Enemy Territory – files worth to backup

Environments are changing these days quite soon. A new Linux distribution to try out, Windows Vista, new Mac OS – whatever reason you have to reinstall Enemy Territory, there are certain files in your ET directory, that are often worth to backup.

I had to deal with that question when preparing my migration from an 2 year old Windows XP instance to Windows Vista (yes, windows can run such a long time without major issues ;-)). From a game perspective there are following items, which are modified during several multiplayer online sessions and therefore quite unique to your installation:

• GUID
  The GUID is generated once you started ET successfully. It identifies your installation among all the million others. Servers use the GUID along with your nickname to recognize you as a specific player. GUID is stored within the file etkey in your etmain directory. Once you have lost this file there is no way in reconstruct it and you’ll receive a new GUID.
• Profile
  Your personal profile stores your nickname among a lot of other stuff, that you may sat up within then game’s option menu. You may find your profile folder in etmain/profiles. It has the same name as your nick. A lost profile may be recreated at any time, you just need to remember your settings…
• Maps
  Maps are downloaded from servers when you attend an online session and the map is not yet installed on your client. Maps are stored in your etmain directory with the file extension .pk3
• Modified files
  There are several reasons, why you have generated new or modified existing files, e.g. as workaround for the memory issue. Of course, those files are worth for backup as well.

So from a technical point of view, all information can be recovered, except the GUID (I don’t know an easy way at least). That would not be an issue, as long as you do not want to keep your player’s statistic, continue with your XP saved on a server, etc. This "addon" functionality, which is often depending on client side modifications (mods), is in most cases relying on your GUID.

Finally it would also make sense to include your maps in your backup, since they are often quite big in filesize, an ET installation with more than 2 GB is not exceptional. Just imagine, if you need to download all the maps every time you connect to your favorite servers again, after your reinstallation…

So I wish you a nice and successful reinstallation, and remember: Gott sei Dank Mann, gibt’s ne Pumpgun!