Hey everyone, can I get your opinion? I'm near release for my game, and Steve Mccrea just pointed out that rar files are quite a bit smaller than zip files. I've always known this, but I've always avoided rar figuring that alot of people don't have the ability to uncompress it.
Am I wrong to think that? Have any of you ever released a rar file, and if so, did alot of people not know what to do with it?
for example:
I just compressed all the Prodigal game data, minus the music.vox file, and with Kzip I got a 42 meg file...but compressing the same files with Winrar yielded a much smaller 31 meg file! This would save alot for the people who are still on a modem! (like me)
Though I'll recommend ZIP as it's a more commonly used format, but if the difference is so huge in your case I think you may compress it with RAR. Just don't do self-installers, self-installers are for cowards!
lol cowards? What do you mean?
No one likes self instalers, that's what. And anyway, I don't care what I unzip with, but like gilbot said if it makes that much of a difference then use rar. It's easy to get winrar, so it's no coropeal difference unless some people don't know where to find it (assuming they don't plan on putting "winrar" into google)
... I don't have a problem with self installers..
They're just plain evil. Unless you just use the self-extract feature of WINZIP or WINRAR, that you can still unzip/unrar them directly without double clicking on the executable.
You can rename an self-decompressing exe to zip/rar (whichever was used to compress it) and then open it by double-clicking it. If it's a zip, Winzip, if a rar, WinRar will open and display the file content. (Of course, you need Winzip/WinRar installed.)
You don't even need to rename them, I can just right-click extract (at least for 7-Zip), the problems are from custom installer making programmes which pack the files into A B normal formats, which you can't uncompress with your archiver.
I don't think anyone uses programs anymore that doesn't have the ability to compress or uncompress rars, zips, 7zs and so forth. Atleast the softwares I've used have that. Ultimatezip and 7-zip.
I experiemnted with compressing various popular AGS titles with different compression programs and found that 7zip gave the best on average.
7-Zip is rather good, but since 7z is not a very popular format it's not recommended to use.
However, I found that even if you use 7zip to compress to ZIP, it's slightly tighter than most other programmes (maybe it's just my illusions), just don't turn on some of the more advanced options (like deflate64) then most programmes can uncompress the files.
Me say rar. Rar is good. Worship rar. Besides, as has been said, rar is not that obscure a format anymore. Everyone should have a means of extracting ZIP, RAR and ACE nowadays.
Definately RAR. No questions there. As Brisby said, it's becoming a common file now.
When I did my game, I found that, from a 60 Meg file, a ZIP put it down to 51, a RAR to 48, and an ACE to 37, but I zipped it anyways for the same reasons you are debating whether or not to use RAR. However, although it yielded the best results for me, I can't recommend ACE one way or another because I do not know enough of the inner workings of compression formats to know if it is good or stable.
And since the original thread in which I was doing this got locked, let me throw in my final guess here: Elliot Hird is seven years old.
OFF TOPIC
<groan> I have no idea what you're talking about, esper, with that final paragraph, but if threads are locked they're meant to stay locked. Don't keep on discussing whatever in a different thread. Especially a remark which, to someone who has no idea what you're talking about (such as I), seems like an insult.
EDIT - I now read the thread, and I see it's not even remotely insulting, but you see the misunderstanding that ensued for a while? You can always PM the guy.
ON TOPIC
The biggest problem I ever had with ace was just finding a decompressor, actually - WinRAR wouldn't decompress some ACE files. But when I found one, it all seemed stable enough... look at it this way, if it weren't stable it probably wouldn't be one of the popular methods out there. :)
I use WinRAR instead of Ace and whatnot because I just like the interface and I like RAR compression... and that's about it. Ease of use is a beaut.
Quote from: esper on Wed 26/10/2005 10:53:35
And since the original thread in which I was doing this got locked, let me throw in my final guess here: Elliot Hird is seven years old.
Go down esper go down...
I think that he's not even born yet...
And having that said, I think that anyone with an interent connection, who are the people to download the games in the first place, can get a hold of a decompresser for ACE or RAR or anything. So not a real problem. And since RAR and ACE produce much smaller files, I don't think there is an issue here...
And anyways, mirror both files. ZIP and RAR. If you can find webspace that is...
Well, whenever I get an ace file I have to install WinAce, extract it and then unstall WinAce, I don't wanna install any additional stuff just to uncompress ACE files, unless 7-Zip supports it.
Ok, I know this may sound silly, but why not just keep WinAce installed for whenever you have to extract ACE? Works for me.
Sorry. Ease up, pally-o. It didn't get locked because it was about guessing his age, and for whoever was reading that thread I just threw this in as a little inside joke. I apologize. You didn't have to groan at me for one short OT sentence. It couldn't have been that bothersome, and you spent more time telling me not to do it then I spent actually dong it. I feel like a complete n00b now, too, which is no good. :D
... That having been said, I use WinAce, which has almost the exact same interface as classical WinZip, and can do RARs, ZIPs, ACEs, along with 20 other little known file types.
Slightly off-topic (no one groan at me, please) - Why is it that EVERY archiving application has such a lousy evaluation program built in to it? You can only use this program for thirty days, and then they tell you "Hey! You're 5,842 days over your evaluation period!!!" but don't do anything about it. Companies that made archiving programs like WinZip could make so much more money if they turned the program off after thirty days. I for one could care less that after a thirty-day period, there is a screen reminding me to register. If they want to make money, the program should stop working at the end of the evaluation period, because everyone who uses the internet for just about anything needs an unzipper. I'm not going to pay 30 bucks for a program that works perfectly fine for free. However, if I did need to pay thirty bucks to keep using it, I would, out of necessity, HAVE to pay for it.
Even if the programs were disabled after 30-days there'd be a crack or serial on the net within 10 minutes.
You're both right, but esper keep it down. Don't let them know. I like it this way. hehe
Sorry I have to say this: I think that I have a habbit of making the first post in every second page in the Gen forums... Once again post #20 is mine!
Quote from: Rui "Brisby" Pires (a Furry) on Wed 26/10/2005 11:09:59
Ok, I know this may sound silly, but why not just keep WinAce installed for whenever you have to extract ACE? Works for me.
Because 1. I don't wanna use pirated software, and most important of all, 2. I don't like WinAce.
7-zip has so far extracted everything I've come across... on the days of this new PC that is, on the old one I had Winzip, Winrar and 7-zip installed. It was a bit of a rumble to cope with the three, so I set .zips to open with Winrar... worked, for the time being. But 7-zip seems much better than Winrar, userfriendlynesswise. Personally I don't (anymore) have a problem which format it is.
Obviously, if the program still runs after thirty days, it can't be too terrible to keep running it even though you are technically supposed to uninstall it (and then a little screwing around in the windows system registry makes it so you can just reinstall it Ã, :o ) but cracks and hacked serials are like saying "I know I'm doing wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway." I use them, don't get me wrong, but it's only if I have the program but lost the CD case that had the serial on it. Nevertheless, I also think it makes sense to say that WinZip couldn't charge, because then some nerdy teenager would make a clone and give it away. However, I think I would still pay thirty bucks for a professional program over using some crummy nerd-made Visual Basic program with one "dekumpres" button and an "eggsit" menu.
Oh, 7-zip can't extract ACE, and if it ever will is unknown. So I don't like .ace then - atleast not yet. :=
I'd say - RAR it.
Yes, there was time when all people foolisly preferred ZIP over internet, but it's about to end, at least I have noticed much more rar packs everywhere. .ACE may be the one not everyone could open yet, but RAR has became at least as popular as zipping. Plus, it's smaller AND can have split volumes, which is like - first thing a packer should be able to do! fuck zip
I prefer .rar. Assuming that I have completed games, I consider anyone who does not know how to get the game out of the .rar archive as unworthy to play them.
I don't mind self-extracters, I always right click on them and select "run with win-zip" or whatever.
Hmmm...sounds like the general concensus is that RARs are OK to use? Nobody said if they'd ever uploaded a file as a RAR and had problems with people not knowing what to do with it...?
If you're talking about adventure games, well -
People who can't figure out what to do with RAR are probably very young generation - who usually isn't attracted to adventure genre at all, or simply too stupid and not worth being worried about. These people won't get to play your game anyway, and won't figure rar-thing out even if you'd add long tutorial along with link or a whole video about how to unpack the game. I wouldn't care so much.
Who gets rar open, gets to play the game.
Who won't, isn't probably wanting enough so hell with them.
If I was you, I wouldn't care too much about everyone to learn to use computer or archiving program.
Also, I'd make a simple webpage where is both the game link and line like:
"The game is packed in RAR format, in case of problems getting it open, get an archivator from www.rarlabs.com" or something like that (erg, bad english)
Hmmm, after reading all this I wonder how much size difference there actually is between ZIP and RAR using AGS 2.71, which now.
From 2.71 Beta Thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=21373.0)
Quote
The second change is optional sprite compression. There is a new option in the General Settings tab to compress sprites. This is done with a basic RLE compression scheme, but it should reduce the sprite file size by about 70%.
Isn't RAR a M$ thing? I have been weening myself of that dependancy for several years now and don't want to lock myself into yet another one. So are there RAR decompressors for MAC and Linux? Does 7-zip run on Linux or Mac and isn't it open source?
In any case since more people can deal with ZIP, I will stay in the dark ages for the time being and stick with ZIP.
Quote from: InCreator on Wed 26/10/2005 18:43:18
People who can't figure out what to do with RAR are probably very young generation - who usually isn't attracted to adventure genre at all, or simply too stupid and not worth being worried about.
Ey? Loads of people who aren't really "into" computers don't know what to do with RAR files, but almost anyone can open a ZIP file (since XP has it built-in). Sticking with ZIP is the most sensible option if you want to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Quote from: RickJ on Wed 26/10/2005 19:08:52
So are there RAR decompressors for MAC and Linux? Does 7-zip run on Linux or Mac and isn't it open source?
For Linux, there are unrar and p7zip.
I would say 7zip. Sure, it's not really popular, but what does that mean?
Every package program I know supports it, like WinRAR, Izarc, UltimateZip and probably even WinZip then, although I can't tell because I haven't used it in ages.
There's no more hassle with it.
I would say RAR is a much less supported format because with the exception of WinRAR there's no other application with which you can create a RAR-package. This tells us that it is a corporate format, while 7z is open-source, and don't we love that?
I'm not sure if this makes enough sense, but at such a late/early hour (4am?) I don't really care anymore....
Well I like 7zip very much but in my opinion it's still not popular enough to be a preference for publicly released stuff (on the other hand it's a good idea to have 7ziped self extracting packages, like what they did with the GIMP window$ installer, and possibly source packages which are not that public anyway, I'm never a *nix fan, so I don't like those tar-?z stuff). Here're my prefered order for public archives:
ZIP
LHA/LZH (Yeah)
7Z
RAR
ARJ
CAB (WTF?)
ACE
Interestingly, the LZMA compression used by 7zip is downloadable as an SDK http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html and can be used any way CJ likes if unmodified, so maybe he'd like to add it to AGS 2.72?
I agree with InCreator. Use the most bizarre, arcane compression format you can find, then the first puzzle in your game can be "how do I extract the game to play it." You'll be extending and enhancing the gameplay. Pure genius!
Quote from: SSH on Fri 28/10/2005 11:07:49
Interestingly, the LZMA compression used by 7zip is downloadable as an SDK http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html and can be used any way CJ likes if unmodified, so maybe he'd like to add it to AGS 2.72?
For what? Backgrounds in rooms?
For speed concerns, as far as I know, apart from backgrounds (and now, sprites, which adopts only RLE compression for speed issue), mostly all of the data in an AGS game are not compressed.
On the subject of compression, read the article on this site. http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/ArchiveTools/