Description

Save valuable space on your memory card by shrinking unneeded manuals, language and video files to 0-Byte files.

Game Shrinker automatically searches for manuals, language (text, audio, images) and video files in the game directories and offers you the possibility to shrink them to 0-Byte.



Shrinking files to 0-Byte is usually better supported than completely deleting them and reduces the chance of crashes and getting stuck when the file would usually be accessed by the game. Depending on the game and file, you still cannot shrink every file, though.



Game Shrinker comes with a "Try-A-Dummy"-Feature, which let's you temporary replace a file with a dummy-file. After you tested the game you can then decide to make this change permanent or undo it. (This saves you from having to reinstall the game if you shrinked a file that is obligatory for the the game)



Update :

• 1.1 Fixed some issues regarding scrolling and added some buttons: You can now hold ↑ and ↓ to browse through a list quickly. You can also press → and ← to jump 10 entries a head.

• 1.0 Initial Release







Notes :

• In some games the video length is hard coded, this means even though the movie file got removed, the game will wait until the movie would usually have finished. In most games you can skip this time by pressing the typical "Skip cut scene"-Buttons (X, Start, Select or O) repeatedly.



• The file-search uses a key word list to find manuals, language and video files. While this is (by now) pretty reliable for most games, using key words can result in false positives and false negatives, this is why you still have to shrink the found files yourself. If the search does not find any files, try to search and shrink files manually.



• If you find video or language files manually, which are not found by the search algorithm, please send me the name of the game (or the names, or the game id) and I'll try to adjust the key words



• Shrinking the wrong files might break the game. If this happens you will have to reinstall the game on your vita.

This is why i recommend to use the "Try-A-Dummy"-Feature and deleting the backup after you tested it.



• I'm working on an advanced shrinking method (see "Some Information" below)





Instructions :

In case it's not clear, here's a general how to for Game Shrinker:

1. Select the game which you want to shrink

2. Press to search the games folder for shrinkable files

3. Select a file you want to shrink (like language files in Multi-Lang-Versions)

4. Press to Shrink the selected file or Directory

4.1. Or use the "Try-A-Dummy"-Feature



Regarding the "Try-A-Dummy"-Feature, this is how to use it:

1. Select the file you want to shrink.

2. Use to backup the file up and to shrink the original file.

3. Start the game and check if it crashes (this usually happens when the starts up or when the video would usually be played)

4. Go back to Game Shrinker and navigate to the ".backup_"-version of your file

5.1 If the game Crashed press to on the .backup file to restore the backup and remove dummy file

5.2 If the game runs fine, press to permanently delete the backup file and free space on your Memory Card





Links :

I recommend having a look at these threads, if you are looking to get (or want so share) some information about which games or files can't be shrinked (yet):

• https://gbatemp.net/threads/reducing-game-size-by-deleting-language-files-and-or-movies-list.440978/

• http://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=47059





Some information :

This is my first C-Projekt in years, so it might be a little unpolished here and there. I started this as a side project in order to fresh up my C-knowledge and to support the growing Vita community! With the very high price of Vita Memory Cards, i hope that some users will find this useful. I didn't program it specially for this contest, but I thought why not submitting it? The source code will be released on github after I did some cleaning and refactoring ;)



I'm currently working on an advanced shrinking system, where movie files get replaced by short dummy movies which the game can actually load / play. This will additionally reduce the chance of getting stuck or experience crashes. Unfortunately I'm struggling with finding the correct encoding settings, so that the games accept the video files for each of the main video file types on the vita (mp4, usm, bik). So here this first release does not support this, yet.



Twitter: @DakorVR

Website: www.behindvr.com