why would you want to commpress the ini's any way ?

Anybody have any suggestions? or is it a straight forward no, we don't have one?

Ok first of all does freelancer even read that format.

Second of all just compress them with bini

Third of all why even compress them

Oops.... looks like you are confused.

"Ok first of all does freelancer even read that format."
Check the files in the original game they are compressed .ini files.

"Second of all just compress them with bini"
See my first post?, bini causes errors when you have large files = CTD, thats why i need am alternative.

"Third of all why even compress them"
I am exploring an idea I have and to do this I need to compress them.

I will assume that we don't have one, the post has been up for a few days. Thanks anyway

You can even compress/decompress the files with FLE.

OK... my questions here are simple:

1. Why do you need to compress the INIs?
2. Have you tried the method I described in the Tutorials sections for removing blank lines before trying to compress the INIs? Blank lines left in may be the primary cause of yer CTDs.

I can only see two reasons for recompressing inis. One for slowing down cheaters (although anyone near competent will not be bothered by this) or Two to use Starfyres method of crippling FLDataStorm. I have to say that it didn't stop me though but it did give me something to think about for two days

LOL... well, I guess that those would be two "uses"... and here was lil' ol' me, thinking that he was trying to boost operational stability and speed or something... which re-compressed INIs would definately do.

Hmmm, well here is my thinking :
Compressed files need to be decompressed to be used so; no real change there. FL reads whole INIs into memory.
BINI (was?) far from stable - errors may be introduced.
Compressed INIs do take up less disk & bandwith. Not a bad reason to use em but makes for extra work each tweak/bug fix/addon.

Thanks for the interest.

Yes the idea i am working on is if there is difference in performance for the server/client over text and any other additional benefits such as data transfer, load handling etc.

I believe that there is, but i cant put my finger on it yet, so i want to compress all the files, without errors; and compare them to the current experience on the server.

The file sizes are reduced, however, when they are compressed the compression ratio on the "text" ini's is far greater. When the two files are compared there is little difference in size when in .zip.flmod format.

Argh, I have posted about my experience with the trailing references and i am in the process of going through the inis so that i can try it this way, again many thanks for the find.


Edited by - Strail on 3/9/2005 2:54:12 PM

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Two to use Starfyres method of crippling FLDataStorm

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This would be incredibly useful for the Tides of War mod, as we are trying to give Rebels secret bases. If you could direct me to this info, I'd be thankful.

problably the same thing I tried doing for one of the exelcia releases a long long long time ago, I had kept talking to the creator of both the tobini and the sebini (the program which locks a comressed ini so it cant be decompressed.... well actually you can uncompress it still cause he realesed a program which can uncompress the secured binis, it's on lancers, just no one dls it =p)

But back to the original problem, the thing is you can't use tobini on files which are too large... it loses data... I talked to the creator about it and he gave me a reason why it wouldn't work on large files, but I forget what it was.... anyways what I did to get around this was to just break up larger files into multiple smaller ones. You can easily cut an ini's data in half, put the second half in a new ini, and just add the appropirate refrerence in the freelancer ini right after the original ini's entry in it. Thus your files are small enough for tobini to work, and then you can lock them with sebini or whatever program or utiillity your using to lock it from bini from being able to uncompress it, or from datastorm from being able to read it.

Thing of it tho is... it was a lot of effort... and i found a much much much easier and faster way of blocking programs like datastorm from reading any of the files in freelancer... just screw up the freelancer.ini in a way that freelancer can still read it, and datastorm can't

We just released a program that does mass conversions to and from bini format. You can get it at our site: =EOA= Players Consortium

AWESOME! weeeeeeeee! *spam*

to paraphrase - I feel a new generation of modding coming on.....etc here


Edited by - Cold_Void on 3/27/2005 9:36:31 PM