Homebrew Share and Download custom Wii U Themes

[MikaDubbz]

well, I was just confirming what you said, since I have one of those games specifically. it's a legit purchase too.

I see.

I can also confirm that N64 VC games will freeze when you hit home in them after booting SDCafiine. See, I had actually recognized this before, but thought that it was simply something to do with a mod I had put on all my N64 VC titles via SDCafiine where each N64 game will display in stretched 16:9 ratio if loaded after SDCafiine, it works great, but if I hit home the Wii U freezes. I had always assumed it was because of the mod for some reason, though I realize now I never even checked an N64 VC game with SDCafiine without a mod for the title being applied), but now that I'm hearing confirmation that Mario Kart 64 will freeze when you hit home after booting SDCafiine, with I assume no mods in it's SDCafiine folder, then I think it's safe to say that certain properties in titles don't allow for hitting the home menu, including all N64 VC titles and injects, and Child of Light for some reason. I'm sure there are more too.

 

[godreborn]

thus far I've encountered no bugs with anything, and I play my wii u almost daily and for like 6 hour intervals. I'm still using the light blue theme, but I used your first theme before that. no issues with either.

 

[meeeow]

Since the problem is caused by SDCafiine and not by the theme, I installed the Dark Light Blue theme via FTP into the NAND. Starting Homebrews through Channels and closing Games via Home button works. Thank you for testing, @MikaDubbz and @godreborn!

That white/gray standard theme always kinda annoyed me. Dark is so much prettier!

 

[godreborn]

Since the problem is caused by SDCafiine and not by the theme, I installed the Dark Light Blue theme via FTP into the NAND. Starting Homebrews through Channels and closing Games via Home button works. Thank you for testing, @MikaDubbz and @godreborn!

That white/gray standard theme always kinda annoyed me. Dark is so much prettier!

Great!

 

[MikaDubbz]

And up next we have the Dark Theme - Yellow variation. Came out better than I was anticipating, the blue glow actually meshes well with the yellow in those corner highlights:

Dark Theme - Yellow Download

 

[godreborn]

think I've got them all so far:

 

[MikaDubbz]

Oh and before anyone asks, the reason why I didn't make the screens on the right bubble black instead of white to better clash with yellow like you see in the USB icon, it's because, changing that icon's appearance does NOT want to play nice with me (and the arrow image on top of it is a different file, which is why I can change that part without issue). It seems like somehow it is compressed as a .dds or whatever is not in line with how the rest are handled and as such when I make changes, try as I might, but transparency/alpha layers are just not being properly adhered to and I can't figure out why. So for now, those images stay with the white screens and grey features (ideally I wanted to make those grey gamepad and TVs to be black where they're grey for the other dark themes, but that's where I first encountered this issue to begin with) and maybe later if I make some revisions and do more research I might be able to fix up such things..

 

[MikaDubbz]

Skipped the Orange variation and jumped to White instead, will do Orange next.

Dark Theme - White Download

 

[Manuel06p]

I love It, is so minimal!

 

[MikaDubbz]

Small Update to the white theme: I was able to find a workaround solution for the gamepad and TV icon to properly show up the way I was trying to make it. Considerably easier than I was making it honestly. Anyway, the download links have automatically updated, but you can see the update to the icon in the updated images below:

I will probably use this knowledge to edit at least one or 2 previous themes, the yellow one could use something similar for sure, but for now I'm heading to bed.

 

[meeeow]

The white theme matches your icons perfectly. Where do you have these forwarders from?

And a more general question: how could I change the icon.tga of a homebrew in case I only have a WUP installable package of that homebrew? I am using FTP at the moment to change icons which works but is more a workaround.

 

[MikaDubbz]

The white theme matches your icons perfectly. Where do you have these forwarders from?

And a more general question: how could I change the icon.tga of a homebrew in case I only have a WUP installable package of that homebrew? I am using FTP at the moment to change icons which works but is more a workaround.

Many forwarders came from here, or an old shut down .iso site, I think I may have made a couple of the forwarders with TeconMoon's injector, and in the case of the PSP and Retroarch forwarders, I made those throuogh the haxchi method. They weren't all uniformly themed to begin with though, so I took the established theme a few of them did share and remade all the icons and banners for the other emulators and loaders in the same style and then replaced those .tgas via FTPiiU.

If you make the channels yourself either via haxchi or Teconmoon's injector, you can make sure the icons and banners are what you wanted from the start without the need to change them from FTPiiU. But if you're using someone else's already released channel already installed on your Wii U, then that's gonna be your best option. Though you could unpack the installation of someone else's loader/forwarder with cdecrypt, swap out the icons, and then pack it up with I believe NUSPacker. Honestly that method sounds like more of a hassle to me than just going through FTPiiU.

 

[meeeow]

Many forwarders came from here, or an old shut down .iso site, I think I may have made a couple of the forwarders with TeconMoon's injector, and in the case of the PSP and Retroarch forwarders, I made those throuogh the haxchi method. They weren't all uniformly themed to begin with though, so I took the established theme a few of them did share and remade all the icons and banners for the other emulators and loaders in the same style and then replaced those .tgas via FTPiiU.

If you make the channels yourself either via haxchi or Teconmoon's injector, you can make sure the icons and banners are what you wanted from the start without the need to change them from FTPiiU. But if you're using someone else's already released channel already installed on your Wii U, then that's gonna be your best option. Though you could unpack the installation of someone else's loader/forwarder with cdecrypt, swap out the icons, and then pack it up with I believe NUSPacker. Honestly that method sounds like more of a hassle to me than just going through FTPiiU.

Thanks for the explanation! So it boils down to 3 methods:
a) FTP (<- which I used because it worked immediately)
b) Unpack the installation of someone else's loader/forwarder with cdecrypt, swap out the icons, and then pack it up with I believe NUSPacker (<- did work immediately with the Retroarch forwarder but after repacking other packages WUP installer complained about missing signatures; so I switched to FTP)
c) Haxchi method or Teconmoon's injector (<- gonna look into the latter asap).

In any case: the custom theme look very nice. I started with the blue one because most of icons very already blueish

 

[MikaDubbz]

Thanks for the explanation! So it boils down to 3 methods:
a) FTP (<- which I used because it worked immediately)
b) Unpack the installation of someone else's loader/forwarder with cdecrypt, swap out the icons, and then pack it up with I believe NUSPacker (<- did work immediately with the Retroarch forwarder but after repacking other packages WUP installer complained about missing signatures; so I switched to FTP)
c) Haxchi method or Teconmoon's injector (<- gonna look into the latter asap).

In any case: the custom theme look very nice. I started with the blue one because most of icons very already blueish

Nice, what's your upper left icon?

 

[meeeow]

The upper left is Haxchi. The tga files are taken from here:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-create-edit-tga-files-for-haxchi.465027/#post-7263679

 

[MikaDubbz]

The upper left is Haxchi. The tga files are taken from here:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-create-edit-tga-files-for-haxchi.465027/#post-7263679

Ah, gotcha. I'd probably have done something similar for such an icon if I wasn't on CBHC. It reminds me of something I was wanting to do, but not quite having luck with, I wanted to edit the pages of the Hyrule Historia ebook app on the Wii U that would have made it a whole new book, with the goal of making it a guide to everything that my Wii U can do. And I can get close to making this a reality, like I can edit the pages, but the problem is in how Switch Toolbox handles packing .gtx files, it just doesn't work for some reason. Anyway, I digress, you icon just made me remember that idea, maybe I'll play around with that a bit more soon too, see if I can find any workarounds.

 

[MikaDubbz]

And Here comes the Dark Theme - Orange variant, looks like a nice Halloween theme really:

Dark Theme - Orange Download

I feel like this covers all the most obvious Dark theme variations at this point. I may do 1 or 2 more, like a dark blue or a teal, those sound like they could look great to me too. But at that point, I think it'll be safe to say that most desirable dark themes will then be available for the Wii U. I may go back and edit some of the themes I've posted so far, or maybe make some more colorful themes like my first one. Point is, it shouldn't be so much work now to make more themes now that there are so many bases you can choose to work with, in terms of RGB values for glows and all of that.

 

[xoINARIox]

Could you please make a dark cyan theme next

 

[Deleted member 476408]

Hey all! I made a video tutorial for this:



I hope it helps!

 

[meeeow]

clear and precise tutorial!

(note to myself: the standard theme was really so bright?; the obvious question why CHBC saves you is answered in the comments under the video -> I should finally install haxchi)