XH_JSMX

If possible before the game is finalized, id suggest importing the zlib compression library online (http://www.zlib.net/) to allow the entire assets folder to be a single zlib compressed *.dat or whatever file loaded on the fly, it could still be unzipped and modded using any .zip program, it shouldn't slow down loading with further compression although it likely wont compress much further (and optionally can use no compression to load exactly the same possibly faster even if compressed since windows wouldnt have to cache all the files locations). You may already have it, since PNG coding usually includes most if not all of the zlib code. It also shouldn't be too complex to code in & to me (and probably to steam too) its better to only need to handle 10 actual files or so than having 35000+ files in a folder (im still on v18 dunno if that changed yet) . An added future benefit would be to code the game to allow any additional .dat named zip files in the folder to be loaded after the assets.dat and allow it to use those files in place of the ones that normally would be in the assets.dat to allow mod packs to be loaded easily. Example: assets dat containing all original files loaded first, then load any other *.dats in the folder such as a mod.dat containing a modified file (assets\gui\Mission End\VictoryScreen.png) thats in the same structure would load the modified victory screen or whatever files instead of the originals etc blahblah.

In case you want to save a crapload of time converting heres the batch script i made & pngquant. http://www.mediafire.com/download/6ujv84a8wzc9d7u/xenopngquant.zip Just extract the pngquant exe's to where xenonauts.exe is and run 'xhxeno_multithread.cmd' I made it to auto scan all subfolders from wherever its run at and run pngquant on all png files, i included both the multithreaded and single threaded versions because some people had issues with the multithreaded one according to their site but its 2-3x as fast as the single threaded version given u have 2+ cores. Edit: Oh and ignore any 'errors' there's 2-3 'png' files that arent actually pngs that were in my games directory. And if your gonna use some other batch program you can still used the cmd script i made just open it in notepad and change "pngquant.exe --force --speed=1 --ext .png 256 --" to whatever command the program your using needs and itll run it on every png file .

> maackey : Overall i meant to only do it in the final stages of development. DDS would likely be larger than 256 color pngs (im pretty sure theres 256 color 8 bit dds too though) & yeah dds would load faster in game, but seeing as the game already supports png's i assumed itd take some development time to switch over to dds if it would be quick to develop then they should go with dds. 24 bit PNGs (what it has now) although lossless still use the exact same form of compression (zlib) and 256 color ones would take either the same or less time to uncompress into video memory than the pngs they have now so when the games getting finalized out of beta if still using the same pngs there no reason not to do it then. > Chris : I used some custom batch scripts i wrote and and the multithread version of PNGquant http://pngquant.org/ along with a slightly modded version of their 'PNGoo' GUI.

Random Suggestion Unless theres some weird reason not to, i don't see a reason why you shouldnt at least consider compressing a majority of the game textures to rgba 256 color PNG's maybe even 128 color to lower the size of the game overall, i did it out of boredom testing how small i could get the game, i compressed all ~34000 of the textures (on v18 stable, which totally did not take over 8hrs) & managed to decrease the games size from 4.6gb to 1.7gb with unnoticable loss to any image quality due to a majority of the games individual textures not having a very wide color range. Here's a texture example to look at: http://www.mediafire.com/?3ml5ox5h0h0f363 I used this image in example: xenonauts\assets\units\xenonaut\armour.buzzard\weapon.lasercarbine\burstshoot_sw.png Sizes Original Image: 2.53 MB (2,660,276 bytes) rgba 256 color: 731 KB (749,081 bytes) (virtually lossless) rgba 128 color: 583 KB (597,218 bytes)* *(little loss, only noticeable if you zoom in alot on the texture itself, in game the difference is visually irrelevant and unnoticeable) In game testing screenshots (not of that texture in particular): http://www.mediafire.com/folder/scenemn8st84d10,5u93jsq5b9s2ryv/shared The first screenshot (1.png) is all original textures, and the second is using all 128 color textures on everything. Anyways at the least a much smaller game, itd be almost lossless at 256 color & likely around 2-2.4gb in size, i like to save as much space as i can on my computer, and depending on how the game loads and renders the textures it may actually speed up loading with the much smaller files.