Why not have a library that understands ZIP files? This is very common
in software like Netscape and so on.
Maybe this doesn’t belong here, but I prefer Quake’s PAK files - these can
improve performance on bad filesystems, like DOS FAT (windows) and who cares
about the size in the time of CD’s ? If the thing is to be distributed via the
internet (low bandwidth), it’s compressed anyway, so…
It also gives you the possibility of passing a FILE* ptr to some libs like
mikmod 
------------------------ Tomas Andrle ~ Virsoft — @Tomas_Andrle -------------
Maybe this doesn’t belong here, but I prefer Quake’s PAK files - these can
improve performance on bad filesystems, like DOS FAT (windows) and who cares
about the size in the time of CD’s ? If the thing is to be distributed via the
internet (low bandwidth), it’s compressed anyway, so…
Okay, why PAK files? What do they have over archive types like ZIP,
RAR, or others?
I for one care about the size of my datafiles. CDs and gigs of space
do not make up for sloppy programming. I realize most commercial games
have disk space requirements above 50mb, but I don’t think we need to
encourage them.
It also gives you the possibility of passing a FILE* ptr to some libs like
mikmod
Yeah, it does, but so does ZIP, and other compressed files. So why PAK?On 31 Jul, Tomas Andrle wrote:
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Last one on datafiles (today:)
Why PAK files? It's simple. Look, I'm an amateur, I haven't been working on
anything ‘big’ yet, but I see many programmers still don’t care about how the
files are stored - just have a look at Carmageddon - it’s a good game (yeah!)
but it loads soo slowly! If they just put it into one big PAK and replaced fopen
with pak_fopen and gave some attention to not to use fseek(SEEK_SET… , it’d
be much better, IMHO.
ZIP files are good, yes, but I just don't like these - what is some date/last
modified information good for in a game datafile? (bleh!) The format can be
modified, OK, but you still have to write new read_routines. If anyone is
interested in compression, the only one I’d use would be lzo.
OK, let’s stop this. I use PAK files.
------------------------ Tomas Andrle ~ Virsoft — @Tomas_Andrle -------------
Why PAK files? It’s simple. Look, I’m an amateur, I haven’t been
working on anything ‘big’ yet, but I see many programmers still don’t
care about how the files are stored - just have a look at Carmageddon -
it’s a good game (yeah!) but it loads soo slowly! If they just put it
into one big PAK and replaced fopen with pak_fopen and gave some
attention to not to use fseek(SEEK_SET… , it’d > be much better, IMHO.
I’m an amateur as well (As I suspect most of this list is). And many
programmers might not care, but ther are a lot of of us that do, hence
this discussion. I’ve never played Carmageddon, but I have seen some
games that take forever to load datafiles (Diablo anyone?)
ZIP files are good, yes, but I just don’t like these - what is some
date/last modified information good for in a game datafile? (bleh!) The
format can be modified, OK, but you still have to write new
read_routines. If anyone is interested in compression, the only one I’d
use would be lzo.
I agree that the date/last modified info can be pretty useless, but how
much space does it take in a compressed file? The main thing I’m looking
for at this point is something that isn’t going to break existing SDL
routines (SDL_LoadBMP(), Mix_LoadMUS(), etc.) If you’ve got code for
accessing PAK files that you could pass on, I’d appreciate it.
OK, let’s stop this. I use PAK files.
Calm down. Have some dip. I wasn’t attacking you or your choice for PAK
files. I was just trying to find out why you prefer it.
-KW