Hey Texture Pack creators and users. We've been a bit lucky to have a bunch of talented individuals making some of the most expansive texture packs for games that run in Dolphin. While support hasn't always been perfect, things right now are pretty good with most major features working fairly well. So, now's the perfect time to try and introduce a luxury feature from Spycrab: Resource Packs!
What is a "Resource Pack" you wonder? It's support for a format that allows Dolphin to automatically install custom resources for a game, currently texture packs! The new system can also keep track of which texture packs you've installed, to easily manage, remove, or just make sure they've been installed correctly and can be seen by the emulator. An early specification of the format can be found here. When you have several resource packs, you can easily access them and see it like this.
So, how do you install a resource pack? Well, it's pretty simple. You can use the included resource pack manager shown above to install a compatible zipfile. This should make it a lot easier for users where before, they'd have to navigate through Dolphin's folders, find the correct spot, create a folder with the correct ID, etc. This also allows you to have multiple resource packs for a single game! The resource packs can be deactivated and activated as you please without the need for manually removing any files. For a game like Kirby Air Ride, this means you could have a ton of skins for City Trial and swap between them without having to do any folder modification.
We're currently testing this feature in Pull Request 7600, so feel free to try it out or suggest modifications before it is finalized. If you like it, let us know, if you're having issues or problems, let us know what we can do better. Thank you for your time, and we hope you enjoy this new feature!
What is a "Resource Pack" you wonder? It's support for a format that allows Dolphin to automatically install custom resources for a game, currently texture packs! The new system can also keep track of which texture packs you've installed, to easily manage, remove, or just make sure they've been installed correctly and can be seen by the emulator. An early specification of the format can be found here. When you have several resource packs, you can easily access them and see it like this.
So, how do you install a resource pack? Well, it's pretty simple. You can use the included resource pack manager shown above to install a compatible zipfile. This should make it a lot easier for users where before, they'd have to navigate through Dolphin's folders, find the correct spot, create a folder with the correct ID, etc. This also allows you to have multiple resource packs for a single game! The resource packs can be deactivated and activated as you please without the need for manually removing any files. For a game like Kirby Air Ride, this means you could have a ton of skins for City Trial and swap between them without having to do any folder modification.
We're currently testing this feature in Pull Request 7600, so feel free to try it out or suggest modifications before it is finalized. If you like it, let us know, if you're having issues or problems, let us know what we can do better. Thank you for your time, and we hope you enjoy this new feature!