Zelda: The Wind Waker – Tech and Texture Analysis
polycount.com
polycount.com
It goes into detail about things like how the inverse kinematics work, and rendering layers of translucent textured polygon shells for its fur effects since programmable shaders weren't possible on the hardware.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx96LuRBo4jASGNmVHNaUjZRU2VD...
On a less technical note it's amazing how going with the cell-shaded look has made the game age so well even the original non-HD gamecube game still looks great today.
So when Windwaker was announced it was a big let-down and had minimal cultural impact (even though it was a critical and financial success).
In fact, it seemed like the entire Gamecube era can be defined by Nintendo trying something different and kinda being punished for it due to preconceived expectations. Things like FPS Metroid instead of 3rd person Metroid. Mario Sunshine instead of Mario 64 2. Mario Kart Double Dash instead of regular Mario Kart 64 2. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat instead of proper 2D Donkey Kong Country. And of course WindWaker. It's no surprise that some of those games became cult favorites even though they didn't resonate at the time. They were good games, but wrong for the time. Sometimes it pays to give people what they want.
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Nintendo is actually pretty clueless with market trends in general. Sometimes that's ok, but sometimes it hurts them greatly (e.g. sticking with the cartridge format one generation too long - which I think is THE reason why Sony owned the console market until the PS3 era. No DVD on Gamecube which did hurt their sales in the US. Ignoring online gaming until well into the Wii generation, and even then being clueless about it for many years. No answer to Xbox Live/PS Network. Missing the HD era by a generation - though they got really really lucky with the Wii _initially_). More recently, a Nintendo exec couldn't understand why people would want to watch streamed games[2]!)
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBtAvX4Pkyk
[2] http://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2014-wii-u-s-lack-of-twi...
Don't forget launching with a Luigi title rather than a Mario title.
And the funny thing is, most of those are great games: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and Luigi's Mansion are all quite good because they broke the usual formula. Trying something different is a risk; you might get something much better than formula by adding some variety, or you might get an utter flop. But I'll take that over something completely formulaic.
Kinda glad to see the tide turn :) OoT was pretty epic too, but WW is more fun to play. Maybe I just like the whole sailing+pirates thing too much.
Nintendo adopt puzzling strategies at times, but I'd be wary of second guessing them. Everyone criticised the decision to stick with cartridges, but let's not forget that every other vendor except Sony that tried switching to CD-ROMs basically went out of business. Likewise, the Wii was slated when people saw the Gamecube-level specs with no HD, but then it was successful beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
- The two missing dungeons were a non-factor (I didn't even know about this until just right now). The game wasn't buggy, and it felt complete. It was as good as it was going to get.
- Sure, a bunch of console-vendors bit the dust with CD-ROM, but nobody blamed CD-ROMs. They failed because of price, or because of lack of recognition, lack of games, or whatever, but not because of CD-ROMs. That's not me talking with the benefit of hindsight. I remember being in that era. There was a consensus that optical media in general, and CD-ROMs specifically, were the future. They were cheaper, and could hold huge amounts of data and FMV clips (FMV was big!). Nintendo had their reasons to go with cartridges, but they weren't good reasons for customers and publishers.
>Likewise, the Wii was slated when people saw the Gamecube-level specs with no HD, but then it was successful beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
Yeah, it was a success and let Nintendo survive that console generation, but that success didn't do anything for the Wii U and the Wii kinda lost steam near the end (didn't most 3rd party publishers abandon it mid-way through it's life?). They got really really lucky with the Wii.
Nobody thought to blame CD-ROMs as Sony made a big success of it, but sticking with cartridges let Nintendo differentiate themselves from everyone else and ensure they were the only genuine alternative to Playstation. In general Nintendo's business strategy can be described as: a) do something different b) never bet the house. The first ensures the potential for runaway hits like the Wii or DS, while the latter ensures they can always try again next generation.
I enjoyed Wind Waker, but I always felt like something was missing. It felt odd that there were only two temples where the previous games had more. I also didn't know about the missing dungeons. And as another poster mentioned, apparently the dungeons were complete, but 'too hard' so they were cut. I almost wish they would have included them somehow even if it was a 'hard more' or some sort of special edition of the game.
> that success didn't do anything for the Wii U
To be fair, the Wii U didn't do much to cash in on the Wii's success other than keep the name, and confuse people as to whether or not it was a new console.
Gahh.. that link made me seriously question Nintendo's management - are they that disconnected from their customers? just thinking one inch ahead and asking yourself "what's fun about watching [insert your country's favourite sport]" would immediately answer that question whether this is something people want.
Kinda. It's Nintendo being Nintendo. Miss the boat on some trend, and rather than work towards fixing it, deny the trend.
The whole Wii brand is itself perhaps the best example of it. I can not think of a more terrible name - or rather I couldn't until they released Wii U. Any success these consoles have is in spite of the branding, not because of it. (Which might go to show that branding is not terribly important after all, since the Wii was obviously very successful, and Wii U apparently did well at E3 this year.)
Where else can I ask this question without being treated like a noob or a "gimme teh code plz" beggar?
I definitely do not recommend trying to roll your own engine at first because you'll never get a game done.
That's especially true for someone who already knows programming, the answer would be different for someone who had no programming experience.
Nowadays, I'm a web dev, but I build games in my spare time, and have lately been doing it with Canvas/Javascript. Just like SDL it takes some of the finicky bits out of your way, but is still pretty low level somewhat.
So yeah, to parent poster: Go download Unity and do the tutorials.
It's also worth working through some OpenGL tutorials to get a feel for how the lower level stuff works.
- Learn Unity make a couple of small 3D games.
- Learn some basic OpenGL , learn to write your own shaders and understand how it all works.
- After Unity try working with other engines ( work with something like the CryEngine[1] , it costs like 9.90$ / month royalty free)
- As you make games start making your own game engine as a side project.
ProTip: Open Source it to speed up development.
[1]http://cryengine.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-... edit:formatting
AFAIK he did all the game design, coding and assets (models, textures, sounds etc.)
If you like JavaScript as a language, use that; if you don't, then either try a language that compiles to JavaScript via emscripten or similar, or try a language that works with Chrome Native Client.
I spent about 5 minutes in a barrel last night just watching the guards swoosh around their spears. My guess was that was added for the Wii U edition - but apparently I'm way wrong.
Incredible looking game!
fwiw you can usually pick those spears up after you beat the guards lol
http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/8336/how-was-coll...
2D Zelda had some neat stuff too.
"this animated wave material is one of my all time favorite fx in game art"
Incidentally if you like this kind of thing, and you haven't played Fez yet, then well, the rest of your sunday is sorted.
See http://www.zeldadungeon.net/2013/08/the-wind-waker-hd-trifor....
Still, great analysis.
(And how much of that is a problem with just OpenGL vs. how much does it apply to DirectX as well?)
That blog post should help you clarify the difference. I think the primary problem it that OpenGL and DirectX handle changes in pipeline state very poorly.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/3-564
youtube dupe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0QkjKGZQzI
I've always personally felt many of Nintendo's games specifically limit the art in the service of gameplay where as many other companies are "art first" companies. Zelda in particular aims at making worlds free of clutter and trying to make nearly everything interactive. Compared to most games where 99% of all doors are not openable, 99% of all plants are not manipulable, 99% of all rocks, pots, etc are not movable. If you let the artists fill up the world you get Uncharted, which while it might be a great game in it's own way, it's also massively static compared to nearly any Zelda game. If they let the artists fill up Zelda to be as art drivin as Uncharted it would no longer feel like Zelda because Zelda is about gameplay, Uncharted is about art.
While working on this game, I got some code that a colleague wrote for another product to pre-generate all the GPU commands offline, so things could be drawn with 0% CPU overhead. But once I'd merged it all in and got it working, the thing was actually slower! No good sending them all to the GPU and letting it deal with them, it turned out. It was faster to have the CPU carefully check each state setting and not bother the GPU with the redundant ones.
(Sort-of disclaimer: Wii developers never got tools as good as the ones for the PS3 or Xbox360. In particular, there was very little visibility into the GPU's working, just some poorly-documented performance counters, and a Javascript tool that would estimate a per-vertex cycle count for a given set of vertex attributes. So it's possible I just got something wrong. And sadly I can't claim to be the sharpest tool in the box.)