The Compressorizer! Mass DBPF Compressing Program

[bowrain]

ok thanks I'll run it through my program files then

[Aggie]

Hmmmm, my Downloads folder must be terribly subpar: it went from 280 Mb to 261. Not a big change. I've been trying this program out on the My Documents/The Sims 2 folders one by one, but thus far have only seen an 8mb difference. Am I doing something wrong? 

Also, when I try to add the Music folder, no files show up in the list (recursive was selected at the time).

ETA: Oh, I see. Now that I've selected the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 folder, everything is getting selected. I may notice a bigger difference now.

[KLGFCG]

Well, I'd say it works. I started with a 17.1 GB download folder (yeah, yeah, I know, it's a sickness - I need Downloader's Anonymous and if you're wondering, load time was about 45 minutes) and after compression... 7.45 GB. Holy crap. My jubilation may be short lived, I still need to actually load things up to make sure the game doesn't puke and it may not make a lick of difference, but damn, I like that new number. I'm hoping this makes a difference because I was pretty much at the point with my game where I had to delete things if I wanted to add anything new (okay, maybe the game is trying to tell me something) to prevent crashing.

One positive, however, I had a HUGE skin file that I loved but couldn't justify keeping it in the game at 49 MB in size. I'd searched high and low for a replacement but no luck. I ran it through this utility and lo and behold, it came out at just under 3 MB in size. I can happily put it back in game now, so even if the rest of the downloads folder ends up being a bust (cross your fingers that it's not) I got something out of it. Any thoughts what had it so horrifically bloated to begin with?

One other note though, I had the same problem with the dll (I forget the exact name, it's listed earlier in the thread) file needing to be copied in the same file as the Compressorizor program. No big deal, just figured I'd let you know. No other problems (though I may be back tomorrow once I've had a chance to load my game up). THANKS for the great program!

[Ambular]

One positive, however, I had a HUGE skin file that I loved but couldn't justify keeping it in the game at 49 MB in size. I'd searched high and low for a replacement but no luck. I ran it through this utility and lo and behold, it came out at just under 3 MB in size. I can happily put it back in game now, so even if the rest of the downloads folder ends up being a bust (cross your fingers that it's not) I got something out of it. Any thoughts what had it so horrifically bloated to begin with?

Is it a standard skin file or a default replacement?  Sounds to me like someone edited the thing in SimPE for one reason or another, rather than just running it through a standard BodyShop edit, then imported the textures at the highest resolution and neglected to compress them afterward.  Though 49 MB seems excessively large even taking that into account.  Is it a really detailed photo-quality type skin?

[kuronue]

how often does it borke things nowadays? Should I wait until after my weekly monthly "my system needs an overhaul" system backup before running it, just in case? Or is it safe enough to use pre-backup so I can save a disk or two when I do back up the system?

[Hecubus]

I have had nothing bork with this utility.

[RedNii]

I'm too scared to try it on my Program Files Sims 2 folders. Are you sure it won't mess up ? Has it been tested? Thanks for the program

MOD EDIT: The only tag worse than [ move] is [blink]. In fact, [ move] is worse.

[witch]

Hmm, just possibly, people have been talking about testing it all through this thread. Don't download it now though, they've re-hacked it and uploaded a new file which will blow up your game.

[Strangel]

Hmm, just possibly, people have been talking about testing it all through this thread. Don't download it now though, they've re-hacked it and uploaded a new file which will blow up your game.

..Buh?

Downloaded yesterday or the day before and now I'm.. well.. a bit worried.. by this statement. lol

[RedNii]

Hmm, just possibly, people have been talking about testing it all through this thread. Don't download it now though, they've re-hacked it and uploaded a new file which will blow up your game.

I already downloaded that one yesterday used it, ran my game, and it played fine. Maybe you are just doing something wrong did you delete groups.cache?

[KLGFCG]

I did Sims 2 folders in the My Documents and My Programs files, squishinating everything down by over 10 GB (most of that was from my scary downloads folder, of course) and no borkedness noted. It shaved about 7 minutes off my load time, too. I'm a satisfied customer. As for that one 49 MB skin file I noted earlier, nothing special about it - no photo realness, not even anatomic correctness or "artwork" on it - it's just a darker skintone than S4, so no idea what caused its bloatedness. All better now, so whatever.

By the way, am I the only one who read Witch's post as extreme sarcasm?

[Hecubus]

KLGFCG, some people don't have their sarcasm filters turned off. (Which is odd...because isn't EVERYTHING Witch says laden with extreme sarcasm? (Hey..new Olympic sport!)

I have found that I don't gain MUCH space from running it on my lot catalog or neighborhood packages, but it doesn't hurt.

[Zazazu]

Hmm, just possibly, people have been talking about testing it all through this thread. Don't download it now though, they've re-hacked it and uploaded a new file which will blow up your game.

I already downloaded that one yesterday used it, ran my game, and it played fine. Maybe you are just doing something wrong did you delete groups.cache?

Sometimes the forum default titles are extremely accurate.

[witch]

(Which is odd...because isn't EVERYTHING Witch says laden with extreme sarcasm?

No.    Sometimes I am helpful and nice. See? Oops, you blinked, must have missed it.

[Magicmoon]

It worked fine for me on recursive. I finished running it last night. The first time I ran it several days ago, it crashed, but that was my fault for moving things while it was running. So last night before bed I ran it on the entire downloads folder with recursive checked. When I woke, it was done.

Before: 4.10 GB
After: <1 GB

It would have had to seen and processed the subfolders because I don't have any files whatsoever in the main Downloads folder. All items are subfoldered.

ETA: Now my post just sounds stupid because the post I replied to has been deleted.

[Ellie]

sorry for some reason I got the recursive to work now, although I didn't do anything differently.

It seems to compress objects to less than half of the original size, hair and clothes not that much. I can't wait to test my loading times.

[Ambular]

It seems to compress objects to less than half of the original size, hair and clothes not that much.

This would undoubtedly be because BodyShop automatically compresses textures (using, apparently, an inferior compression scheme?), while SimPE doesn't unless you do it manually.

[Foxybaby]

Thank you for this-I'd just removed about 1GB a few hours before finding this as it was about 3.5GB! So its gone from 2.20GB to 1.39Gb, which is fantastic. Also means i don't have to keep placing or removing my themed downloads when am or not playing those neighbourhoods! 

[Morague]

I guess I am just unlucky. I downloaded Beta3, spent several hours compressing stuff, folder by folder. Then started up my game. But, it wouldn't start, it wouldn't get past the blue screen. I ended up having to replace My documents folder with the backup copy :/ And yes, I did delete groups.cache before I tried to start the game.

I'll give it another try later in the week.

[t r a c y]

i'm amazed at how much compression some of my downloads will take, for instance a 9712 kb furniture object (a bed from avalon sims) compressed down to 519 kb.  about 50% of my files are compressing 50% or more. my 4esf folder compressed from 237 megs to 79 megs, whoa.  so after compressing everything in my downloads folder it went from 4.59 GB to 2.18 GB, and when i loaded my game it was just over 2 minutes faster than my usual 8 min load time.

i think i've found a conflict though, between it and Delphy's Download Organizer.  after compressing and running my game with no probs, i deleted a bunch of clothing files, and then when i exited my game i ran Delphy's program to locate the clothing meshes so i could delete them.  while it was scanning my downloads folder i got one of 2 different error messages on nearly every single file.  so that sucks, since Delphy's program is essential to me, i always end up with so many orphaned meshes and they're a drag on the game.

[Lorelei]

Removed a bunch of crap before squishin', from 11G to 9.5G. zCompressed to 5.5. (W00t!)

Haven't had time to test the game load time (or see if it will load at all) yet.

[dizzy]

This is surprisingly good at compressing big skin textures. It does every bit as good a job as pkzip. I really got to hand it to Ben. He really knows his onions when it comes to stuff like this.

[Magicmoon]

Amberdiceless mentioned in Delphy's Download Organizer thread that some have reported that this compression program is causing errors with his program.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=227925

Anyway, I compressed my hair folder before running his program and a handful of files (10) error-ed that had not error-ed before compressing. All the files that threw an error were in the hair folder (3898 files). I have now finished compressing my entire downloads folder and a great many new errors are now occuring with his program, files that scanned fine before compressing. Once a file throws an error with his program, that same file will always throw the error.

My next experiment will be to take all the files that are erroring, replace them with my backups, and then compress them again to see if the same files will always error when compressed.

ETA: By the way, my game is running fine, even the files that are showing errors with his program. Two of the hairstyles that have started throwing errors in his program are in use in the game and are working fine.

[MistyBlue]

I might be having a problem with this program and the clean installer. I packaged a lot that was furnished, then opened the file to remove the phone line controller. When I tried to save it, the package got corrupted. This happened with several lots. I may be doing something wrong, though this is a normal routine for me, but could someone else try it and see if they get the same end result?

[Delphy]

Amberdiceless mentioned in Delphy's Download Organizer thread that some have reported that this compression program is causing errors with his program.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=227925

Anyway, I compressed my hair folder before running his program and a handful of files (10) error-ed that had not error-ed before compressing. All the files that threw an error were in the hair folder (3898 files). I have now finished compressing my entire downloads folder and a great many new errors are now occuring with his program, files that scanned fine before compressing. Once a file throws an error with his program, that same file will always throw the error.

My next experiment will be to take all the files that are erroring, replace them with my backups, and then compress them again to see if the same files will always error when compressed.

ETA: By the way, my game is running fine, even the files that are showing errors with his program. Two of the hairstyles that have started throwing errors in his program are in use in the game and are working fine.

It affects only SHPE chunks that are in files compressed with the compressoriser, but as for why, I don't know.  I'm currently trying to track down the issue, so expect a DDO update in the next few days.

Edit: Okay I figured it out.  On *normal* Maxis/SimPE compressed SHPE chunks, the DDO works fine.  It is only on the SHPE chunks that are run through the Compressoriser that it borks.  The reason is that there is an extra byte inserted after the length of the sgResource string but before the actual string.

For example:

Normal compressed SHPE ref, in Hex view in SimPE: 66 42 72 61 6e 64 69... etc.  This is 1 byte for the string length (102 bytes) and then immediately followed by the actual string (Brandi...).
For a compressorised SHPE ref, in Hex view in SimPE: 95 01 62 72 61 6e 64 69... etc.  This is 1 byte for the string length (149 bytes) and then a 01 and then followed by the actual string (brandi...)

A string in the SHPE ref chunk *should* be encoded with 1 byte for the length and then the actual string.  I'm guessing Simpe either ignores this extra byte, or does something else with it - I can't find anything in the SimPE code specifically mentioning it. 

I can put a catch in the DBPFClass code to check if the first byte of compressed string is 01 and ignore it, but I'd like to know why it's there in the first place.  Perhaps my understanding of the actual string storage is not complete, but the code for the DDO works with basically every other file you can throw at it *except* the compressorised ones.