GameBanshee Forums

Modders working on projects with new area graphics, take note! Players looking for smaller downloads, rejoice!

Per Olofsson, a friend of mine, generously spent the last week or so working on the problem of TIS area graphics: they're huge and ungainly, even packaged with RAR or the like in a mod.

The result is TISpack, a tool that applies an intelligent JPEG/ZLIB compression routine to a TIS file, making it significantly smaller than one packaged through conventional ZIP/RAR/ACE/whatever.

TISpack comes with full source, documentation of the tool and new TIZ compressed file format, and is easy to integrate into the mod installation process.

Grab it now: http://www.forgottenwars.net/tispack

Errm... sorry, Jason, in plain English, what does this download do?

I take the liberty of reproducing the first paragraph on your site:

TISpack is a small utility written by Per Olofsson that compresses Infinity Engine TIS tileset files for mod distribution. Using an intelligent algorithm, TISpack applies JPEG and ZLIB (lossless) compression with user-selectable quality to each tile in the TIS, preserving palette data when necessary for tiles with alpha channel/overlay properties. When the mod is installed, the tisunpack program turns the compressed .TIZ file back to a game-readable .TIS. TISpack supports input and output of both headered and header-free TIS files.

My noob questions are:

1. Does it help me save space while downloading?

2. How do I apply it to my future Weidu and other downloads?

I guess what I am really asking is how do I use it. Would appreciate your clarification.

To randomly jump in and answer those questions:

1) Yes, that's the whole idea, but only on mods which include new area art. For example, DLTC is aimed to be around 100MB for the demo release, a large amount of which is taken up by the area art. TISpack should allow this to be reduced substantially if we use it, resulting in a smaller download size.
The only disadvantage is slightly longer install times as the files have to be unpacked again, but this is almost certainly preferable to longer download times.

2) You don't have to worry about applying it to mods you download. The mod authors need to make sure they compress their TIS files for distribution; all you would need to do would be to run the mod installer.

Hope that helps.

Hey thanks SimDing0! You have cleared things up for me

Now all I have to do is to sit back and wait for the new mods to come!

Right, as Sim said, this is a "modder-level" program. All you should have to worry about is saying "Oh my! Only X megs! I can't believe it's a mod with new areas!" where X is some number that's probably half, or less, of what it would have been without TISpack.

Originally posted by SimDing0
To randomly jump in and answer those questions:

1) Yes, that's the whole idea, but only on mods which include new area art. For example, DLTC is aimed to be around 100MB for the demo release, a large amount of which is taken up by the area art. TISpack should allow this to be reduced substantially if we use it, resulting in a smaller download size.
The only disadvantage is slightly longer install times as the files have to be unpacked again, but this is almost certainly preferable to longer download times.

2) You don't have to worry about applying it to mods you download. The mod authors need to make sure they compress their TIS files for distribution; all you would need to do would be to run the mod installer.

Hope that helps.

What does DLTC stand for? Is that the sequelk to BG:II? I feel so ignorant.

DLTC is the Dragonlance TC (a whole new game, but not a sequel as such). The site is down at the moment, but normally would be accessible via the link in my sig.
The latest beta was around 80MB in RAR format, as I recall, and TISpack should help us reduce the final download size.

OK, I have been reliably informed that the DLTC site can be accessed [url=216.40.230.31/~admin3/]here[/url]. Don't forget to check out the screenshots to see what we'll be compressing

[EDIT] Link in my sig works again now.

i am going to send this pm to lord m and post on his forum....

imoen romance mod full version is a huge download due to its tis file for a critical part of the romance...i think the tis is extracted from bg1....

thanks!!!!

Good job, Jcompton. =)