How to Install Texture Packs / Custom Textures Info

[General_Han_Solo]

To be honest, I am really loving this. At first I was used to the old method (I devised a particular workflow, and to be honest, wasn't looking forward to making a whole new workflow), but it has taken me a mere 10 minutes to realize how much faster my workflow is, and how tidy everything is. Really loving this addition!

[General_Han_Solo]

(01-28-2015, 03:06 PM)Bighead Wrote: @degasus: Hopefully more clear now with a few more examples (even/odd dimensions). It's a concept I have trouble explaining (and even grasping at first).

@General_Han_Solo: The converter is amazing! Soon as you flip that switch in the ini, you just need to hit the textures in game! So you still need to "redump" them in that sense, minus actually having to do anything else.

Wait, 're-dump' as in, high-res re-dump and then transfer? Or Dolphin is 're-dumping' it automatically into my high-res folder (without the dump-texture being on)?

[Bighead]

(01-28-2015, 03:06 PM)General_Han_Solo Wrote: Another question in regards to 'grounding' the textures. Say I reach a texture limit of 256x1, or 1024x1, or whatever ridiculous dimensional stretch (nx1), can I change that nx1 immediately to 1x1?

No, you keep dividing both dimensions by 2 til they both reach 1. So 1024x1 would have mips of 512x1, 256x1, 128x1, 64x1, 32x1, 16x1, 8x1, 4x1, 2x1, 1x1

(01-28-2015, 03:09 PM)General_Han_Solo Wrote: Wait, 're-dump' as in, high-res re-dump and then transfer? Or Dolphin is 're-dumping' it automatically into my high-res folder (without the dump-texture being on)?

Probably was a bad analogy, you aren't actually dumping. You just have to follow the exact same method as dumping to rename you high rez textures: you must find the original texture in game.

Edit: Sorry fixed it a bit to specify 2, my mind is tired so I'm forgetting some details.
Edit2: Ok done editing it for now, didn't really get a chance to proofread before work earlier, open to more suggestions to clear up anything that looks foggy.

[degasus]

@Bighead: Yeah, much better now. As you like scripting, do you think it's worth to have a script which check all textures and warn if
- the upscaling factor isn't an integer
- the aspect ratio is changed
- mipmaps have wrong size
- mipmaps aren't complete
- ...

[Bighead]

It would be very useful but it may or may not be beyond my capabilities. So if you were asking me to write this, I can try but it would be in batch and limited to windows, but if someone far more talented than I was willing to do it in a more able language, then I wouldn't object. It would be really neat if this was built into Dolphin, if maybe that's what you were asking? If so then I think that would end up being very useful. I know there must be textures even in the Xenoblade pack right now that aren't scaled correctly, which I was going to manually look for eventually one by one when I have time to do that... I will say that having the base dimensions right there in the name is total godmode.

As for the suggestion list, can't really think of anything else to add to it. You basically got every important one. So I definitely think it's worth it, especially if I think back to the old pack before I got involved with it. Stuff was created at all kinds of different scales, causing stretching/squishing/bugs. And since I didn't know much about anything at the time, redumped and manually rescaled a ton of textures to just match original x 4 (based on something I read somewhere lol). This worked even though I wasn't entirely sure why, fixed scaling bugs in OpenGL, and everyone was happy. At that time I would jumped all over for a script such as that.

[StepDragon]

Awesome! It's nice to see that texture loading is getting some love!

I've got a texture organization tool in the works, and this will make it even easier to implement. I'll probably post details it in the forums + on my site tomorrow.

edit: Implementing these changes will take time. Will post when a working beta is available.

[StripTheSoul]

Hm, I don't know... today's Dolphin is SO good that (except for one or two incompatible games due to regressions) there's really no reason to use an older version. Even performance in most games is better than ever has been.

[degasus]

@Dan_Tsukasa: The hash did also change. It's no double as long and always a safe hash. So hash collisions are much unliklier in the new format.

[frozenwings]

As far as I understand it, changing the texture accuracy no longer has any effect on the chance of hash collisions; it's basically always dumping in "safe" now.

So, basically, I don't think changing from medium to safe will change anything.

This is probably why you've already discovered those 7 new textures.

[Bighead]

(01-29-2015, 06:07 AM)Dan_Tsukasa Wrote: Downside is it will require 2 texture packs for all HD retexture projects, 1 for new dolphin 1 for older (provided people wanted to support older revisions).

As long as your game works in new Dolphin (which it should) there is no reason for a pack to support older versions. Development versions are much faster and stable than the 4.0 release or anything before it, and this gives you a jump start at having a compatible pack before the next stable release.

(01-29-2015, 06:07 AM)Dan_Tsukasa Wrote: With this texture pack would it be possible to have 2 variations of the texture? 1 that loads in one place and 1 that loads in another? With standard Dolphin it dumps a texture with the exact same name,
In the games actual files the texture itself is identical but its in 2 separate folders with 2 entirely different names, so its not like the game simply reuses it, just dolphin does.

(01-29-2015, 07:42 AM)Dan_Tsukasa Wrote: Did a quick test, yeah same issues still there. I wonder why though, the game has 2 separate textures in 2 separate folders (different names, identical image) on the disc, its so frustrating having to have a nice middleground as an artist.

Dolphin doesn't extract the textures from the game, they are read when loaded then given a hash that is calculated from the texels (texture pixels). If two textures are identical, then they will share the same hash, there is no work-around. Dolphin doesn't care where the game stores them on the disc, it just cares where they are used in-game.

(01-29-2015, 06:07 AM)Dan_Tsukasa Wrote: A texture dump using the newest dolphin actually showed me some textures which didn't get dumped at all previously, I even redumped that same area with the old dolphin, same settings, didn't get those 7 new textures using that either, how strange, they must have had the same hash.

Yeah that was nice, Xenoblade was actually dumped with fast and I found 2 map textures I didn't even know existed! Also, changing accuracy does nothing for the new format, custom textures are always hashed with "Safe". Changing the accuarcy is still needed to load/rename old texture packs though.

(01-29-2015, 07:42 AM)Dan_Tsukasa Wrote: This version even loads the old texture packs still, which surprised me, I figured it'd only load the new names, not the old ones, will it always be like this or will 'backwards compatibility' for those older packs be phased out entirely at some point?

I was told it was to be phased out sometime after the next official release. Right now it's actually slower than it should be because textures are hashed twice using both the old and the new method, which becomes pretty redundant after a certain period.