[QUESTION] Aali's Compression

[Klaid Liadon]

Hi to everyone,
I would like to suggest an idea, maybe you already thought this option and discarded it.

It's all about PNG files and the load time in game.

I wonder if you can put another type of compressed archive like LGP (I suppose you can) or better ZIP/RAR into mods folder.
The core question is:

Aali's driver could support this, maybe in a future release?
If it does, will the performance improve?

 

[PitBrat]

Using the LGP version of Magochocobo's battle textures produces the same loading delays as the PNG version.
There is no noticeable performance benefit when using the LGP version as opposed to the PNG version.
Some people report difficulty using the PNG version and that the LGP version is more compatible.

 

[pyrozen]

re-sizing the overall dimensions of the PNG textures gives a small improvement to the load delays, but you should only experience these delays the first time you fire up the game without cache. My old laptop has Intel graphics in it, and i can play ff7 just fine in widescreen with all the graphical mods and very minimal hiccups.

Another avenue that was discussed was using the JPG format for smaller file sizes, but that was more to ease distribution of the packages. In the end PNG was chosen for its loss-less encoding, thereby preserving all the hard work that many of us have put into these textures. There was a lengthy discussion about this some time ago(wow, nearly 2 years!)between many of the members of TA and Aali, and this is what was chosen.

As far as ZIPing them goes, PNGs don't compress well. Give it a try, you'll end up with 15% compression with .7z files if your lucky! Even programs such as PNGgauntlet(another option looked at) don't make a large enough difference in filesize to justify the time it takes to run them(10-15%).

What I would like to see, however, is the "ff7/modpath/random directory/here are my mods" simply changed to a concrete "ff7/modpath/here are my mods". The /modpath directory doesn't support multiple folders inside, so it just seems weird to have it like that.

lee

 

[DLPB_]

SSD are obviously also a major advantage.

The /modpath directory doesn't support multiple folders inside, so it just seems weird to have it like that.

I made this point ages ago but no one seemed to get what I was saying. I guess 1 advantage of modpath changing is that I don't have to worry about people overwriting other mods when they install mine.

 

[pyrozen]

I had talked with AAli a long time ago about it, he knew what i was saying but he must have his reasons. I suppose it is so you can easily switch between multiple mods by changing the directory in you .ini file, but I can't imagine many people are doing that.