Newbie Question Thread

[Tmills]

Hey, i'm new and trying to learn. Is there a guide to the methods in DiskSpan gui?
SREP
LOLZ
Zlib
Xtool 2020 reflate
Xtool 2020 preflate
LZMA2
what are they best at and what are the pros & cons of each?
what file types are they used for?
how do i know what file types a game uses etc?

[-tara]

Hi Tmills

Heres what the methods listed are:
SREP (LD Deduplicator)
LOLZ (Final Compressor)
Zlib (I'm guessing this is XTool's implemintation of zlib, that is a Precompressor)
Xtool 2020 reflate (Precompressor)
Xtool 2020 preflate (Precompressor)
LZMA2 (Final Compressor)

I'm going to shortly explaing what these do.

SRep removes duplicates in files you feed it, it's very quick.
Lolz and LZMA2 are final compressors and they always go at the end of a method chain, they compress data that was previously fed to Precompressors or SRep.
Lolz is very slow on compression, but it's upside is faster decompression compared to LZMA or LMZA2, while LZMA/2 are a lot faster in compression but a little slower when it comes to decompression. (Lolz gives better ratio compared to LZMA/2 aswell)

Typical chain of methods when it comes to game data (excluding media) is SRep+Lolz/LZMA/LZMA2.

However sometimes you can encounter game data that is already compressed, this is where Precompresser come in, during compression you place them in the beginging of the chain, what Precompressor you use depends on what algo the game is compressed with.
For example if the game is compressed with zlib, you use a Precompressor that utilizes zlib decompression (like XTool zlib/reflate/preflate) which one of those you use depends on how they preform, they have tiny differences in speed/ratio, however they all decompress zlib.

Typical chain with precompression is XTool+srep+lolz

I skipped over loads of info in order to keep my replu consise, but this should be good enough for a beginer

Hope I Helped

[ravikant]

Originally Posted by Tmills

Hey, i'm new and trying to learn. Is there a guide to the methods in DiskSpan gui?
SREP
LOLZ
Zlib
Xtool 2020 reflate
Xtool 2020 preflate
LZMA2
what are they best at and what are the pros & cons of each?
what file types are they used for?
how do i know what file types a game uses etc?

Use this tool to find which method of xtool to use

Generally use Xtool(zlib is also included) + srep + lolz/lzma [LZMA is faster but usually makes the output size a bit larger]