How to use .bz2 files?

[theodoeshutup]

I've compressed my map into a .bz2 file and see that it's inside of it. But I can't run the .bz2 file in game.. I've tried extracting the file from the .bz2 but it's still the same size when it was uncompressed (defeating the purpose of compression). So how on earth do you use this strange file? Google doesn't help and no one has ever questioned this before for some reason.
Thanks in advanced. I have some really large maps that I need put on my server.

 

[xzzy]

The bsp has to be uncompressed for TF2 to use it.

Servers distribute bz2 files only to save on bandwidth when players download the maps. TF2 has code to unzip the file once it finished the download.

I'm not sure why you're seeing problems with the file size not changing after decompression. That's effectively impossible if the bz2 is actually a bz2 file.. the byte size should always be different than the file that's being compressed.


"bz2" is a compression algorithm that is one of the more efficient methods out there. It tends to mystify Windows users because there's not a lot of Windows utilities that can read bz2, but it's pretty common in the Linux world. The biggest difference from a usability perspective is that unlike a zip file it can only contain a single file.

 

[theodoeshutup]

Oh, so the .bz2 and the .bsp that I found in the .bz2 are supposed to go on the server? Or do I get the original .bsp, not the one found in the .bz2? And the server runs on the .bsp and the player's client downloads the .bz2 to be decompressed?

EDIT: Nevermind, I've figured it out. Turns out that is how it works. Connected to the server without the map file and it downloaded the .bz2 extremely fast (used dropbox). Thanks for the help though!