Talk:PK4 (file format)

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"Although compressed pack files increase loading times this penalty is small while the filesize difference is significant"

I thought that using compressed paks actually were faster, since it takes longer to load large files than loading small files and uncompressing them into memory. -- iceheart

It's a tradeoff. Let me copy & paste an old post I did re this subject:

I had tried it before but I remembered the benefit was not too great on my rig. I did it again now just to get some facts, but note that what I did was not very scientific: even though the partition I have D3 installed in is near the outer edge of the disk, since I didn't erase the "true" pk4, just renamed them, means the newly created 0-compression pk4s were put further in the disk (thus a tad slower). Anyway, here are the results: 

From clicking icon to appearance of id logo movie: Original - 7 secs. New Zips - 7 secs. 
Loading Alpha Labs Sector 4 auto-save: Original - 35 secs. New Zips - 31 secs. 
Loading Caverns Area 2 auto-save: Original - 16 secs. New Zips - 14 secs. 

Fun facts, Original - 1.45gb. New Zips - 3.65gb. 

Now, I'm assuming my 3.2 Northwood just isn't sweating with the original decompression, thus the small improvement. I bet with this processor I'm more limited by the the RAM's bandwidth than how fast the CPU can compute on its own. You'll also note that on Alpha labs which is a long save the gains were more substantial, which might indicate slower machines will get a larger delta for even "small loads".

-- Mord

Zipper

I'd like to see a free zipper besides winrar/winzip mentioned. 7-zip 's my favorite, which is open source.

Though there's pk4scape mentioned. --Kissaki 17:11, 19 November 2007 (CET)

And about distribution, 7zips format is even better than rars :) --Kissaki 17:13, 19 November 2007 (CET)

I'll add a link for 7-zip just to have a free compression tool in the list. However, the article still says "you can use WinRar, Winzip or a similar utility" so I guess anyone using common sense should know 7-zip can be used as well. ;-)

Same applies for the distribution section. I don't know if it is really proven that 7-Zip produces better files. It seems to depend on file-type, if I may believe tests like 7z versus rar: two compression formats. With other words, we may just keep that section as it is, unless we really would aim to mention mostly open-source programs. -Kamikazee 18:00, 20 November 2007 (CET)