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

[Masquerade]

Originally Posted by :( Sad8669

Ok so i read the whole process, everything went smoothly.

Lets talk about RE8 specifically. Ripping the video outta the big file using HxD doesn't reduce its actual size.

Then what is the point?

Or does it decreases upon compressing?

You're confusing replacing the space in the big file with empty space with removing the space altogether.

Imagine you have 5 different coloured squares, each compress to a varying level of goodness:



Now, blue squares repesent videos, they don't compress well at all. So we use HxD to remove the blue square, leaving white empty space:



The big file size (represented by the black border around the squares) doesn't change. The space is still there, but nothing is occupying it, it's empty. Empty space compresses well, because there's nothing there to compress.

Since you took out a file that doesn't compress very well, you have just saved yourself loads of time when compressing under lolz, since lolz is slow. If you only use something like LZMA which is a bit faster, the speed gain becomes less prevalent.

Also why patch files back once ripped? they are optional anyway, or was that a reference for universal use?

For more of a general thing, yes.

Repacks intended to be lossless, but when you remove data from a file, you break CRC perfection. So, you put the files back in and everything is fine. Ofc you can keep it out if you want, you get a smaller repack in the end.

Some games have completely unused files inside the big files - take Just Cause 4 as example, instead of fixing their videos, they just re-rendered new videos and just slapped them into the patched data folders. The old videos are still in the game, but the game just doesn't read them. IIRC there's over 3GB of unused videos in that game (including the credits video to Just Cause 3!) - so ripping them out of the archives saves you not only time in compression and final compressed size.

Other times it's useful to just patch data out in order to compress it differently. E.g. you can patch the bink videos out of Just Cause 4 and compress them with bpk, whereas if you used lolz without tampering with the archives, you'd get a larger size since lolz doesn't work on bink videos.

Hope that explanation wasn't too all over the place