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DOS Game - Galactic Conquest v9.00 test (Announce)

posted by Arjay, 11.12.2009, 14:56
(edited by Arjay on 11.12.2009, 15:42)

> > > [...] EXE compressor you use.
> > > Again this will make the ZIP file considerable smaller.
> >
> > Bad idea
 Depends on your view point.

> Especially because the compressed executable might be less compressible.
 A compressed executable will very likely be less compressible by ZIP etc. However I was primarily suggesting EXE compression for the reason it reduces the filesize on the disk after unzipping. I was suggesting merging files into the EXE as that also makes stuff easier to manage. As personally I prefer smaller and less stuff when something is unzipped but again that's personal preference. Still we could all waste hours talking about the topics of "compression vs slower loading", "tiny programs vs default file allocation units" etc. But when it comes down to it the best answer is to do the best thing for the situation.

> > Use TAR before ZIPping or 7-ZIP instead of ZIP
 I disagree, probably a ZIP and a *nix friendly format are required or just ZIP. I see tar/gzip et al as fine if target is *nix but NOT if the target is for DOS/Windows, unless the target audience are very likely to have those tools but as I'm sure you appreciate the majority of people don't have them under DOS/Windows. So I guess that comes down to who this game is being aimed at? If it's mostly DOS/Windows people I would use the most common widely used format; in the case of DOS the most common format was and always will be ZIP (I'm excluding ARC...!).

Yes things like ARC/LHA/RAR were common back in the day but to a *significant* lesser extent, they were and never as common as ZIP. And despite the limited success of LHA/RAR compared to ZIP they aren't exactly commonly installed on PC's anymore (LHA's use on the Amiga/BIOS's totally different subjects!).

> The 7-Zip archiver even creates normal (compatible) Zip files with better
> compression than some other programs.
 So does Winzip etc but the question then is can other programs unpack those ZIP's. Start trying to get too clever with file archive compression and you end up shutting out people. e.g. I used LHA a lot back in the day (usually to automatically convert updated stuff from LHA into ZIP!), however a while back I had to spend a while surfing .jp sites and dealing with a Kanji version of LHA under Windows - all because someone distributing a DOS program "insisted" in using the *very* latest for LHA version that created LHA files that were unpackable by *any* of the versions for DOS or indeed any of the English Windows versions! Thus I think it is always the case of using the right tool for majority of the target platform. Hence if I'm distributing for Windows then no LHA, no RAR, no GZIP etc etc. And normally no ZIPS for Linux... which is why I feel probably 2 packages might actually be best here.

But obviously I do appreciate other peoples opinions are different.

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