Asset compression, optimization options, help me learn where to start?

[calicofires]

I'm interested in learning how to mod, specifically to help Dragon Age Origins run better on my computer. A few things I'm interested in learning how to do:

 

- Better compression for textures and audio.

- Do something about the annoying DRM that makes it difficult to game offline, even occasionally breaks completely and locks many people out of their games, without first preparing by cutting DA:O from the outside world with my firewall.

- Make it less of an utter pain in the ass to install DA:O on a new system.

 

Simply, I really hope that there are options to reduce DA:O's storage footprint, loading times, and choppiness.

 

At the very least, new compression technology has been invented since 2009, but I suspect that Bioware did not compress DA:O very well in the first place. For Skyrim, a very petite game compared to DA:O, I am able to use this tool for further optimization: Optimization of DDS Textures. If I directed Optimizer Textures toward my DA:O directory, how would that work? Or should I learn how to use something like 3Ds Max to edit the textures individually?

 

Have little idea where to start with audio. Surely there are programs capable of sophisticated audio compression for DA:O's specific audio formats?

 

In part because there are so many options optimizing it, Skyrim is the best running game on my PC. My experience with Bethesda compared to Bioware and EA tells me that DA:O is probably a pile of bulls*** on the back end. (the last time I got into an EA game, it was The Sims 2, and I swore I'd never buy an EA game again, a promise I often regret breaking for DA:O)

 

I have a decent PC, it's a 13" notebook, naturally in this portability range it has some limits. Its speed bottleneck is the GPU. It runs most games adequately, but it has trouble with bulls***. Why does Skyrim, released 2011, higher visual quality and apparently more demanding engine features such as its physics, run so much smoother than Dragon Age: Origins, released in 2009 and far less visually complex? This has become fascinating to me.

 

This is on my mind because I recently upgraded from Windows 7 to 8. Last time I reformatted my computer, installing Dragon Age Origins was incredibly painful. The sheer space requirement means that these files take a long time to manage and inevitably results in DA:O's famously long loading time. The built-in content manager for DLC is incredibly buggy, mismanages and corrupts files.

 

I bought a solid state drive when they were newer and more expensive, totally worth it, but space is an issue. Without any mods or DLC, the main Origins campaign is at least 20GB. Most of the games I play are 10GB even with extra content and DLC. DA:O with its expansion, DLCs, toolset and character creator weighs in at close to 40GB, which seems totally absurd, especially when I was playing both DA:O and The Old Republic MMO and my hard drive was 60% bloated Bioware games. Is there a good reason why DA:O needs so much hard drive space?

 

Even an ancient Bioware game, Balder's Gate, was supposed to be ~30ish GB with the recommended mods and extra content. For this reason I have never played Baulder's Gate until the 2-3GB Enhanced Edition was recently released. Supposedly, the back end of Balder's Gate was a "horror."

[Thandal]

Short answer: Not Possible.

 

There are some very sophisticated hardware/software platforms out there that can perform complete compression/decompression and code pre-fetch operations on the fly for running programs and data; Windows on a consumer machine isn't one of them.

 

The main "static" content (almost 1/3 of the 27GB total) is in the form of an .erf ("encapsulated resource file"), so it's already compressed. Mods are produced by fellow players, so they are unlikely to even have the tools (much less the know-how) to further optimize their contributions.

 

Basically, it's already as good as it gets. More RAM, better video card with more VRAM, faster disk (SSD is a great move).