tsunamods-codes/7th-Heaven

[Feature Request] Switch .iro archive compression from LZMA to Zstandard (zstd) for faster loading times

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#404 opened on Jul 14, 2026

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enhancementgood first issuepriority/P1

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Description

Describe the bug Currently, 7th-Heaven uses LZMA compression for .iro mod archives. While LZMA provides excellent compression ratios, its decompression speed is extremely slow, leading to prolonged mod installation, scanning, and game loading times, especially with modern heavy asset mods.

** Versions ** [X] Tested on latest stable version [ ] Pre-release only bug

To Reproduce

Expected behavior According to the official Zstandard Benchmark Data (tested on Silesia corpus, Core i7-9700K), zstd demonstrates overwhelming advantages in decompression speed when compared to traditional algorithms like deflate (zlib) and lzma (xz).Below is the benchmark table adapted from the Zstandard Homepage showing how Zstd bridges the gap between speed and ratio:

Compressor Name Ratio (Higher is better) Compression Speed Decompression Speed
zstd 1.5.7 -1 2.896 510 MB/s 1550 MB/s
zlib 1.3.1 -1 (Deflate) 2.743 105 MB/s 390 MB/s
lzma 9.4 (xz/7z) 3.310 4.5 MB/s 110 MB/s

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Desktop (please complete the following information):

  • OS: [win10/11]
  • Version: [22h2/25h2]
  • Build: [190xx]

Additional context Decompression is 14x Faster: Zstd decompresses at 1550 MB/s, while LZMA crawls at 110 MB/s. This will significantly reduce the time users spend waiting for mods to extract or load in real-time.Better than Deflate. Zstd delivers a better compression ratio than standard Deflate (zlib) while being 4x faster at decompression and 5x faster at compression.If maximum compression is still desired, Zstd at level 19–22 approaches LZMA’s footprint while maintaining a much higher decompression speed.

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