Shrinking IBT files for distribution

GlasWolf on 4/4/2006 at 22:00

Wow... a thousand dial-up users (not to mention Jason/Komag) will thank you if you can consistently achieve that kind of result!

potterr on 4/4/2006 at 22:24

If you need help or changes done to GL let me know.

Shadowspawn on 4/4/2006 at 22:59

potterr,

What would be the best way to integrate this into GarrettLoader? Command line executables? DLL? What's easier for you?

bloodangel1977 on 5/4/2006 at 06:01

Sorry for this post in advance as I really dont know much about the files or how T3 works in general.

But couldnt you get greater compression if you built a table of 'blocks' that exist in the main game's .ibt's and store this in GL. Then when you load the game GL will copy the blocks from the main game into the FM .ibt.

Or is this what you are doing already?

potterr on 5/4/2006 at 07:03

Quote Posted by Shadowspawn

potterr,

What would be the best way to integrate this into GarrettLoader? Command line executables? DLL? What's easier for you?

A VB compatable DLL would be best as it can be built in to GL completely, however there would still need to be some kind of flag file in the zip to identify that this would need to be done, although I would presume that running the re-inflate process would not do anything to FMs that have not been compressed?

OrbWeaver on 5/4/2006 at 09:20

Quote Posted by Shadowspawn

Now, if I can just properly re-inflate the file...Still working on it...

Always the fly in the ointment - you could achieve 1000:1 compression if you didn't have to worry about that pesky decompression.

242 on 5/4/2006 at 10:51

Quote Posted by GlasWolf

Wow... a thousand dial-up users (not to mention Jason/Komag) will thank you if you can consistently achieve that kind of result!

Not only dial-up. I recently installed ADSL - 15$/month, but the thing is that only 512Mb of monthly traffic is included in the sum, each additional meg costs ~0.05$.
I.e. each 80Mb FM (after I'll eat my monthly limit, which as I feel now I'll do regulary) will cost me about 4$, and 10Mb FM only 0.5$. Feel the difference! :rolleyes:

Shadowspawn on 5/4/2006 at 12:29

potterr,

Can you just check for the existance of .CBT files and run the decompressor on any that exist. You would only need to do it when you actually install a particular FM.

VB compatible DLL? Erg... We should talk, I'm writing in C++.

bloodangel1977,

That's more or less what I'm doing, but the list of 'blocks' will be stored on the FM developer's machine. I just make links to those blocks in my compressed file. However, any custom content (or content which I cannnot identify) still gets shipped (unchanged) in the compressed file.

I'm not yet sure if this works on different language versions of T3. If the resources were somehow different...

jtbalogh on 5/4/2006 at 13:00

C++ DLL could be fine too?

potterr on 5/4/2006 at 19:39

Quote Posted by Shadowspawn

It can be written in C++ but the dll header needs a slight change to make it VB compatable. These may be of use:
(http://edais.mvps.org/Tutorials/CDLL/CDLLch5.html) http://edais.mvps.org/Tutorials/CDLL/CDLLch5.html
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q171583/) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q171583/
And this may possibly be the best one.
(http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/1973/) http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/1973/

With regards to the CBT files, I am presuming that the DLL will rename them to be IBT files or create new IBT files? if so GL will also need to add those files to its list of ones to delete when uninstalling.

One last question, what kind of timescale are you looking at for having a working (if not perfect) DLL? The reason being is I have had a lot of abuse from a few people over GLs UI (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104473) here (it was meant to be competition thread :nono: ) so I am doing a overhaul of GLs interface which I hope to release late next month, although a test version of GL using your DLL can be made available to authors earlier.

EDIT: sorry 1 more question. The .CBT files will be located where in the zip? i.e. under the content\maps folder like the IBT ones will? its preferable that they are :thumb: