So, pretty lazy and shocking what rob papen is doing with his copy protection..
Lots of serials and images taking up space! but did R2R reduce and remove them or is their release the same weight as the retail one?

Pngs are lossless and strategically reducing the bitdepth can massively reduce the filesize, but i dont know what image format used or how easy they are to access.

I dont use rob papen stuff ever really so i don't know why i care, i guess its the release of blade2

 

R2R said, in the Papen explorer package:
"With latest bundle, it's even impossible to load all RP produts to one
project on 32bit hosts due to the 2GB RAM limit. Ironically, it should work
fine if they strip all those hardcoded serials. Think twice that most of
bedroom producers still use the computer with 8GB or less RAM. Do not kill
the customer!

Developer should code new simple authorization (keyfile or base64 encoded
serial) with RSA sign and just verify it from DLL. All done without hardcode.
Is it difficult for them?

Legit users, please tell them. It's not a funny situation for you "

So with 64 bit and plenty of memory it would work...
But really how many do you need on one project?
So, I don't think it's more of a problem than VSTi that eat CPU.

If the synth is capable, and the GUI leads to making good sounds / music, that's the important thing!

 

" Legit users, please tell them. It's not a funny situation for you ""

Yea, this leads me to believe legit users have bloated rob papen vsts, But then i look at the distribution and its 8gb
thats bloated as fk.

I'll check out the new blade2, might use predator once a year, its not that important to me but i am intrigued about wtf is still taking up so much space in those fx and digital synths, i think its pngs

 

It's not just bloat from images which can become quite significant as screens get larger and each side needs it's own set. It is kind of lazy but when a coder falls into a pattern it can happen if they don't ever focus on compacting and are not interested in new rendering engines.

The authorization system Papen is using bundles every possible good key into the program itself. That is all the possible past and future keys that can be generated from their authorization, plus delimiters, plus salt, and a parser. Since it's part of the executable part all of it gets loaded into RAM and all of that is very inefficient. It isn't so much about the size of the distribution, but about how the entire thing loads itself into RAM even all the unnecessary keys and images.

The .dll could take all those and the images and keys just send the actual executable what it needs. It would still take up disc space but that is something most people ignore as storage is plentiful and cheap. However RAM isn't as plentiful and most people don't have more than 8Gb, so it would be a kindness to everyone if the executable were a bit more efficient with it, since it would help with overall performance of the system.

I guess it's a bit like someone driving around with a trunk full bags of 20 bags of cement when all they need is one bag to fix their mailbox. Yes maybe they have a pickup truck and be able to carry way more than 20 bags of cement, but if they had a garage (dll) they could only carry the one bad they need and leave the rest at home.

 

Interesting, and what a disaster. Its crippling perfectly good digital synths

What a shame

 

I extracted all the PNGs from the Predator2 dll:

Size of DLL: 110MB
Size of PNGs: 76.1MB

70% is ugly GUI assets! I can reduce the size of these dlls massively with png compression.

 

I swear, Predator2 and Blue were my favourite VST's back in the day. It's gotta be ten years since I touched either though. I took one look at that big bloated download and thought 'Nah, why would anyone bother?'

 

Yea theres not much point these days apart from getting a change of scenery

GUIs dont matter in the end, but Blade2 looks like shit

 

The most ridicules company is Arturia 90% of their synths wight are images