Hey! This is my HD texture pack page for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker!
Some general info regarding this texture pack which you should read before you download it;
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In its current state, the texture pack includes over 500 unique textures, remade from the ground up. They cover most of the main islands, main characters and the whole user interface, but some locations such as many interiors, smallers islands or dungeons are not yet fully covered.
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The end goal is to remake every single texture from scratch!
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The texture pack is scaled to between 4x and 8x the default resolution.
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My goal with this texture pack is to enhance the original game visuals while remaining faithful to the original vision. That means my textures are meant to blend in as much as possible with the old textures so that the game feel doesn't change, whilst retaining a high quality with lots of detail.
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This texture pack is for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker on the GameCube only.
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This texture pack will work with any custom mods / hacks of Zelda: The Wind Waker as long as they aren't adding new textures or changing old ones (in which case conflicting textures will be overwritten by one another, but it will still work). It will work with the randomizer, for example.
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The texture pack works perfectly with regular Dolphin. However, Ishiiruka-Dolphin is required to make shaders and other extra visual features work, and is recommended if you're on Windows. Download the latest version of Ishiiruka-Dolphin here.
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Currently, only NTCS and PAL textures have been modified. You can still use this texture pack on Japanense / Korean versions of the game, it will still work. This will not include the Jap/Kor region specific textures though.
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Please note that, if using Ishiiruka Dolphin, all post processing can be modified easily from user to user to fit your own preference, you can make it look however you like.
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I am completely up for suggestions, changes and submissions. You will of course be fully credited for any work you submit.
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If you are having issues with stuttering or lag, remember to check "Prefetch Custom Textures" in the 'Advanced' tab of the Graphics settings before asking for help. I also recommend enabling V-Sync as it removes screen tearing in full screen mode.
Setup instructions:
Windows:
1. Download and install the latest version of Dolphin. Or if you want added graphics features such as shaders and customizable tone mapping, download the latest version of the Ishiiruka Dolphin.
2. Start Dolphin at least once to make the necessary folders generate.
3. Copy the folders (Config, GameSettings, Load & Shaders) from the texture pack .zip into your Dolphin Emulator folder, located inside of Documents.
4. Inside of Dolphin, check that "Load Custom Textures" is enabled in the Graphics Settings > Advanced tab.
5. Check that Internal Resolution is set to your desired resolution in the Graphics Settings.
6. Load your own game rom in Dolphin (not included).
Information on how to dump your own game rom legally can be found here.
MacOS:
1. Follow the same instructions as those for Windows, except that your "Dolphin Emulator" diretory is called just "Dolphin" on MacOS, and is located inside of /Library/Application Support/
You can use the "Go to folder" option in the taskbar of Finder to navigate to this exact directory using the following address: ~/Library/Application Support/Dolphin
SteamDeck:
1. Follow the same instructions as those for Windows, except that your "Dolphin Emulator" diretory is called just "dolphin-emu" on Linux, and is located inside of /home/deck/.var/app/org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu/data/
Android:
1. Follow the same instructions as those for Windows, except that your "Dolphin Emulator" diretory is called just "dolphin-emu" on Android, and is located inside of Internal Storage on your device. Use a file manager of your choice to navigate to this location and extact the files there.
iOS:
The process is very similar to that of Android. However install Dolphin is a bit trickier and will require that you use DolphiniOS, which has it's own installation instructions provided here.
NO GAME ROM OR GAME FILES ARE INCLUDED WITH THIS TEXTURE PACK.
SHARING GAME ROMS IS PIRACY AND IS ILLEGAL.
DO NOT ASK FOR THEM HERE OR ON DISCORD.
What are the differences between regular "Dolphin" and the "Ishiiruka Dolphin"?
There are two versions of Dolphin you can choose between on Windows. One is Ishiiruka Dolphin, which includes all the post processing effects showcased in the screenshots like ambient occlusion, tone mapping, bloom, material maps and more. The other version is just regular "Dolphin" which doesn't include these features but has some other benefits instead.
Ishiiruka Dolphin has some graphical features implemented not available in regular Dolphin. It also requires Windows 7 or higher (only available on Windows) and a dedicated graphics card. Both versions include controller presets for common gamepads like the Xbox One controller, and the custom textures are the same between both versions. Regular Dolphin is much more modern has has fixed some bugs present in Ishiiruka Dolphin (and therefore offers increased stability, and substantially higher performance than Ishiiruka Dolphin) and supports many more platforms. But, it does not support any of the additional graphical features listed above exclusive to Ishiiruka Dolphin, like material maps, custom tone mapping or ambient occlusion. Both versions look great nevertheless so if you're uncertain I recommend you use regular Dolphin- or try out both and see which one you prefer! The screenshots above were taken using Ishiiruka Dolphin.
How can I get 60 FPS?
It is not possible to obtain higher than 30 fps natively. However, it is possible to obtain 60 & 120 fps using Lossless Scaling, a tool which can be bought from Steam (I'm not sponsored by them, but I like the tool). The tool is still in beta however, and upscaling artifacts will appear. For a clean image, I still recommend playing the game at the default frame rate without Lossless Scaling.
It can interpolate frames in-game to give the appearance of 60 fps or higher, without any of the drawbacks of a cheat code or patch: There will be NO game breaking bugs or glitches using lossless scaling, as it's only active a post processing effect. But as stated earlier, there will be artifacts which may or may not hinder your enjoyment of the game, depending on how sensitive you are to artifacts.
Here is some important information about using Lossless Scaling to get higher FPS:
* Artifacts may appear when there is lots of sudden camera movements on screen.
* The tool costs $6.99 on Steam (a price worth paying in my opinion, since it works for any game)
* It is only available on Windows, and does not work on Linux or MacOS currently.
* A somewhat modern GPU is required, preferably an RTX or recent AMD GPU.
Whether or not it's worth getting is for you to decide! Of course, playing the game in it's intended frame rate is a perfectly good experience as well, so don't feel forced to use this tool to have a good time.
Why is the image grainy?
This can be an issue in Ishiiruka Dolphin on some hardware configurations if Ubershaders it NOT set to "Exclusive". Try setting Ubershaders to "Exclusive" in the Enhancements tab of the Graphics Settings and that should fix the problem.
Why do textures take a while before loading in?
This occurs in modern Dolphin when "Prefetch Custom Textures" is not enabled. You can enable "Prefetch Custom Textures" in the Graphics Settings > Advanced tab and this will fix the problem (this requires a lot of RAM!)
Updating from an older version is super simple:
Just install the new version exactly like you would normally, and this will overwrite the old textures with the new ones from the new version. This won't touch your save data or save states at all, so you can update without fear of losing any progress.
If you encounter any issues with the texture pack please post them on Discord!
Enjoy!
Changelog:
1.0.0 (2024-11-01):
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Initial release