[SOLVED] technical question on the "distribution" and "archive.rpa" file

[deltadidirac]

Hi all

During the final "distribution building" process, there is the possibility to leave the game as it is, or create an "archive.rpa" file

1) In principle, what is the difference?
if I use "archive.rpa" the game becomes lighter overall where everything is inserted (images, scropts, etc ...)
or is it just a way to hide images and scripts?

2) Using "archive.rpa" the game becomes slower because it has to extract everything from the package before executing it? or does it change anything?

I tried to figure out on the renpy site, but I couldn't find the right answers.

Can anyone help me?
thank you all

[rames44]

1) In my experience, your game will not be significantly different in size if you package into an rpa file versus leaving the the files “exploded.” The rpa file basically is just a way of packaging all those little files into one big one. Although the size of your distribution won’t change muc, if you want to get picky, the installed game will take somewhat less total disk space if you do use an rpa. This is because space on disk is allocated in fixed size blocks, so there is typically a small amount of wasted space associated with each individual file, so by having fewer files, you have fewer half-used blocks. This effect is VERY small, however - I just include mention of it to be pedantic.

2) In my experience, there isn’t an appreciable difference between Ren’py loading files out of rpa archives versus loading them straight from disk. In the case of images, in particular, the loading process is likely to be dominated by the processing to decompress file formats like JPEG, as opposed to the time actually reading in bytes via one method or the other.

That’s my $0.02. If others mileage varies, we’d all love to hear it...

[deltadidirac]

1) In my experience, your game will not be significantly different in size if you package into an rpa file versus leaving the the files “exploded.” The rpa file basically is just a way of packaging all those little files into one big one. Although the size of your distribution won’t change muc, if you want to get picky, the installed game will take somewhat less total disk space if you do use an rpa. This is because space on disk is allocated in fixed size blocks, so there is typically a small amount of wasted space associated with each individual file, so by having fewer files, you have fewer half-used blocks. This effect is VERY small, however - I just include mention of it to be pedantic.

2) In my experience, there isn’t an appreciable difference between Ren’py loading files out of rpa archives versus loading them straight from disk. In the case of images, in particular, the loading process is likely to be dominated by the processing to decompress file formats like JPEG, as opposed to the time actually reading in bytes via one method or the other.

That’s my $0.02. If others mileage varies, we’d all love to hear it...

HI, So,
in conclusion the differences are so little and influential, that the both methods are the same... (this in general and probably for games under 1 or 2 giga-b) over this limit probably some difference start to increase a little I imagine, but for now I have no worry or problem about it.

thanks for the answer