Support NeoGAF

[Sky87]

Just found mentions on this on various tech websites, seems to be what we need with todays space-hungry games. Anyone tried it? Would love to see MS/Steam implement this as default if there's no downsides to it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/7787qd/compactgui_compress_any_game_with_no_impact_on/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/76hj26/i_tested_25_games_against_the_windows_compact/

Apparently Shadow of War can be shrinked down to 16GB from 100GB for example (Source here: http://itavisen.no/2017/10/20/magisk-windows-10-funksjon-frigjor-gigantiske-mengder-gb-for-spillere/). Here's some game examples:

EDIT: Some more info from MS: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/compact-os
EDIT2: Followup from the author of the tool: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/77scky/its_been_barely_a_week_since_i_posted_my/

 

[PantsuJo]

From 100 to 16?

What kind of compression sorcery is this?
Holy shit, I must understand it

 

[gossi]

Performance impact should be fun.

 

[Sora the Cat]

The game needing to decompress files on the fly doesn't affect performance? If not this could be great.

 

[TimPV3]

From 100 to 16?

What kind of compression sorcery is this?
Holy shit, I must understand it

Middle-out

 

[Garrett Hawke]

The game needing to decompress files on the fly doesn't affect performance? If not this could be great.

Uncompressing in real time (if that is what this does) would absolutely have an impact on performance. Longer load times and likely streaming issues.

 

[Thoraxes]

Gonna test this on MGS V and FFXIII to see how it goes. They're pretty big on my drives and I don't open them often, but I swear i'll finish them one day on PC, lol

 

[codswallop]

This is Windows' own built-in file-level compression. It's been around for ages, but is probably better with Windows 10 than it's ever been.

But it's still compression, which requires extra CPU time to decompress files. The performance hit would depend on how the game you're playing handles files (does it open a lot of large files over and over, a couple once, etc), how the CPU is being used for that game, and the CPU you have installed.

Personally, given most PC games are on digital distribution platforms, I'd recommend a combination of a "big enough" hard disk (1-2TB for games is probably enough; I use a 500GB SSD for games and it's fine) and just deleting stuff when you're done with it. Doesn't always gel with slower internet connections, however.

 

[KojiKnight]

I mean... Windows has come with built in folder compression since 2k or so... What's different about this?

 

[Wolf Akela]

Yeah... this isn't worth the performance impact. If you're compressing to fit more games on your SSD, why even bother putting games on your SSD? Just buy a high performance HDD.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Uncompressing in real time (if that is what this does) would absolutely have an impact on performance. Longer load times and likely streaming issues.

Most games these days are built around the anemic processors in PS4 and XBox One, so if you have CPU overhead (like maybe you're running a Ryzen 7) doing this could result in minimal impact to CPU with only marginally longer load times.

 

[bemusedchunk]

What's the Weismann score on this compression algorithm?

 

[Coonce]

This program is incredible, but some games won't work well being compressed.

Some games will act funny, or straight up stop working - these are the ones I've tested so far that have had problems, everything else is flawless.

Battlefield 1 - menu gets extremely weird, VERY long load times, would not recommend compressing it, this is even on an SSD.

Lord of the rings online (who is still playing this?) won't launch at all.

Guild wars 2 - crashes and won't launch.

if I find any other issues, I'll report them here.

Yeah... this isn't worth the performance impact. If you're compressing to fit more games on your SSD, why even bother putting games on your SSD? Just buy a high performance HDD.

I'm unsure of this but most of the games loading times will decrease due to smaller file sizes, and if there is an impact, it's negligible. The amount of GB saved for losing milliseconds of loading times is totally worth it. I will look into it and test more games.

I should also note, I'm running a 5820k, a "powerful" CPU. this might not be the case for older CPUs.

 

[Sora the Cat]

This program is incredible, but some games won't work well being compressed.

Some games will act funny, or straight up stop working - these are the ones I've tested so far that have had problems, everything else is flawless.

Battlefield 1 - menu gets extremely weird, VERY long load times, would not recommend compressing it, this is even on an SSD.

Lord of the rings online (who is still playing this?) won't launch at all.

Guild wars 2 - crashes and won't launch.

if I find any other issues, I'll report them here.

Thanks for that. I need to try it.

 

[theultimo]

yeah a rise in CPU usage and wearing on SSD is something I would rather not have.

it's easier just to slap a bigger hd or delete stuff.

also, the minute it's launched you need that space anyway.

 

[SomTervo]

Thanks Coonce. For this to be any use at all we need a comprehensive list of all large games and the performance impact of this compression on them.

At which point you'd have to be really desperate or have a really bad internet connection.

 

[Coonce]

yeah a rise in CPU usage and wearing on SSD is something I would rather not have.

it's easier just to slap a bigger hd or delete stuff.

also, the minute it's launched you need that space anyway.

So far I haven't noticed any increased CPU usage, disk read usage has gone up, but not disc write usage.

edit - it's kind of crazy how bad FFX/X-2's compression is, the "space on disk" is what size it is after compression.

 

[Dinjoralo]

I went a little crazy and compressed my entire steamapps folder on my secondary (old, HDD) drive. It got some pretty good results, and none of my games have had any problems so far.

Granted, I had to use the command line for this because compactGUI broke after a while, but hey.

 

[Coonce]

I went a little crazy and compressed my entire steamapps folder on my secondary (old, HDD) drive. It got some pretty good results, and none of my games have had any problems so far.

Granted, I had to use the command line for this because compactGUI broke after a while, but hey.

damn, that's impressive!

how long did that take you?? I've got like 1200 gb of games installed so I imagine it would be an overnight process.

 

[Mivey]

From 100 to 16?

What kind of compression sorcery is this?
Holy shit, I must understand it

Just means the devs didn't even bother to use lossless compression.
I guess you could argue that it reduces CPU load.

 

[TI82]

I've got about 4TB of steam games installed at the moment. Maybe I can take that down a few places !

 

[Dinjoralo]

damn, that's impressive!

how long did that take you?? I've got like 1200 gb of games installed so I imagine it would be an overnight process.

I don't know. I left CompactGUI to compress everything at first, but eventually it got stuck around 30% and I couldn't bring the window up, or anything. So I closed out of that and ran it in a command prompt, and it worked fine, and sped through everything compactgui already did. I'd wager for that much stuff, you'll wanna leave it overnight. Maybe idle some cards while you're at it.

 

[LelouchZero]

Wow this sounds amazing!

Thanks for posting this, I'm going to try this out on some games!

 

[Zombegoast]

GTA 5 only compressed a bit over 1gb. Probably from mods I installed.

Darksiders 2 8.5 from 12gb

Tekken 7 31gb from 50gb

Nier Automata 32gb from 45gb

 

[Zexen]

Isn't it the same as using this option? If not I could give it a try for some games.

 

[Coonce]

Isn't it the same as using this option? If not I could give it a try for some games.

It's similar, but compact.exe has a few different algorithms to try. Some take longer but compress better, which gives better results, also afaik, compact.exe is only available on windows 10, that folder option has been around since the days of XP? vista?

 

[AzaK]

What's the Weismann score on this compression algorithm?

38

 

[Windu]

Saving local disk space isn't a big concern. I would be more interested in downloads being much more compressed.

 

[Thoraxes]

So far I haven't noticed any increased CPU usage, disk read usage has gone up, but not disc write usage.

edit - it's kind of crazy how bad FFX/X-2's compression is, the "space on disk" is what size it is after compression.

Which method did you use of the four available?

 

[Uraizen]

I wonder how games with anti-cheat like Xenoverse 2 would react to this...?

 

[Sentenza]

I will never trust these sorts of utilities to not fuck up things in some way sooner or later.

 

[Liseda]

Isn't it the same as using this option? If not I could give it a try for some games.

It's kinda similar, you could compare this to that but newer and more powerful.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/compact-os

Uncompressing in real time (if that is what this does) would absolutely have an impact on performance. Longer load times and likely streaming issues.

Not really, reading compressed files (deflate compression) are usually faster than reading uncompressed files FYI.

I wonder how games with anti-cheat like Xenoverse 2 would react to this...?

I don't see why it would react anything different, it's a Windows feature (not built directly into NTFS but is implemented using reparse points) that should be completely transparent to applications.

 

[Paragon]

Uncompressing in real time (if that is what this does) would absolutely have an impact on performance. Longer load times and likely streaming issues.

Not necessarily. Depending on the compression, it can be faster to transfer compressed data and decompress it than it is to transfer the larger uncompressed file.
With a fast SSD it may not matter, but if you're loading games from an HDD it could potentially improve things. Unfortunately all my HDDs are formatted with ReFS rather than NTFS now, and it doesn't support compression.

This is Windows' own built-in file-level compression. It's been around for ages, but is probably better with Windows 10 than it's ever been.

It's not the same thing. My understanding is that NTFS compression is based on "compression units", while this works using sparse files.
Depending on the algorithm used, the compression ratio can also be significantly higher. LZX is typically the highest compression but for some games I've actually found XPRESS16K to compress things better.
NTFS drive/folder compression is "live" where it will automatically compress anything in a directory marked for compression, while this is not - so game updates would require you to recompress files for example. That means it's not prone to the fragmentation issues that NTFS drive/folder compression suffers from.

I would be hesitant to say that this is "free" though. At the very least there is going to be CPU overhead - but if you have free CPU resources available, that may not matter.

I will never trust these sorts of utilities to not fuck up things in some way sooner or later.

It's just a GUI for Windows' own compact feature. You can compress or decompress via Powershell if you prefer. /C to compress, /U to uncompress.

Compact.exe /C /A /F /EXE:XPRESS16K /S:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\<game directory>"

 

[Coonce]

Which method did you use of the four available?

I've been using the XPRESS16K method

 

[Blam]

Someone on reddit got this.

What the fuck? 15GB to 900ish mb?

 

[Thoraxes]

I've been using the XPRESS16K method

Ah neat, I was using the slightly lesser methods for the first games I tested, but wasn't getting great returns, so i'll bump it up.

Edit: Tried it on my larger games and did not have too much an impact with Ryse (saved ~1GB), FFXIII (saved ~2GB), and ~MGSV saved 4GB).

 

[Coonce]

Ah neat, I was using the slightly lesser methods for the first games I tested, but wasn't getting great returns, so i'll bump it up.

it definitely takes some time for the larger games, but I think it's well worth it.

 

[ussjtrunks]

We need steam to buy these guys out so the can compress the hell out of downloads

 

[RazorbackDB]

This is actually used to install Windows itself in those low storage laptops and tablets. I'm sure they had performance in mind when implementing it with W10. It's nice to have a more user friendly way to apply it to whatever now.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/compact-os

 

[StereoVsn]

That's a great tip, OP. I have used the tool before (well, powershell version) both at work and at home for my file server, but never thought to use it on games. I figure a decent SSD will offset most penalties to speed as well, I just wonder at "wear and tear" on the SSD due to compression/decompression.

Going to test it out this weekend for sure.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

I’ll just buy a bigger hard drive.

 

[emag]

We need steam to buy these guys out so the can compress the hell out of downloads

Valve to buy Microsoft?

 

[Xcell Miguel]

Well I tried and indeed the loading times are longer because it need to unpack files to read them, so they end up taking more space while being in use as there's some king of unpacked shadow copy.

That's not really good for SSDs as it writes the file's data each time it needs to read it.

It's good only to archive old games (prefer unpacking before playing), but not games you use actively.

It's different from NTFS compression, the NTFS compression is done on the fly and can be read without unpacking the files.

 

[aaaaa0]

Well I tried and indeed the loading times are longer because it need to unpack files to read them, so they end up taking more space while being in use as there's some king of unpacked shadow copy.

That's not really good for SSDs as it writes the file's data each time it needs to read it.

That's not how it works. It doesn't unpack and write the files each time you run the game. What it does is that for each piece of a file the game requests to load, it unpacks just that bit into RAM.

The only time it unpacks and writes the whole file, is if the game tries to modify the file, which should happen rarely for the vast majority of the game's files (usually only when applying patches).

 

[Xcell Miguel]

That's not how it works. It doesn't unpack and write the files each time you run the game. What it does is that for each piece of a file the game requests to load, it unpacks just that bit into RAM.

The only time it unpacks and writes the whole file, is if the game tries to modify the file, which should happen rarely for the vast majority of the game's files (usually only when applying patches).

I wanted to move a game I just compacted (Ghost Recon Wildlands), and I could see the size on my SSD getting lower and lower because it needed to be unpacked before being moved to another drive. This game has some huge files that can't fit in my RAM and those files were taking more time to move (with several seconds without activity on the destination drive but only on the source one, unpacking).

I did not check ingame, but that would explain the longer loading times.

 

[littlegrasshopper]

Middle-out

You sir, are a man with great taste. Great post. Love that show.

 

[aaaaa0]

I wanted to move a game I just compacted (Ghost Recon Wildlands), and I could see the size on my SSD getting lower and lower because it needed to be unpacked before being moved to another drive. This game has some huge files that can't fit in my RAM and those files were taking more time to move (with several seconds without activity on the destination drive but only on the source one, unpacking).

I did not check ingame, but that would explain the longer loading times.

If any program tries to move or change the game files, the files will get uncompressed.

Steam doesn't know about compression, it's just reading from the old compressed file, and writing it to a new uncompressed file.

But if you then recompress the new copy, it should go back down and stay down, until something tries to change the file. Just reading from the file should always leave it compressed.

Note it also doesn't have to uncompress the whole file to read it. It works on 16KB pieces for reading (for xpress 16k mode). If a program needs to read a 16KB piece, it only needs to read in and decompress that 16KB piece.

 

[Xcell Miguel]

If any program tries to move or change the game files, the files will get uncompressed.

Steam doesn't know about compression, it's just reading from the old compressed file, and writing it to a new uncompressed file.

But if you then recompress the new copy, it should go back down and stay down, until something tries to change the file. Just reading from the file should always leave it compressed.

Note it also doesn't have to uncompress the whole file to read it. It works on 16KB pieces for reading (for xpress 16k mode). If a program needs to read a 16KB piece, it only needs to read in and decompress that 16KB piece.

Indeed, thanks for the details, I just tried on another files (non-game) and it was not unpacked when using it.

But it's really weird that some games gets longer loading times.

I may not use that "feature" on most games, some don't behave well and just get worst.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

This isn't very relevant to gaming and should not be suggested as though it is. Compressing your games like this will generally do more harm than good.

 

[Judge Magister Zexion]

I just did it with Battlefield 4

So far i'm not seeing a Difference in Load times or Performance.