Comprehensive List of Natively Supported Compression Formats

[ChrisKant]

Hey, sorry for the weekend delay guys.

That GDI to CHD compression is amazing. I went from 78gb to 34gb.

For the Full Set of DC as of the Database? Amazing [emoji5]

[SkyHighGam3r]

Yeah, you have true instruments, providing a different experience, I like NEO GEO CD games better because of that:

 

Samurai Shodown IV

https://youtu.be/ndcZ1cSLcsM?t=48

 

KOF 97

https://youtu.be/E-kp_dCSklI?t=476

 

"I'm trying my best to avoid censorship of that series"

 

I don't know what you're talking about avoiding censorship of that series;

The Samurai Shodown series had some notorious censorship of blood and gore through (many) various ports and re-releases. I'm not sure if that affected the Neo-Geo CD at all, but I know the original MVS/AES copies are uncensored.

 

For the Full Set of DC as of the Database? Amazing [emoji5]

Noooooo no no no no nooooo lol hahaha

I never have a fullset for anything. Nope, haha. This is just for my personal collection, and what I have thus far. That's like 30-ish games I think? I'm still working on that system.

Still though, that cut my file-size in half, so the compression rate is incredible.

[guyverjay]

Can nulldc play Chd? If so, how?

[SkyHighGam3r]

Once I set the .chd extension in RocketLauncher it just booted right up like normal.
Same thing worked for the Reicast core in RetroArch.

I'm not sure if it works with Demul though... I'd have to check the notes. I think it does.

I don't have Demul setup though. Not sure about Chankast either.

I need something new though lol Street Fighter 2X, Super doesn't run more than 2fps in NullDC for me. I can't get Reicast to play Japanese games at all either.

[guyverjay]

Yes it can, you shouldn't have to do anything to make it work. NullDC supports it natively and I think chd is listed as an extension in RLUI for that module by default. If not, you would just have to add chd to the list of extensions.

the img reader plugin in just gives me an error. I think I may have the wrong plug in as it doesn't list chd as an available format

[Awakened]

the img reader plugin in just gives me an error. I think I may have the wrong plug in as it doesn't list chd as an available format

 

Make sure you're using the nullDC SVN 150 build from March 10th, 2013, since CHD support was added to it around then.

[SkyHighGam3r]

Is anyone aware of any kind of Saturn compression?

I have all my games in Bin/Cue at the moment.

Wouldn't be surprised if nothing existed, given the poor state (Although better than XBOX ...>.>...) of it's emulation.

[Spawk]

Saturn is one of the few remaining systems that still need an image mounted. Therefore dtlite would also have to support the same compression. Don't see that happening anytime soon.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

[Aorin]

Wouldn't be surprised if nothing existed, given the poor state (Although better than XBOX ...>.>...) of it's emulation.

It's an off-topic comment, but it seems you're not aware how SSF emulation is good, it doesn't use any plugins, it's a solid emulator, I can play basically all games in it without any frame drop or any kind of issues I could remember.

It lacks some modern features for modern monitors, to make it look smoother, yeah, but if you run it with scan-lines or in a real CRT monitor it's otherwise perfect, what makes it even more amazing is that it was Shima, one Japanese guy only who developed this emulator, he deserves all credit and thanks from us since we can play 99% of Saturn games like in the real hardware thanks to his effort and unique ability to achieve what everyone else haven't so far.

[SkyHighGam3r]

Saturn is one of the few remaining systems that still need an image mounted. Therefore dtlite would also have to support the same compression. Don't see that happening anytime soon.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

That's a solid point, hadn't thought of that.

Yabuse core in RA is up and coming though, so maybe in the future something will pop up.

 

 

It's an off-topic comment, but it seems you're not aware how SSF emulation is good, it doesn't use any plugins, it's a solid emulator, I can play basically all games in it without any frame drop or any kind of issues I could remember.

It lacks some modern features for modern monitors, to make it look smoother, yeah, but if you run it with scan-lines or in a real CRT monitor it's otherwise perfect, what makes it even more amazing is that it was Shima, one Japanese guy only who developed this emulator, he deserves all credit and thanks from us since we can play 99% of Saturn games like in the real hardware thanks to his effort and unique ability to achieve what everyone else haven't so far.

Yeah, SSF's actual 'emulation' is pretty good. You have to give it that. Far more impressive compared to any other SSF emulator that's for sure. I just hate the actual program. It makes sense being made by only one guy that it is the way it is. The fact that Yabuse is in second and is SO far behind is more to my point though. Anyway, you're right though this isn't really the point hahaha.

I just amassed a ton of Saturn games and thought I'd see if there was a compression method that fit our discussion.

[Aorin]

There's two options for a compression in Saturn Bins/Isos, the first that comes to mind is the 7z, it will give you the undesired loading time, the second, less effective in terms of compression would be using the NTFS compression that Windows offers as a way to save some space.

 

Actually these methods would work also for all other CD systems that doesn't have a compression that is supported by their emulators.

 

You can add these info in the first post as additional methods to save space for cases like these.

[SkyHighGam3r]

There's two options for a compression in Saturn Bins/Isos, the first that comes to mind is the 7z, it will give you the undesired loading time, the second, less effective in terms of compression would be using the NTFS compression that Windows offers as a way to save some space.

 

Actually these methods would work also for all other CD systems that doesn't have a compression that is supported by their emulators.

 

You can add these info in the first post as additional methods to save space for cases like these.

At some point I will point towards 7z compression and stuff, once we've covered these native formats a little more thoroughly.

This NTFS compression though, I've heard a little about this... How does this affect read/write speed, hard drive life, and more importantly, Fat32 isn't very common anymore, right??

 

[Aorin]

At some point I will point towards 7z compression and stuff, once we've covered these native formats a little more thoroughly.

This NTFS compression though, I've heard a little about this... How does this affect read/write speed, hard drive life, and more importantly, Fat32 isn't very common anymore, right??

 

You'll find more info about NTFS compression here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/133264/how-to-use-ntfs-compression-and-when-you-might-want-to/

 

FAT32 is very common, for Pen Drives, SD cards and so on, HDDs use NTFS system.

[hpr]

There is new information regarding the file length problem on the Wii system:

you can simply merge the two files Backup-Manager generates with a binary copy to one single file. It works flawlessly then. (it's possibly the Linux file system on the real Wii which causes this process, otherwise it won't run there).

 

I have experienced one game where the two files were exceptionally large. I think it was a problem with Backup Manager. In all other cases the merging process went well. So it is possible to generate a WBFS-only collection.

[SkyHighGam3r]

There is new information regarding the file length problem on the Wii system:

you can simply merge the two files Backup-Manager generates with a binary copy to one single file. It works flawlessly then. (it's possibly the Linux file system on the real Wii which causes this process, otherwise it won't run there).

 

I have experienced one game where the two files were exceptionally large. I think it was a problem with Backup Manager. In all other cases the merging process went well. So it is possible to generate a WBFS-only collection.

This is interesting I'll have to check it out.

I guess I kinda got distracted doing so much and haven't updated this in a bit... lol

I actually couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use Dolphin to do WBFS, so I put them ALL (Gamecube and Wii) into gcz.

I keep seeing that format knocked, but it cut 3.5 gigs off of one of my games, so it's A-OK in my book.

I also upgraded to a 3TB the other day (Had to do an entire backup) so space isn't as bad of an issue as it was lol Still, the fact I've probably cut 1/3rd away from my overall filesize is nothing to dismiss.

[hpr]

You can't! Dolphin only can convert to GCZ. You have to use BackupManager.

WBFS easily cuts off another 20% (my guess). I will take this road.

[SkyHighGam3r]

You can't! Dolphin only can convert to GCZ. You have to use BackupManager.

WBFS easily cuts off another 20% (my guess). I will take this road.

... I swear we had discussed it 'could' at some point, but it seems that it can't by your testimony, my experience, and more searches online.

I updated the front page to reflect this 'revelation' lol

[thcdgaf]

I'll have to check on this as well just compressed GameCube games keeping em as they are which is gcz but I had slight problem wbfs format this was on softmodded Wii not pc and graphics started messing up I'll check it out next week nephews be here to test

Sent from my LGL16C

[Awakened]

Work has started on adding PBP support to the Mednafen PSX RetroArch core: https://github.com/libretro/beetle-psx-libretro/issues/36

[SkyHighGam3r]

Work has started on adding PBP support to the Mednafen PSX RetroArch core: https://github.com/libretro/beetle-psx-libretro/issues/36

That's great news!!! I haven't compressed that system yet because as nice as ePSXe is... it's no RetroArch lol.

[Aorin]

That's great news!!! I haven't compressed that system yet because as nice as ePSXe is... it's no RetroArch lol.

ePSXe, PCSX-R emulators support loading PBP files like a standard iso, so does PCSX-R Rearmed core and Mednafen-PSX now.

[SkyHighGam3r]

Exactly, but I love RetroArch so much I didn't want to switch just to load PBPs.
Now I can have the best of both worlds!

[Awakened]

Tested the nightly build of the core and it already works with single disc games. Multi disc pbps aren't working yet and trying to use a .m3u playlist of single disc pbps gave me a black screen.

[Aorin]

Tested the nightly build of the core and it already works with single disc games. Multi disc pbps aren't working yet and trying to use a .m3u playlist of single disc pbps gave me a black screen.

I have a pbp file for each game, example, a game that uses 5 discs, Riven.

 

Riven (USA) (Disc 1) 

Riven (USA) (Disc 2) and so on, up to (Disc 5)

 

 

I believe Rocket Launcher will only recognize each disc since each iso has its own pbp file, maybe they can sort that later if it's needed, so, my question is, if the current emulators don't support multi disc pbp files, is that a bad thing?

I believe 99,9% of multi disc games allow you to save your progress before swapping discs, disabling a memory card for each game, maybe only for multi disc games could also prevent any issue regarding saves.

 

When I played multi discs pbp files in the real PSP, like Riven, I could easily swap discs using the reset function, or even swap them without resetting when the game prompted to, so I'm assuming that supporting multi disc pbp files has these benefits too, right?

[Awakened]

I have a pbp file for each game, example, a game that uses 5 discs, Riven.

 

Riven (USA) (Disc 1) 

Riven (USA) (Disc 2) and so on, up to (Disc 5)

 

I believe Rocket Launcher will only recognize each disc since each iso has its own pbp file, maybe they can sort that later if it's needed, so, my question is, if the current emulators don't support multi disc pbp files, is that a bad thing?

I believe 99,9% of multi disc games allow you to save your progress before swapping discs, disabling a memory card for each game, maybe only for multi disc games could also prevent any issue regarding saves.

 

When I played multi discs pbp files in the real PSP, like Riven, I could easily swap discs using the reset function, or even swap them without resetting when the game prompted to, so I'm assuming that supporting multi disc pbp files has these benefits too, right?

 

You can currently use single disc pbps for each disc of a multidisc game and load them individually fine. You just can't swap on the fly in RetroArch using the disc eject and next/prev hotkeys and you have to rename your save file to carry it on to the next disc, since the Mednafen PSX core creates separate saves for each disc (because they are separate files). Both of those should be fixed when they add support for multidisc pbps (all discs in a single file).

 

I found out after experimenting a bit that .m3u playlists pointing to multiple .pbp discs do work. But I have crashing issues when loading those sometimes if I also have the "skip BIOS" core option on.