The Compressorizer! Mass DBPF Compressing Program

[jrd]

Before compressing it, I had enough time to go downstairs, boil water, make a coffee, and take the cup back upstairs with me before the game began the loading music.
Now I just have time to yell "coffee!" down the stairwell.

[J. M. Pescado]

Agreed. Apparently there's some sort of magic that happens that won't let a package get more squishified than it's suppsoed to (yeah, there is actually some computer process that does that, but it's Greek to me, so ...'magic".)

Well, actually, the magic is more basic: It just blindly unpacks and restuffs everything. If it was already packed before, you'll just get the same output back out. Nothing interesting will happen.

Also, I have successfully run this on my lot catalog and neighborhood files...not as much compression, but a noticeable improvement in speed. My game now loads in under 6 minutes (used to be 10), and maybe it's just me, but it seems that lots load a tad faster from the neighborhood screen.

There's reason to believe it may load faster simply because most of those files are already compressed, albeit poorly, so by compressing them better, less crap needs to be snorted into memory, resulting in less time spent reading the hard drive.

[dizzy]

At this point it's just a few cosmetic problems. Otherwise it works fine with Mono.

[jfade]

Interesting... I'll see if I can make a few tweaks to fix those things and then hopefully it'll be all spiffy looking.

How did you get it to actually run the dbpf-recompress.exe file? Wine?

[MutantBunny]

I've squished some files with this, worked great, but as of yet haven't had a chance to play/check them out.

Questions: Am I reading this thread right: we can run this on the program file/EAgame blah blah folders and it will compress those? And then: what is in a lot file that needs to be compressed?

I was thinking this program basically compressed the texture and GMDC parts in a package--but I should be thinking it compresses ALL of a file(s)...similair to how Rar or Zip does?

[Zazazu]

Have you deleted your cache? It has been noticed that it can lengthen load time unless this is done.

Yeah, that was the first thing I did. It's not a big deal, just an extra minute. Um...I'm in shock at how long some of you have to wait for the game to load! You can fix a meal in that time, probably eat it, too.

On my old laptop, load time for the game was at least a half hour. I had no custom content whatsoever. It wasn't until I got this computer that I learned that those pretty cinematics shown in the credits actually existed in-game, and that mirrors could show reflections.

[MissKitty]

Cool toy ^^

I don't have the most extensive download folder these days (3279 files) but I ran this thing on my desktop and it went from 1159mb to 795mb.

I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but I noticed that the files it took most out of were mainly in my Peggy folder. The bulk of the files are down to between 1/2 and 1/4, while a few are even down to 1/10-1/20! 

Can anyone say bloated?

Anyhoo, the game boots fine etc. Not sure if it's faster as I never thought it was slow before, but it didn't get slower either. Haven't got time to play the game right now but I'll edit this message if I run into anything worth mentioning later.

[starrling]

I'm sooooo pleased with this!  I cut my d/l folder from 2.08 GB to 1.04 GB!  Wheeee!  And loaded the game about 3 minutes faster (off a 10 min. load - I have a crappy comp).  Played lots, commercial and residential, with plenty of custom stuff, and no problems at all.

One thing I did notice with the Squishinator is that when you click "Clear file list" the progress bar doesn't reset till you begin again.  At first I thought it was a problem, but after the first time I realized it was just cosmetic.  Still, thought you'd like to know. 

[Ambular]

Okay, here we go.  I cut my Downloads folder from about 2.24 GB to 1.38 GB and compressed my EA Games/The Sims 2 folder as well (didn't stop to check how much additional space I saved there.)

A couple of curiosities:

1. The game repeatedly choked after my large Object Recolors folder was compressed, until I split it into three parts and compressed them separately; then it worked fine.  Recombining the three folders afterward had no apparent ill effects.

2.  The game appears to load more slowly with the compressed Downloads folder in there, but that could possibly be my mind playing tricks on me, because it now appears to hang for some time at the opening copyright message and then runs through all the silly UI text really quickly right at the end.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to time my pre- and post-compression startups. :/

3.  When I ran the game with the compressed The Sims 2 folder before putting my Downloads back in, it started up like lightning!

I'm now weighing the possible risks versus benefits of compressing my base game files.  If I decide to go through with it I'll let you know how it works out, but in the meantime, thanks, jfade and benrg!  It's a great program, and something that was badly needed. 

[dizzy]

How did you get it to actually run the dbpf-recompress.exe file? Wine?

Wine has been properly integrated with Mono in Ubuntu since Feisty beta, so that wasn't the issue. When I really took a look at getting that executable to work, I quickly discovered that it was failing because of a missing dll (msvcr71 - which you can easily just download).

[jfade]

How did you get it to actually run the dbpf-recompress.exe file? Wine?

Wine has been properly integrated with Mono in Ubuntu since Feisty beta, so that wasn't the issue. When I really took a look at getting that executable to work, I quickly discovered that it was failing because of a missing dll (msvcr71 - which you can easily just download).

Ah, ok. I'm just now running the upgrade to Feisty (Literally, right now it's upgrading) so I wasn't aware of that. Before I'd always just installed Mono via the package off the Mono site. Should I use synaptic to get it from the official Ubuntu sources instead?

[dizzy]

Repo is the way to go although it's still just the v1.2.3, and that also goes for Wine (I just learned that the latest versions of Wine don't handle Mono integration properly).

[MistyBlue]

2.  The game appears to load more slowly with the compressed Downloads folder in there, but that could possibly be my mind playing tricks on me, because it now appears to hang for some time at the opening copyright message and then runs through all the silly UI text really quickly right at the end.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to time my pre- and post-compression startups. :/

It's not your mind playing tricks on you, I'm having the same hang up at the opening.

[Ambular]

2.  The game appears to load more slowly with the compressed Downloads folder in there, but that could possibly be my mind playing tricks on me, because it now appears to hang for some time at the opening copyright message and then runs through all the silly UI text really quickly right at the end.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to time my pre- and post-compression startups. :/

It's not your mind playing tricks on you, I'm having the same hang up at the opening.

Hmm, good to know it's not just me.  I'm just not sure whether the entire startup sequence is *actually* taking longer, or if it only *feels* like it's taking longer because I'm staring at an unchanging screen for so much of it...

[spikesminx]

I add the files to the list and hit Go button but I get a pop-up that says MSVCR71.dll is not found, the application couldn't start etc.  I couldn't close the pop-up no matter how much I click ok or close buttons, I had to restart the comp  Do you know what causes this?

[jrd]

spikesminx: Just a guess, but I think it's caused by a missing msvcr71.dll file.

Make sure you have .net 1.1 installed. Instructions are not optional!

If you are sure you already have the framework installed, just copy Msvcr71.dll from another directory on your system to the directory where the compressorizer is installed.

[spikesminx]

I have .net 1.1 installed. It's still the same.

[jrd]

Which windows version?
Does copying the DLL help?
Do other .net applications work?

[spikesminx]

I have Windows XP. I didn't try any other .net versions  And where should I copy the .dll file? *feels stupid*

[jrd]

Search for Msvcr71.dll on your system. This DLL file comes with most .net applications. If you have SimPE installed, it could be there.
Once found, copy it to wherever you unpacked the compressorizer archive.

The current version is just a beta, so I guess Jfade hasn't included all the dependancies (required helper files) in it. Most people have Msvcr71.dll somewhere in their path anyway.

[spikesminx]

It works perfectly now  Thanks!

[jfade]

Hrmmm, weird considering it works just fine without that file copied in the same directory. It should work normally anyhow....

When I go to release, I'll make sure to include the right file. Speaking of release, other than UI things, is there anything else I need to change about it? I think it's fairly straight forward and complete myself, but what do you all think?

[notveryawesome]

I tried this programme today (beta 2 version), and it compressed everything quite nicely, but didn't seem to acknowledge subfolders, meaning that I had to separately go into each folder, as well as every subfolder, in order to compress all the package files in my Downloads directory. Also, I had to close and re-run the thing after doing each individual folder. Browsing the file-menu each and every time got to be quite tedious. Is this a feature or a bug? Is there any way to streamline the process a bit?

[Simsbaby]

Wow, this is a great little tool. I downloaded a ton of cars from Sims2Carsource and ran them through this. Files went from from being huge (7, 8, 9, or even 10 MB) down to around 2 or 3 MB. Teh awesomez!!!1 

[Ambular]

I tried this programme today (beta 2 version), and it compressed everything quite nicely, but didn't seem to acknowledge subfolders, meaning that I had to separately go into each folder, as well as every subfolder, in order to compress all the package files in my Downloads directory. Also, I had to close and re-run the thing after doing each individual folder. Browsing the file-menu each and every time got to be quite tedious. Is this a feature or a bug? Is there any way to streamline the process a bit?

Check the "Recursive" box and re-load the folder and it will recognize subfolders.