Some compression libraries like zlib are often suggested but they're not optimal speed wise.

Just wanted to spread the word for Snappy. This one was purely optimized for speed. So you can compress/uncompress faster than light.

code.google.com/p/snappy/


Snappy is widely used inside Google, in everything from BigTable and MapReduce to our internal RPC systems.

Originally posted by mrmike
Thanks for the post - decompression speed can be really critical for game load times. But, optimal lossless compression can be critical for build/download sizes too, so choose wisely!

It's not impossible to use both. You could compress your game distribution with a very efficient packer and once the files are unpacked (installed on the customer machine), a post-install process could repack some specific resources files for efficiency.

The needs will always vary from one project to the other.