The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release • Hacker News Board

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#491

Post by nikanj » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

esprehn wrote: post #429

zac23or wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priorities. For Nintendo, size matters. Time also matters. In an old interview, Someone from Nintendo says that the time to put the disc in the Wii and be able to play Zelda needs to be less than 30sec. A great example is the size of Super Mario Odyssey being 5.7GB and a save file from NBA2k18 being 5GB. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/09/super_mario_odysse...

Apparently the save data was really only 75MB. I'm not sure what could use 5GB in save data... dynamically generated FMV?

Nintendo save: bit-optimised tightly packed binary

NBA savegame: json encoded in xml, run through a base64 because < in team names was breaking saves, all packed in YAML because the new summer intern couldn’t find a parser library for anything else

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#492

Post by gabrielizaias » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

looping8 wrote: post #439

qbasic_forever wrote: post #14

I was listening to a gaming podcast last week and they were talking about how this release was pirated and available for the last week or so on torrents. That in itself wasn't surprising, but the interesting point they talked about is that the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy because modern gaming PC hardware is much smoother and higher resolution than the stock Switch. It really ma…

Nintendo is extremely resistant to change and compromise, there is probably zero chance they will do it. Remember that, even as they make excellent games, they reject a lot of modern aspects of gaming. Like they used to ban Twitch streams and YouTube let's plays of their games.

> Nintendo is extremely resistant to change and compromise

Are you sure? The company the brought us…

- Color TV-Game

- Game Boy

- Nintendo 64

- GameCube

- Nintendo DS

- Wii

- many, many others [0]

… is resistant to change? They have always been at the forefront of hardware innovation/experimentation, I'm sure they wouldn't be against it.

I'd suggest listening to the 2-part Acquired podcast episodes about Nintendo [1] if you haven't already.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_video_game_consoles

[1]: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/nintendo https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/nintendo-the-console-wars

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#493

Post by sb057 » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #125

qbasic_forever wrote: post #14

I was listening to a gaming podcast last week and they were talking about how this release was pirated and available for the last week or so on torrents. That in itself wasn't surprising, but the interesting point they talked about is that the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy because modern gaming PC hardware is much smoother and higher resolution than the stock Switch. It really ma…

Is Switch emulation on PC that good? Maybe I should try it if so. I imagined it would be fairly janky due to the difficulty of emulating currentish hardware, and only old consoles could be emulated with good performance.

I've been playing the leaked version of TotK at 4K 60 fps for several days, and with only extremely minor visual bugs (example: when switching abilities, the background turns black rather than out-of-focus). It's honestly less janky than many AAA PC games.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#494

Post by nscalf » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

felipc wrote: post #77

Has Nintendo ever talked about how they do software development? Can we all drop the thousands of books that have been written about software engineering in general and just figure out what they do? Game aside, the reviews have been pointing out how the game performs well (after day 1 patch) and is not pestered with bugs, which is an impressive feat for such an open world game where most things are able to interact w…

It might be worth listening to the Acquired podcast episode on Nintendo. They are very far from perfect, and have had a good number of serious failures, along with some very strange decisions that clearly hurt them. Nintendo has a die hard stance on modding that is definitely net negative. Just a few weeks ago they went after some giant Twitch streamers for playing modded content. They also consistently ship technology that is generations behind.

One big thing they pointed out is the type of gaming they target. While the Playstation and Xbox general aim for very serious, high "skill" players, Nintendo often launches just above the seriousness and skill level of mobile gamers. It's easy for me to sit down with my extended family and play Mario Party or Mario Kart, but they'd hate me if I had them play Elden Ring. They also are strongly against much of the free to play content.

I left that episode questioning how much of Nintendo's recent success is due to them outcompeting versus the competition making a series of unforced errors.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#495

Post by stavros » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

sb057 wrote: post #493

stavros wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Switch emulation on PC that good? Maybe I should try it if so. I imagined it would be fairly janky due to the difficulty of emulating currentish hardware, and only old consoles could be emulated with good performance.

I've been playing the leaked version of TotK at 4K 60 fps for several days, and with only extremely minor visual bugs (example: when switching abilities, the background turns black rather than out-of-focus). It's honestly less janky than many AAA PC games.

Huh, that's very encouraging, thanks! Which emulator have you been using, out of curiosity?

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#496

Post by Shared404 » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #296

orloffm wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really an issue for the stakeholders. Zelda is probably the only game that has this problem. Most hits - Mario Kart, Smash, Splatoon - run at 60FPS.

On the other hand, the 5th and 7th best selling Switch games (Pokemon SS and SV) were notorious for being unable to maintain 15fps. A lot of the workarounds made the game legitimately awful looking (downscaling shadows on the fly for demanding scenes, very reduced draw distances, slowing down and synchronizing background animations to slideshow speeds during battle). It seems like the Switch is unable to have more th…

To be fair, the last two Pokemon games were atrociously optimized cash grabs.

They look like Gamecube games honestly, and are generally not impressive from a technical standpoint.

I don't necessarily disagree with the overall point, but BotW and Dynasty Warrior clones are probably a better argument over all.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#497

Post by TinkersW » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #357

I cannot describe in words how impactful Ocarina of Time was to me as a kid, how intensely I got sucked into that world to the point that I even wrote some (bad) fanfic set in that universe back in the days. When Majora's Mask came out I was almost bursting with excitement until I was actually able to play it and was again totally blown away by a unique experience. When I played Breath of the Wild, I felt ... nothing…

When OoT came out I'd already played Link To The Past And Link's Awakening so I didn't find OoT very impressive.. it often had clunky camera and controls & the story was pretty lame(especially compared to Link's Awakening).

It also just wasn't that creative.. a very safe Zelda. Majora's Mask was much better though.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#498

Post by UncleMeat » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #436

Tainnor wrote: post #357

I cannot describe in words how impactful Ocarina of Time was to me as a kid, how intensely I got sucked into that world to the point that I even wrote some (bad) fanfic set in that universe back in the days. When Majora's Mask came out I was almost bursting with excitement until I was actually able to play it and was again totally blown away by a unique experience. When I played Breath of the Wild, I felt ... nothing…

I share this feeling. I loved Ocarina of Time on the N64. BotW was a total snooze fest for me, just felt like way too much to see and do without a lot of structure.

You can’t recreate ocarina. The link to the past structure has been criticized for being stale since twilight princess.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#499

Post by system16 » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:44 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #357

I cannot describe in words how impactful Ocarina of Time was to me as a kid, how intensely I got sucked into that world to the point that I even wrote some (bad) fanfic set in that universe back in the days. When Majora's Mask came out I was almost bursting with excitement until I was actually able to play it and was again totally blown away by a unique experience. When I played Breath of the Wild, I felt ... nothing…

Nostalgia is a funny beast. Your comment holds true for me but the wonder was with the original NES Legend of Zelda and I felt nothing for Ocarina/Majora's Mask.

Interestingly, Breath of the Wild is the first modern game I can remember that brought back that sense of wonder I had as a kid.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#500

Post by jeroenhd » Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

peanuty1 wrote: post #214

basisword wrote: post #161

I caved and bought a Switch last week. It’s the best tech purchase I’ve made in years! The games on it are fun, the versatility of the Joycons is incredible, and the loading speed is a breath of fresh air. My main console is an original PS4. I upgraded to PS5 last year and returned it. It’s just more of the same. Huge game downloads, huge update downloads, a huge console, and long load times. And tbh, I didn’t see a…

I've heard the Steam Deck emulates Switch games like Zelda BOTW much better than the Switch. And it's not much more expensive either.

The Deck is impressive and wonderful, but it's not exactly a high end gaming device. Emulating ARM code efficiently requires a significant amount of CPU power and my experience is that the Deck doesn't quite have the CPU capacity to keep up with heavier emulated titles.

I expect the new Logitech handheld (or the many other, even more expensive competitors) to perform much better in this regard.

In a perfect world, emulators such as Skyline would be developed further. As the Switch is just a five year old mid tier Android tablet with a controller attached, I can only imagine the experience if you were to use the KVM capabilities of the upcoming Android 14 to run Switch software at near native performance on modern devices. Just buy one of those controller grips for phone and tablets and you're off!

iPhones/iPads would do even better, but I doubt Apple is going to let you use the necessary APIs to virtualize like that.

It's a shame Skyline has been killed off. With terrible games like that Pokémon game needing much more CPU power than the Switch can provide, I imagine even legitimate players would be interested in a way to play their switch games on modern hardware.