The Compressorizer! Mass DBPF Compressing Program

[jfade]

The Whaterizor?
The Compressorizer! (It eats your sims for breakfast!) It's a little utility I made that shells out to the nifty little dbpf-recompress program that benrg made and uploaded to Bowels of Trogdor here. Full credit to him for the awesome compression utility, I just made a pretty friendly, but ugly, interface to connect with it and make it easier for you to compress all your package files to a much smaller size!

But... Why?
There's no reason to not compress your files. EA/Maxis does and SimPE can (sometimes) but there was no easy way to do it, until now that is. With my tests, I compressed 73 MB of files to 37 MB. That's pretty much 50% smaller right there. Those of you with massive downloads folders will probably see even more benefit as this will help you make room for even more downloads!

OK, I'm Interested Now. Where do I start?
You'll need Microsoft's .NET Framework, version 1.1. This was written in C#.NET, and the source code will be released under GPL once I'm satisfied that it works properly. Since this is a debug version, it has all kinds of extra debug files with it, so the final version will be even smaller as it won't have those files along for the ride. Just extract the files to a folder somewhere, and start TheCompressorizer.exe. From there, it should be pretty self explanatory.

Important Stuff
As always, since this program's in beta, you'll want to BACK UP YOUR FILES before using it, especially since this program will change just about everything internally in a file that you point it at. Let me know about any problems by posting here, but I don't expect there to be any. It seems to work really well.

As it is now is pretty much the final product, though I will consider any suggestions about changes to the UI.

Enjoy!

Download: http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=21
Screenshot: http://temp.djssims.com/beta/compressorizerscreen.jpg

Edit: Forgot the file links, heh.
Edit 2: The program has been officially released, get that version instead.

[syberspunk]

Does compressing actually benefit you and reduce your loading times?  I thought the game still has to take time to uncompress files again in memory, no?

Oh... and thanks (to both you and benrg), this is great!

Ste

[jfade]

Not actually sure if it has an impact on loading times, but if all the EA files are compressed, I don't see why we shouldn't have our downloads compressed. *Shrug*

I'd be interested to see the results though if someone did a benchmark type test on things and found out what impact, if any, compressed files have versus normal files.

[dizzy]

Works in Linux (Mono v1.2.3) though it doesn't look that great and of course the process fails (it doesn't try to open the exe in Wine after all).

[jrd]

Is this safe for textures? Many textures, if compressed in SimPE, result in corrupt packages.

[jrd]

Seems safe for textures!

Before: 1036MB
After: 489MB
------------------ -
Delta: 547MB

Very impressive.


A possible side-effect... my game loads significantly faster. I haven't made any configuration changes other than using this compresser, and it saved at least 2 minutes off the startup time.


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If you're still taking feature requests: clear list would be nice (remove all files from list).
And an auto-focus, that if selecting a file, its before and after are highlighted to see the compression of any specific file.

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Also, while "recursive" is the correct term, labelling it "scan subdirectories" may be more clear for all users.

[aqualectrix]

Eh, the pherverstool and SimPE both use recursive.  I'd imagine most people using any sort of tool are used to that terminology at this point.

Anyway, if one were really attempting to accomodate the less-knowledgeable, one would have to use "subfolders" -- because your typical Windows user is not going to think in terms of directories.

[Hecubus]

How would this work on other package files, such as those in the lot catalog or neighborhoods? Or is that borrowing trouble?

[jrd]

Seems to compress them without issues. I wouldn't run it on the install folders though.

[Ambular]

The fellow who first posted the library jfade used for this said that it knocked 100 MB off his base-game installation and everything seemed to work fine.  That said, if you want to experiment with the base files, back everything up first!

jfade, it screwed something of mine up, but then I tried to do over 2 gigs at once, and also I know there were a couple of files I had that didn't like being compressed in SimPE and made things crash.  I'll try it again tonight, incrementally, and see if it works better that way.

[jrd]

Compressing base game install folders seems to work without problems, although I won't be surprised if I can't install the future Seasons patch 2 now. Shaved off about 75MB from a TS2+everything install.

[Gwendolyne]

Seems to work fine for me. Only tested it with my objects, yet. I noticed one file was compressed from 5000 kb to about 500. I only wish I knew which file. Can't you make that files list a little bigger so that I can see the filenames? Now I will go and test my loading time 

[Ambular]

Can't you make that files list a little bigger so that I can see the filenames?

I second that request--a resizeable window for the filenames would be awesome!  (Better yet, one that lists only the filename with the folder path displayed separately at the top, rather than the entire path of every file.)  Also, a "Stop compressing" button would not go amiss.

It seems to be working fine though.  Got most of my files compressed now, one folder at a time, and the game runs without a hitch; I'll finish up the rest as soon as I can and post a final report.

[Lorelei]

This is VERY shiny!

So, if a babygeek such as m'self wished to try this on, say, her Sims2 DL folder, the best way to do it would be to

1. backup DL folder (to external drive, or, at the bare minimum, b/up the folder(s) I am about to compress)
2. run Magic Ensquishifier tool
3. attempt to load Sims 2
4. lather, rinse, repeat until all folders in DL folder are de-embiggened?

Yes, no, "don't touch it, it is too shiny for the likes of you"?

[Ambular]

This is VERY shiny!

So, if a babygeek such as m'self wished to try this on, say, her Sims2 DL folder, the best way to do it would be to

1. backup DL folder (to external drive, or, at the bare minimum, b/up the folder(s) I am about to compress)
2. run Magic Ensquishifier tool
3. attempt to load Sims 2
4. lather, rinse, repeat until all folders in DL folder are de-embiggened?

That's about the size of it.

ETA: Probably a good idea to delete the groups.cache file from your EA Games/The Sims 2 folder before you run the game for the first time, too.

Oh, jfade, one other small thing that would be really nice is if the directory listing in the Add Files to List dialogue would remember the last folder you ensquishified...

[Li'l Brudder]

I just compressed the DL folder itself.  All the contents were squishinated.

[Ambular]

I just compressed the DL folder itself.  All the contents were squishinated.

Well, that seems to work well for some people, not so much for others.  I just recommend folder by folder because that's what worked for me.  :p

[Li'l Brudder]

And I for mine.  :-P

[jfade]

If you're still taking feature requests: clear list would be nice (remove all files from list).
And an auto-focus, that if selecting a file, its before and after are highlighted to see the compression of any specific file.

I only wish I knew which file. Can't you make that files list a little bigger so that I can see the filenames?

Oh, jfade, one other small thing that would be really nice is if the directory listing in the Add Files to List dialogue would remember the last folder you ensquishified...

Working on all those features now. Thanks for the feedback so far!

[Lorelei]

I just compressed the DL folder itself.  All the contents were squishinated.

Well, that seems to work well for some people, not so much for others.  I just recommend folder by folder because that's what worked for me.  :p

Mine's at 13G, so I think I'd be courting trouble.

This won't cause other tools to fail, such as SimCat / S2PCleanInstall / S2HDetect, right? I can't see how it would, but if the ensquishinator is altering files....     

[SaraMK]

One of my files went from 2775 to 45. I fear for this file....

I'm now going to see if compressing a huge Downloads folder (19,570 files, 6.13 GB) will do anything to loading times.

[jrd]

SaraMK - look closer. The numbers do not scroll right, the left column is one more down than the right (or was it the other way? Anyway they're not in sync).

Load times definitely are affected by this tool. I went from ~6 minutes to less than 2.

[SaraMK]

That was the only file I had in a subfolder, so it definitely went down to 45 as long as the program is reporting correctly.

[jrd]

Huh, weird. But possible... I had one file that went down from over 2000 to less than 100 as well. It was riddled with text based resources and nothing compressed (text compresses really well). The file definitely works still.
It is a property set overrider I have for my own use, which I never compressed because it is too large to do so in SimPE (took more than 20 minutes before it completely hung, so I left it be). The compressorizer took far less time (about 90s or so).

[Gwill]

I'm very frightened of this, but I'm going to give it a try.