[ATTN] Start using 7-Zip you slackers.

You know, there is such a thing as accessibility being an issue as well.  Rar and particularly Zip are far more likely to be extractable for any given user without them having to hunt down 7z.  The majority of users on this forum (or any forum) are most often not the type of people who always have that kind of software installed.  In all honesty, I already do enough support with people for my mod(s) in regards to installation and various troubleshooting that I'm not keen on having to answer the question "how do I extract 7z?" every second post as well.

I'm not refuting the stats that 7z can do higher compression.  That's nothing but a good thing.  I'm already getting better than 60% (sometimes 90% depending on the content) compression ratios with good old almost universally supported Zip though.  At this point, I don't feel the additional gains in compression, as nice as they might be, are worth the extra hassle switching would bring.

-dolynick

Winrar can open 7z, so you're pretty much guaranteed that if they can open something other than zip, they can open 7z. Offer a zip and a 7z and you're done, I'm pretty sure I'm going to start doing that with the next release of my mod (which is still under 20 megs, but still).

Extra hassle would be PAQ or BALZ.

So much stuff is already being distributed as 7-Zip - including official patches for some games - I really don't think it counts as that anymore.

Yes Dolynick, I have the same opinion!

I got these questions also as I used "rar" as compression tool, ok this was a while ago, but since then I am only releasing my stuff as zip. Cause everybody knows how to handle this files.

Also if I convert all my changed files back to binary the package becomes much smaller. I will do this with version 1.0 of my mod.

Perhaps I will finish the installer for it .I have begun to make a script for NSIS a while ago, that checks everything and put the files to right locations, which will be much more comfortable for the users, and has a better compression. But I don't know how a windows vista installation of sins looks alike (cause i have only win XP), so this installer is useless for vista owners.

I think the reason people demand zip files because they didn't associate winzip with 7z. That is why the software doesn't reconigze it. To make the program reconigze it you have to change the settings and it should be under File Associations.

I have IzArc so it doesn't really matter.

And maybe useless for Linux and MAC OS X users too

The "Program Files" directory stays he same except its "Program Files (x86)" for Vista64 owners.

The mod dir is "<DRIVE_LETTER>:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\"

lol brains remain useless for some of u guys i see.

The mod compilation i had was released in .zip and .7z. :]

Yes, there are a few notable exceptions to the bandwidth-wasting trend

I have had some people having trouble with rar but as my map updater SAVES 10k with rar and therefore upload time.

I will continue to RAR for all files that rar better than zip, and I will test each, but I also like the recovery, solid and test options in RAR so that the users DO get all of the files as I had supplied them.

harpo

For my huge project, the Last Stand, which will likely be at least 200Mb in size, I am looking into making a self-installer, just to avoid the installation support. I will do my best to use the highest possible compression method however.

But yeah, 7zip isn't so widely used as rar or zip, so that's the reason most people choose to pack their mods using these two.

I know that this might be a linux compression, but what about, tar or gz? what are their compression rates?

I think that the gz might be based on the zip compression methods

harpo

7Zip is practically standard now.  I see way more of them than either rars or zip files these days.

Ok if most people use it now, i give it a try.

But now I have another problem, finding a new filehoster. Why? I read my article:

http://tohklidan.impulsedriven.net/article/344382/FileFrontcom_closes_its_doors

Mediafire is relatively good, if you plan on hosting files less than 100Mb in size. I use it for most of my downloads.

Tar is just an archive, it doesn't compress. In linux you tar the files up, and then compress the tar as .Z .gz .bz2 or .lzma

.Z is a lageacy gnu zip format, you don't see many of them around. gzip is a cousing of winzip when it comes to algorythm, and achieves similar performance. BZip2 has been the defacto standard in linux high-compression for years. Its about at RAR levels.

LZMA is what many distributions are using now for package compression. Its 7-Zip's compression algorythm with the 7z archive format (which doesnt support unix permissions) ripped out. Or vice-versa, depending on point of view.

Like someone else said, I see far more 7z than I see Rars these days, except for warez.

As far as the installer, 7zip's SFX is, like all SFX, not really suited to that stuff. Happily NSIS can do pretty much anything under the sun, installer-wise.

In fact, one of NSIS' compression algo's - lzma-solid - is the equivalent of the .lzma files used in linux, aka 7-Zip's compressor right from the SDK. If you wanna ssqueeze every last meg, however, there's Nsis7z, which is an extractor plugin built from the recent 7Zip SDKs that lets you use 7z archives made with x64 7-Zip at custom (read: insane) settings.

I don't mind 7-Zip at all but if you actually see more 7z than zip or rar that's because of your surroundings, the majority of files are most certainly zips and the main reason is probably since windows can actually open those without an external archiver. I've never used Vista for more than a few days so I have no idea what that opens, anyways I particulary hate 7Z due to the problem that it really doesn't work on stock installs of XP. You'd be surprised at the amount of times I've had to get the console versions of it just to unzip some libraries I've needed in python on school computers. Do I mind if we have mods in 7z... not at all, but I can guarantee you there will be people stumped having no idea how to open them. The classic example of this person is "How do I burn this 900mb .iso to a cd-r" post =P

Thx Soor

That's ... odd. I've never had an issue instaling 7zip on stock W2K/XP installs. Its the first thing I install, followed by TotalCommander ...

7-Zip Portable has never failed me either, and some of the computers at my university are truly shocking.

I don't wanna go all "youre doing it wrong" on people though

7z is part of my post-format installs as well, never had any issue with it.

It's also worth noting that 7zip has the benefit of being opensource/freeware. The free versions of winrar and winzip were both time-limited or nagware last I checked.

So someone else IS aware of this program! It has some issues with the special letters in my language (ä,ö,å, i mean), and it cannot skip damaged files in rar archives like WinRAR, but otherwise works perfectly, and is freeware. It also does 7zips, both ways

So does PeaZip, which also does some truly obscure compression methods