Implement .gz files support

[zefklop]

It (maybe) could be a good idea to replace bif files with .gz (or .tar.gz) in order to save a piece of hard drive.

 

As far as I know, bif files are not compressed at all (except .cbf or something similar) and are not so well documented.

[Avenger]

bifc files are compressed (extension is bif, fourcc is bifc).

These files are standard PKZIP compressed. Which is very similar to .gz

So, there is no need to implement yet another compression method.

 

The only thing I could help you with, if you are in dire need of diskspace, is to provide a tool which converts bg1 bif files to bifc.

This would render them unusable in bg1, because only bg2 can read bifc. But GemRB would use them without problem.

 

Actually, you can compress them using DLTCEP

DLTCEP runs on Wine too.

[zefklop]

OK I will do it (I'm really in dire need of disk space !!!)

 

Thanks.

[Guest petteyg359]

Reviving a dead topic with another idea to save disk space Create a squashfs with the bif files in it, mount it, and either symlink from game dir to squashfs or mount the squashfs on top of the game dir with unionfs.

[zefklop]

A second thought :

 

.bif files can not contain anything else than Infinity engine specific files, right ?

 

with tar.gz files, you could put everything you want in it (especially .png files which were not in the original games).

 

Maybe it is that weidu does not want to handle anything more than what was in original IE games, to prevent bugs.

[Avenger]

The only thing that prevents something to be put in a .bif file is a missing filetype ID (named resource locator in IESDP).

But, as soon as a file is supported by GemRB, i will have to give it a filetype ID anyway. So, i could pack new filetypes in .bif format, the only problem would be no modding tool would be able to extract those, but no modding tool could extract a .gz file either.

GemRB uses 0x0003 as PNG filetype ID.