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What are Textures?
When it comes to games in general, there are 2 main things that makeup what we call the visuals of video games, Models and Textures. Models are the shapes that encapsulate every character, stage, boss, etc. in the game, while textures are the 2D assets that go over the models to give them their flavor of appeal. Without textures, all you would see are gray lifeless models moving around.
On Wii and GameCube games that run on Dolphin, any textures that are dumped from the game are shown in a PNG image file format. By editing the image, whether it's increasing the size (without changing the aspect ratio), altering the colors, or recreating certain parts of the texture, you can customize the game's visuals to your liking.
When you first look at a texture for the first time, it will seem all mixed up. Don't worry, the game's code helps determine where everything in the image goes so it colors over the model correctly. If you want to load your own custom textures, Dolphin only reads PNG images and DDS images (dds are usually used over PNG for better performance for low-end PCs).
Luckily, Sonic Riders is one of the few games that have textures that aren't formatted as insane as some other games. For characters, depending on which one, each has a single-player and multiplayer texture that is linked to them (some have more than one texture for single-player like jet and wave). Although not every texture colors over models as there are textures for menu and select screens as well which are much easier to understand from buttons to all the text that show up on screen meaning you can even put a different font text over that if you wanted to. Gears also have single-player and multiplayer textures as well for every gear (luckily these are all in one image for each gear).
Although not every texture colors over models as there are textures for menu and select screens as well which are much easier to understand from buttons to all the text that show up on screen meaning you can even put an different font text over that if you wanted to. Here is an example of altering the Menu made in HD by recreation:
Drag & Pinch!
Another important set of textures in Sonic Riders are the stage textures. Depending on what area or stage you are looking at, there are many MANY textures that make up that area entirely. From lighting to floors, buildings, walls, objects, and much more. Here are an example of one of the floors made in HD by recreation:
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