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[_r.u.s.s.]

yes MS + Mac + Sony are encouraging people to upgrade :P

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Doink

Edit: 7zip appears to have a 50% to 60% better compression ratio than traditional zip so its a major step.

[* Irritant little voice *]

UHarc compresses better and faster than 7Zip, that's why many pirated games are spread around in this format, -(it even compresses mp3 files!)-, so why stick with 7Zip? Let us push UHarc down their troats.

[/* Irritant little voice *]

And what will happen when this whole 7Zip project will be terminated, abandoned, whatever?
Will you recompress all the archives on AB to yet another 'better_than_zip_or_rar' archiver?

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Adamg

..... The best compression results I get are obtained using the .7z format, on ultra compression, using the LZMA method, with a dictionary size of 128MB, a word size of 273, and a solid archive setting. With those settings I get around 20% better compression, sometimes more, sometimes less, than the maximum I can get with WinZip. .....

*Ah, nerdy talky, me likes.*
If compress ratio is your goal, you really should try out UHarc once, beats 7zip completely.

If 'n00b_compability' must be the goal: ZIP -(or RAR eventually)- is the way to go.

[The Fifth Horseman]

We use primarily ZIP format for compatibility reasons. RAR may be used for larger games, but only if absolutely neccesary.

[GTX2GvO]

Originally Posted by Adamg

For maximum compression you need 2GB of RAM though, but the results are usually very impressive. The compression times are longer, of course, but that's not really a big deal.

I have Two PC's
One Laptop and a Desktop.

The Laptop has 1,46GHz and JUST 512MB of RAM.
My Desktop is Just a P3 with 550MHz and a mere 320MB of RAM!

And you want WHAT!!
Longer compression times are equal to longer DEcompression times.

I would highly suggest Abandonia keeps to either .zip (compatibility) or uses .rar (very known archive type).

And Nothing else! :mad:

[Doink]

Originally Posted by _r.u.s.s.

what's the point? it's not that we hosted 2 GB images or something

True for now but the size of abandoned games will rapidly increase and changing to a better compression format(not necessarily 7zip) sooner rather than later mite be a good idea.

Originally Posted by GTX2GvO

Longer compression times are equal to longer DEcompression times.

This is better than longer download times.

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

The whole point here is: Even if we were to offer two downloads, one with .zip and another for 7zip... There would be a lot of computer knowledgable people who will be pleased to download the 7zip version. But 90%+ of the downloads, those made by people who don't know better, won't even bother to try to discover what 7zip is and will download the .zip version anyways.

For a trial period the selected games should only be in the 7zip format and the right utilities will be available on the site, this will force people to use the 7zip format and if we get to many questions and to many people have trouble with it then the 7zip files will be removed and the zip files put in there place.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Doink

... this will force people to use the 7zip format ...

Djees man, you're worst than MS + Mac + Sony together.
*Force* people .... :mad:
It's not because YOU like an application you're suddenly entitled to force it upon others.

Even if I also have 7Zip -(yes, indeed)- I wouldn't dream to shovel it down in other peeps troaths.

Talk about it, propose it, advise it, yes, but force ? No way josé.

What's next? 8Zippy that's again a bit (0.05%) better?
9Zippy? (0.02%) better?

[Sebatianos]

Originally Posted by Adamg

I noticed that Abandonia still generally uses .zip archives for all of the downloads.

What do you mean still generally uses? All game archives on Abandonia should be ZIPped. It's just a question is some extract to their own folder or if they don't.

Why is this? As mentioned before - user friendliness. Believe it or not, many people don't even know what WinZip is and extract directly via WinXP extractor (which isn't even able to extract all zipped files - I remember a few games The Horseman compressed, wouldn't decompress with WinXP extractor and some guests went into panic).

And about archive size - games like Death Gate are great examples. The full game (with all the high-er resolution video and speach files...) is much larger then the version on the site, yet it doesn't hinder the gameplay. In fact, if somebody isn't sure weather ot give the game a go or not, such a person in more likely to download the ripped version (smaller file to download simply to try).

And I think it happened only once, that a game really got rejected because of its size. It was Magic the Gathering: Shandalar. It was on the site for about 6 hours before Kosta took it down (because it took up too much space - among other things). It wasn't a problem, since it turned out to be ESA protected anyway (but that was a few weeks before the famous ESA clean-up).

So why switch to any other compression tools to convert the archives on the site? For personal use - sure thing, most of our regulars started using it about three years ago, about the time (the EoF mentioned) the previous simular debate was held on the topic.