Yes, again. This time with more efficiency. Average compression ratio before was 38%, now the average compression ratio is 32.8%*. Also cleaned up the tool finally and gave it a proper license. Also comes with source code for use in the Mega Drive (both 68000 assembly and C). Download SLZ After this I may make XSLZ so don't expect SLZ to last much longer =/ Project MD still uses SLZ though, for what it's worth, so if you ever want to modify Project MD you'll need SLZ. * Used the compressed data I extracted from Sonic 3D for testing.
Instead of a big block of say 128 uncompressed tiles (4 KBytes), this allows you to store the same data as a compressed block of maybe 1 KByte or so depending on how complex the data is. That's not the novel part, there's lots of compression methods out there. What makes this novel is a) the decompressor is FAST, and b) it allows you to specify which tiles to decompress instead of requiring you to decompress them all. So you could have your compressed block have ALL the tiles for the ENTIRE game, then only decompress the ones you need for this level without the need to decompress all the tiles.
You're mixing up UFTC and SLZ. SLZ is just a generic compressor (think Kosinski), the only novel thing about SLZ is that it's homebrew so it's legal for use in homebrew =P UFTC is the one that does what you say (and achieves less compression ratio, but it's still something)
Yes, sorry. I did mix the two up. Odd, but I've been sick the last few days, so I clearly wasn't thinking.