Tutorial

This is a tutorial meant to help teach you how to use the tool created in building Dynamic Input Texture packages for Dolphin Emulator. (Do note: this feature is still under review and not yet publicly available).

The steps below will likely be complicated at first. But after using the program a few times, you should be able to create a pack in a minute or two!

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will go about creating a pack for a fake game. Assume that this image is being used in the game and was dumped from Dolphin using the texture dumping feature:

The "A" and "B" are Wiimote buttons and we want users to be able to replace either of those button prompts with any of these images on the keyboard:

(we are assuming they are using a Windows machine)

Steps

Add Textures

When you first boot up the program, you will be prompted with a rather large screen. The first thing you want to do is add the game file, you're looking for a "Add Texture" button:

Since the file was directly ripped from the "game", it has a hash as the filename. We can take advantage of this by checking the "Get hash from filename" checkbox. Doing so should give you something like this:

You can double click on the image to "view" it. (Also, while it isn't used in this tutorial, middle scrolling will zoom and middle clicking will pan; there's a button in the bottom right with the zoom percentage that can be clicked to reset it)

Adding Emulated Controls

Now we need to do the first mapping. The first thing to do is to look at the image and find out what buttons are being used. In our example image, let us assume they are Wiimote buttons for player 1.

At the top menu, choose Edit > Emulated Devices...

Doing so will bring up a prompt and you're looking for the "Add" button:

You will then be prompted to enter the emulation device name. This is defined in Dolphin like Wiimote1, GCPad3, etc. Clicking on the arrow to the right will list some potential options:

Since the texture is targeting the player 1's Wiimote. We choose Wiimote1.

After defining your emulated device. It is time to define the keys you wish to map. The first step is to choose a color for a key. There's a bar that looks like this:

Clicking it will bring a drop down of colors. Choose a color not found in your texture. Otherwise Dolphin may do some replacement where you don't expect it!

I chose the color orange. Now we need to tell the program what key in Dolphin to map the color to. Again, you can type or you can click the little arrow for some suggestions:

Let's pick Buttons/A for this first mapping. Now we also need to map the Wiimote's "B" button as well. Here is what mine looks like:

With the keys added. You can close the window.

Defining Regions in the Texture

If you're paying close attention, you might notice the bars above the image have changed:

The two bars represent the currently selected emulation device / key "brush". It allows you to create regions on the image to tell Dolphin where each emulated button maps. Let's select the Buttons/A key and click and drag a region around the "A" button in the texture. You should get something like this:

Now we need to do the same with the "B" button.

If you mess up, don't worry. You can click on one of the boxes you laid out to modify the bounds of the region. If you really don't want it, you can right-click on it and choose "Remove" to delete it.

At this point, you've given all the information to map the emulated keys to the texture. All you need to do now is give information about the replacement textures.

Adding the Replacement Textures

At the top menu, choose Edit > Host Devices...

Doing so will present you with a very similar screen to the Emulated Devices menu. Click "Add" and now you will need to add a Dolphin device. This is something like XInput/0/Gamepad or DInput/0/Keyboard Mouse which can be seen in the Dolphin controller mapping window.

I went ahead and chose DInput/0/Keyboard Mouse with the assumption the user would be using a keyboard and mouse. After adding the device, you next need to add the host keys, look for the button below:

Doing so will open up a file selection browser. Here you will choose the file you want to replace when the user species that specific button. I'll map the "A" texture to the "A" button on the keyboard:

Now all that is left is to map the other buttons in the same way. I ended up with something like this:

Generate content for Dolphin

With that you are finished!!!! Well almost :)

Close out of that window to return to the main window. Now all you need to do is choose File > Save to Location... to save all the files in a format Dolphin can read.

If you wanted to test your work, you would save to <Dolphin folder>/Load/DynamicInputTextures/<game id>.

Happy creating!