Shrinking a large bsp for faster download

So you have an awesome new map to share on the server, but it's ridiculously large in size?

First, download and install 7-Zip from here: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

Next, open 7-Zip and point it to the directory you have the map in. Right click on the bsp file, move the cursor over to 7Zip and click on Add to Archive. The add to archive window will pop up, change the Archive Format to BZip2 and click OK.





Then upload the newly created bsp.bz2 to http://www.yourserver.com/directory/maps/. I'm pretty sure a redirect will have to be setup for this to function correctly. I'm not sure if ours is, so...

enable dloads on the server
setting up a path to a redirect url.

example below


sv_allowdownload 1
sv_downloadurl "http://www.yourdotcomhere.com/ins/"

inside the ins folder on your redirect make a dir called MAPS
the server will look for a maps dir for the files


upload the maps to your host

then upload the .bz2 ( compressed map you did with 7 zip)
to your redirect
so the files will be put here

http://www.yourdotcomhere.com/ins/maps

so you have the .bsp and the imc2 on your GAME server

and the .bz2 of the map on YOUR redirect..

Not sure if it's playable in this format though. It may have to be uncompressed by the user or have both the bsp and bzip2 on the server.