[PC] kernel2 compressor - FF7's kernel2 compressor using black magic

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myst6re

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When we worked on the french retranslation project, we were annoyed about the kernel2 size limitation. After I detroyed the file format with a hammer, every texts have been inserted successfully in the file.

What I share you today is a stand-alone program that reproduce my magical compression. The file is always readable by the game after changes (except if you exceed size limitation), but few kernel editors may have troubles after that.

Download link: https://github.com/myst6re/kernel2_compressor/releases

Note: there is a console version in addition to the GUI version, let me know if you have a trouble to use it.
 
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How does it work? I looked at the source for a few minutes, but couldn't spend a lot of time analyzing. It's still using LZS style, surely, but what makes it smaller?
 
I though "black magic" was a good explanation ::)

On each section of the file, there are common texts, like "Potion", I merge this kind of text by changing the list of text positions. If possible, I merge common suffixes. Two text positions can point to the same text, on in the same text. The list of positions can be reordered, that's why few editors cannot open the resulting file.
 
That's beautiful! I see why you labeled it "aggressive" :) WallMarket should be able to read it, but definitely won't rebuild it in that way.

PS - "Magic" is just a science that hasn't been published. :)
 
Nice work :), Avast is detecting it as a virus (false detection I'm guessing) so I had to add a exclusion to get it to download, but thanks for the program :)

EDIT:- just built it myself with QT5.7.0 and avast didn't detect it as a virus, so i checked the differences and saw your EXE has been UPXed, after unUPXing it avast no longer finds it as a virus.
 
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excellent, thanks.

I had improved weapon, armour descriptions so they show what hidden stat boosts are and also added descriptions to ultimate weapons for how damage calculated and this took me over the limit, but your tool fixes it. :)
 
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