Zip up the starter characters and stages by default?

[waspennator]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Ive been experimenting with zipping up my characters and stages the past month and it genuinely feels nice freeing up storage space and keeping everything in one zip.

It'd be nice if possible to have the default characters and stages that come with the initial download of ikemen go zipped up by default in future versions, cause I could see benefits for doing so.

1: Reminds people that it is possible to zip up characters and stages
2: Helps save on storage space for certain characters or stages (especially helpful on Android where space is limited, plus would also shave down the storage size of the initial build in general)
3: Consolidates files into one place (especially helpful for stages, the ones with attachedchars included..... and again Android would benefit alot)

Describe the solution you'd like

Maybe have the included characters and stages zipped up by default in future builds of ikemen go

Additional context

No response

Search terms

Zip, file size, android

[potsmugen]

I agree that we could maybe zip something to show we have support for it. Maybe the CNS KFM or Mugen stages since they're static content. But all of it would probably be a bad idea. What you get in free space (which is cheap nowadays) you lose in loading times.

[waspennator]

Dunno if its something that id only notice on a hdd, but I tested 2 ikemen go builds with nothing extra, one unzipped default and one with all the chars and stages zipped up and i didnt really notice any increase in load with the vanilla build. Then again all my devices have ssds so im guessing maybe im not noticing it as much. Maybe if I had some heavier characters or stages to test.

At the very least zipping up one character if its that bad on weaker devices could work, or zipping up the stages at least, cause stages are more spread out loosely compared to characters with the attachedchars folders many interactive stages come with.

[waspennator]

Also providing screenshots with the debug text to check the load times, I honestly didn't notice too much of an increase in loading with everything zipped up, mostly seeming to stay close to each other between tests. Weirdly I noticed sometimes zipped up would be faster (Though again my device is using an ssd).

Unzipped:

Zipped:

[potsmugen]

The only possible explanation for that is that either the timer is off for zipped files or that it's already so fast that it can fluctuate wildly percentage-wise.
But to elaborate further, zipping our assets would add one extra step when maintaining them (zip/unzip) and I'm not sure GitHub shows the history of files inside zip files. That's why I suggested only the unchanged Mugen assets.
As for the load time, that will probably be more apparent with large characters.