(11-22-2016, 11:16 AM)Aleron Ives Wrote: I recall that there used to be some games that required GCZ to avoid certain timing bugs, while other games wouldn't work at all if you used GCZ. Have any developments with GCZ in terms of speed or compatibility happened during the transition from the Dolphin 4.0 - 5.0 era?
I joined in the middle of the 4.0 - 5.0 era, and I've never heard of any problems like that, other than the Wind Waker/Spongebob thing that Neui mentioned.
(11-22-2016, 11:16 AM)Aleron Ives Wrote: Is using GCZ recommended, discouraged, or still somewhere in between these days?
Unless you mind Wii compression not being lossless (because it includes scrubbing), there are no problems with using GCZ.
(11-22-2016, 11:16 AM)Aleron Ives Wrote: Similarly, is CISO any better or worse than GCZ? AFAIK CISO keeps the original 32K alignment of games, while GCZ uses 16K alignment, which I've read can be problematic for some games that expect certain files to be at certain offsets.
GCZ doesn't alter the alignment. Both should work fine, but keep in mind that CISO's only way of decreasing the file size is to remove data (which is roughly on par with GCZ for Wii games but not GameCube games).
(11-23-2016, 12:13 AM)Neui Wrote: AFAIK GC games in GCZ are compressed lossless where for the Wii they're 'lossy' (can't recreate the exact disc, wrong MD5sum is generated).
That's correct. Maybe it's worth nothing that this behavior isn't inherent to the GCZ format – it's just how Dolphin's compression is implemented. (Lossless GCZ compression for Wii discs saves essentially no space, so we don't provide that as an option.)
(11-23-2016, 12:13 AM)Neui Wrote: When Dolphin switched to VS2015, a seek-bug caused TWW and a Spongebob-Game to crash at a certain point, but, at least in TWW, it could be worked around by compressing it to GCZ. (It has been fixed of course)
That's also correct. However, it's not an advantage or disadvantage of how either format is designed or implemented. As far as I know, it's just a coincidence that some files worked and some didn't.
(11-23-2016, 12:13 AM)Neui Wrote: As the game disk is compressed, it needs to be uncompressed on the fly, using only some CPU time that isn't very noticeable (execpt for Wii games).
The CPU time used for GCZ decompression isn't noticeable, both for GameCube games and Wii games. The "additional difference" I was talking about in that post was that Wii games are scrubbed, which doesn't affect the performance.