Introducing Resource Packs: A new feature to manage and install texture packs

[JosJuice]

(01-03-2019, 04:42 AM)StripTheSoul Wrote: Woops, just wanted to try this out, dropped a zip of a texture pack in the resourcePacks folder and refreshing made Dolphin crash and not even start anymore until I took the pack out >_<
Does it have to be in a specific format?

Yes, it needs to be in a specific format. Crashing is not intended, though...

[Zexaron]

(12-02-2018, 07:05 PM)Admentus Wrote: Assuming that DDS textures also work, there should be an additional descriptor (metadata) in the json that specifies the type of textures (PNG, DXT1/5, BC7 and so on).

(12-07-2018, 10:55 AM)Bighead Wrote: @spycrab: Great! Any chance we can get one more optional field in the json file / column in the resource pack manager? As previously discussed above, a "Format" section would be convenient. Many times a pack is offered in two flavors: PNG and DDS. This would let the user know which version they currently have installed.

I thought about this from the get go, since I wanted more clarity on this as I've seen packs labeled as PNG but with many DDS still inside, or vice versa, this is a perfect place for these indications and strictness.

Infact, there should even be a verification check to scan for all the files in a texture pack if they're really all PNG or DDS.

[Bighead]

It might be overkill as we should hope the artist/maintainer is competent enough to fill in the correct type. If they are using my script to generate the resource packs I could enforce it there, allowing only 3 options such as "PNG, DDS, PNG/DDS" or something. An auto-scan feature to fill in the field with the correct value. This would be trivial to implement.

But I also suppose it depends on how you want to go about it. Using the current scheme the "Pack Format" would be stored in the json file. If it was updated and enforced by Dolphin, then Dolphin would have to extract the manifest.json file, update it, then repack it into zip. That is unless it completely handled by Dolphin, meaning it would have to calculate it each time the UI is presented since it wouldn't be stored in the resource pack data itself. Dolphin could also store this data somewhere else, but that is an overly complicated "solution".

When it comes down to brass tax, does it really matter to the user if a pack labeled "DDS" contains a few PNG files? Specifying the type of DDS is almost irrelevant these days as well since almost all GPUs used to play Dolphin are most likely going to have DX11 support.

[brackenhawk]

We've been thinking about how to use this feature to install our Animal Crossing texture pack, but currently several versions and localisations are all crammed into one pack to provide the best compatibility with the game you're playing. The pack provides textures for both Animal Crossing (GAF) and Doubutsu no Mori e+ (GAE), and you rename the folder to whichever version you're applying the textures to. The games are extremely similar and have a relatively small number of unique assets so we haven't felt the need to separate them (yet?).

Would you recommend duplicating/splitting the pack into separate download links renamed appropriately, or is there a way we can specify the folder name/game ID during installation? The specs state that the '[GAMEID] can be one or multiple directories' but this implies needing twice as many files inside the resource pack. If we can set things up with only one texture folder that would be ideal, but I realise this may not be possible.

[Bighead]

This is similar to an idea I had, but I found issues with the resource pack GUI. So for now my conversions are on hold.
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-resource-pack-gui

[brackenhawk]

(02-03-2019, 05:27 AM)Bighead Wrote: This is similar to an idea I had, but I found issues with the resource pack GUI. So for now my conversions are on hold.
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-resource-pack-gui

I like the idea of a 'core' pack with add-ons. I'd like to be able to pick a game from the library, select which elements from a resource pack to apply to it, then have the folder set up appropriately. For example I could choose DnMe+, select the core pack (shared assets), e+ add-on (new stuff) and e+ translation add-on (new assets from the fan-translation) and the correct folders would be installed together under GAE.