Switching to 7zip Archives
 

I noticed that Abandonia still generally uses .zip archives for all of the downloads. I, personally, started using 7-Zip several months ago. It's an open source compression program which supports every major format, at least every one that I know of, and it has very high compression.
The best compression results I get are obtained using the .7z format, on ultra compression, using the LZMA method, with a dictionary size of 128MB, a word size of 273, and a solid archive setting. With those settings I get around 20% better compression, sometimes more, sometimes less, than the maximum I can get with WinZip.
For maximum compression you need 2GB of RAM though, but the results are usually very impressive. The compression times are longer, of course, but that's not really a big deal. 7-Zip also has multi-threading support, and a lot of other features.
So, I think Abandonia should recompress all of the archives to 7z format. The site could significantly reduce bandwidth by doing that. It would take a little while, but it would be worth it.
Occasionally I have an archive that compresses better with .zip format than it does with .7z, but the good thing about 7-Zip is it supports compression with all the major formats, as well as for decompression.

So, what does everyone think? It could save a lot of money, hopefully. :wondering:

This been discussed a lot of times in the past. The main concensus was that newbies already have trouble knowing about and using WinZip and we don't want the troubleshooting forum to turn into a "what the hell is 7zip? forum...

The advantages of using rar or 7zip over .zip are, however, uncontested.

Oh. :( Well, add my vote to the yay side. With a front page notice, and a sticky in every part of the forum, the questions would hopefully be reduced enough to not be too annoying. :worried:

Is there a program to work with 7zip archives that works under DOS ??

What could be done is one or two of the most popular downloads .zip files could be replaced by 7zip files as a trial and see what feed back we get or the next couple of games updates could be in 7zip, format if it causes to much trouble then we stick with .zip


Edit: For this to work 7zip utilities will have to be available on this site (Windows and DOS versions)

Yep, it comes with a command line program. It's called 7z.exe. There's a full stand-alone command line program also included called 7za.exe, which can run by itself. :amused: I don't know if those can compress too, or if they are just for decompression. I would recommend compressing in Windows, ect.

Edit:

That sounds like a good idea, Doink. Also, perhaps there could be a poll done, where only VIPs or higher could vote, as to whether or not to try that? I suppose it would have to be a manual poll, since to my knowledge the automatic polls can't take into account rank. Or can they? I would imagine converting the top 10 most popular downloads to .zip would be a good test, if that were to be done.

what's the point? it's not that we hosted 2 GB images or something
the better compression wouldn't bring as much advantage as trouble. zip is older and more stuff supports it, and even if you install pure xp and don't have anything yet there is also default zip uncompressor

I am fairly certain that if you make a poll with only the VIP able to answer, most of us will answer yes readily. Me included. This is really not the point though since nobody else than Kosta and the admins have a say in the matter. And of course, Kosta is weighing way more in the balance too. So, unless Kosta changed his mind since the last time...

The whole point here is: Even if we were to offer two downloads, one with .zip and another for 7zip... There would be a lot of computer knowledgable people who will be pleased to download the 7zip version. But 90%+ of the downloads, those made by people who don't know better, won't even bother to try to discover what 7zip is and will download the .zip version anyways. If we switch all the .zip files to 7zip, most of those 90%+ people will complain that they can't do anything with that "strange file" they downloaded and will either not bother further or flood the troubleshooting forum with stupid questions. Those who won't bother further might be people we are trying to reach out about old games, people who might have joined the rest of this group in the preservation of said games.

It's a good idea, but in the long run it's unfortunatly pretty much a loss/loss situation.

Whatever AB do now, I think that with the number of bugs still not sorted out, any changes that make things more complicated are not a good idea. If AB decides to change the zips to 7zip, they should wait until AB gets back into the top position as a user friendly site.

*Ah, nerdy talky, me likes.*
If compress ratio is your goal, you really should try out UHarc once, beats 7zip completely.

If 'n00b_compability' must be the goal: ZIP -(or RAR eventually)- is the way to go.