Texture swapping
Textures swapping is a feature that allows the replacement of the textures in a game with new textures that have no restrictions in size other then the maximum size supported by the video card - at least 4096x4096 in Direc3D9 shader model 3.0 and newer cards. In all supported games, even those whose engines only support 16 bit 256x256 textures - as it happens is most early Direct3D games - it is possible to swap the original textures with high resolution textures
This feature is refered to as texture swapping because the original textures within the game's files are never modified. The patches just tell Direct3D - or OpenGl- to use a replacement texture, instead or the original, for rendering. On the next few paragraphs you will find a tutorial on how to use this feature that applies to all games supported
Swapping a texture requires you to dump that texture to disk while the game is running and then paste the image you want to use as the replacement in the right location. Before following this tutorial, you should click the game you want to modify in the list on the left and inspect how the texture swapping options are configured. This configuration is individual for each game. The texture swapping options are the following:
Show\Hide Thumbnail - A hotkey that show or hides a thumbnail in the top left
corner of the screen with one of the textures currently
loaded, you will use this to search for the texture you
want to dump. Hold this when you start the game to have
search activated at start
Change text color - A hotkey that changes the color of the text shown bellow
the thumbnail, which informs how many textures are loaded,
which is being showed in the thumbnail and which API the
games uses
Next - A hotkey to select the next texture
Previous - A hotkey to select the previous texture
Fast Browsing - A hotkey to hold together with the Next or Previous
hotkeys to browse textures more quickly
Dump Texture - A hotkey to dump the current texture to disk
Path - A directory there will contain two folders. The dumps
folder, which is where the patch will dump textures to,
and the replacements folder, where the replacements
should be placed
Dumping textures
Start the game then press the Show\Hide Thumbnail hotkey during gameplay. Now you will see a thumbnail (whose size can be customized in the texture swapping options) in the top left corner of the screen with one of the textures currently loaded. The texture in the thumbnail is also disabled in the game, except on DirectX 3 and earlier
Use the Next and Previous hotkeys to browse all currently loaded textures (hold the Fast Browsing hotkey to browse them more quickly). When you find a texture you want to modify, press the Dump Texture hotkey to dump that texture to disk
Textures will be dumped to a folder called Dumps in the path specified in Path option. e.g.: if the path is
"c:\some folder\some game", the textures will be dumped to "c:\some folder\some game\dumps". That folder is always automatically created by the program
Textures will be dumped in the .dds format and named dump0.dds, dump1.dds and so on. You should not modify texture dumps, but you can rename them if you like
Installing the replacement texture
To finally replace a texture, all you have to do is to place a replacement image with the right format and name in the right location
In the example above, the path option was configured as "c:\some folder\some game", so the replacements should be installed in "c:\some folder\some game\replacements"
A replacement file replaces a dump with the same name as it, so if you dumped a texture and renamed it to somename.dds, the replacement should also be called somename.dds, but it should be installed in the replacements folder, while the dump must remain in the dumps folder
Format of the replacement texture
Replacement textures must also be in the .dds file format. The recommended pixel format for all games is DXT5, but remember that textures in compressed DXTn formats must have sizes that are integer multiples of 4. Even if some programs can create DXTn files with different sizes, those won't be loaded
To get arround this limitation or if you want the best possible quality, use the A8R8G8B8 format for Direct3D games and A8B8G8R8 for OpenGl
If you want small files, use the DXT1 format, but note that this format doesn't support partial transparency
On Direct3D 7 and earlier, you will frequently find textures with transparency, but no alpha channel. These textures use chroma keying. For these textures, create replacements preferably in the X8R8G8B8 format - R5G6B5 and X1R5G5B5 will also work. The replacement texture will inherit the color key of the original texture
Mipmaps are supported in all formats but note that mipmapped textures on DirectX 7 and earlier must have power of two dimensions
Distributing textures
If you want to distribute textures you have created, you can use use the texture compiler program - which can be found on the top of the games list to the left - to merge all texture dumps into a single file, dump._dds. You can distribute only dump._dds without need to distribute the original dumps. The replacements, obviously, must be distributed
Tons of text, without any meaning. Is it really so difficult to write in a nutshell what exactly needs to be done, Without all these troubles? 🙁