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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/30/15 in all areas

  1. LessGRF What? LessGRF (LGRF) is an extension to the GRF format which adds a new algorithm for file compression. Normally the GRF will compress files using the DEFLATE algorithm which is the compression method typically used in ZIP files, but LessGRF adds the LZMA algorithm as an option. Why? Ragnarok's GRF files can get quite big. Back in the days the game data used to take up a few hundred megabytes, but today the GRF archives are about 2GB and contain tens of thousands of files. Since the data is starting to get pretty big it's possible to save quite a bit of space simply by re-compressing the game files with a more efficient algorithm. In my test on a full data.grf the file was reduced to about 60% of its former size. Maybe someone will find it useful if they want to make a mini client or something? Honestly, this was just a little experiment I did out of curiosity. How? Two simple steps are all that's necessary to use the LGRF format. First, download this file. 1. Installation To upgrade your client, replace the cps.dll in your Ragnarok folder with the one from the download. (Make a backup of the old DLL file first.) 2. Recompression Extract GRFCrush.exe somewhere. Run it from command line or just drag and drop your GRF file onto it. It will generate a new GRF file which you can use instead of the old one. The recompression process will likely take about 20 minutes on a moderately powerful computer. Q&A Q: Since the compression rate is better, will files load slower? A: I've not notice any different in map load times. LZMA is more expensive to decompress, but modern processors are so fast the load time might just as well be reduced since less data has to be read from the hard disk. Q: Can I use both GRF files and LGRF files at the same time? A: Yes. The new cps.dll supports the old GRF compression as well. You can mix LGRF and GRF Q: Can patchers or GRF tools update LGRF archives? A: Very likely, but only if they don't attempt to decode the data in the process. Q: Can current GRF tools extract files from LGRF archives? A: No. Q: ...Does that mean it can also be used for GRF protection? A: I wouldn't recommend it. (That being said I guess this is no less "secure" than GRF protectors like SecureGRF.) Q: Are there any penalties involved with using this format? A: Incompatibility with GRF extractors is currently the only thing I've been able to think of. Let me know if you notice something else.
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  2. http://ratemyserver.net/index.php?page=download_tool Download UnBollox
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  3. I added a binary release to the GitHub repo. https://github.com/curio-r/rag-cps-dll/releases/tag/1.0 Use the Tokei's GRF editor to recompress your GRF with the DLL.
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  4. SecureGRF works with its own cps.dll, same as this tool. So you can't since you have to choose which .dll you want the client to load. Great work as always curiosity, I don't know why Gravity didn't implement something similar yet. Hope this will be used soon in a lot of servers : boring to download 2go of data.
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  5. I'll send it to a dev friend for testing in real server =o, thank you, I'll reply here with more info later!
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  6. This is a great idea; I had no idea GRFs still used DEFLATE. I can see this being very useful, especially for small private servers, since they'll no longer have to find a way to host a 2GB+ file with limited bandwidth or space. It'd be helpful if some users tried testing what tools currently work or don't work with this, to encourage faster adoption of it. Questions, though: do you have a list of the command-line options (are there any?), and can the tool also decompress the GRFs?
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