Popular Question On Compressed Game Formats

[rmm2131]

Can we have the games for SNES, NES, Final Burn Alpha etc...in zipped format or should they be in their uncompressed bin state for Pandora to handle them when the devs get the emulators running? I know Tinnus mentioned PS1 games could be in iso/compressed eboot/bin-cue but what about the other game consoles when they are ready? How likely will zip format be used?
Thanks.

 

[sindbad]

I guess it depends on the individual developers what kind of formats they plan to support. I'd expect support for zip to be harder to implement than for a filesystem-in-file designed to be compressed.

If you want to save space, just 7zip everything and unpack when needed.

 

[Tinnus]

ZIP (and gzip for that matter) support is very easy to add to any emulator so I assume it will be included in all decent ones

 

[sindbad]

ZIP (and gzip for that matter) support is very easy to add to any emulator so I assume it will be included in all decent ones
I don't really know what and when an emulator needs to read, so it was a guess. But any emulator most certainly can read from the filesystem, which means compressed filesystems are already implemented (squashfs).

 

[rmm2131]

Thank you Sinbad and Tinnus.

 

[javaJake]

Will 7-zipping ripped ISO's really save you that much space? I was under the impression these PS1 games are hard to compress unless you remove the pre-rendered movies.

Edit: My mind has been focusing on the PS1 platform because it is so huge compared to N64's 256 MB ROMs. Sorry if I'm steering this topic off track.

 

[Tinnus]

As explained in another thread, it's NOT possible to use compressed ISO games with a normal compressed file format like ZIP, RAR, or 7-zip.

 

[javaJake]

<desperation> Well, you could decompress them temporarily until you're done playing...</desperation>

 

[Tinnus]

Well, I don't fancy waiting for a 700MB file decompressing before playing each of my PS1 games...

 

[jbr]

At least for PSX, just use PocketISO. I don't need all the funky music and long video introductions, anyway. Of course, for some games, you do, but for many, removing the videos can take a 700mb ISO down to 100mb.

 

[Tinnus]

Ridge Racer gets to a neat 4.3MB, and that's uncompressed

 

[Pleng]

Well, I don't fancy waiting for a 700MB file decompressing before playing each of my PS1 games...

oooo you could build a decompression routine into the emulator though, and while it's decompressing you could be given the C64 style loading screen. You know. The one with all the coloured lines moving up and down the screen. Would be sweet!

Sorry. Had a bit of a retro moment there! Generally not a great idea!

(edit) Anyway the original poster was asking about emulators for MD , SNES etc. I believe most gp2x emulators already support zipped roms? Not that I ever bother zipping mine as I seem to have gathered quite a collection of 2 gig and 1 gig cards (like 3 of each) so I'm not short on space right now!

 

[sindbad]

Has anyone read my post? ANY emulator that can read from the filesystem can use SquashFS, which is a lzma(7zip) compressed 'iso'.

 

[Squidge]

Well, I don't fancy waiting for a 700MB file decompressing before playing each of my PS1 games...

That only happens if the emu author only provides zip support, which would be stupid.

 

[Tinnus]

Well, I don't fancy waiting for a 700MB file decompressing before playing each of my PS1 games...

That only happens if the emu author only provides zip support, which would be stupid.

Which was exactly my point

 

[xinfernoofdantex]

any chance of there being an "interpreter" to allow the execution of EBOOTS

 

[Tinnus]

Obviously not if you mean PSP apps/games, that would require a PSP emulator. In the specific case of PS1 games packaged in the EBOOT format, psx4all will most likely support reading from the CD-image part of it, maybe the icon image too. (ignoring the rest, including any PSP-specific code)

 

[magicman5421]

sweet! gotta start ripping my discs.