
Zelda: The Wind Waker – Tech and Texture Analysis - fmax30
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104415
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doomlaser
If you enjoyed this, there's also a good breakdown of the techniques used to
build Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2:
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/170524064/The-Making-of-Shadow-
of-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/170524064/The-Making-of-Shadow-of-the-
Colossus)

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.

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Danieru
Could someone re-upload the PDF to a different site? Scribd on mobile has
turned into an even worse Experts Exchange or Quora.

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DanBC
Please could you clarify? On Ios I had a single full screen thing that I had
to cancel but I get the full PDF after that.

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wodenokoto
You got the full PDF without login? I got a HTML version with very poor
quality pictures or asked to pay 9 dollars to create an account that can
download the PDF.

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krisgee
Fantastic! I remember reading this a couple of years ago and saying "huh,
that's cool" but I make games now and it's much more interesting to read
having had to write shaders and make similar sorts of compromises, I
especially like the closest source shadows and semi-dynamic tassles on the
spears.

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.

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jafaku
Kind of offtopic: As a professional of web development and operations with ~10
years of exp... Any ideas where I should start if I want to learn game
development? I want to be able to create something by myself, like the Dwarf
Fortress guys. Not sure if something with better graphics is even possible as
a one man project.

Where else can I ask this question without being treated like a noob or a
"gimme teh code plz" beggar?

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krisgee
I'm almost 100% sure others will disagree but I'd say start with Unity. The
most important thing is getting something small done to give you a taste of
what's involved and then you can dig deeper and develop _Opinions_ and
eventually go pick a new engine/roll your own.

I definitely do _not_ recommend trying to roll your own engine at first
because you'll never get a game done.

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eloisant
Actually as someone who also did mostly web development professionally before
starting games as a hobby, I think it's better to start by coding a small game
without any engine (like a shooter or a platformer) to fully understand the
concepts like game loop, FPS, sprites, etc. Then only you can move to using an
engine and you'll understand better what's going on.

That's especially true for someone who already knows programming, the answer
would be different for someone who had no programming experience.

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krapp
I'm taking tutorials for game making in SDL2 to expand my knowledge of C++,
and because i've had an interest in game design for a while. I'm certainly
learning a lot more than I ever did playing around with Game Maker..

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girvo
Hey, don't knock it. I learnt to program in GML; to the point where I built a
3D game out of Game Maker, pretty much using the UI as a glorified level
editor, rather than using its proper actions. Taught me heaps :)

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.

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krapp
Game Maker is actually pretty nice now that it comes with a physics engine
(although I was annoyed when it took me like an hour to reimplement a project
it took me weeks to do in an older version because _everything was just there_
) ... I just wish it used something other than GML for its scripting language.

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magoghm
Zelda games have a lot of interesting implementation details. You might also
be interested in Twilight Princess Eyes Breakdown:
[http://www.benjones.us/twilight-princess-eyes-
breakdown/](http://www.benjones.us/twilight-princess-eyes-breakdown/)

~~~
krisgee
[http://old.troygilbert.com/2006/10/the-movement-and-
attack-m...](http://old.troygilbert.com/2006/10/the-movement-and-attack-
mechanics-of-the-legend-of-zelda/)

[http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/8336/how-was-
coll...](http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/8336/how-was-collision-
detection-handled-in-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past)

2D Zelda had some neat stuff too.

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baby
I remember just stopping and watching the waves in awe. I'm glad I'm not the
only one who was charmed by them

"this animated wave material is one of my all time favorite fx in game art"

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dhfromkorea
Precisely the same kind of awe I was in. Even several years from then, I still
listen to the WW theme songs as part of my morning ritual. Too bad I couldn't
play games like this too much lately...

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JonnieCache
I forgot how pretty that game was. Shame it fell apart 2/3 of the way through,
like so many games seem to do.

Incidentally if you like this kind of thing, and you haven't played Fez yet,
then well, the rest of your sunday is sorted.

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antidaily
I thought it was pretty fantastic the whole way.

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JonnieCache
That ridiculous fedex quest at the end kinda took the shine off it for me. It
felt really lazy.

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antidaily
The Triforce stuff or Ganon's Tower?

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gergles
Almost certainly the triforce stuff, as even Nintendo realized how ridiculous
it was, and nerfed it in the HD remake.

See [http://www.zeldadungeon.net/2013/08/the-wind-waker-hd-
trifor...](http://www.zeldadungeon.net/2013/08/the-wind-waker-hd-triforce-
quest-changes-detailed/).

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thegeomaster
It seems to me that the artistic portion of Wind Waker was given a little more
attention than the technical one. The lack of instancing/batching when
rendering grass or the lack of efficient culling outside, for instance, surely
doesn't match the care with which the artists designed the lighting or
splatted sea materials.

Still, great analysis.

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glhaynes
I'm not sure -- the game runs with a good frame rate in nearly all places
(IIRC), so it doesn't seem like they needed the power that'd be freed up by
better culling. Maybe they just didn't (prematurely?) optimize there and
instead spent their time on some of the other little details from this post?

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JoshTriplett
Exactly. PC games optimize like crazy because every optimization offers the
chance to run on lower-end systems and sell a few more copies. Console games
have a defined target, and as long as they run well on that target, they're
done; optimizations only matter if the game doesn't hit the desired framerate
on the one and only target device.

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Narishma
It's the other way around. PC games are rarely optimized to any significant
degree because of the vast amount of different configurations out there, and
PC gamers will just through hardware at the problem anyway. On a console, you
know exactly what configuration all your players have, and any optimizations
you do will benefit every one of them.

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gabriel34
His point still holds: in consoles, any optimization past a certain threshold
is wasted effort because your consumer does not get any additional value (the
game runs equally as smooth and beautiful with or without the optimization),
therefore, doesn't pay more.

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Narishma
It's only wasted in the short term. If you optimize so much that you have a
lot of unused resources left, you just use them in your next game.

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glhaynes
You get to make that case to the project lead. :)

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kevin818
Are these same kind of techniques applicable to mobile devices or is the
hardware just not there yet? I've always wondered about whether console
development and mobile development have converged or not yet.

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wtallis
Mobile devices have long-since surpassed the GameCube generation of consoles,
and in some ways are past the Xbox 360/PS3 generation. Mobile devices have
architecturally modern GPUs, and only lack in core count and clock speed
(given the lower TDP than consoles).

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Narishma
And bandwidth.

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daktanis
This is pretty cool as a hobbyist game dev.

