Is your PC low on space? Do you want to install another game without buying a new disk? Do not fear, the compressor is here! While BeamNG.drive's vanilla content is in .zip files, they are simply stored and have no compression whatsoever (unlike mods). This script repacks them all using 7-Zip's Ultra setting, giving the game a much smaller footprint. To use: Get the script (below) and 7-zip (for compression) If you installed BeamNG.drive to a custom location, edit the script to change the beamPath variable (Optional) Make a backup of the original files, if you want to undo this without reinstalling (I assume this is allowed, but it's a grey area of the EULA) Press "1" and then any key to start repacking. Pros: Saves a lot of space (around 25GB) Doesn't seem to affect how levels and vehicles work May not set off Steam's integrity check (I restarted and nothing happened, but YMMV) Cons: Takes a very long time to run (1h 20m on a Ryzen 7 mobile) Small increase in loading times (69s vs. 62s on West Coast USA) Side note: I've tested everything except restoring a backup, it should work but can be manually copied if it doesn't. Github: https://github.com/CovalenceSTU/BeamNGCompressed Release: https://github.com/CovalenceSTU/BeamNGCompressed/releases
Does this only affect loading times or other performance like opening the vehicle selector as well? But I guess if you are really low on space you will profit from being able to provide it to your Ram anyway
The lack of compression is a deliberate and intentional decision on our part. This is not merely a matter of saving storage space, there's plenty more factors than just free space that lead to our current choice. You can see the full explanations in these two posts I wrote some months ago: here and a few posts below here
IMO the best way is to compress individual files like "us_semi.zip", "sbr.zip" and "common.zip"(make this zip compress instead of just packaging the files) instead of making a large "content.zip"
We already use that per-vehicle layout of zip files. Where have you seen "content.zip"? The lack of compression is deliberate. We used to have them compressed but the overall negative effects of using compression were evaluated to be worse than the positive effects, and so we reverted back to non-compression.
I already elaborated here. Using compression will mess up with Steam's deltas, leading to not only the current huge patching times/sizes/wear, but on top of that, hitting data caps in the countries where people have internet data caps, and of course much longer downloads. It will also impact CPU load, so for some people, this could lead to slower game load times, specially users with the slower computers. There may be more effects I don't remember, this discussion is not trivial.
That's a valid concern, thank you for your explanation. However I have a question about load times, isn't loading the game only involves decompression?
Loading the game involves a lot more operations than just decompressing files. Loading the game does not perform compression operations, if that's what you really meant to ask.
