7zip benefits??

[katuuuz]

hey guys, i didn't even realize you could have your roms in 7z fasion and have gameex play them until i read a thread about how this feature is missing in the new version of GE. i still have an older version of GE for i didn't feel the need to upgrade cuz my config is all good. i'm just realizing the space i can save on my hardisk (a.k.a. more room for more games mwa ha ha) if i can get this working i just have some questions about it. I tried to test this by enabling the feature in my NES emulator config and zipping 1 game (i think it was 3-d world runner) to 7z and testing. upon selecting the 7z from the gameex front end, it went to the screen to view boxart, cartridge, etc. and "play this game" wasn't available. BUT the game was listed again, and i clicked it and it loaded. upon logging out of gameex afterwards, in the nes rom folder it had a folder that said 3d world runner conents, and inside was an unzipped 3d world runner rom. so what i concluded was even if i zipped my roms for room saving, upon playing it unzips them? it doesn't make sense. if someone can clear this up for me i'd appreciate it, and if it is beneficial, i will get to work on the zipping.

katuuz.

[Tom Speirs]

Only 1 7-zip is unzipped at any one time, so it shouldnt be an issue. Next time you launch a 7z for that system it will delete the old ones contents.

[katuuuz]

Only 1 7-zip is unzipped at any one time, so it shouldnt be an issue. Next time you launch a 7z for that system it will delete the old ones contents.

good deal tom, any way to do this faster? or do i have to zip them one by one? what's best for gameex?

[Adultery]

good deal tom, any way to do this faster? or do i have to zip them one by one? what's best for gameex?

GoodMerge is what you're talking about.

It merges like roms in one 7z file, ie:

Mario Bros (U)

Mario Bros (JA)

Mario Bros [!]

Mario Bros (V1.0)

Mario Bros (V1.1)

becomes something more manageable:

Mario Bros.7z

and all the previously mentioned files are in one 7z file. It tidys up your list and ultra-compresses your files to save room on your HD.

I highly recommend this.

Learn more about GoodMerge and 7-Zip. (You'll need the command line version!)

Need further assistance ask away.

[katuuuz]

Need further assistance ask away.

well, you may damn me for spending so much time doing so, but i went through all my emulators i downloaded good merge roms from and hand deleted every duplicate (jap or v1.1 for example) to leave myself with just a list of once mentioned (U)[!] roms. reguardless of the time it took, it was worth it to me. even having just 1 version of all the roms, i only have about 3 gigs left on my 70gig hd. zipping the one nes rom for a test run practically cut it in half in size. so my question is even though i have only 1 version of each rom, can this still be a method to save space? do i zip all roms into 1 package? zip them all seperate?

if i un-tick "create solid archive" in the add to archive pop up screen, will a group of selected roms be zipped individually? this is what i'm trying to accomplish.

[Adultery]

Should, yes.

But the biggest benefeit of 7z and GoodMerge is the option of stripping unneeded code from various ROMs... You could .zip on best compression and still be pretty close to .7z so it may just be a lot of time spent and not much result.

Hope that helps!

[Nologic]

You would have to 7zip each...other wise there would be a huge slow down in your system.

Now when nearly exact files as is the case given in the list above...they all compress down to nearly the same as a single file compressed...to effectively you have a bunch of free files for the same space.

How ever compressing vastly different binary files will not yeld the same result.

[katuuuz]

woah, that's too much for me to chew at the moment, so i think i'm gonna leave that alone. my arcade is next to done, and all i need to do is F up my roms. thanks for trying to make me see the light though. i figure i have a hell of a lot of games for various systems, so me being greedy and trying to get more by compressing space will hurt me in the long run.