Archivetool Compression not working?

[spectre]

Hi there,

I found myself unable to reproduce the rate of compression of the games' .arc files with my .arc files

Steps taken:
1. Extracted Text_EN.arc (for example)
2. Added the extracted txt files to a new .arc file with max compression (command used:

archivetool New.arc -add ui.txt New.arc [compression 9]

and so on for each file)
3. The filesize of New.arc is
a) significantly higher than the original Text_EN.arc and
b) unaffected by the use of values between 0-9 (it also doesn't matter whether I put the "[]" brackets there or not)

Does anyone have a clue why it seems that the compression doesn't work for me??? (I tested it on Win7 and XP both with and without fanpatch)

Help would be appreciated

[Elfe]

Maybe it would help if you post the full real code, what you post is just the code in short form, you need some "" symbols for getting it to work correctly. Only thing I see: why did you write [compression 9]? Simply put a 9 behind and don't add anything else?! At least on my pc that works without any interruptions. BTW I just read your problem with the recompiling text arc. Simply use art manager for it, it works same way and you can do lesser mistakes than in using the code .

Greetings
Elfe

[spectre]

In Artmanager? Guess, I'll have a look at it...

you need some "" symbols for getting it to work correctly

Yeah, I did that. Just forgot them in my post here

[compression 9]?

I once saw that notation in a post by Munderbunny, so I thought that'd be the way to go.
EDIT: That did it! Thanks a lot!

Thanks for your reply and solution

[ASYLUM101]

Artmanager is easiest imo for archiving. Just put your stuff in the build directory, open AM, hit archive and everything gets zipped up. Pretty awesome. You don't have to constantly rewrite batch files or something unless you're gonna do everything at once.

[Violos]

Yeah.
As discussed recently you only need the tool to archive things the AM refuses to do (which is meshes, maps and animations) or to quickly update single files if you deleted the unzipped parts and the AM would redo everything.

And the first is not even necessary, as I learned, if you are fine with some loose files & folders.

[spectre]

The quotes are neccessary in some cases, when you got paths that contain whitespace. Famous example being the "My Games" folder. As for the rest: I hadn't thought of the AM for that specific task...

[ASYLUM101]

Yeah.
As discussed recently you only need the tool to archive things the AM refuses to do (which is meshes, maps and animations) or to quickly update single files if you deleted the unzipped parts and the AM would redo everything.

And the first is not even necessary, as I learned, if you are fine with some loose files & folders.

AM works fine for these tasks too though.

[Violos]

Would you care to elaborate?

While there is the option to do so, making the assets for those files by hand where the auto-creator won't do it asks for different/converted formats like .max and .wrl, as well as obscure "AIF" and "MIF" files.

Seemed like a hassle to me, compared to the tool which just adds them as they are..?

[ASYLUM101]

Put the anm, msh, or glowtexture in the build directory (my games/titan quest immortal throne/custom maps/yourmodname/resources/foldernameofchoice/etc), then open said mod in AM and click the "archive" drop down menu and build, it will show the file being built into the mod and then when you go to view resources for a modifiable database (such as an actor mesh for a creature), the custom mesh will show up.

I've been doing this all month, playing around with stuff to see what kind of limits it has and I haven't really found one.

Example of how I've been doing it:

I created a custom animation for talos to shoot lightning instead of fire from his hand. To do this, I had to go into the animation text file and edit the location of the callback file, since it calls for the chimerafirebreath, I swapped that for the manticorelightningbreath. Normally you can't import the animation directly in artmanager, so what I did was drop the animation file into the build directory - in this case it was my games/titan quest immortal throne/custommaps/testmod/resources/anim/.

Open artmanager, hit build archive. Now in the same custommaps/testmod/resources folder, I have an arc file called anim, and when I modify databases I can browse to that file.

It works the same with meshes also. Made a "custom" mesh using the viewer and modified the HELL out of talos by adding more attachment points and giving them special effects. Put the mesh in the folder custommaps/testmod/resources/models/, build it with the archive button in artmanager and got an arc file called models.

And viola -

[Violos]

Put the anm, msh, or glowtexture in the build directory, then open said mod in AM and click the "archive" drop down menu and build

I see. So one can trick AM into zipping it along with the rest, by manually copying it from the resources in working/custommaps/MOD into the processed copies in custmmaps/MOD.

Does that also keep the AM from deleting them back out of the archives in the "compact" step of the regular building process, or does that mean you have to avoid this and remember to use the archive-build only?


In any case... I guess having the files show up is useful, and a batch that copies all those files once in a while is about the same effort than one which archives them directly.
Personally though, I think I'm still happy with the latter. It just takes seconds to run it at any time.