How would you detect players joining in MP via LUA? I searched the list of LUA fucntions and found a few:
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But I'm not sure how I'd use them. Could these be used to detect when a player joins?

No, those help you join a game and you can tell you joined just by looking at the screen.

The v1.3 patch r117 added a function which returns a list of player names. You can use this with a timer and periodically count whos in the server and who isn't.

First, use the team counts to determine the amount of people on each team. When the count changes, grab the player list and see who wasn't on it the last time you grabbed it (you will need to store a copy of the list from each last time it was gotten). You can use this to see which players joined/stopped playing the game. Note, this doesn't track any spectators.

Theres no other way to do it.

That's fine by me; I just wanted to use that processPlayers function for something and wanted players to be included in it even if they joined after the server started, in the middle of a game.

If I use that method, where I check to see if the team count changes, why would I need a timer?

There is a lua function to get the amount of players on a team. It is far faster and 'lighter' then the v1.3 patch's processPlayers. There is nothing that tells you when the team counts change.

You have to use a timer to get the current team count, wait a bit, then get it again to see if the count changed. If it did change, then you know someone joined (if its higher) or someone left (if its lower). There is a small chance that someone both joined and left, in which case the count would have stayed the same. You can use processPlayers to look at the player's names inorder to see who exactly joined or left the game.

Ah, thanks. Er, how would I store the table in order to compare it to a more recent one?

Set it to a variable. Nearly anything in Lua can be set to a variable, even functions.

Thanks. That sounds easy enough.