The 7-Zip compression format (patchers, read this!)

[Santiago Roza (Kq)]

Most patches in this community are packed in .ZIP, which is OK: it's a popular format, everyone can open them, and its compression rate is acceptable for single patches (one player update, one jersey, etc.)

But for larger patches, other formats are much more suitable, since they have compression rates than kick ZIP's butt. I'm gonna give real-life examples so we can see the impact it could have in our day-to-day patches.

All NTeams kits (26):
uncompressed 18000 Kb
ZIP 9100 Kb (51% of original)
RAR 8550 Kb (48%)
ACE 5850 Kb (33%)
7-Zip 4750 Kb (26%)

This test (which is just an example, but matches the results I got with dozens of other tests, always with NBA Live files), could lead us to some conclusions:
- ZIP is really inefficient for large patches.
- RAR is overrated, since it doesn't produce MUCH better results than ZIP.
- ACE is significantly better than RAR, but those two are propietary formats (copyrighted), and commercial programs are required to make and open that kind of archives.
- 7-Zip has the best compression rate of them all, and is not only free but also open-source.

So for large patches (over 1-2 Mb I guess), 7-Zip should be our choice. And the users don't need to have a 7z-compatible program to open those patches: we can make it into a SFX (self-extracting archive), an .EXE file that can be run without additional software.

[madskillionaire]

wow, i must tell me peoples about these hehe, thanks for the heads up

[Nick]

Good looking out KQ, everybody should use this method.

[Shadyon]

never heard about this program, but it sounds pretty cool

[Kozachok]

Most patches in this community are packed in .ZIP, which is OK: it's a popular format, everyone can open them, and its compression rate is acceptable for single patches (one player update, one jersey, etc.)

But for larger patches, other formats are much more suitable, since they have compression rates than kick ZIP's butt. I'm gonna give real-life examples so we can see the impact it could have in our day-to-day patches.

All NTeams kits (26):
uncompressed 18000 Kb
ZIP 9100 Kb (51% of original)
RAR 8550 Kb (48%)
ACE 5850 Kb (33%)
7-Zip 4750 Kb (26%)

This test (which is just an example, but matches the results I got with dozens of other tests, always with NBA Live files), could lead us to some conclusions:
- ZIP is really inefficient for large patches.
- RAR is overrated, since it doesn't produce MUCH better results than ZIP.
- ACE is significantly better than RAR, but those two are propietary formats (copyrighted), and commercial programs are required to make and open that kind of archives.
- 7-Zip has the best compression rate of them all, and is not only free but also open-source.

So for large patches (over 1-2 Mb I guess), 7-Zip should be our choice. And the users don't need to have a 7z-compatible program to open those patches: we can make it into a SFX (self-extracting archive), an .EXE file that can be run without additional software.

But uuuuuuuuu how do we do it?

[toni kukoc]

to get 7-zip its here http://www.7-zip.org/