SwitchWakerHD v1.2.2

SwitchWakerHD runs The Wind Waker HD (Wii U, version 0: USA 00050000-10143500 or Europe 00050000-10143600) natively on a Switch with custom firmware: the game's code is statically recompiled to C and drawn with deko3d. No emulation.

No game inside, no binaries. Every build carries the game's code recompiled from your own dump, so you build it on your computer and copy the result to your SD card. Do not share what you build.

Install

• Windows 10/11: download SwitchWakerHD-Installer.exe below and run it.
• macOS: download SwitchWakerHD-Installer-macOS-*.zip (Apple silicon or Intel), unzip it and open the app (the first time: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway).
• Linux: download SwitchWakerHD-Installer-linux-*.tar.gz, extract it and start the installer.
• By hand (any system): download SwitchWakerHD-v1.2.2.zip, unzip it and follow INSTALL.md:

  python3 tools/switch/make_sd.py --image game.wux      # or --wua game.wua, or --game-dir <extracted game>

Updating: from v1.2.0 or v1.2.1, open the installer and choose "Update to v1.2.2"; from an older version, run the installer again (or make_sd.py). Copy the result over the old one: your saves and settings stay.

What's fixed since v1.2.1

• Ganon's Tower: the game no longer closes when the cutscene before Puppet Ganon starts (#126, thanks @Dante9744 for the report, save and log). The cutscene reads a small texture in a way the Switch renderer did not handle yet; it now does, and the cutscene plays into the fight.
• Errors the renderer is meant to survive no longer close the game (#127). In the builds the installers make (tuned for the console, PGO), some of the code that recovers from an error could not run, so an error that should have skipped one picture closed the game instead. The build option that caused it is gone; speed is the same as v1.2.1 (measured: docs/perf-results.md).
• More graphics prepared on your computer: the template the installers use has 400 more shaders (8,965), so fewer are compiled while you play.
• European game: the console-tuned (PGO) build now covers the game's code (#130). v1.2.1's European profile was made from code the installer does not build, so the European game's code was built without it. v1.2.2's profiles (USA and Europe) are made from exactly what the installers build.

Everything new in v1.2.0 (PGO, the fourth core, smoother first sessions, the menu in Italian, German and French, the installers' update mode...): see the v1.2.0 notes.

Full list of changes: the v1.2.2 milestone.

Known issues

• Windows Defender may flag the installer as Wacatac.B!ml, a false positive (#61); INSTALL.md explains what to do while the code-signing certificate is pending.
• macOS 27: the installer cannot prepare the graphics yet (#129); the game still builds and works, and compiles them while you play.