Best Compression Methods for 'Specific' Games. Q&A

[KaktoR]

Command & Conquer Remastered Collection

I made this as a test and showcase with use of quickbms + bink patching. In this case use of quickbms is possible because game files are not compressed (or at least not seem).

Steps:

1. Make Backup of original archives (Data\movies_*.meg)
2. Unpack original archives (Data\movies_*.meg) with quickbms
   

   for %%f in ("MOVIES_*.MEG") do quickbms_4gb_files -d -o -Y petroglyph.bms "%%f"

3. Compress binks and make patches (bink_pack.exe, bink_unpack.exe, hdiffz.exe, hpatchz.exe)
   There are some bk2 files which even bink_unpack.exe has problems with, so patch size is same as original size (416mb diff size). Take care of them.
4. Null unpacked bk2 files (fill contents with zeros)
5. Reimport nulled bk2 files with quickbms into original archives (petroglyph.bms)
   

   quickbms_4gb_files -w -r petroglyph.bms "input .meg file" "input folder containing nulled bk2 files"

   Before reimporting you have to separate all the files in the unpacked folders, you only need bk2 files for reimporting
   Tbh I don't know if quickbms has a option to just import defined file types lol
   Remove Data\movies_*.meg.bak files if there are any (quickbms creates these files I guess)
6. Delete all (nulled) bk2 files, so you have just compressed binks and patch files + nulled .meg archives left
   These nulled .meg archives have a compression ratio by nearly 0%, so don't mind the size of these (14.8 GB -> some KB)
7. Compress the game
8. Include required files in Installer or game folder (before compress the game)
9. Let your Installer run a batch file to do it's job after extracting all files (example batch)

Installation/batch stuff will take some time, .meg archives are crc perfect at the end.

Results:

 15:11:02 - Selected ARC/DS method for Data1a-01.bin was: srep_new:1+4x4:b64mb:lzma:ultra:64m:bt4:fb273:lc8:mc1000000
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 15:35:12 - Overall input size: 36.90 GB
 15:35:12 - Overall output size: 15.67 GB (Ratio 42.47%)
 15:35:12 - Overall conversion time: 00:24:08

Results without quickbms + bink patching stuff:
https://fileforums.com/showpost.php?...postcount=1772