

It looks like a thing capable of some headaches, or something more adapt for a specific mod instead of the base game.
Maybe most adapt modes would be Team DeathMatch and Team Possession, which do not require specific-made maps. Unfortunately, at the moment we don't have Possession and Team Possession gametypes at all! (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3995.0)

Harvester, LMS, 1-flag ctf and domination could be played in multiple teams.

May work for Team Deathmatch, Elimination (not eCTF) and Single Domination. 4-team base-based gametypes would require tailor-made maps for them.