Fuod on 17/10/2012 at 17:02
If you do decide to migrate to a database could you still offer the desc file, or some variant of it, for people like me? :confused:
epithumia on 17/10/2012 at 17:16
Maybe, maybe not. I certainly don't want to promise anything.
SinisterShadow on 20/10/2012 at 12:25
Shouldn't be much hazzle to convert a database table to a text file.
That way the file would always be as up to date as the database itself.
Albert on 1/11/2012 at 17:56
Since darkloader is getting updated to support .7z files, is there a plan involving re-compressing the entire thiefmissions FM library into the 7-zip format? I knew this was talked about earlier, but I didn't know if it was about thiefmissions in particular.
It would of course mean two things, good and bad: Smaller space usage if all .zip files were to be removed, but no support for older non 7-zip files FM manager/loaders unless someone re-compressed it manually into a .zip.
Just wondering.
epithumia on 1/11/2012 at 18:43
Certainly not. The last thing I want to do with the existing library is modify them in a way that potentially breaks them, or in a way that renders them useless to those who don't have updated software.
Albert on 1/11/2012 at 19:57
So in other words, you would imagine an entirely new archive being made by someone else, that hosts all alternate container format FMs, like .7z?
gnartsch on 1/11/2012 at 22:00
Quote Posted by Albert
So in other words, you would imagine an entirely new archive being made by someone else, that hosts all alternate container format FMs, like .7z?
I don't think that coverting all missions to 7zip would bring much benefits. You might spare 10% on compression maybe. But is that worth it?
But indeed there are a few missions that would deserve to be rezipped, because they are using some incompatible ZIP format, resulting in some filenames to be obfuscated.
For example Dennis' 'Freedom for Nepomuk' does not properly install some of the readables properly. Once I unzipped and rezipped it, it worked just fine.
So, on the other hand, simply rezipping everything may eleminate such issues.
Some authors seem to have used some really odd programs that pretend to be compatible with ZIP - or the problem is in the DarkLoader ZIP algorithm. Don't know.
cattamer on 1/11/2012 at 22:08
/z may have a higher compression ratio, but has a solid archive structure and is not very suitable for FMs.
This was discussed elsewhere but I don't remember where atm.
To display a readme file, you have to decompress the whole archive to memory.
Albert on 2/11/2012 at 02:39
Ah, well I see. How about other compression formats though?
Really though, I was just thinking of decreasing overall archive sizes. And if that isn't feasible with popular high-compression formats, then I guess it's not worth the bother as much as I imagined... Still, there's some experimental high-ratio formats out there worth studying.
(
http://www.nanozip.net/) Nanozip being one.
Yandros on 2/11/2012 at 02:41
With the disk space most people have these days, is it really worth any large effort to for example reduce an 80MB mission ZIP file to, say, 67MB?
