From ZIP to RAR
Anyone have any objections to using RAR instead of ZIP for NetGore releases? I have only been using ZIP since it is the most widely supported compressed archive format, but it hardly seems worth it anymore seeing as ZIP compression sucks in comparison to RAR, especially with NetGore's files.
I'm only asking since I have been a WinRAR and 7z user for so long that I just have no idea how well Windows natively supports RAR. I don't remember XP having native support for it, but I assume Vista and 7 do, in which case that is fine for me. If people can't figure out how to open a RAR archive (or figure out how to figure it out), NetGore is probably beyond them anyways.
Comments?
QFT.
Go rar 
yeah go rar indeed,
if needed just post a link to the download,
and like Skye said so true ^^
Really? I could've sworn native support was there at least for 7...
I guess I can also just create it as a self-extracting archive.
I prefer gzipped tarballs. They have good compression and you only have to open a terminal, cd ~/Downloads, and tar zxvf netgore.tar.gz to decompress it.
Then again instead of netgore releases in a downloadable file. You could just set up a git hub so people can just bash < <( curl http://netgore.com/releases/head ) or git clone http://netgore.com/repo/netgore.git, and then they could put a cd netgore, git stash, git pull --rebase, git stash apply, cd ~, in their bashrc so you can guarantee everyone will always have the latest release everytime they start the terminal and also potentially ddos the git server if it gets really popular. 
Too bad windows is too user friendly to do anything cool.
lol why so hard just use a self-extracting archive like Spodi said,
btw Spodi
is this website does it has alot of bandwith?
otherwise might using mirror site?
Self extracting 7z!
Meh, traffic shouldn't be an issue, Skyon.be got 3gb of traffic daily when NCFC was going on. Now it's back to 1gb a day.
vbgore use to offer .rar or .zip cant you see how many was downloaded from the .zip and how many downloaded from the .rar section and make a choice from that?
by .rar/7z all the way
I have quite a bit of bandwidth (1.56 TB), but very little disk space - only 25 GB. That includes the OS, log files, etc. Though I want to shrink it more for those who are downloading, and not so much because I "need" to.
Because the hard way is a lot more fun.
.rar/7z ftw!
Those archives should be standard. =D
While I love RAR, the compression implementation is proprietary (or at least restricted in some way). Its okay if they open RAR files, but not make them.
7z is completely free and open source. Even if it is a little slower than RAR, the flexibility and power of the compressor makes up for it. But like with MP3, people use what is popular, not best. 
7z is going to have to have a much sexier UI to catch on, too. Computer savvy individuals just use whatever, and figure it out if their existing tools don't work. Its the abundant number of newbies that make the final decision, since they are the ones who will just give up and cry if it doesn't work immediately.
Alright, its done. All downloads are now a self-extracting 7z instead of ZIP. There is a pretty surprisingly small gain from the releases from the XNA days, but 2.0 and later are now around 25-45% smaller.
Also done shrinking the actual contents for NetGore, which will make the next release significantly smaller. Assuming I don't add much more new content, it looks like it'll be around 3.6 MB. Compare that to 0.3.2 which is ~14 MB as ZIP and ~8 MB as 7z.
I think I can live with those numbers.
I'm going to leave the zip links up for a few weeks to make sure I don't break any existing hard links. But if anyone sees any links to the NetGore releases as a zip, please let me know.
Those numbers are awesome. Anything under 5 mb is pretty smexy. Anything under 10mb is cool too. I think after 10mb it gets to be a tad big. (for a engine, not a game)
RAR is not natively supported by Windows XP/Vista/7
you need to download winrar in order to open .RAR files