================================================================

Title : Dzip v2.9

Authors : Nolan Pflug, Stefan Schwoon

Email Addresses : radix@planetquake.com, schwoon@in.tum.de

Description : Dzip is a program for file compression.

It's compression is on par with standard .zip file
compression and is sometimes marginally better.

Dzip's original purpose was to compress demo

recordings of the id software game Quake much better
than any other program, and it still does this.

Check out the Known Bugs section if you're

using Netscape!

This release includes the source files and execu-

tables for Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS-X.
A powerfull Windows graphical version is also
available.

Information on how to compile executables by

yourself for other platforms is included in the
source download (it's fairly straightforward).

Installation : Put the appropriate dzip exe for your system wherever
you want it.

Credits : Nolan had the idea for this program, maintains the
Windows executable and the graphical user interface.

Stefan executed Nolan's original idea, and now

compiles and tests the linux and solaris versions.

Additional Credits to : Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler whose Zlib

compression library is used by Dzip (see inside
source package for more information).

Michael Hudson for providing the OS-X binary.

Anthony Bailey for writing the original Quake demo

parsing source and for help with the Visual C++
compiler.

Uwe Girlich for the dem specs.

All the people at Speedcon for being there

and giving us a great time.

================================================================

More detailed instructions

Dzip runs in one of several modes of operation depending on

the command line switches you give to it.

Running Dzip without any arguments will give you a list of

possible options which are discussed in greater detail here.

General purpose option: -f

Normally, Dzip will refuse to overwrite existing files.
This is a simple policy to prevent you, the user, from
shooting yourself in the foot too easily... you can still
shoot yourself in the foot if you want, but you will need
to say so explicitly :) If you provide Dzip with the -f
switch, it will happily overwrite existing files if it
thinks it needs to.

General purpose option: -e

Since v2.9 Dzip will continue execution after most errors, such
as a CRC error on extract or a problem reading from a file.
With this option the program will quit when the first error is
encountered.

Compression: dzip [-e] [-f] [-0 .. -9] <filenames> [-o <outputfile>]

In this mode, Dzip will take specified files and compress them into.
a new dz file. If -o is not specified, the name of the first filename
given will be used for the name of the dz file. The filenames can
contain wildcards or directories, in which case the entire directory
is added.

The -0 to -9 switches set the compression level for zlib. -0 is no

comression at all, and -9 is the best, but there is not much difference
between -9 and even -1. The normal compression used is -6.

Examples:
dzip example.dem
Compress example.dem, writing the result to example.dz.
dzip example.dem example.txt
Same as before, but also put example.txt into example.dz.
dzip example.dem -o another.dz
Compress example.dem, writing the result to another.dz.
dzip pak0.pak readme.txt -o marathon.dz
Get all the files from pak0.pak, compress them and write
the result to marathon.dz.

Decompression: dzip -x [-e] [-f] <dzfiles>

When invoked like this, Dzip will treat the filenames given to it
as .dz archives and try to extract their contents.

Example:
dzip -x example.dz
Extract files from example.dz.

Verifying an archive: dzip [-e] -v <dzfiles>

This switch simulates the extraction of a dz archive without

actually producing any files. This is useful for testing the
archive and checking if it will decompress correctly.

Example:
dzip -v -e *.dz
 Verify every dz file in the current directory and quit on
any error.

List an archive: dzip [-e] -l <dzfiles>

Lists the contents of a dz file.

Add files to an exisiting archive: dzip [-e] -a <dzfile> <files>

Opens <dzfile> and then adds <files> to it, similar to compression

with no switches.

Delete files from an exisiting archive: dzip [-e] -d <dzfile> <files>

Opens <dzfile> and then deletes <files> from it. The file names list
must match exactly a file that is actually in <dzfile>, ignoring case.

================================================================

Version history:

18.07.02: Version 2.9

added -a and -d to add/delete files from existing dz
add compression of whole directories
added error continuation and -e switch to quit on first error
added support for 2-4GB files on some platforms
changed layout of -l listings

14.05.02: Version 2.8

fixed problems with compression/uncompression of .dem
files that were not compliant Quake demo files
updated zlib to v1.1.4

24.01.01: Version 2.5

extraction of quake demos is now 4x or more faster
fixed a few minor problems

24.10.00: Version 2.2

fixed rare dem encoding problem with out of order spawnbaseline messages
while adding files, protection against bad .pak files

24.08.00: Version 2.1

fixed a few more dem encoding problems (Remaic-related)
better handling of tiny files
added support for Nehahra .dem's
other small bug fixes

28.07.00: Version 2.0

slightly improved compression
significantly faster
removed -p option; dzip now remembers if a file
was in a pak and re-creates the pak automatically
fixed bugs for demos edited with demix or other tools
date and time of files are preserved
now displays compression ratio
finally fixed all bugs with wildcard and path expansion

01.07.00: Version 1.2

 fixed wildcard bug in Windows version
improved Hipnotic compatibility

21.06.00: Version 1.1

added wildcard expansion for Windows (thanks Nolan)
fixed a bug during decompression

20.06.00: Version 1.0

initial public release

================================================================

Results (from v1):

I tried Dzip on different kinds of demos to see how well it

would compress them; these are the results.

Demos Zip size Dzip size Ratio

SDA Nightmare
run records 3.51M 1.78M 50.6%

SDA Nightmare
100% records 9.55M 5.20M 54.4%

Marathon of Quake
on Nightmare 7.53M 4.48M 59.5%

Collection of
Deathmatch demos 9.53M 5.60M 58.8%

Devil's Covenant
movie demos 1.85M 0.59M 31.8%

================================================================

Future plans:

Just work on the GUI. Baring bugs there won't be any updates to
the cmd line versions for a while.

I'm sure there is some interest in expanding the concept of demo

compression to other games/formats like QuakeWorld, Quake2 etc.
Also, I'm fairly confident that the ideas used in Dzip can be
successful for these games, too. However, we were only interested in
demo compression for Quake because of the large size of the demos
on SDA. Feel free to use the source code to create compression of
other file types!

================================================================

Known Bugs:

This is not really a bug in dzip itself, but we mention it anyway:

Saving a dz file in Netscape under Windows that is on an http

connection may corrupt the file. The reason for this is if the
webserver is sending the file as plain text since it doesn't
recognize the extension, then Netscapes messes up all the line
feeds. Adding 'application/x-dzip' as a mime-type for .dz files
on the server will fix the problem.

================================================================

* Copyright information *

Use of this program is free of charge.

Use of the source code is subject to the conditions pointed
out in the readme file accompanying the source code.

* Where to Get This *

The Dzip homepage is at http://planetquake.com/sda/dzip/

* Related websites *

Speed Demos Archive

http://planetquake.com/sda/

Quake done Quick website

http://planetquake.com/qdq/

Demtool
http://planetquake.com/qdq/demtool.html

The demo specs page

http://planetquake.com/demospecs/