squishy
TL;DR

squishy is a modern pc 64k intro packer that provides better compression than all alternatives (that I've tried at least). It does so with a healthy mix of fresh and existing ideas, along with a hefty dose of CPU cycles and memory.

squishy has been used in several intros by top pc 64k intro groups including logicoma, monad, macau exports, polarity, quadtrip, ivory labs, and more.

Latest release

version 0.2.0 (23.03.2021)

Features/Usage

Currently, squishy is a barebones, command-line PE packer. There are no fancy reporting/debugging features or parameterization. Some of this stuff is planned, some of it isn't.

squishy -i uncompressed.exe -o compo-winner.exe

Pass -h or --help for more options/usage info.

Comparisons

Up-to-date metrics for several test intros are kept in this spreadsheet.

Presentations/Media

"Modern 64k Intro Compression" at Revision Online 2020

An overview of relevant techniques/information about 64k compression today, with specifics about squishy's primary model/approach.

"C64 4k intro packer deep-dive" on ferris blogs stuff

A blog post about an experimental C64 4k intro packer, with a section containing a detailed description of the closely-related second packer stage used by squishy.

Attribution

While squishy was primarily developed and tested by ferris / logicoma, several folks (and their respective works) have been instrumental in its design/development. Specifically, I'd like to thank:

Changelog

version 0.2.0 (23.03.2021)

version 0.1.3 (07.02.2021)

version 0.1.2 (22.04.2020)

version 0.1.1 (05.04.2020)

version 0.1.0 (29.03.2020)