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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

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

#601

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 think "as a kid" is the operative phrase here. Nothing will ever live up to that nostalgia. That's not to discount the criticisms or "feel" you get from the game, but it's worth noting that nothing lives up to our childhood favorites.

I thought I was too dried up and curmudgeonly to get immersed in a video game but BOTW dispelled that myth. Prior to BOTW Ocarina of Time was my greatest gaming experience.

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

#602
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 100% has to do with retention of key talent and knowledge transfer. It seems the model for most western studios is to make one or two big successful games, then layoff all the staff and/or be acquired by EA/Activision/Microsoft. Then their next games flounder as they're milked dry. Western companies are only worried about the next quarter and treat talent as a bottom line expense.

I guess it's not only about what the studios do. Japanese also have a different kind of loyalty from employees which rarely ever change change. It's probably 20 years of average tenure, compared to 2 years in the US. And that's not because these companies pay so much more: They probably pay less for their most experienced stuff than what an employee with 2 years of experience gets in the US. It's just a different culture.

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

#603

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…

> the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy Neophyte question here, but what's the 3d engine used for this game? can you just change a parameter to make the game more realistic if the hardware supports it?

It's a custom engine by nintendo, also seems to be user by other games like super mario odyssey.

Changing graphics settings would be accomplished using patches, more or less the same idea as making cheats in older games. Find the value somewhere in their code that corresponds to render distance and change that, as an example.

Emulators for older systems can do more impressive things. Graphics pipelines tend to be a certain shape and use certain data types, so once you're already emulating at the GPU level you can do things like upscale old textures (works great on cell-shaded games like megaman legends). For 2d games you can use a dedicated pixel art scaling algorithm.

Pretty much all 3D games can output at a higher resolution than the original hardware allowed, just due to how the hardware is set up. You're game isn't responsible for deciding the output resolution, the GPU is, essentially. Changes aspect ratios is much harder and often requires patching the games themselves to make it work properly.

Other common patches are things like higher FPS. By default the new zelda game plays at 20fps, but there are patches to play them at 30 and 60 fps for a smoother experience. Those are once again actually reverse engineering and patching the game files though.

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

#604
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've been using Yuzu with a couple of patches (that I think have now been merged) with Vulkan, which can be touchy with hardware, but runs fine on my machine other than minor visual glitches. The game runs nearly flawlessly and with apparently great compatibility with Ryujinx, but is dramatically slower (~20-25 fps compared to 50-60 fps with Yuzu).

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

#605
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah none of that matters, if the gameplay is amazing. BOTW was amazing and this one looks to have surpassed it from reviews.

Original comment: >Apparently the game is just 16GB and runs seamlessly on a decade old hardware with no loading screens between game areas. >How does Nintendo pull it off? Because it looks like two decade old game. No one is arguing that it can be fun, but it looks awful.

> it looks like two decade old game.

Yeah, no. https://static.kinguin.net/cdn-cgi/image/f=auto/media/catego... is what a two decade old game looks like.

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

#606
post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've been using Yuzu with a couple of patches (that I think have now been merged) with Vulkan, which can be touchy with hardware, but runs fine on my machine other than minor visual glitches. The game runs nearly flawlessly and with apparently great compatibility with Ryujinx, but is dramatically slower (~20-25 fps compared to 50-60 fps with Yuzu).

Ah, thanks!

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? What are these watches optimized for then?

I think the commenter means that mechanical watches don't keep time as well as digital watches. So, I guess they are optimized for mechanical beauty instead of timekeeping.

That you never see? So a piece of software might be amazingly-engineered but doesn't do the main function well - is that the analogy?

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

#608
post #5

BOTW was almost perfect, but the weapon breaking system left me so tired of managing it. What a constant distraction! I get that they wanted to encourage experimentation, but they overtuned it, and it became a chore. If TOTK has the same system, I'm returning it.

It took me forever to figure it out and I only recently noticed it after I put the game away shortly after its release, but: if you perform a shield parry, the enemy will drop his weapon. You can then pick it up. This means you can go into a fight with no weapon and only a shield and end up being the one with the weapon fighting an unarmed enemy.

You can also use shock arrows IIRC to stun enemies and make drop their (metal) weapons.

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

#609

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 think "as a kid" is the operative phrase here. Nothing will ever live up to that nostalgia. That's not to discount the criticisms or "feel" you get from the game, but it's worth noting that nothing lives up to our childhood favorites.

Nostalgia is definitely the reason I love civilization II so much (I'd argue it's #2 behind civ IV in the series).

It's a damned shame civ II is so hard to get properly running (dosbox, win3.1, etc, sound drivers, etc)

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

#610

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 think "as a kid" is the operative phrase here. Nothing will ever live up to that nostalgia. That's not to discount the criticisms or "feel" you get from the game, but it's worth noting that nothing lives up to our childhood favorites.

I don’t think that’s true. I played Ocarina as an adult and loved it, but BotW left me feeling similarly cold. It’s just a different style of game.

Meanwhile, Elden Ring drew me in like no other game in recent memory.

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