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Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K Texture Pack 1.4.0a Major Update (Patreon)

Published:

2023-01-01 17:00:05

Imported:

Tags:

4K 4k texture pack hd texture pack twilight princess 4k update zelda

Content

Patch Notice (2023-01-02): A small patch has been uploaded (1.4.0a) to fix an issue where some debug cheats mistakenly were enabled by default in the new version, resulting in some bugs.

Please download this latest patch if you have the old version, or manually disable all cheats except for Manual Camera Controls and Widescreen Code 4.0 in the game properties (right click the game in the games list in Dolphin > Properties) > AR Codes / Gecko Codes tabs!

Happy new year! 🎆

I'm pleased to announce the release of the next major update to the Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K texture pack, 1.4! This is yet another massive update to the pack with hundreds of new textures and is, once again, the largest update ever made to the pack (in terms of new textures)! Changes include new environment textures for many areas in the game, new character textures, new UI textures, performance optimizations, file size optimizations, improved stability and plenty of bug fixes. And many, many more miscellaneous changes. Here's the detailed changelog:

Overhauled environment textures!

The environment textures have been overhauled in many areas of the game, and many new ones have been created from the ground up as well in 4K! The new textures cover these regions;

Ordona
Kakariko Village
Death Mountain
South Hyrule Field
Snowpeak
Sacred Grove
Lake Hylia
Eldin Field
Lanayru Field
Hyrule Castle Town (now with HD food stands)
Gerudo Desert
City in the Sky
Hyrule Castle Sewers
Faron Woods

As well as these dungeons:

Forest Temple (Extensive)
Goron Mines (Extensive)
Lakebed Temple (Extensive)
Temple of Time

New Link Textures!

There are several newly created textures for both Link and Wolf Link in higher resolutions, including the shields and swords, this also covers most of the alternate armour sets and weapons!

New item textures!

Several items have been re-textured, including the Bow, the Dominion Rod, Water Bombs and more.

New creature textures!

Including enemies like Tektites, Bokoblins and more!

New UI textures!

New UI textures include both the on-screen UI as well as the various menus and icons present all over the game. This includes new map textures, icons, menu fixes and more.

New material maps!

New material maps have been created to give more surfaces and textures depth and more realistic reflections from lighting.

Heavily reduced file sizes (without sacrificing quality!)

Thanks to improved compression algorithms, all textures have been thoroughly optimized and reduced in file sizes, without losing any noticable quality. Even with mip-maps and re-conversion to DDS in the desktop version, TP 4K 1.4.0 is still a fair bit smaller than 1.3, even with all the new textures. And Android/iOS users get an even larger improvement, with a mindblowing 2.7x reduction in file sizes. This is all thanks to improved compression and file optimization using PNGQuant and other tools. This will definitely improve load times and reduce stuttering, might improve FPS and of course speed up download and extraction times.

Increased consistency and improved quality all around!

Lots of work was done under-the-hood this update to re-review and re-make many of the old textures to be higher quality, and to be more faithful to the original artstyle. The game should now feel a lot more like the original GameCube/Wii version when played with these textures, and a lot fewer should look out of place in their surroundings.

Simpler version selection and improved instructions!

Starting from version 1.3 onward, the post-processing edition and standard editions have been partially merged. Both versions now share the same folder and Dolphin settings will transfer between them, and they both load textures from the same location. This means the file size of the texture pack has been halved as a result (since duplicate textures are no longer included) and it should also make it possible to switch between the versions as you please, provided you're saving the game normally using in-game saving and not save states (save states are not compatible between versions).

What are the differences between the "Post-Processing Edition" and the "Standard Edition"?

There are two versions of the texture pack you get to select once you've downloaded it. One is the "Post Processing Edition", which includes all the post processing effects showcased in the trailer like ambient occlusion, tone mapping, bloom and more. The other version is the "Standard Edition" which doesn't include these features but has some other benefits instead.

The Post Processing Edition utilizes Ishiiruka Dolphin to achieve these features, and has some graphical features implemented not available in regular Dolphin at all. It also requires Windows 7 or higher (not compatible with MacOS or Linux) and a dedicated graphics card. Both editions include a controller preset for common gamepads like Xbox One, PS4/PS5, GameCube etc. The standard edition version alleviates some bugs present in Ishiiruka Dolphin (increased stability, for example) and supports MacOS & Linux, too! But does not support any of the additional graphical features listed above, like material maps, custom tone mapping, HD bloom, depth of field or ambient occlusion. Both versions look stunning so if you're uncertain I recommend you play the standard version- or try out both and see which one you prefer! The screenshots above have been taken using the post-processing edition.

Enjoy!

This update is available to all you Patrons here, with a public release 1 month from when this post was first published!

There is also a 4K version available, if your computer can handle it! Please feel free to try it out!

Note: The 4K version will look better than the 1080p version, even if you don't have a 4K display. This is because the textures are physically larger and contain more detail in the 4K version, no matter what resolution display you're using!

(Only available for the Dolphin Emulator, the texture pack does not work on real Gamecube/Wii/Wii U consoles).

Updating from an older version is super simple:

Just copy & paste the "GC" and "Wii" folders inside the "User" folder in the texture pack directory over to the new version's User folder and it should work straight away!