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Author Topic: Compression  (Read 925 times)

Tenth Speed Writer

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Compression
« on: April 27, 2012, 10:17:03 am »
I realize this has probably been said before, but -damn- dwarf fortress compresses well.

I've been counting megabytes for my dropbox account; in open form, the single game I have going between my machines sizes about 600MB with uncompressed saves. Zipped, the entire thing squeezes into 30MB.


Holy shizzle.
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Quote from: Pickled Tink
I don't believe in a standing army. I believe in cruel and unusual architecture.

Exponent

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Re: Compression
« Reply #1 on: April 27, 2012, 10:58:30 am »
Lots of repetitive data in DF for sure; mostly the map data probably.  Uncompressed, it probably saves the full data of every single tile that is active in memory while playing, and the vast majority of tiles are identical to their neighbors.  There are definitely ways to compress that intelligently by code that actually understands the data layout and what it represents, but a standard generic compression algorithm is mostly able to recognize and take advantage of that very well too.  Compression algorithms generally love repeated data.
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oven_baked

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Re: Compression
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2012, 07:13:55 am »
30mb game, 2gb of RAM needed to play it.
Looks likes it's really old, only in alpha.
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Quote from: Uristocrat on May 06, 2012, 01:57:36 am
We just need to get Toady to embed a Lisp interpreter into DF.  Learning lambda calculus in order to play the game wouldn't make DF's learning curve much steeper.

daveralph1234

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Re: Compression
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2012, 11:39:30 am »
Quote from: oven_baked on April 28, 2012, 07:13:55 am
30mb game, 2gb of RAM needed to play it.
Looks likes it's really old, only in alpha.

Works better on a single, powerful core rather than multiple adding up to a greater total.
RAM speed/latency is actually important.
Most complex and detailed game ever made, shows everything with letters.

Dwarf Fortress is not your typical computer game.
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Deathworks

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Re: Compression
« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2012, 01:13:59 pm »
Hi!

I have used uncompressed saves for a little while because I was worried about a nasty corrupted save file. I also found that the DF compression is quite good, nearly as good as zipping an uncompressed save.

And yes, having the save files compressed is a good thing given their uncompressed size :) :) :)

Yours,
Deathworks
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