AlterIW Hosting Aid Manual
AlterIW Hosting aid is an AutoHotkey script that helps you manage all kind of console Commands when playing (and
especially when hosting) Modern Warfare 2.
To use this script, you need to play with the Developer Console enabled. This should be the default setting when
playing on the AlterIW network.
Table of Contents
1 The GUI
1.1 The Players Tab
1.1.1 Getting the Player IDs and Names
1.1.2 Kicking Players
1.2 The Maplist Tab
1.2.1 The Maplist
1.2.3 The Radio Buttons
1.2.4 Adding Maps
1.2.5 Switching Maps
1.3 The Gamemode Settings Tab
1.3.1 Changing Gamemode Settings
1.4 The Binds Tab
1.4.1 Executing a Bind
2. The Numpad Controls
2.1 The Numpad Controls
2.2 FPS, numerical Ping, increased Max. FPS
2.3 Messages
2.4 Kicking someone
2.5 Gamemode Settings
2.6 Maps
2.7 The Overlay
3. Customisation
3.1 Overview
3.2 Important Settings
3.3 Messages
3.4 Map Cycle
3.4 Map Cycle
1. The GUI
1.1 The Players Tab
1.1.1 Getting the Player IDs and Names
To get a list of all users and their IDs, click on “Update Player List”.
This sends a status request to the console and displays the result, which should look like this:
1. The GUI
1.1.2 Kicking Players
The Next thing you probably want to do is kick someone for violating your server’s rules
To do so, first you need to enter the Player’s ID into the input field.
After that, you have three options:
The “Kick” button, the “Kick (cheating)” button and the “Kick (item abuse)” button.
All of these buttons can be assigned a custom kick-massage in the “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini” file. For a detailed
explanation on how to do so, see “Chapter 3 customization”.
What they all have in common, is that they kick the Player associated with the ID you just entered.
Pressing “Enter” is the same as clicking on the “Kick” button.
When kicking someone for cheating with the “Kick (cheating)” Button, his GUID is also stored in a text file inside
your MW2 directory. This will later be used to create a permanent ban list or even a collaborated ban-list by
routing the IDs through a web interface.
The displayed kick-messages are customizable. By default these will be used:
1. The GUI
1.2 The Maplist Tab
The Maplist Tab is divided into 4 parts.
1.2.1 The Maplist
The first part is the current Maplist. This is a list of maps that will be played if you set the “enforce playlist” option
in the “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini” to 1.
To remove a map from the list, select it and click the “Remove from List” button.
1.2.2 The Radio Buttons
The Radio buttons list all maps that are available to play. By default all maps that are in the game are listed (both
vanilla MW2 and the 1st DLC).
1. The GUI
1.2.3 Addings Maps
You can add maps to the top or the bottom of the maplist, by clicking on the “Add on Top” and “Add to Bottom”
This will add on instance of the map to the top or to the bottom of the playlist.
You can add multiple instances of the same map to the playlist by clicking on the according buttons multiple
times.
Reminder: You need to have the map selected on the Radio Buttons. Selecting a map in the playlist and clicking
on “Add on Top” or “Add to Bottom” will have no effect.
1.2.4 Switching maps
If you want to switch to a certain map manually rather than having the playlist take care of it, simply select it on
the radio button menu and click on “Play next (lobby)” to change the current lobby-map to one of your choosing.
If you see a check- or tile- image when changing to a certain map it means that
1) Something went wrong, or
2) You don’t have the necessary map file. In either case the server won’t load and everyone will be stuck in the
loading screen.
Changing maps mid-game can be achieved by clicking on “Play Now”. However, it’s usually in the best interest of
most players if you wait until you are in the lobby to change maps with the button above.
Clicking on this button while in the lobby may cause the loading progress to fail and have you stuck on the loading
screen.
1. The GUI
1.3 The Gamemode Settings Tab
1.3.1 Changing Gamemode Settings
Changing the Time limit and Score limit for a certain game mode is pretty straight forward.
Simply select the game mode you are currently playing from the radio buttons and set the desired values for both
time limit and score limit in the boxes below.
Clicking on “Update Gamemode Settings” will paste the according commands into the console.
1. The GUI
1.4 The Binds Tab
1.4.1 Executing a Bind
To execute either one of the standard binds (Welcome and Warning Messages) or one of your custom binds,
simply click on the corresponding button.
E.g. to display the Welcome Messages, click on “Welcome Message”.
Depending on what you set as your personal welcome message in the “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini”, it should look
something like this:
Welcome message:
Warning message:
2. The Numpad Controls
2.1 Setting up a server
To get into your own lobby, press Alt + NumPad0. This pastes the “party_connecttimeout 1” into the console,
which most often leads to you becoming the host.
It may however be every once in a while that this will not work. In such cases just try it again. It has nothing to
do with my script but with how MW2 handles lobby management.
2.2 FPS, numerical Ping, increased Max. FPS
In order to see your current FPS, who hosts the current game (may only show from 2nd map on), get numerical
ping values instead of vague ping bars and increase your maximum fps to 100, press Alt + Numpad1.
Showing your current fps (besides seeing if you actually are the host) is kind of important because if your fps as a
host drop too low, everyone will experience lag. Obviously this is not in the best interest of anyone, so if your
FPS drop below 40 or even 30 on some maps, it’s best to either stop hosting a server or decrease your graphics
settings.
2.3 Messages
To display your customizable welcome messages, press Alt + Numpad2.
To display your customizable warning messages, press Alt + Numpad3.
These are the same ones as those shown via the GUI.
2.4 Kicking someone
In order to kick someone with the Numpad Control, press Alt + Numpad4. This sends a status request to the
console and brings up a small Kick Window with all Players and their IDs.
To kick someone, simply enter his ID and either hit “Cheater” or “Item Abuse”.
The kick messages displayed with this method are the same as when using the GUI.
If you already have all player IDs and want to save about a second of your time, press Alt + CapsLock + Numpad4.
This brings up the same window but does not send a status request to the console.
2. The Numpad Controls
2.5 Gamemode Settings
To the gamemode settings, press Alt + Numpad6.
This will bring up multiple consecutive windows that ask you for the settings.
If you use the default “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini” file, it will ask you for the game mode you are playing and the
desired time- and score limit.
The standard values and what settings it should ask for are both changeable in the “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini” file.
2. The Numpad Controls
2.6 Maps
In order to change the next map to one of your liking, press Alt + Numpad7 when you are in the lobby.
This brings up the following map selection screen:
Simply enter the name of the map you want to play in the input field and hit “Ok”.
The maps have to start with a lowercase letter and must be spelled correctly. Not doing so will result in a false
mapfile being loaded, which will consequently leave you stuck on the loading screen.
2. The Numpad Controls
2.7 The Overlay
The Ingame-Overlay displays all player names with their ID on the left side of your screen. However, this will only
work if playing in window mode and has only been tested on a resolution of 1680x1050. If you are using a much
lower resolution, certain ingame elements may be overlapped by the overlay, especially when playing on a full
server.
Do display or update the overlay, press Alt + Numpad+. To hide the overlay, press Alt + Numpad-.
This is what it can look like ingame:
3. Customisation
3.1 Overview
The AlterIW Hosting Aid script provides a relatively simple means of setting your own binds and changing some
default values
The key to this is the already mentioned “AlterIW Hosting Aid.ini” file.
3.2 Important Settings
The most important setting is the MW2_dir variable.
IT can be found in the [MW2Dir] section and should point to your local MW2 directory that you are using. If this
directory is wrong, you won’t be seeing anything when requesting player IDs. Also automatic map-change won’t
work if this variable points to the wrong directory.
Important as well are all settings displayed in the [SleepTimers] section.
key_delay defines the time in milliseconds (ms) between keystrokes. If some commands like the welcome
messages do not get executed properly, set this to a higher value.
sleep_after_status defines the time the script waits between requesting player IDs via the console and analyzing
the response. If only part of the players show up on the overlay, the kick windows or the GUI, set this to a higher
value.
console_log_timer defines the interval in which the script analyses your console log to determine if you are in
the lobby. This is only needed for the automatic mapchange and thus custom playlists, which can be defined
later in the [MapCycle] section.
4. Customisation
3.3 Messages
In the [Messages] section you can customize welcome messages, warning messages and kick messages.
It is important to know that only 4 lines of text can be displayed at once ingame, so having 4 welcome messages
with one being longer than one line of ingame-text will cause the first message to be hidden. This is not the fault
of my script but is caused by game mechanics.
Both Welcome messages (welcome_msg_1 through welcome_msg_4) and warning messages (warning_msg_1
and warning_msg_2) need to start with “say”. Also, all but the last message of each section have to end with a
semicolon “;” to be interpreted correctly by the console.
The kick messages don’t start with “say” but directly with the text you want to have appended to the kicked
users name.
For example “kicked_no_reason = got kicked” will display “[kicked_users_name] got kicked” when kicking
someone with the “kick” button via the GUI.
Available color-codes are:
^1 - RED
^2 - GREEN
^3 - YELLOW
^4 - BLUE
^5 - CYAN
^6 - PINK
^7 - WHITE
^8 - DEFAULT MAP COLOR
^9 - GREY OR DEFAULT MAP COLOR
^0 - BLACK
The “^” has to be enclosed with curly brackets like this: “{^}6”
3.4 Map Cycle
In the [MapCycle] section you can define which maps appear in the GUI and in the maplist.
If you remove a map here the script interprets it like you don’t want to play the map at all. Thus you will not see
it in the GUI, it won’t be part of the maplist and it won’t be picked by alt + capslock + numpad7.
Comment maps that you do not want to play out with a semicolon “;”.
e.g. if you don’t want to play “rust”, change
map13 = rundown
map14 = rust
map15 = subbase
to
map13 = rundown
;map14 = rust
map15 = subbase
5. Customisation
3.5 Custom Binds
To define up to 5 custom binds that are then shown in the GUI, add
bind[x]_name = [name of the bind to show in the GUI]
bind[x]_val = [console commands separated by semicolons]
below [binds].
Example:
[Binds]
bind1_name = Set Lobby Time to 60
bind1_val = party_minLobbyTime 60
bind2_name = XP mod 10x
bind2_val = scr_xpscale 10
The numbers can range from 1 to 5 and should not skip a number.
