This post is not about gaming, but about giving and about social responsibility. Even though what this company does for profit is to organize backgammon tournaments they seem to have a social side to it: they are helping survivors of the latest China earthquake by donating prize money.

Basically they are offering to match $5 on every $1 from tournament buy-ins in their online casino so anyone can register to play on their site anytime during this month and they’ll be donating towards helping fellow people in need. For example, if you sign up for a $10 tournament, the online casino will be donating $50 towards this cause.

Their CEO is stressing how important it is that companies help as much as they can to help a charitable cause, stressing that it’s not really important how much they donate but rather showing the example to the communities.

By offering this donation, Backgammon Masters are giving back to the people that made them so successful, since a lot of their customers come from Asia.

Other companies, like Poker Starts have offered donations by matching dollar for dollar buy-ins and hopefully other companies will follow through in helping to raise money for this noble cause

It seems that Backgammon Masters is becoming a one-stop-shop for single player and multiplayer games and their improved graphics and interface has encouraged many of the users to request more games to be added. Take for example the blackjack game: it's always been one of the gamers' favourite game enjoying wider usage and support.

The nice thing about this website is that you can find a lot of information gathered in one place. You don't need to go looking for game rules since Backgammon Masters have a specific page dedicated to How To Play. Of course you can find more information on the web on how to play a blackjack game

I like the fact that you don't need to download any new software to use the new games. The upgrade is automatic and completely transparent to the users.  

If you are into playing with real money make sure you check the Promos page since there you'll all the current promotions. 

The nice thing about BGroom is that you can deposit money completely safely and start competing against your friends or other backgammon enthousiasts. You can deposit as much money and as many times as you want. Currently there is a promotion to enter a competition to win $2500! If you are lucky you'll get in the competition for free!

Of course you don't need to play for money. You can play for free until you get the hung of it or until you want to deposit money.

Technically, there's nothing to worry about: just download the game and follow the instructions. You'll be set in no time. Even if you fall into trouble there is online chat support as well as telephone support.

Finally, the site can be viewed in more than 10 languages which makes it accessible to most of you!

Just a clarification: this configuration does not replace the server.cfg configuration that will need to do as a server administrator. 

Many cvars are the same or similar to etpub configuration so I'll try to explain some of the unique Jaymod functionality.

• g_weapons: this is a variable which controls some of the weapons and their behaviour in the game e.g. you can enable the Winchester M97 as a weapon (which in fact is one of Jaymod's innovations), you can make health packs restore lost helmets etc. I find some of these excessive so I suggest setting this to 1846 which will enable quite a few of these fun features but not all

• g_engineers, g_soldiers, g_medics: these variables control class behaviour which is unique to Jaymod e.g.:

• g_engineers 2: teammates cannot defuse your dynamos which are close to enemy constructible or objective (hence they can't steal XP from you)
• g_soldier 1: the trajectory of the panzer rocket will be affected by gravity and will take a curved direction i.e. makes it more difficult to use. Consider enabling it if people on your server tend to prefer the use of panzer.
• g_medics 16: this enables adrenaline sharing with live teammates. In other words you can inject adrenaline to a team mate instead of yourself.

• consume less energy i.e. if you hand out ammo, med packs, construct objective etc you consume less of your charge bar
• more grenades
• poison gas grenades, mine, smoke canisters
• reduced recoil (less kick when sniping and hence easier to get back on target)

All these configurations/features are exclusive to Jaymod but do read etpub configuration which contains common features (e.g. syringe poisoning, double jump, throwing knives etc). Make sure you read the server.cfg configuration and the Jaymod documentation.

These posts are mainly written to help you with your journey as an ET gamer or a game server administrator.

Configuration

• How to configure your server for XP Save
• Wolfenstein configuration explained - server.cfg 
• Wolfenstein configuration explained - etpub.cfg 

 
Scripting ET configuration files 

• How to create a campaign and add maps 

Errors & Troubleshooting

• Incorrect ET.exe & Guid problems 

Did you say FREE?

• How to get free teamspeak
• How to get a free downloads server 

Informative

• How to improve your aim - Wolfenstein Hitboxes explained 
• ETAdmin mod

There are 2 ways you can get new maps:

1. connect to the server you want to play: if the server runs a map that you don't have, you'll download it there on the spot prior to getting on the server. This can be a pain in the back since some administrators are not redirecting their server downloads hence the download rate is very slow, but also because when you connect to a server you want to play and not download maps
2. download maps from the web: there are quite a few websites which host maps and you can easily download any map you want from them. The best of those are:
• New-Maps
• Gameprophets

To make your life a bit easier I suggest you download the following popular maps:

• supplydepot 2
• venice
• frostbite
• braundorf (version b4)
• tc_base
• caen
• warbell

 To install the maps

• Download the map and save it on your Desktop
• If it's a zip or rar file then decompress it (un-zip or un-rar)
• Take the .pk3 file and place it in your Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory/etmain folder

A word of advice to game server administrators:

• Always place the maps in the server's etmain directory and not in the mod's directory (e.g. etpub, noquater, jaymod etc). otherwise connecting players will need to download all maps (and not only the one currently played on the server) prior to connecting.
• Always redirect your server downloads. Read Re-directing your server downloads if you don't know how to do that and How to get a free downloads server if you don't have your own webspace.

Crosshair
seta cg_drawCrosshair "5"          //dot (.) type crosshair
seta cg_crosshairColor "red"       //crosshair color 
seta cg_crosshairColorAlt "red”    //maintain colour even if you lose health
seta cg_crosshairPulse "0"          //crosshair will not pulse
seta cg_crosshairSize "40"          //experimentwith the size of the dot
seta cg_crosshairHealth "0"         //crosshair will not show health information

Visual aspects
seta r_gamma "2.0"                   //brightness
seta r_drawSun "0"                    //increases FPS
seta cg_atmosphericEffects "0"    //no rain or snow
seta b_muzzleflash "0"                //no gun flashes
seta b_tracers "0"                      //no bullet trace
seta r_fastsky "0"                       //low quality sky
seta cg_bloodFlash 0                  //no blood splash
seta cg_screenshake “0” 

Mouse
seta cl_mouseaccel "0"               //remove mouse acceleration
seta sensitivity "3.0"                  //experiment with it-3 is medium

System variables
seta com_soundMegs "128"         //These are variables which
seta com_hunkMegs "512"          //allocate memory for different
seta com_zoneMegs "128"          //aspects of the game

Screen
set r_mode -1                            //custom resolution
set r_customwidth 1600              //set width and height based on
set r_customheight 1200             //what your PC can handle

Put these in your autoexec.cfg file and you are ready to go. Read this for more information on ET config files

For these cases I have a very interesting solution to suggest: get a private forum spot on Borgclan.com. Borgclan currently houses quite a few clans/groups. Some of them have grown and created their own forums but still maintain their forum spot on Borgclan. Basically it's a community of gamers, mainly playing Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory (and now Quake Wars) who enjoy playing the game for fun. They share ideas, tips, help each other and sometimes organise tournaments between rival teams. If you want to be part of this community then head over to Borgclan.com and register on the forums. If you have a small clan then just request from an administrator to open a private forum for you. You can then get your clan mates to join.

If you are looking for a server to play then Borgclan will welcome you on their NoQuarter server which is based in California/US. If you actively participate in the community's forums and behave on the server, then you might be given special privileges on the server.

Check out this great offer from our sponsor!

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While browsing around blogs, I've stumbled on a list of 100 free games to download. Some of them are First Person Shooters similar to Wolfenstein (e.g. Assault Cube), others are MMORPG games (Massively Multiplayer Online TRole-Playing Game). 

Enjoy but don't blame me if your parents, wife, girlfriend throw you out of the house!