Smallest 14.1 client folder possible.

algebuckina

MTG Secretary
Staff member
Super Moderator
Moderator
Joined
Apr 19, 2017
Messages
69
When trying to port to another device, it's always really cumbersome to have a largish swgemu folder to be hauling around. So I was wondering if anyone had only the files needed to fun 14.1 swgemu on vanilla servers. Cause I know a lot of assets were replaced further on in the games production and so on.

So pwetty pwetty pwease?
 

Halyn

That One Guy
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
257
Location
Empire in Flames
MinSWG? That's an interesting thought. Definitely easier to do with Bas than branch servers.
 

Halyn

That One Guy
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
257
Location
Empire in Flames
So, if you crush all the 14.1 TREs together, you shave it from 2.72 GB to 2.42 GB...which isn't a lot, all said and done. You *could* do a lot more by removing all "unnecessary" art - in this case, I mean by removing all levels of detail except the highest. The "appearance" folder alone is north of 1 gig (uncompressed, not in a TRE) - you could maybe cut that in half. Similarly, the "textures" folder is close to 2 gig uncompressed, and could probably be cut way down with the textures for all those removed meshes being culled, too. But given that you're dealing with something like 7500 apts/sats to start with, you'd really need to bribe Timbab or Sytner to write a tool to help the process along.
 

Kayliaah

Relic
Joined
Aug 30, 2010
Messages
322
I remember a very stupid idea I had trying to run the game with everything uncompressed/unloaded from the TRE archives into folders and after an extensive amount of trouble (had to keep certain files archived like tables what whatnot) and reformatting the textures through the Photoshop DDS plugin and other tools, colormaps normalmaps removing uneeded alpha maps and the like, to almost halve their size without losing quality since SOE either didn't care or didn't have the tools, I don't know.

All in all it ran but it was glitchy as you wouldn't believe, textures were fine but I had some menus and world items simply not showing and got through multiple crashes, never got around to try and fix it, stupid idea and all.

Now you have USB keys bigger than the hard drives I used to know, it shouldn't be a problem. ;)
 
Last edited:

Halyn

That One Guy
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
257
Location
Empire in Flames
I did a run-through of all SWG assets - from end of NGE - and tried doing a shave by removing all non-highest LOD models and textures. Only saved something like 20% of space of the art assets, not even full size.
 

Kayliaah

Relic
Joined
Aug 30, 2010
Messages
322
That's always extra space saved, I do remember going through troubles while modding things from the NGE and having crappy low detailed models kicking in when I didn't want them to, had to remove all that crap.
In our current era, the old times SWG LODs shouldn't even be a factor anymore, better off deleting that stuff.

I don't know if anybody ever managed to get a clean 14.1 PreCU "repack" by removing all the left over files from past patches that weren't relevant anymore, we all know SOE loved their leftovers and never bothered to optimize anything, I guess in a way we should be thankful to have older files available in their archives, maybe it wasn't incompetence or rushing things, maybe they had it all planned!
 

Lasko

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Feb 13, 2012
Messages
295
I did it for the MtG tre files.

Just load up SIE and extract all. That'll just remove all the duplicate versions. How far you take it after that is up to you...... Wish anybody well on sifting through that lot though lol.

Then repack into whatever form you require.
 

Kayliaah

Relic
Joined
Aug 30, 2010
Messages
322
That's good, even if data space isn't much of a problem these days, a clean base to start modding from clears all the confusion. I went through some weird moments while modding, extracting the wrong files and editing certain things that weren't relevant to the 14.1 game anymore, that time could've been spent doing more productive things like going to the SOE headquarters and throwing dog poop at them, ah well.
 
Top Bottom