Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Second to last update! Did Central Hyrule, started the Castle where i did the last Shrine and got the Hylian Shield too. I got also all memories and i watched the entire sequence. Wow, that is really incredible! Now i have to decide if i'll upgrade the Shrines Hero Set before doing for real the Castle. If i'll easily get the Star Fragments i'll do it. Can't wait to see the final of the game!

@TNGYM What an interesting post, thanks. What was your source/s?

You even reference Dire Straits (in another post)... I'm gonna have to follow you

@FGPackers My favorite music by far is the music from where you pull the Master Sword. It got that "we know you are the lost hero and we are here for you" epic type mysterious forest music, like its your base and the final place before the boss, also sounds a lot like the Twin Adders Grand Company music from Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn in Gridania

@Haru17 The top of the imgur post says "The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles," from the episode with the Krusty Krab Pizza.

@gcunit God you're old if you listen to that stuff.

Whats the best armor for battle? Barberian, "Of the Hero" set, or Guardian w/Guardian weapons used?

Ehh.. source?

I'm pretty certain Wind Waker and Twilight Princess run on a completely different engine than the N64 engine. Heck, even Nintendo considers the OOT engine different from the Mario 64 engine, because — while it it based on the Mario 64 engine — it is completely different. There's no reason to assume that BOTW is the first Zelda game to run on a completely new engine, or a modified Xenoblade engine for that matter. They didn't start development until 2015/2016. It's still the same game from 2014. The delay was because of the Switch, nothing else.

Also, remember that Monolith Soft Tokyo and Kyoto are two completely different teams. The Kyoto team helps out Nintendo's Kyoto studios, and the Tokyo team is the one behind Xenoblade.

Old enough to know how to get Money for nothing and chicks for free!😉

@ReeLongbow Barbarian for regular combat, Ancient for battling Guardians and so.

OMG i finished the game with true ending. So don't open spoiler if you don't have finished it. Final fight was really epic! I was expecting a third phase, but at the end it was really good. The approach to Ganon's room was nice and the scene where he come out is fantastic. I read a lot of people that did not like the ending, instead i liked it really a lot. If i may have a complaint is that the second phase was way too easy confronted to the first. That's the only one. I liked all the rest. I'll share my all-around opinions in the "beat" topic now. By the way i did not upgrade the Wild Hero Set. Was just not necessary.

@ReeLongbow IIRC the +3 attack boost from either food or the Barbarian set (they're equivalent) results in a 50% boost to any weapon, while the Ancient Armour gives an 80% boost to Ancient weapons.

So for a given Ancient weapon, and ignoring all other factors, the full Ancient set will be more powerful than the full Barbarian. What's more, the Ancient Proficiency bonus is considered separate to the food based damage boost system, meaning they can stack, and allowing for a 1.5*1.8=2.7 times multiplier (if my maths in correct) in total.

The Barbarian Armour's boost, however, is tied up with the food/elixir system, so cannot be pushed higher than +3 (just as stealth cannot be raised beyond +3 by combining food and clothing), meaning it caps out at a +50% in all circumstances.

So if you're using an Ancient weapon, the Ancient Armour will outclass the Barbarian Armour, and can be increased even further. But if you're not using an Ancient weapon, it'll have no effect, and the Barbarian armour will at least mean you don't have to consume any food for the equivalent boost.

The Hero set is just a bit pants though, unless you're really into using your Sword Beam. Pew pew.

@FGPackers Yay! Congrats on beating it! Your thoughts basically mirror mine and I'm also fond of the ending. Btw, did you find Zelda's Diary, Zelda's Research Notes and the King's Diary? They're easy to miss but really add depth to the story.

The internet is failing me on answering this question: What does "finding new objective" mean on the sensor?

I've had the sensor off for the longest time, but now that I'm taken on the new task of upgrading armor and completing the compendium, I started using it to search for materials. I hope "finding new objective" doesn't mean the sensor isn't also finding me shrines that I don't want help on.

@Nicolaison It will not find you shrines if you set it to find something else.

@Nicolaison The few times I used that function, the message seems to mostly appear when your objective has disappeared from the area, either because you picked it up or it ran away. Think of it as recalibrating.

@Eric258 only the research diary unfortunately. I would have loved to explore better the castle but i could not resist to the final fight. I'll search for other 2 in another game session

@FGPackers I'm the opposite, I was in hyrule castle to look for the last memory then I left. Not ready to be done with this game just yet. Still have 2 Devine beasts to go and about 25 shrines before I feel like I'm done with this game.

@FGPackers Oh, okay. Here are some hints for the locations. Zelda's Diary is very close to her research notes and the kings diary is in the library (difficult to find) . Good luck finding them. First one is fairly easy to find but the second one I only stumbled upon by chance.

@Maxz wow thanks for the detailed info, i had no clue the food didn't stack with the barbarian set, that makes my choice somewhat closer, i now will consider guardian set now.

Wait, thats the part you ask source on? Well, okay, man, this is probably going to be really long, there is a lot of ground that needs to be covered.

Oh, but first, when I say 'The New Kids at Monolith Soft' I am specifically referring to the Kyoto studio. The Tokyo studio is basically a large chunk of golden age squaresoft, and I usually work that in whenever I bring them up. I also tend to bring up how much of a part of chrono trigger they were. It was literally the new kids at monolith soft who stopped and asked aunoma why. His veteran Zelda team, when faced with such things, every single time would go "What would god (Miyamoto) Do?" The new staff from monolithsoft, literally went, no thats dumb, there is no reason the player cant do this. They literally told Aunoma what Me and Mine have been screaming for years.... And Anouma actually listened to them.

Lets see, easiest first... Actually the delay had nothing to do with the switch, the switch vwersion was actually a literally raw version of the wii u version of botw, gotten up and running on switch with zero optimization. Didnt really take much time at all. I can provide a source to that, but its literally just going to be that now famous picture of the investors conference with the slide behind the nintendo dude literally saying what I just said.

The delay was actually caused by Aunoma being a little out of his depth with just how big a team he had working on breath of the wild, and mismanaging the team... One visit the game was doing really really good, then he went to supervise other projects, came back and so much new stuff was added that it ruined everything they had before (Outlined in an interview in edge 296, along with the vast majority of the other things in my post.) Said the lesson he learned was to remember to tell the team what they did that was good or something like that.

However I wasn't really referring to any particular delay, just the fact that the game went on media blackout after its initial reveal and that really shakey gameplay video, for over a yeah and a half, and when it re-emerged... It was breath of the wild, and looking distinctively different despite having the same art style and direction. (It had all the underpinnings of the Xenoblade streaming engine, and none of the underpinnings of the traditional Zelda Engine that were noticabole before). There was over a year and a half where there was not a single video, interview or even a picture of Zelda U. Thats what I was talking about.

Now the other one. You will never, ever ever EVER find any interview anywhere where Nintendo directly outlines these things or even talks about them. Its not the product end, its not something any PR mouthpeice will talk about. The one person who WOULD show this side of the spectrum... If he was going to get around to it... Well, Hes in a better place now.

But its more or less common knowledge for anyone familiar with software development, not even game related. There is a pretty clear trail, even evident in hex editors when you are rom hacking games through the generations... That kind of a foundation is pretty priceless, and there usually isnt much of a reason to get rid of it... To the point that I can tell you with a large amount of confidence, that despite Zelda switching engines, that evolution of the n64 codebase will still appear in many many games continuing its evolution well past the switch. In fact, it could circle back around to Zelda again. This time, was more of a marriage of convenience and efficiency, which would really be the only reason for such a scenario in my opinion. After all, Im not talking about the renderer, or the graphics engine, but the much lower language stuff. (Although the rendering engine from windwaker did go all the way through to skyward sword... but ill get to that)

Yes, Miyamoto considers the modified mario 64 engine that was the oot engine so far modified that its a different engine. Yeah Im not disputing that, thats actually the crux of what Im talking about, that these engines are the foundations for the mutations and evolutions that are built upon them. Doesnt change the fact, that the OOT engine, was built off of the mario 64 engine. Thats where it started. That one was built from scratch on that mips processor (there was nothing for them useful to build off of, the snes 65c816 was just a souped up 6502 from the nes, and their 3d engines relied on the FX chip, it was just too different. The n64 was a pretty clean slate on 3d engine software, and they had to overcome a lot of unforseen pitfalls with hardware there are some really good interviews on this over the years)

But once they established that low level code base, they had a foundation that they could build on top of, and when it came time for dolphin, that foundation transferred over. Now if you want direct evidence, you are going to have to get a n64 specific mips decompiler and a gcn specific ppc decompiler, so you can see precisely what code is in those roms. Good luck with that. I had some great fun on the mod scene of oot and ww and m64, and I never got into much more than a hex editor to do all I needed. Even with all the emulators we have, I dont think such a thing exists... would have certainly made a lot of things way easier then reverse engineering with trial and error.

But even so, we pretty much know there is a legacy code base in there. its really not something that unusual. The X86 processor in your computer right now still has all the legacy code of the 8086 from 1978. Still fully backwards compatable. And plenty of games started on the n64 ended up on the cube, with plenty of the same code intact (The biggest change was the assets like textures models and sound files). There is very little reason to believe Nintendo's internal dev teams would throw unecessary things away.

Honestly, you're probably thinking of more directly iterative stuff, things the player can see on the screen, as opposed to things every single 3d engine ever made needs to do, and still does the same way now as it did in the 90's.... Particularly since you stated very clearly iterative engines like m64 and oot were more than different enough for you.

Thats definitely where windwaker comes into play, and its no coincidence its been purely iterative since gamecube, With no change in basic processor, all machines have been variations on the same ibm 750 processor all the way until the switch, well, switched that., Keeping an actual basic functioning engine available, as opposed to just the framework that's underneath became a huge priority here.

But it wasn't windwaker that would start it:

"To tell you the truth, Super Mario Sunshine was developed on Nintendo's new R&D system, which integrates a 3D engine with other engines. This is a new system. When you use it, the time required for game projects is significantly reduced. So, Super Mario Sunshine was the very first game to be developed on this basic system. The second game is The Legend of Zelda." Miyamoto 2002

This is a basic description of the modern game engine. You have your base framework, into which other engines, like renderers or physics engines can be 'plugged' into. A more efficient version of what they were doing the previous gen, trying not to start completely from scratch for every game, instead modifying existing engines so completely they were like new engines. Now they made a modular base, which would have its own offshoots.

"It is now taking such a long time to come up with the basic engine for whatever game we are working for and if we can make use of an already completed engine, it is better for me as a producer. I want to make ideas come to life. As a producer and designer, I am hopeful we can make use of the Wind Waker engine for future games too." Miyamoto 2003

And oh man did he make good on that. So here there are actually some pretty good tells that these engines are basically modified versions of what came before, even if we didn't have shiggy here saying it.

1. These engines didn't use floating point for things like physics. This resulted actually in the dolphin emulator having the weirdest quirks for the longest time, until they figured it out... I think a year or two ago. Pretty recently. It was integer math, once dolphin made the switch (Heh), all the physics in WW were perfect, the replays in other games worked right, everything was fixed and way faster.

2. They don't use any culling beyond distance and frustum. This means that everything in the on screen area, is always drawn, all the time, observable yourself by turning on wireframes in dolphin. This is a pretty big one for what we are talking about. Particularly since this particular facet clashed completely with the way the Xenoblade engine handles things, which has tons of Occlusion Culling, and aggressive LOD adjustments, even right up next to the camera.... And is very specifically unique to the xenoblade games. I Mean, pretty much EVERY modern game has these things for their streaming open worlds, but you can LITERALLY identify any cropped video of a Xenoblade game, no matter how hard you try to disguise it, purely by the way it streams, culls, and changes lod, because of the way it handles culling and lod to make huge well detailed worlds... for low power consoles. Breath of the Wild SCREAMS that signature tell. Previous Zelda's, not in the slightest, they had their own signature:

So basically, in windwaker, and tp, and ss etc whatever scene you are looking at on your screen, EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS DRAWN, pots behind the wall? Drawn. Grass behind the pots? Drawn. Pig way off in the distance on the other side of the town? Drawn. You can see it all through the wireframe.

Im not sure what the reasoning behind this was, it may have just been that the gamecube was just that damn good at crunching draw calls compared to the other systems of the time. Its a signature tell. It makes for a very solid feel to the world. Everything within the frustum is already being drawn, so when you go over or around something, you never catch the engine 'catching up'. Do the same thing in dolphin with TP or Skyward sword, and you get the same results. The original reveal video, had this look and feel. Of course, its immediate drawback is that limits scene size and complexity. And it turns out, that original reveal video, wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. Oh, it was 'in engine', but there was a reason the camera never did anything but pan. Then came the aunoma and miyamoto very doctored 'gameplay video', which looked VERY rough.... Like the current iteration of the zelda engine couldnt handle that size with the scene complexity the reveal had. Then the game disappeared from media for over a year and a half. No video, no interviews, no pictures, no showings, no nothing.

Then SUddenly it bursts back onto the scene, in playable form, with all the streaming quirks of the xenoblade engine. That Xenoblade pop in, THat Xenoblade LOD change, That Xenoblade seamless world where you can walk right into a town with no loading screen, that Xenoblade teleport to any landmark with only a few second loading screen.

All signs point to Aunoma deciding to appropriate the Xenoblade engine, which already did everything he wanted for Zelda, and modifying it slightly, instead of making vast modifications to the current iteration of the once windwaker engine (Last used in TP HD)in order to be able to do what the xenoblade engine is already knocking out of the park. Best of all, they already owned the engine that already did everything they wanted. Its kind of a no brainer.

So, no, you dont have Aunoma flat out saying 'We took the Xenoblade Engine and modified it for our needs' And probably wont for years looking back at history. But the evidence for the argument is very, very strong, and any arguments against, are very very weak.

@TNGYM Interesting read... you are either spot on or full of ****. For me there is no way of knowing but I like your passion nonetheless