Introducing Dynamic Input Textures: a new feature for controller icons

[iwubcode]

What are Dynamic Input Textures

As of 5.0-12801 Dynamic Input Textures are available. This feature allows the user to change their input configuration and see textures change in realtime. The intent is this can be used for UI controller icons which will be updated regardless of layout or device used.

Examples:

Mario Galaxy
Xenoblade

Creating a texture pack

Dolphin reads packs in JSON. For the technically minded, the format is outlined here.

To ease creation of these packs a WPF C# tool has been created alongside the feature. That tool can be found here along with an accompanying tutorial.

Current Limitations

The functionality in Dolphin and the tool have a number of limitations at the moment. Many of these limitations will be resolved in a future release.

* Textures (both input and generated output) are limited to PNG format
* Game UI controller icons like a stick or dpad that aren't specifying a specific direction are not easily mappable. I have ideas for how to fix this but at the moment, you would have to pick a mapping (ex: a dpad icon is specified as dpad-up)
* Game UI controller icons that have a different style (like a "pressed a" and a "normal a") and are spread across multiple textures cannot be mapped directly in the tool. You would need to make multiple texture packs or edit the Dolphin JSON
* Advanced expressions (like & or |, as well as functions like 'timer') do not have any special replacement in Dolphin. If you want to support these types of expressions, you need to specify them explicitly in your pack.
* Dolphin currently uses a very simple algorithm for copying images, because of that, lower res images may look a little grainy. Use higher resolution images for cleaner looking visuals

[Zombie]

well that's pretty neat

[e2zippo]

That's really nice! I could see this being very useful, well done!

[Hunk_4TH]

Amazing! I was hoping for something like this for DS4 controllers!

[RinMaru]

Whens this going to be released be great to have an xbox one icon pack

[mohanned85]

looks pretty neat
would lobe this for an xbox controller and playstation controller

[iwubcode]

Great to hear such positive feedback! This hasn't been merged yet, it is still under review. Just to be clear, this isn't a Xbox One pack, this is just a feature to enable input texture replacement in realtime in any game a texture pack creator would want (directly in Dolphin). The creator would choose what controller icons to provide. I used the Xbox One icons because they were available on the forums and I liked the aesthetic.

While I wait for the code review to progress, I've been working on a tool to make these packs easier to create. It is located here (Windows only). If you are interested, you can get started by looking at the tutorial.

Disclaimer - I'm not a UI designer so the UI isn't great but it should be good enough to get started. I haven't officially released it yet as I'm still fixing some bugs, making the UI a little nicer, and adding a feature or two. I'll post here again when it's released.

Of course the community is free to make their own tool. This is just an idea!

[calebthegeek]

This is seriously cool stuff! Good work!

[iwubcode]

The latest release of the tool is available (see first post) .  Among other fixes, this adds a helpful feature for handling games that have buttons that are in a single texture.  Ex:

[JMC47]

Seeing if this stickies the thread...