Tribes 2 // Mod Development Handbook GitHub

29 · Rabbit

The ancestor gametype behind sections 28 and 39’s flag-passing modes, at 739 lines — untouched by Classic. Where Hunters and Team Hunters score by returning flags, and Team Rabbit 2 scores by throwing them, base Rabbit is older and simpler than both: one flag, one carrier, hunted by everyone.

The rules

scripts/RabbitGame.cs’s header comment names it plainly [script]:

// Team Rabbit script

Grab the flag
Run like crazy
EVERYONE tries to kill the person with the flag (the Rabbit)
The longer the Rabbit keeps the flag, the more points he scores

Despite the header comment’s name, this is not a team-passing game. There is no throw mechanic in scope here, no bonus matrix, no roles. One player carries the flag; every other player, regardless of side, is hunting them. Points accrue to the carrier for time held, not for anything done with it.

A team system built for one purpose

The gametype declares only one real team, but tracks two pseudo-team IDs purely to distinguish the carrier from everyone else [script]:

function RabbitGame::setUpTeams(%game)
{
   %game.numTeams = 1;
   ...
   $teamDamage = 0;
}

$RabbitTeam = 2;
$NonRabbitTeam = 1;

numTeams = 1 and teamDamage = 0 — friendly fire is off among the hunters, because mechanically they are all on the same side. $RabbitTeam and $NonRabbitTeam exist only so the engine’s existing team-membership machinery (target triangles, team-scoped messaging) can be reused to mark whoever is currently carrying the flag, without writing a parallel targeting system from scratch. Becoming the Rabbit means switching pseudo-teams, not joining a side.

Scoring ticks on a fixed interval [script]:

%game.teamBonusValue = 1;
%game.teamBonusTime = 15 * 1000; //15 seconds

One point every fifteen seconds the flag is held — a slow, steady accrual that rewards survival over burst plays, in contrast to both of its descendants.

Where the family goes from here

A TribalWar community strategy guide to Team Rabbit 2 (Yogi, covered in full in section 30) sketches a short lineage: it credits this “Rabbit game type” to Dynamix developer Eric “RatedZ” Lanz, describes an intermediate mod called “Team Rabbit” that put a passing-based “twist” on it, and presents Team Rabbit 2 as Codality’s fuller evolution of that twist [community].

That account is community history, not a claim this handbook can verify against source code — RabbitGame.cs carries no attribution comment of its own, and the intermediate “Team Rabbit” mod is not part of this install. What the code does independently confirm is the mechanical shape the account implies: a solo-carrier keep-away game (this file) that a later, unrelated team-based mod (“Team Rabbit,” the “new twist,” not shipped with 25034 and not covered here) turned into the flag-passing game that Team Rabbit 2 then took to its fullest extent — the jackpot, the roles, the ten-dimensional bonus matrix covered next.