Mod Creators - Watch out for artificially bloated DLCs files.
-
Here is an interesting discovery. Full credit goes to @a63nt-5m1th for bringing this to our attention: the dlc.rpf size of certain vehicle mods far exceeds the sum of its contents. Sort of like 2+2= 20.
Case in point, imagine a vehicle mod on your hard drive which takes up 650MB of storage when the contents are only 65MB, only 10% of the total.
Well it happens. During the creation process, apparently when working with OpenIV and doing repeated edits and saves, the dlc.rpf mushrooms in size, wasting space by in this particular case a factor of 10.
If the file was repackaged before distribution on this site, it would take up roughly 90% less room on your hard drive. We don't know what the impact would be when loaded in memory, during gameplay, but we do know that's a helluva lot of wasted HDD space.
I'm not singling out the creator in this video, just bringing this issue to the attention of interested mod creators and to users who might want to shrink their files themselves. To put things in perspective, I have 28GB of dlcpacks. Assuming they were all bloated (which isn't realistic I hope), the real size would be closer to 2.8GB!
Please watch in fullscreen on Youtube, not here, because the text is small, set to 1080P (I hate f*##@# Youtube).
-
Just wanted to say to anyone reading this, although I would recommend doing it manually as per John's vid
, OpenIV can do multiple '.rpf' archives in bulk using:OpenIV > 'File' tab > 'Defragmentation' (Shift+Ctrl+R) > '[Add Files]' button > Select the files (repeat for multiple if required) > '[Defragment]' button.
Just did a quick test & that fixes the file bloat, so if you suspect you have quite a few bloated archives, might be a method you want to try etc.
Note:
Obvs, make backups before you touch anything, always, & especially if using the Defragmentation method (I know of at least one occurrence where that went wrong for somebody, so test everything out afterwards if you go that route).
-
@a63nt-5m1th Good to know. I'm just going to look at some of the larger packages such as nordschleife which is just under 2GB. I'm a control freak about doing things manually, forces me to learn myself rather than have a mod do it for me, unless it involves lots of repetition ofc - then I automate.
P.S. Anyone who watched the video now knows how simple it is to create a dlc.rpf blank container with one right click.
The challenge is what goes inside that rpf.