How to make custom Dolphin and Citra texture packs
I havenāt found many resources out there, so Iād like to share my process for creating texture packs for Dolphin (the process is nearly identical for Citra, except for a few settings being in slightly different menu locations).
The first thing we need to do is get the original game textures from Dolphin. This is essential even if you have the game textures from another source because Dolphin names every texture with a Dolphin-generated hash, and you will need this name in order to have Dolphin pick up your custom version of the texture.
1.Ā From Dolphinās main interface, open the Options menu and choose Graphics Options. Go to the Advanced tab and check āEnableā and āDump Base Texturesā under Texture Dumping:
You probably donāt need to dump mip maps unless you specifically know you need them.
2.Ā Play the game! Textures only get dumped when you actually encounter them in-game. This is a blessing and a curse: you wonāt be overwhelmed with the innumerable textures all at once, but you will need to access a texture in-game in order to dump it and get the hash, which can be challenging for long games. If the texture youāre hoping to edit is far in the game, it may help to use cheats to access the texture quickly. For instance, I used Action Replay (AR) codes in Harvest Moon: Animal Parade so that I could access all the clothing options right at the beginning of the game to dump the textures.
3.Ā Now that the textures have been dumped, you should be able to find them in Ā C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\Dump\Textures\[your game hash]. Every texture that has been dumped will be in this folder. Itās up to you to visually identify the ones you need for your texture pack. Dolphinās naming convention seems to be tex1_[image width]x[image height]_[generated hash].png.Ā
4.Ā Open the texture you want to edit in the image editor of your choice. I use GIMP because itās free and has all the tools I need.Ā
5.Ā Make the edits you want to the texture. I will explain the specific process I use to make character model color edits in a separate post, since really anything can be done to edit the texture and I donāt want to assume what changes youāll be making. Be sure to pay attention to transparency! Note: the final image does NOT need to be the same size as the original to replace the texture. For example, if you want to replace a 32x32 texture with a high-resolution 256x256 image, you can use the larger texture and the game will load it just fine. It should, however, have the same width-height ratio as the original.
6.Ā Save the edited/replacement image as a .png with the exact same name as the original texture. Place it in C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\Load\Textures\[your game hash]. You may need to add the folder under C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\Load\Textures\ if you have never used custom textures with that game before. The name of the folder will be the same as the folder name that was in Dolphin Emulator\Dump\Textures.
7.Ā Back in Dolphin, open Options > Graphics Options again and be sure to enable āLoad Custom Texturesā in the Advanced tab under Utility.
8.Ā Launch your game through Dolphin. You should see your custom texture in-game!Ā
Thatās it! Youāve created a custom texture for Dolphin (or Citra). You can share these images with other people who can place them in their own Load\Textures folder and use them in their own games!
