TorrentZip v0.2 (1st May 2005) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The efficient way to prepare your zipfiles for BitTorrent.
Brought to you by the TorrentZip team :
StatMat, shindakun, Ultrasubmarine, r3nh03k and goosecreature
To get more information, read the following files (note some of these files only apply to the sourcecode distrubution) :
TorrentZip for Dummies : http://mametitles.co.uk/tz/torrentzip.pdf INSTALL : How to build and install this fine product README : Where to find out more information ChangeLog : What fine additions have been made AUTHORS : Who has been putting in time for this product COPYING : When you're allowed to use this wonderous code NEWS : Why you should care ;-)
Contact ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ There are a few of ways to contact the makers and users of this project (see links below). You can find many of us wasting time ... uh ... hanging out in the #romtorrent channel on the IRC foreverchat network. There is also the forum at Petr1fied's fabulous website (you'll need to create an account, but then, you have nothing to hide, right?).
Sourceforge homepage : https://sourceforge.net/projects/trrntzip Petr1fieds's site : http://torrent.mametitles.co.uk IRC : irc.foreverchat.net #romtorrent
1. What is TorrentZip? ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TorrentZip (TZ) is a replacement for MAMEZip. It creates byte-for-byte exact zip files on any machine. This allows people to join a torrent (after they have converted their zip files with TZ) with a partial romset, thus preventing them from having to download the entire set again. Because of the way it creates identical zips, the file hashes will always match those in the original torrent. It has been written in ANSI and POSIX compliant C such that it can be built and run cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OS-X etc) and has been tested on 32bit, 64bit, Little-Endian and Big-Endian architectures.
2. Why use TZ instead of MAMEZip? ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ This section provides the key differences between TZ and MAMEZip.
2.1 INI file ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ does not use an INI file like MAMEZip. The way it achieves this is it places a special string in the global comment of converted zips. The comment looks like this:
TORRENTZIPPED-XXXXXXXX e.g. TORRENTZIPPED-09FE247A
The last 8 bytes is the CRC32 of all the bytes in the zip file central directory. This allows TZ to detect any changes to the zip file by any app. This includes ClrMAME Pro, regardless of what settings it has been configured to use (retain timestamps etc). Because TZ uses this method instead of storing exact path and timestamp info in an INI file (like MAMEZip), roms can be moved around anywhere on your computer. Files will be still be detected as already TorrentZipped wherever they are. It also means that a first-time downloader does not have to TorrentZip the already TorrentZipped romset they have downloaded just to get a valid INI file (as with MAMEZip).
2.2 Subdirectories ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ supports the scanning of subdirectories below the passed path.
2.3 Supported filename chars ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ will handle any characters in the filenames, unlike MAMEZip. Examples of these are the accented characters like [é] and [ü].
2.4 Internal filename case ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ retains the case of internal files in the zip, unlike MAMEZip which makes them all lowercase.
2.5 Logs ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ creates log files, one for processing info ([DIR]_[TIMESTAMP].log), and one for errors (error.log). This allows the user to review a long conversion process after it has completed.
2.6 Errors ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ won't stop the complete process when an error is found. When MAMEZip discovered a zip it couldn't handle (i.e. a corrupt file), it would stop completely. TZ will simply log the error, and move onto the next zip file.
2.7 zlib ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ uses the excellent zlib library, unlike JazzLib in MAMEZip. TZ achieves slightly better compression as a result.
2.8 Written in C ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ is written in C, so it's considerably faster than MAMEZip.
3. Usage (commandline) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ TZ is very simple to use. It's a commandline app, so it has commandline parameters. This main parameter is the path/zip file that contains the roms you want to convert to TZ format. Remember, if a path is passed TZ supports sub-directories, so it will also scan these under the path you provide. Therefore, the calling convention is as follows :
trrntzip
You don't have to use the commandline if you don't wish to. You can drag a folder to the executable within your GUI OS environment. This will automatically pass the path to TZ. You can then review the log files that TZ creates during the process.
3.1 Commandline options ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ -? : show commandline help -d : strip sub-directories from zips -s : prevent sub-directory recursion -v : show version
4. Usage (GUI) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Also available on the Sourceforge homepage is a Java based GUI for those that wish to use it. Please see the TorrentZip for Dummies document linked to at the start of this document for instructions on it's use.
5. Credits and Thanks ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ There are so many people who have been instrumental in getting this project up and running (aside from the authors - you can read AUTHORS for the skinny on those geeks). TorrentZip would never have existed if it wasn't for the great people over at the Pleasuredome Trinity web-sites, who have extensively used MAMEZip for their rom torrents, making it very easy to for everyone to keep up-to-date. Here are the links to these web-sites :
http://www.pleasuredome.org.uk - Main Pleasuredome site http://torrent.mametitles.co.uk - Full Roms and Extras http://chd.pleasuredome.org.uk:1000 - MAME CHDs and CHD sooners http://strath.mametitles.co.uk/tracker - Updates and rollbacks
We would like to thank the following people for their assistance and support during the construction of TZ (in no particular order) :
Jano : The original author of MAMEZip, without which we would not be inspired. Petr1fied : For the great site. Tor_RentBoy : For the abuse.
Others : Rupert, MisterWhite, strath, BB, Cockney_Geezer, Sulako, gunner23_98, emuLOAD, kevin, Ataru, Baraka, kelrod, Connie, harrierattack, coombsb and Zanny