v9- f1RE gRAPHICS Combustin out I don t want to say much this month All I want you to do is look at the art but there are still some things that need to be mentioned Our vga department has taken a bit of a new direction over the past month and this is thanks in large part to the efforts of our own Fathom Because of his help and dedication lately he s been given an official role as CO-ordinator of the vga division and will be working together with me from here on out I haven t done much editorializing since becoming president of fire but I find that I now have to Recently the powers that be who control the ACiD Artpacks Archive dir on cdrom com decided to allow only packs compressed with the RAR format I was reluctant at first but I eventually decided that it wouldn t be that huge a deal to create two archives if it meant saving some of the space on the artpacks dir Not long after though I learned that when used for artpacks the RAR format saved barely any more space than the widely used ZIP format and nowhere near the 8%-15% promised Packing with RAR is simply a huge waste of time for me and all of those who must find a RAR uncompressing program just to see the pack I encourage you to look at the stats for zip rar and several other compression programs when used for recent art packs and decide for yourself The stats (compiled by Silverthorn) along with some extra background info can be found at the bottom of this news file Also of import www fireweb org is finally up and running Check it out The gallery and history should be completed very soon and a redesign of the site is planned to be completed in the next month or two - God among Lice Here s the rest of the story The warming and bright light of a merciless sun shines down on the great plains of ansi art only reflected by the eager bodies of a few the Golden Bees are back No member roster changes this month except for Silverthorn who was moved to inactive status on his own request and Vade79 who couldn t cope with senior staff status and was moved to normal artist status again but who in fire is normal we kick your ass you better admit obey the masters creep have a look at the pack and fear the airborne power of the Golden Bees we are back - nail AAAH Attack of the killer 3 s This month fire hires has undergone some drastic changes First off I (fathom) am helping God Among Lice out in the hires coordinator position so as of this month we are CO-ordinators Along with a change in leadership comes a big change in our member list We have aquired a great deal of talent this month adding contrast to our lineup The first of our three-letter-named recruits is Kyo He came to us from fuel and you can count on seeing good anime pics out of him in the months to come! Coming from the alleyways and building walls of San Francisco and Berkley comes IMG With his witty and light hearted characters he adds a new side to the hires team Although he s new at the computer medium his art is amazing and destined to get better as time goes on Also joining us this month is Sid His intelligent art brings fire a new dark and cerebral side I personally admire his artistic skill All this talk about the new members almost made me forget the sudden burst of quality from our already existing members First off numb is back and better then ever showing off a small example of the (hopefully numerous pieces to come I m a big fan of numb s art and glad to see her jump on the activity train July marks the release of personal bests by myself and God Among Lice I m very pleased with the way my pic for this month (that s two months in the making if anyone s counting P) came out and I know God Among Lice is excited to release his also Leaving us this month for Twilight is Flux We wish him the best All in all July marks the month of the fire Hires revolution Let it be known we re not stopping here - fathom Back from Alascii First off I want to apologize to anyone (mainly God among Lice) who didn t know where I was last month I d also like to thank Baphomet for actually releasing during my absence Now onto the news This month we got a lot of new members and as with any group said said farewell to some members who left us Skatter left us to join Remorse Point Blank joined for about 2 days and then left for Remorse Empty left for Remorse (noticing a trend here ) and Discofunk left to continue on his quest of being a member in every group in the scene New members this month are Radical from Fuel who brings great pic skills along with him Deadpool from Cia who shows a lot of talent and FrgnFruz (that s his full nick) joins us from Awe with his unique coloring techniques also a late acquisition Warhawk comes to us from the dismantled group Basic and brings his excellent oldschool skills along That s pretty much it for this month I m not sure if my email account is working so if your unable to contact me through email or on irc then you can direct any apps questions to Haji or The Emperor - pariah thetemple@juno com Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I m quite proud of the pack that we ve released today A special thanks goes out to all those who put in the extra effort this month Look for more to come next month - God among Lice _ __ 88$$$b_ qd$$$$bp yyy yyy 8$$ d$$P 8$$b the RAR conspiracy $$$ $$$ l$$$$$$ $$8 ii $$$ $$$ 8$888$ l$$ lli $$$ qd$$$P $$ l$$ SSlllSlSSS888___88$$$8888 8$$b_ 8$$888888888888888 HAJI $$S $$$ $$$ _ 4$$$88$$bp $$ $$$ $$$$$$$$ $$$ $$$ $$$$$$$b 88$$$$$$$$$ iii $$ $$$$$$$$ $$$$$$SSSSSbp iiiiiii $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSSSSSSSSSSSSllllllllllliiiiiiiiii Recently a small controversy has arisen due to Radman and Co s decision to move the Acid Artpacks archive over from ZIP to RAR compression The following messages were received by Silverthorn and in response to them he compiled the following charts and information to compare the actual performance of several common archivers (and some that aren t so common as well ) I ll elaborate further below On Tue 22 Apr 1997 12 07 36 -0700 (PDT) Christian Wirth radman@wcarchive cdrom com wrote GAL I am writing to inquire if you re interested in joining our scene movement towards a new compression format (Actually it s almost two years old g ) RAR (Russian Archiver) can offer up to 40% better compression on graphics and sound files than ZIP or ARJ Usually though typical for artpacks it does about 10 to 15% better Mindcrime Blade kind of jumped the gun on us but all of ACiD s divisions are going RAR May 1st (ACiD VGA Avenge Remorse pHluid) as well as Blade and probably Mistigris and a few others Anyways -- A couple of the major tracking music groups have moved to this format becasue of it s abilities to compress sound so well as well as alot of cracking groups who RAR first then ZIP -- I guess only because BBSes dont fully recognize RAR files Artpacks is made to handle RAR files first Lastly Our poor archive is running out of room ( 10% to 15% savings on a couple hundred megabytes of files makes all the difference Check http artpacks acid org main html we re 90 something percent full ( RAR supports authentication and ANSI zip comments without the need of a device driver loaded Cool stuff SFX s also supported look forward to talking to you soon let me know if you re interested I can support you with a registered RAR program that will say whatever you want on the AV line Regards RaD Man ACiD Productions As you can see Radman based his decision largely on the anticipated 10-15% compression increase of RAR over ZIP The next message sent to Fire as a group announced a slightly more conservative estimate On Wed 04 Jun 1997 12 36 41 -0700 radman@acid org radman@acid org wrote Greetz Just writing to notify y all in advance that artpacks acid org will be switching to manditor RAR compression for all uploads as of July 1st due to space limitations RAR offers up to 30% better compression than PK-ZIP with an average of about 8% better I highly recommend you pick up a copy of WinRar 2 01 which was just released 2 00 is available on http artpacks acid org programs archivers Take care Chris Here are silverthorn s findings compression report - by silverthorn@videotron ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * zoo cannot archive 0 byte files * maximum compression used when available * all ansi ascii comments in the archive header where removed * same format archive where recompressed to provide maximum compression format version status* platforms ------ ----------------- ---------- ------------- zip 2 04g dead all os arj 2 50a alive dos win linux pak 2 51 dead dos win lha 2 55b dead dos win arc 5 32 (not pkarc) dead dos win zoo 2 1 dead dos sqz 1 08 3 dead dos uc2 revision 3 pro alive dos hap 3 00 dead dos rar 2 00 alive all os The status column indicates whether the compression form is still being developed and maintained It is important to note that WinZip *IS* currently continuing where pkzip left off so pronouncing it dead is a bit permature ) Here s a compression comparison for some typical art packs RAR is used as the 0 or standard value fire results ------------------------------------------------------------------ 6-08-97 23 59 1 781 326 fire0697 arc 45 603 + 6-09-97 8 38 1 739 982 fire0697 arj 4 259 + 7-10-97 23 49 1 740 703 fire0697 hap 4 980 + 6-09-97 8 38 1 739 376 fire0697 lzh 3 653 + 7-10-97 23 44 1 755 435 fire0697 pak 19 712 + 7-10-97 23 44 1 735 723 fire0697 rar 7-10-97 23 44 1 739 655 fire0697 sqz 3 932 + 7-10-97 23 44 1 733 646 fire0697 uc2 - 2 077 7-10-97 23 44 1 740 152 fire0697 zip 4 429 + 7-10-97 23 44 1 767 961 fire0697 zoo 32 238 + acid results ------------------------------------------------------------------ 6-01-97 22 41 1 235 148 acid-58 arc 15 396 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 220 859 acid-58 arj 1 107 + 7-11-97 0 13 1 230 815 acid-58 hap 11 063 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 220 612 acid-58 lzh 860 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 229 811 acid-58 pak 10 059 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 219 752 acid-58 rar 6-13-97 13 49 1 220 036 acid-58 sqz 284 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 216 890 acid-58 uc2 - 2 862 6-13-97 13 49 1 221 938 acid-58 zip 2 186 + 6-13-97 13 49 1 236 416 acid-58 zoo 16 664 + ice results (ansi) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 5-03-97 20 53 330 198 ice9704a arc 73 031 + 5-03-97 20 44 263 965 ice9704a arj 6 798 + 5-03-97 20 44 253 049 ice9704a hap - 4 118 5-03-97 20 44 265 645 ice9704a lzh 8 478 + 5-03-97 20 44 278 987 ice9704a pak 21 820 + 5-03-97 20 44 257 167 ice9704a rar 5-03-97 20 44 264 695 ice9704a sqz 7 528 + 5-03-97 20 44 260 018 ice9704a uc2 2 851 + 5-03-97 20 44 263 418 ice9704a zip 6 251 + 5-03-97 20 44 322 400 ice9704a zoo 65 233 + ice results (vga) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 5-03-97 20 45 1 331 003 ice9704b arc 39 507 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 301 205 ice9704b arj 9 709 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 326 880 ice9704b hap 35 384 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 304 025 ice9704b lzh 12 529 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 311 212 ice9704b pak 19 716 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 291 496 ice9704b rar 5-03-97 20 43 1 299 732 ice9704b sqz 8 236 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 297 790 ice9704b uc2 6 294 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 300 790 ice9704b zip 9 294 + 5-03-97 20 43 1 332 040 ice9704b zoo 40 544 + fuel results (ansi) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 7-04-97 0 17 222 376 fuel14 arc 68 839 + 7-03-97 21 40 159 636 fuel14 arj 6 099 + 7-03-97 21 40 146 919 fuel14 hap - 6 618 7-03-97 21 40 160 285 fuel14 lzh 6 748 + 7-03-97 21 40 177 920 fuel14 pak 24 303 + 7-03-97 21 40 153 537 fuel14 rar 7-03-97 21 40 160 557 fuel14 sqz 7 020 + 7-03-97 21 40 152 338 fuel14 uc2 - 1 199 7-03-97 21 40 160 132 fuel14 zip 6 595 + 7-03-97 21 40 217 729 fuel14 zoo 64 192 + fuel results (vga) ------------------------------------------------------------------ 6-04-97 2 36 2 141 850 fule14v arc 23 090 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 121 399 fuel14v arj 2 639 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 133 240 fuel14v hap 14 480 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 121 787 fuel14v lzh 3 027 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 130 924 fuel14v pak 12 164 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 118 760 fuel14v rar 7-04-97 1 00 2 120 215 fuel14v sqz 1 455 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 114 654 fuel14v uc2 - 4 106 7-04-97 1 00 2 122 360 fuel14v zip 3 600 + 7-04-97 1 00 2 142 808 fuel14v zoo 24 048 + As anyone can see RAR compression *is* better than ZIP It is extremely important to note however that at least for ansi art packs (which is what we re all concerned with) the performance gain of RAR over ZIP does _not_ average anywhere near 8 percent much less 10-15 In the examples above the savings were around 5K which is about one half of one percent of a 1MB art pack! Thence if the Artpacks archive contains 1GB of art packs then converting the ENTIRE site over to RAR would only save 5MB! In conclusion while RAR is a (slightly) more efficient compression algorithm the gains from using it are miniscule when compared to the problems that converting to a new compression scheme would cause The entire BBS world revolves around pkzip and it does for a reason - everyone has it every BBS soft in the world supports it and it s extremely easy to use I urge all group administrators to seriously consider the accessability loss incurred by switching to a less mainstream archiver Progress for the sake of progress is not always a good thing If it s not broken don t fix it Thence stick to ZIP If everyone does that so will the Artpacks archive ) Fire certainly is Halaster(pkware)