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About Game Modifications & Total ConversionsLoosly, game modifications are mods that add to, fix or enhance the Wolfensein: Enemy Territory gameplay, rarely if ever having any change upon the fundamentals of the game. Total conversions, on the other hand, make much more extensive changes, and sometimes it's not so easy to recognise the original game underneath. Unfortunately that's not a universal distinction so sometimes total conversion modifications will be reffered to as "mods". A third type of modification is the simple pack mods which are a simple .pk3 file usually containing alternate media files such as 'skins' (images to wrap onto the player models), audio files or texture images. Game ModificationsThe main mods for ET are:"Public" and "clan" aren't particularily useful descriptions really, but indicates the sub-communities their authors are principally aiming towards. ETPro is in fact the heavily dominating ET modification, so well received is this excellent mod that there are many more public ET servers running ETPro than not - nevermind practically every single clan server. The respective features of each can be found on their websites, as can perfectly good documentation - all elements of this guide still apply when using one of the mods, unless the mod notes changes have been made to that particular element (always assume the mod overrules). Generally these types of mods only add features and commands, so you can setup your server as per this guide and then add the desired mod settings by following it's documentation (most mod documentation will assume the reader knows what he/she is doing with the "etmain" game). Both the mods in their default settings actually change very little to gameplay and instead just add configuration options, features, fix a couple of perceived bugs and so on. The more significant gameplay changes are optional and may be enabled using various settings, their documentation outlines the options. While both ETPro and Shrub are significant Enemy Territory mods, I have only commented on changes ETPro makes to the elements covered in the advanced server guide - this is because I play on and run ETPro servers, not Shrub ones. * The documentation for Shrub used to be here, but seeing as it's disappeared I've put up a copy of it: Shrub Documentation. Total ConversionsMajor TC's released:Likely major TC's not yet released: As far as installation and running a server with any of these mod's goes though, it will be more or less the same deal as with any other mod. There is likely to be many different settings for the server configuration however, and some settings may also have different effects than they do on vanilla ET servers. Some settings may be missing entirely, for example at time of writing ET:Fortress has no REF system, presumably because they want ETF to be initially very similar to Q3F (ETF's predecessor) while ET's extra features are something which can be added later. The approach or style of play may also be very different using total conversions, and this can impact the server configuration. For example, while in ET you usually have a fixed map rotation on public servers, apparently in ETF it is normal to simply load a map to start with, and then at the end of each map there is an automatic vote for players to decide to next one. Installing Mods(thanks Fozzer for helping with detail)Naturally it is best to follow the modification's documentation, but generally installing mods is fairly simple and follows the same steps, with the only difference being between the two types of mod: simple skins/sound pack type "mods", and proper game modifications like ETPro, Shrubet or ETFortress. Some mods are "serverside", which means you need to install them on the server but players are not required to download them. Most mods however are "clientside" and do require both the client (player) and the server to be running the mod's files. There is an exception in that server's can allow players to use any minor mod (such as skin or sound packs) by setting the server "unpure" [sv_pure 0], but this is strongly recommended against due to there being no ability to discriminate between bona-fide mods and naughty cheat ones. As far as installation is concerned, there is no difference between clientside and serverside mods. When your server is running any type of modification, but particularily the "clientside" ones, naturally it is a good idea to ensure player's can download any modification file from the server. Hence you should set sv_allowdownloads to 1 in the server cfg, though if it is several megabytes of files you might want to provide for the faster http redirect too. For the basic skins or sound pack mods, installation is usually as simple as uploading (usually using FTP) the mod's .pk3 file into the "etmain" folder on your server, and then restarting the server to ensure it is loaded. For game modifications like ETPro, Shrubet or ETFortress, you need to install the mod's files into a seperate folder, not within the "etmain" folder but alongside it. Usually the installation is a case of:
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written by and © DG, www.rtcw.co.uk
Last updated 12th January 2004
