Request ability to load arcade ROMs in folder format (uncompressed)

RetroArch General
#1

Hello RA team and thank you for all your work.

This request please the ability to load big arcade roms (like sfiii3n) in folder format instead of compressed zip file.

The reason of this request is that some weak devices like Wii U have slow transfer speed, so loading a zip file means that RA has to read file first, decompress it and write it, thus taking unnecessary extra time.

For instance, non arcade ROMs load almost instantly uncompressed.

Thanks.

#2

AFAIK, the zips used by the arcade cores don’t actually have any compression, and they aren’t decompressed and written anywhere. They are passed directly to the core for consumption.

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#3

In the first place, none of that is happening. And the reason it’s longer than loading one of those “non-arcade uncompressed rom files” is because sfiii3 is 80M, which is bigger than any non-arcade rom, especially since the biggest non-arcade rom you might be loading on wiiu is probably a snes rom which is less than 6M. Please compare apples with apples.

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#4

Thanks I thought RA would extract the zipped Rom into a temporary folder first.

Maybe the decompression step could be optimized if roms are “plain files inside folders”. But that’s just a suggestion.

For instance, Sega CD and PC Engine CD games load instantly on Wii U despite being cd images.

Thanks!

#5

that’s because cd games don’t need to be fully loaded into memory, unlike games on chips

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#6

Thank so I understand that arcade Roms are fully loaded into RAM. Which makes that step of reading the whole zip package necessary.

Thank you for enlightening me.

#7

Yes, the main reason for this is that for “game-on-chips” emulation, all data must be available immediately at all time, while for “game-on-cd” emulation, the original system was able to ask its cd reader to go fetch data at a specific location and able to wait for that data to be retrieved.

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