Hello! This is my 4K texture pack page for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds!
Some general info regarding this texture pack which you should read before you download it;
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There are ~8800 textures in total in the game. Out of these textures a few hundred have been completely re-textured, including all text and the user interface. Some textures remain completely untouched until I've worked on them since they can oftentimes look bad when upscaled.
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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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The 4K version of the texture pack is scaled to 8x the default resolution, this means that (if internal resolution is increased in Citra) you may be able to view some textures at a staggering 6832x3480 resolution! The 1080p version is scaled to 4x the default resolution, which results to slightly above 1080p.
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My goal with this texture pack is to enhance the original game visuals while staying faithful to the original vision. That means my textures are meant to blend in as much as possible with the old textures so the game feel doesn't change.
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This texture pack will work with any custom mods / hacks of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds as long as they aren't adding new textures or changing old ones (in that case, conflicting textures will be overwritten by one another but it will still work).
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A custom preset version of the Citra Emulator is included with the texture pack to make the setup as easy and painless as possible (starts in seconds!)
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It works on Windows, MacOS, Linux and Android! A fast hard drive, like a M.2 SSD, is recommended to reduce stuttering when loading in new textures.
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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 in Citra, it will still work. This will not include the Jap/Kor region specific textures though.
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If you don't like the way my texture pack looks over the original version, please note that all post processing can be modified easily from user to user to fit your own preference, you can make it look however you like. Press the "HOME" key on your keyboard while in-game to open the ReShade menu, where you can edit the post processing to your heart's content!
Screenshots
Video preview
(Please watch in 2160p (4K), 60 FPS for the best experience!)
Installation:
For Windows users: There is minimal installation! A special version of the Citra Emulator is provided alongside the new custom textures. Simply extract the folder on your desktop (or if that's not possible, preferably on your fastest hard drive), and start Citra using "Zelda ALBW 4K.exe" then get your own dumped game rom of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and load it. NO GAME ROM OR GAME FILES ARE INCLUDED WITH THIS TEXTURE PACK. DO NOT ASK FOR THEM HERE OR ON DISCORD, OR YOU WILL BE MUTED.
If you're on Mac or Linux: please manually download Citra from this page for your operating system and copy all the folders and files inside from the texture pack's "user" folder over to your default Citra directory. On macOS and most distributions of Linux, that would be inside of ~/.local/share/citra-emu/. Then make sure to enable "Load Custom Textures" in the Citra Graphics Settings > Advanced tab, or else the custom textures won't load!
For SteamDeck users:
For SteamDeck users: the installation is slightly different, and there are two alternate ways to do it (one is a fair bit simpler than the other):
Method #1- Using RetroDeck: Follow the instructions here on how to install texture packs into RetroDeck (faster and simpler than installing manually)
Method #2- The manual method: Go into desktop mode. First install Citra manually using something like Flatpak. If you installed Citra using Flatpak or Emudeck, your Citra directory will be located inside of ~/.var/app/org.citra_emu.citra/data/citra-emu - You must first right click inside the Citra directory > Menu > Check the box for "Show Hidden Files" or else you may not be able to access the citra folder. This will make it possible to navigate to the necessary citra-emu folder. The rest of the installation is the same as for Linux/MacOS, which you can find above.
For Android users, the process is very similar to that of Mac and Linux. First download the latest Citra Enhanced APK from here, install it on your device and try running your game rom in it to make sure everything is working before installing the texture pack itself. Next, download the 1080p version of the texture pack on your device (the 4K version might not work on some android devices) and extract it using any .zip unarchival app (some android versions have this feature built in, whilst some require a third party app to unzip .zip files). Once that is done, open the texture pack folder and navigate to the user > load > textures folder.
Next, copy the folder called "00040000000EC300" to this location on your device; Internal Storage/citra-emu/load/textures
IMPORTANT: If you are playing the European (PAL) version of the game, you MUST rename the folder from 00040000000EC300 to 00040000000EC400 or else the custom textures won't display!
Now finally, enable the "Load Custom Textures" option inside the Citra Enhanced Graphics Settings. Then set the "Internal Resolution" in the Graphics Settings to a higher value than the default 1x (start with 2x and increase from there, if it starts to lag lower the internal resolution again). Then start the game. It should say "4K" on the title screen, that's how you know it's working. Enjoy!
If you encounter any issues with the texture pack please post them on the Forums or on Discord!
Enjoy!
How do I get the game rom?
No game files are distributed with this texture pack, since that would be illegal. You need to get the game rom yourself. The legal way is to dump the game yourself from your own 3DS or 2DS console. Information on how to dump your own game rom legally can be found here.
Download
F.A.Q (Frequently Asked Questions):
Some textures are looking really weird / being replaced with other textures!
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This is a known issue and is likely the result of a bug in Citra where custom textures don't load in at the correct locations if the amount of free memory is running low. The fix is surprisingly simple, just disable "Linear Filtering" inside of the Citra Graphics Settings and restart the game. Keep in mind that you should refrain from loading save states frequently, since it's prone to make the bug appear more frequently. You should only save and load the game through the in-game save system, if possible.
Why is the game crashing / displaying "A fatal error occured"?
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Generally, this error is caused by the save data folder being located too far into other folders, causing the character limit in Windows to get exceeded when the game is trying to load or save data. Try moving the whole texture pack folder out onto your desktop or some other folder close to the root drive and see if that fixes the issue!
Why is my game lagging a lot, even though my hardware should be enough? (I have an AMD graphics card/GPU)
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This is likely the result of AMD's poor OpenGL drivers for windows that's causing the issues. Try disabling Hardware Shaders in Emulation>Configuration>Graphics>Advanced Tab and see if that makes an improvement!
My game is crashing at seemingly random instances / when entering a new scene or area!
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This is usually caused by your graphics card not supporting OpenGL 3.3, possibly due to outdated graphics drivers, or a corrupt disk shader cache. It can be fixed by simply opening up the Citra Graphics settings, go to the "Advanced" tab and uncheck "Use Disk Shader Cache". Next, go to the "Enhancements" tab in the Citra Graphics settings and set the active Post-Processing Shader to "none (builtin)".
Changelog:
1.1.0 (2021-12-16):
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Made several vast improvements to Lorule, with many new environment textures.
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Upgraded dungeon textures all across the first two dungeons (Eastern Palace and the House of Gales)
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Added a region switching script to make switching between PAL/NTSC/JAP super simple!
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New 4K item menu textures
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New completely remade eye-textures for Link and several NPCs
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Overall upgraded UI
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Fixed several bugs and other issues (save states from 1.0.0a are NOT compatible with 1.1.0 or beyond!)
1.0.0a (2021-10-02):
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Fixed several minor issues, including the texture pack not loading on the European (PAL) version of the game.
1.0.0 (2021-10-01):
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Initial release.