 Strip
 =====

 This is a small perl script to blank (strip) the brush list from a level.
 This has two effects:

 * It can no longer be loaded into DromEd (it can be loaded, but the brushes are
   all missing). This may be bad or good depending on your viewpoint. I 
   _require_ that you make a DromEd version of your level available to download
   for the editor addicted (so they can cheat or better, use your work as
   inspiration), escpecially if you are making a DEMO mission. We need all the 
   help we can get, and keeping your work secret wont help us at all. Think 
   about it. Normal FMs should be stripped, though. 
 * It is smaller, which saves download time and space, loading time and probably
   memory during play. Although the saving effect is not as big as I hoped. 
   
   Some sizes after (!) zipping:

   Mission      .mis file shrunk by appr. KBytes 
   Edmund          30
   Docks           28
   Information     55
   Lord Binclair   94
   Given the fact that Binclair is 12 MB, this is pretty disappointing, isnt 
   it? ;) 

 Run it as:

 perl strip mission[.mis] [outfile.mis] [-flags]

 It generates a stripped.mis file. I tested it on "Edmund", and "Lord Binclair", 
 Thief seems be able to use this "stripped" version, although I make no 
 guaranties! Use at your own risk!  The new version of strip.pl using Vbr.pm 
 should be practically bugfree and 100% stable, though.

 The next two things were not done by LGS, but seems to work with Thief and 
 Thief Gold, as tests indicated. 
 
 Strip can now, when you add "-e" as parameter, strip empty property and 
 link chunks. This is not done by LGS, but seems to work with Thief and Thief
 Gold, as tests indicated. This saves only 7.5 KByte per file, but hey! better 
 than nothing ;)

 When you add "-sSymName" as parameter, it strips the SymName chunk from the 
 file. 
 This chunk contains the object names as they appear in the Editor. Since this
 info is not used in the game itself, this can be safely removed. FMs usually
 dont contain any SymNames (nobody bothers to rename his/her objects except the
 StartingPoint ;) but the originals contain between 4 and 7 KByte. Also CoW
 generated missions usually contain a lot SymNames, since these are generated 
 by default by CoWGen. Someone reported that the SymNames are used in 
 Conversations and should not be removed. Can someone confirm this please?

 You can strip arbitrary chunks from a mission file, f.i. to distribute a demo 
 mission you could strip the WR (worldrep - portalisation data), the ROOM_DB
 (room database), AI_ROOM_DB (ai room database) chunks. 

 Another feature I plan to add is "-c" for compress texture palette. Not only
 will it remove unneeded textures, it will also write out a clean (e.g. the
 texture names are padded with \x00 and not with random junk) texture palette
 chunk. This will make the file smaller and better compressable.

 The best way to cut down download size/time is packing it with RAR, though.
 WinRAR with best compression and dictionary size of 1024 KByte compresses
 'Lord Binclair' (unstripped version!) even 100 KByte smaller than WinZIP the
 stripped version. And this even when adding a RecoveryRecord, which protects
 the archive against transmission faults. But the stripped version saves
 Player loading/saving time and probably some memory. So strip 'em, and ZIP 'em,
 then think about making a RAR version, too. Not everybody has a cablemodem and
 pays a flatrate!


Bug reports, suggestions and comments are very welcome!

email: thief at bloodgate dot com
WWW  : http://bloodgate.com/thief

