7z Archives

[Petie]

Since the topic has come up twice in the last week or so now, I figured it might be good to get some community feedback on the subject. So, to anyone who has, or plans to submit sprites to the site, would you like to see support for 7z archives? Right now, zip and rar are the only formats accepted and Dazz and I agreed that it should be more than enough but I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks.

Keep in mind that the more formats we add, the more software potential downloaders will need to be able to grab them. For this reason, I think we really should only accept zip archives since they are natively supported pretty much everywhere but that may just be my own opinion.

So, what do you think? Just votes are fine but if you have reasons, please do share.

[Previous]

I think you already said everything there is to say... Accepting strange compression formats will only cause confusion for those who don't know them. We have to keep the accessibility in mind.
Plus, I wouldn't know why anyone would want to use a different format anyways, it isn't like ZIP wouldn't do its job just fine and possible disadvantages can't be as bad as they would be worth decreasing the userbase of said content.

[Garamonde]

Shoot, I meant to vote for just .ZIP. :I

Though what we've got now is alright. I don't see the point in adding 7z at all.

[Vipershark]

Zip and rar are perfectly fine.

No need for 7z.

[Ultimecia]

Windows can open .zip by default and any program can open .rar but it's not that easy to find .7z .
I specified at the tTR submission guidelines I won't accept files other than .zip and .rar, I thought it was a general consensus (and some good sense too)

[Petie]

I specified at the tTR submission guidelines I won't accept files other than .zip and .rar, I thought it was a general consensus (and some good sense too)

Agreed - I only brought this up because it seems like, regardless of what's written in the guidelines, there are some who are occasionally trying to submit 7z files (rare as they may be) so I figured it was worth opening up to discussion.

[RétroX]

Windows can open .zip by default and any program can open .rar but it's not that easy to find .7z .

Uh, not really. Loads of people use 7z. 7z is as good as or better than RAR as far as compression goes and you don't need paid software to create 7z archives; you do for RAR (at least, to my knowledge).

I don't see the argument for why 7z shouldn't be supported. It's one of the three main archive formats, and it's still quite common. I really doubt that allowing it through a system or simply editing the submission rules would take any longer than a few seconds.

I mean, I understand if you're trying to keep a consistent format, but you're not. If you said just ZIP, that'd be fine. But because you're supporting multiple formats, especially including one that requires additional software, I see no reason why it shouldn't be allowed.

[Maxpphire]

Winrar is pretty much free. I mean yeah, they remind you (OH HEY YOU SHOULD BUY THIS) but it isn't something you can't x out of then continue.

[RétroX]

For some reason I thought that it was paid. Either way, as the name implies, WinRAR is only for Windows and people that use OS X or anything else can only extract, not create RARs (which is still okay; most people use Windows, anyway). I'd like to have the option for a format that's better than ZIP but doesn't require nagware.

[Garamonde]

That's true, but we can't include 7z without having situations where someone like me doesn't have 7z or whatever, and aren't gonna go get it just for a single archive, possibly driving away many users.

We unfortunately can't have it both ways. I guess we'll see how the polls turn out...

[Random Talking Bush]

I'm leaning towards adding 7Z support (since it is freeware, 7-Zip itself supports ZIP, RAR and 7Z files, and there are versions of it for Mac/Linux), but if we're not gonna include it, then just stick to ZIP only.

[Petie]

I'm really leaning towards removing rar and just redoing the existing rars myself (there are 356 total). I don't like the idea of requiring someone to download 3rd-party software (regardless of how common it is) but that's not my call to make. I can fully see the argument for both sides but I like that zips can be opened natively.

[Vaati]

I'm really leaning towards removing rar and just redoing the existing rars myself (there are 356 total). I don't like the idea of requiring someone to download 3rd-party software (regardless of how common it is) but that's not my call to make. I can fully see the argument for both sides but I like that zips can be opened natively.

I agree, I wouldn't accept rar files too and also because many people don't have that much access to them and opening them is hell sometimes.

[K.D.]

All of the files that are submitted are already compressed (PNG, GIF, etc). The only reason we allow archives is to make stuff easier to download as a bundle, since the contents are already compressed, the extra compression provided by them does absolutely no good, so there's no reason for other formats other than the most popular one, since it's just an inconvenience for people to open them, with no benefit in file size.

In theory, they should be all ZIPs with no compression (store mechanism), but asking people to make their ZIPs like that is more trouble than worth. Unless I'm missing something and there are cases where people do submit archives with uncompressed content? Perhaps models benefit from archive compression?

In any case, I'd lean towards ZIP only, unless we have files that benefit from stronger compression by a lot (which is definitely not the case for sprites, mp3s and etc), but in that case, either ZIP or 7zip.

[Ultimecia]

Man, what's the problem in saving the file as .zip or .rar instead of .7z? It's just a mouse click away in my case