Add the ability to upload 7-Zip archives

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
aa
Jul 22, 2014
1,257
999
Hello, there.

I believe it would be of benefit to allow the upload of archives in the 7-Zip format, which use the extension .7z.

I use these because they offer much better compression than ZIP, and improvements over RAR. Anyone who has the ability to decompress a .bz2 file, should find that their app also supports 7-Zip files.

Thanks,

Matty
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
bz2 is favoured because that's what the server uses. You don't need to decompress it, it just goes straight onto the fastdl.
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
I thought that the server didn't do bz2, and that it was just the client that did that.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
Well the client decompresses it, so that's why it's the format used on our(and other servers, i assume) fastdl
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
aa
Jul 22, 2014
1,257
999
Indeed, bz2 files can be uploaded straight to the FastDl server. Unfortunately, one still needs to decompress a bz2 in order to upload the bsp to a game server. I should point out that I am making the suggestion for public downloads, not uploads to the TF2maps servers.

bz2 compression is applied to files individually. One is unable to include extra content, such as readme, config and nav files or menu photo images. In those situations, a ZIP archive would normally be used, or the extra content uploaded separately.

7z compresses much better than ZIP. Last night I uploaded a map, here, in a ZIP archive. It was 30MB, though the 7z equivalent is 15MB.

I could have put a 7z file inside a ZIP but that would be misleading. Instead I thought it beneficial to raise the suggestion to allow the use of it. Encouraging the use of 7z files would mean faster downloads for users and less data transfer for the site. They can be easily decompressed on multiple platforms using common, free apps like WinRAR or The Unarchiver, or the free 7-Zip app.
 
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Geit

💜 I probably broke it 💜
aa
May 28, 2009
598
1,161
.7z and .rar files now allowed to be uploaded in the downloads section.

EDIT: No, I'm not going to support it on the gameserver uploader.
 
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