LZMA (7zip) should be used for data package: 150MB smaller

[Alien]

Tar question was not about size (of course) but about loading speed. For example, STEAM's gcf files have low compression, because they were made like this to increase loading speed by preventing file scattering around the filesystem and not to make an archive small as possible. One could compress whole nexuiz using lzma and then decompress everything to data.tar (if it was actually faster then zip). This way game would load (maybe) quicker while taking less time to download. The issue is not final data.* size, but time it takes to load the files.

I guess you ignored the part "data in zip loads twice as fast as uncompressed".
Let's ignore that part again. Let's ignore it forever!

You could 7zip nexuiz, but then no one would beable to figure out how to unzip it and play the game.
If peeps can't figure out how to copy/paste encryption keys, or hack macintosh computers and pwn them, how could the figure out what a "doyt 7z" is?

Started stalking me? It was just another thing which I wanted - personal troll. Yay

[tundramagi]

Tar question was not about size (of course) but about loading speed. For example, STEAM's gcf files have low compression, because they were made like this to increase loading speed by preventing file scattering around the filesystem and not to make an archive small as possible. One could compress whole nexuiz using lzma and then decompress everything to data.tar (if it was actually faster then zip). This way game would load (maybe) quicker while taking less time to download. The issue is not final data.* size, but time it takes to load the files.

I guess you ignored the part "data in zip loads twice as fast as uncompressed".
Let's ignore that part again. Let's ignore it forever!

You could 7zip nexuiz, but then no one would beable to figure out how to unzip it and play the game.
If peeps can't figure out how to copy/paste encryption keys, or hack macintosh computers and pwn them, how could the figure out what a "doyt 7z" is?

Started stalking me? It was just another thing which I wanted - personal troll. Yay

The forum doesn't get much posts. You're the only one posting today

[divVerent]

Tar question was not about size (of course) but about loading speed.

tar is not compressed AT ALL. Zip is faster than uncompressed.

But DP already supports an uncompressed format, so you can do your own benchmarks and try. It is Quake's PAK format.

[Alien]

What would be the explanation of zip being the fastest?

[esteel]

loading the compressed data and extracting it is faster then just reading the uncompressed data.

[divVerent]

Basically, zip decompression is faster than your hard drive can read data.

Uncompressed is only faster if cached.

[tundramagi]

Basically harddrives are garbage and should be shot.
Alien: why AREN'T you using an SSD.
Everyone used an SSD these days, get with the program G.

[scientes]

@tundramagi
in this case, access times (what SSDs are so good at) are not really the thing making uncompressed slower, it is aligned reads, which i believe hard drives are still faster at.


It would be kinda nutty but i could see the file starting as .tar.lzma and then being converted to .tar.gz on first load. lzma decompression itsself (without file packing 7zip stuff) is a very small C library. However i have no idea about tar.gz (and .tar.lzma) vs zip on random accesses (compression wise they are identical)

[Taiyo.uk]

why AREN'T you using an SSD.

Cost. SSDs are still more expensive than conventional hard discs, by an order of magnitude. MTBFs, really, aren't all too different despite the garbage that SSD salesdroids peddle.

scientes: Recent SSDs are significantly faster at sequential, aligned reads than HDDs are. HDD sequential read speed is limited by how quickly you can spin the platters while SSDs are limited by how many flash dies you can run in parallel.

Anyway back to the point. I think a major reason to use a more efficient compression is to reduce download times rather than map loading times since the difference in loading times between uncompressed/zip/bz2/7-z/etc. will be rather insignificant in any system from the last five years or so. Difference in download times will be many minutes for allot of the community though.

On systems with slow HDDs the CPU time to decompress is often less than the HDD time to read uncompressed files.

[divVerent]

Actually, it does matter if a map loads in 10 or 15 seconds...