Why Tears of the Kingdom's physics are so mind-blowing
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- čas přidán 30. 08. 2023
- The physics in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are incredibly impressive. Footage of bridges over lava, and functioning chains, have been wowing game developers on social media. But how did the physics in a Nintendo Switch game get to be this good? Polygon's Simone de Rochefort talks to two devs and explores how TOTK's physics got so good, and what lessons the rest of the game industry can learn from Zelda's success.
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#tearsofthekingdom - Hry
Thank you for highlighting the gaming industry's labor problem, and pointing out how when games are given the time and space for their team to polish their world, the game turns out to be much more successful and enjoyable.
Studios relying on contract developers is directly responsible for why some games are bad and unfinished these days. Halo Infinite's new game engine was created by contract developers, but when it was time to start making CONTENT for the game none of the contractors who knew how to use the engine were around anymore. Their contracts weren't extended so a whole new team of people was brought on and had to learn how to work this buggy engine.
Knowing this ahead of time is why, despite having a passion for video games and programming, I chose to not be a video game developer.
It's not just gaming- every single professional services industry is facing this crunch, and there are exactly two reasons: out of control executive pay, and the relentless demand for growth at any cost by shareholders. Until these root problems are addressed (cue the howls about the evils of communism from capital G Gamers) the issues will get worse and worse and worse.
Looking at you halo
I guess it really helps if you're a studio that can make the choice to push off actually making income from your game. Every month you delay shipping that's another month you have to somehow find the money to pay however many employees you have.
Something that always gets me is the constant shrieking of a certain kind of gamer over how weak the hardware in the switch is, then a game like totk comes out and its great and has these wild physics and they immediately have to pivot to "well imagine how much better it would be with better hardware!" To which i respond "imagine how much better the games you like would be if they were better optimized for existing hardware." And on and on we go.
Also inb4 a bunch of braindead screaming about Nintendo fanboyism or whatever else. I'm not a fan of any particular console or PC, I just think it's stupid to obsess over hardware and leads to a bunch of e waste from constantly having to upgrade.
@@Horrordoc two things can be true but good luck getting the hardware weirdos to say something like that. If it's not running a 60fps they're in tears going wild. The average person doesn't care about junk like that they just want to play games and they want consoles to be affordable. The switch dies both of those things and is therefore, successful.persinslly I'm just glad I can buy a used switch and not be priced out of current gen gaming.
@@Horrordoc also I take issue with "it would sure be a lot better with better hardware"
Would it tho? Would it really? Because everytime hardware power goes up expectations go with it and so do the size and scope of games. When the hardware is improved they immediately begin making games that push the limit of said hardware and due to the rushed nature of the games industry you just get more busted poorly optimized games that render the stronger hardware meaningless.
Hardware simply cannot pickup the slack for poor optimization and employees under such severe crunch they can't produce a finished game. I'll take an extremely polished game like TotK over a half broken game on better hardware any day of the week. An ounce of polish is worth a pound of power.
I agree that optimization is wayy way more important than hardware and totk is wonderful, but also 120fps totk would be so hot
I couldn’t agree more. Similarly I wish most games worked harder to optimise file size. I appreciate the gorgeous visuals and sound but with the storage requirements it feels like seriously diminishing returns.
The comment about the loss of Senior staff is on point, if we take Zelda for example, I think part of the reason it is such a well made game is that there are so many senior staff monitoring and involved in its developement, Eiji Aonuma the producer for example has been involved with Zelda games even since the Ocarina of Time (which on itself was a pretty innovative game at that time) and has been on every Zelda game since then, same for others like Shigeru Miyamoto and others, these senior game designers/producers/directors who've been on the company and involved in projects for so long means a lot of experience and skills are passed along to every new project. Nintendo as a company from what I see seems to be the kind of company that keeps staff on and promotes long term contracts which I guess is what makes their games have that kinda unique "Nintendo" feel about them since many of the oldschool talent behind them are still involved with the newer games even today.
Japan values stability in the workplace (which has benefits and downsides), but critically it means project staff are likely to be there for the entire process.
I remember reading that Nintendo also places an unusual amount of value on raising new hires and bringing fresh voices to development
Takashi Tezuka is producing SMB Wonder. That man was the co director on the original over 30 years ago. The knowledge and concepts that he can pass onto the rest of the dev team…
Exactly what I was going to say. BotW, ToTK, and lots more of their first-party games couldn't be made by hiring a bunch of contractors. You get those kinds of amazing results by taking care of people, and giving them a stable job to continuously grow their talents and skills. It's not an accident that Nintendo is where those games came from.
They also prioritize making quality games. Because they're so much smaller than Sony or Microsoft, they need to stand out Sony is worth $100B and Microsoft is worth $2T. Nintendo is only worth $30B, which is definitely a lot of money, but nowhere near the same area as the others. So there's a pressure to make good games to make up for their lack of support in other areas
Ignoring the market valuation of the company, Nintendo knows that the experience, far and above the system specifications, is the most important foot to put forward on every release. They do their best work in cases like this, where they take an existing work and improve on it and embellish it. Because, remember, the same staff worked on this sequel and the original. They've had time to find or think of shortcuts that make the work run better, as well as ways to expand what it can do, and ideas that would have been left on the cutting room floor in the original can now be implemented in the sequel, because they didn't have to build the second game from complete scratch. That's possible because they retained staff and allowed them to commit themselves to the work.
I love the focus on the labor practices in this video. It’s not that other game developers couldn’t make these things in their game or don’t want to, it’s whether the people at the top of the studio would allow them to.
I love how you all at highlight the substance behind games. Like their creation both practically and artistically.
Not every video gushing on TotK's physics could segway into game delvelopment culture so cleanly either. The Polygon crew is on a roll lately.
🤦♀️ You could not resist correcting someone on the internet, could you? You feel good about yourself? *edited just for you @mabalito.
@@American-Jello*Couldn't
@@mabalito Another one lol correcting auto correct must make y'all's whole day better, huh?
The most impressive simulation tech in games is the type that makes someone unfamiliar with game dev think "I don't get why this is so exciting, that's not that special"
Some of the flashiest developments for players and audiences in the past 2 decades, ragdolls, gravity, particle effects, were all just a matter of raw power. But the rope in the last of us? The... EVERYTHING, in zelda? That is brilliant, but not in a way you can tell at a glance unless you know how hard it is.
The "EVERYTHING" in Zelda has been doable for more than a decade and a half. I played "Garry's Mod" back then when it was still newish.
@@Psychx_ You're comparing Zelda and Source? Hilarious. I play plenty of Gmod... TOTK's physics are way more powerful and usable. Source is really just peculiar gravity and incredibly buggy collisions. (and bunnyhopping) It's super broken, though that makes it tons of fun.
@@itsentdev It's needless to say that Source 1 is obviously less sofisticated due to its old age, but the fundamental elements are all there: weld constraints, hinges, axis constraints, motors, buoyancy, aerodynamic lift, keep upright, blast waves, duplicator etc.
Gmod came out when home PCs only had a single CPU core and physics simulation technology wasn't as advanced. I'd say the amount of jank is actually surprisingly small, given its technical heritage.
It would be interesting to see how well a potential successor (i.e. using latest Havok or Bullet physics engine) would do on modern hardware without the constraints of an embedded system.
Anyhow, my point is that the things TOTK introduced aren't as much of a novelty as they're praised as, although particularily for younger audiences, it may very well present as a completely novel thing.
@@Psychx_ Source is a very powerful physics engine, especially for its time. But Tears of the Kingdom HAS done somthing new. The physics prevails over the entire game - in most non-sandbox source games, there are only one or two permitted solutions, but TOTK allows you to do much more. The idea of physics objects aren't new, they've been around for a very long time. Nobody's treating this as something that TOTK invented, but the physics engine is a masterpiece.
@@itsentdev Right? it's always the cynical people that tries to downplay Nintendo's work on Totk by saying "garry's mod did it too" despite that the aplication and the core fundaments of both games are insanely different, and they can't realize that nobody outside of gmod has applied physics like Botw/Totk does in an open-world space.
The fact that they did this on what amounts to a 6 year old smart phone processor is nothing short of ridiculous.
it's wild
@@polygon No, it's kingdom; wild was the previous game. (Cough) I'll show myself out.
Agreed. Played it for over 100 hours and didn't see a single physics bug. It's rock solid.
…the NVidia Tegra X1 chip in the Switch is a cellphone processor?
@@Ryuujin1078You're right, it's still more powerful than a cellphone in a couple of ways. First it has real thermal dissipation, which allows for more power. The CPU is actually not bad, it's 4 cores but they're big powerful arm cores compared to phones that have 8 cores but only 1-2 are high power and the rest are medium to low power.
The place the switch is weakest in today is memory, 4gb of ddr4 is weak. The GPU is also getting older, but they've been able to squeeze capability out of it with some tricks and efficient use. The CPU is not bad though, still more than a phone chip.
Meanwhile in fallout i open a door and take damage from a can of peas that reached terminal velocity from trying to sit still on a table 😂
Why does this comment make me want to play Fallout? like why?
@@beans.x3 it's charming in a busted kinda way. Like if fallout didn't have 8billion bugs would it even be fallout?
@@beans.x3because Bethesda Jankiness is charming
@@ninjaeddy1717it really is. I don't know how often I burst into loud laughter during skyrim because the engine decided that it's jankin' time and cranked the ridiculousness up to 11 out of the blue
Bruh i used to think putting a bucket over someone's head in skyrim was next level lmaoo
I think your closing point about the labor problem applies not just to the game development industry, but to pretty much every industry. Workers are treated like they’re expendable, like anybody on any project can at any time be completely replaced.
And I think a lot of industries are gonna be crippled in a few years by a lack of young talent in the position to take over because of this.
Yep - everything is squeezed for as much short term gain and to keep the line going up. Eventually it collapses and restarts in spirit in a new venture capital funded startup. The people who were on top are of course secured with golden parachutes, and the workers drag themselves to yet another series of job interviews which all demand higher expectations because the market is flushed with good workers who should be in stable positions.
Capitalism - such an efficient system that even failure has become a feature, not a bug.
Hell, look into the anime industry right now. Anime have been getting delayed more and more lately. With like 50 being made every season, animators have to delay shows that are only 3 episodes in
@@underdog353777 More the Western treatment of it. Not to say the Eastern method such as with Tears of the Kingdom is always better. There should be a mix of this dynamicism, this expectation that people can change companies quickly, since it builds up a lot of experience in a lot of areas very fast. This is very much the Western method. While companies do ask for loyalty, the individualistic aspect of society only takes that loyalty so far.
The Eastern Method has it's benefits, after all careers tend to be more stable, and more investment is expected into the company/community. This makes it difficult, though, to quickly introduce new talent and ideas and can lead to a bureaucratic slog to everything.
Western things tend to have a problem of things failing because they move too fast, Eastern things tend to have a problem of things failing because they move too slowly. A middle ground is what we want. If it was black and white, though, it would probably be best to have the first part of a career follow the Western method, and then later on embrace the Eastern method, takes the best of both worlds.
@@haroldparsons9727 Not the game industry, there's always going to be a stream of naive newcomers no matter how crap the industry treats them because videogames.
I mean, TOTK became my favorite game of all time, because I NEVER seen anything like this. Is insanely good, not just the gameplay, ost, physics or the story (yep! This time is a very good one), but all the care and effot they put in this game is insane.
People like to complain about the price and some Nintendo decisions, but they're doing good games for like...40 years.
To send home the concept that not all things in a game need to be physically simulated I think it's important to look back at the GDC panel for BotW: there they explained how the game had a physics engine and a chemistry engine. They stressed that they didn't aim for realistic reactions in the game interactions, but rather they pursued believable/logical reactions, which doesn't always translate to real physics, having a realistic simulation more times than we think doesn't translate to a fun experience.
The chemistry engine was the term they coined for the world interaction with physics. It's not like it was a separate and new thing. They explained that Havok physics had that great balance of fun and realism
Yes. People didn't play DOAX games for their realism. They played them because of the fun physixxx.
On the note of this scope in physics being unnecessary for most games-- I feel like this work (if Nintendo ever deigns to share it) is vitally important for VR endeavors not so far in the future. Sensory feedback gloves and omni treadmills are in active development. The VR singularity is 1:1 physics simulation, and this engine is probably closer than any VR game or experiment produced so far. If not close (weight being measured in apples, for instance), then strong enough to be a foundation for future development.
Speaking of, a video essay on VR locomotion & sensory feedback is a topic I think is worth exploring. Lots of exciting stuff in the works.
Not sure if internally the physics engine uses apples as a unit, probably people use it because it's a readily available item to manipulate and use for measurements in game. For all we know an apple might weigh 10kg
Yeah, apples are just how users decided to weight things. Now that some data miners have gotten time to crack open the game, we do have proper game unit values for object masses. That said, one thing that was clear to me was that the masses were set by hand to give the right feel for each object interaction rather than reflecting the actual mass of the object. Thats pretty common since game physics engines (including this one) don't handle those interactions accurately enough to just type in the right mass and have everything work out in the way the designers envisioned.
For example, the spiked steel ball is orders of magnitude more massive numerically than it ought to be. That way, it breaks through things dramatically when dropped from relatively moderate heights.
@@ulti-mantis Considering Link only weighs a handful of apples, I agree that their units of measurement may not be entirely 1:1 lol.
Nintendo making BOTW/TOTK's physics open-source seems pretty unlikely considering they submitted a patent application for them
Omnidirectional treadmills are already a thing. Hell, I've got one behind me as I type this.
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are some of the most realistic games ever made. Realism isn't only graphics. These games function more like a real world than most other games ever have.
I think immersive or intuitive are better words than realistic to describe botw/totk's physics system
All systems and rules are consistent within the reality of the game. Immersive would be a good way to describe it indeed.
Exactly! Many NPC's, enemies and animals have complex behaviour, the physics and chemistry systems make sense and are (mostly) bug free and the light is simple yet beautiful in the same way that sunsets can be in reality. In comparison with BotW and TotK, other games with much more "realistic" graphics (Elden Ring, The Witcher) feel super artificial and fake.
@@pramitpratimdas8198no, realism is appropriate, puddle size on diving, grass burning and creating wind streams from the fire physics, object velocity and mass; even more so on tears of the kingdom, arrows bouncing of objects so you can pick them up or even sticking into certain objects, etc etc. they are about realism in physics. That’s not intuition or immersion
@@SkitzSkitzVids there are obviously some physics mechanics that are realistic but overall it's still pretty fantastical. Opening a paraglider from your pocket, climbing up surfaces like a frog, creating updrafts from fire that are strong enough to launch into the stratosphere etc. However it's fairly easy to suspend disbelief cuz the systems are predictable and very consistent
Okay so it wasn't just me freaking out about those door physics? I was so dang impressed and just thinking, "Wait, they thought of that too?"
I feel like this is a problem that requires massive studio _groups_ that work on 3-5 different games at once. It's not economical to hire on large teams to work full time on a single game, because there are large portions of development in which certain roles have nothing to do. But it is also bad to just hire and fire people specifically when they are most needed. So the best solution is to keep everyone employed at the company, but to rotate them in and out of specific projects where they become relevant. That way, you keep the institutional knowledge in house, and they can still be consulted where needed, but nobody is left idle when they've already done most of their work on the project and really have nothing to take up their day until the next project starts,
This video is great, but I can't stop thinking about how good Simone's hair looks
WELL THANK U
A very small but possibly interesting point is that the structures in TotK never form a “true” chain! They can *only* be attached as trees. Even the neat bridge adheres to this. This means that it is likely TotK used a reduced coordinates approach to its physics solver, which is more stable!
Could you explain what you mean a bit by this? Do you mean that in a single step, the movement of object A can affect the movement of object B but not vice versa?
@@aspuzling much simpler: because of the way ultrahand attachment works, you can only add new objects to an existing structure. So no object will ever encounter itself on a path back to the root object. A chain can normally form a full cyclical graph, but this isn’t possible with the reduced coordinates systems.
“Link is a ten apple boy” is now my favorite string of words ever
This game is smarter than I am. I literally just encountered the pulleys at 5:32 and could not figure them out, so I used Recall and sprinted through 😭
I think you’re playing as intended 😂 you used the tools they gave you!
Something to mention as well is that they got it all running on the switch. The fact that totk ran perfectly for hours at a time on a device weaker than some smartphones right now is mad.
This was a great video, let's give them a big Ultrahand!
I would really love a deep dive into the Recall ability too. Maybe its more simple than I am imagining, but recording nearly EVERY objects position as it moves through space just so the player MIGHT use recall on it is blowing my mind. The game must be doing so many calculations under the hood that we never see unless we use Recall
Well, this is easier than you may expect, as it can be optimized using a rather simple technique: you only store the positions of the objects that are actually moving. So, you don't actually have to store that much data. In programming, it's not uncommon to have some apparently easy problems be hellish to solve, while other apparently hard problems turn out to be easy. For a "hard" version of this problem, see the game Braid by Jonathan Blow. In this one, the whole game can be rewinded, and Blow had to create a custom compression system for this (we are talking about being able to rewind hours of gameplay).
@@tinne26 Oh interesting, thank you for the explanation!
Great video! I didn’t realize how impressive the pulley doors were until this pointed it out. I like learning something like this that makes me appreciate little things in a game more than I did before
I'm impressed, but mostly because I never figured out how to make the pulley thing and now I feel I missed out
@@Iffondrelattach the axel to the door with the arrow facing the nearest frame, attach the wheel to the weight at the end of the chain
@@Iffondrel you're not alone, i can't figure out how to use the wheel to open it either, solved it by moving the door with ultra hand and then recall😂
Ain't it kinda funny that every time we look at a game that's pretty astonishing in its quality it boils down "The people weren't constantly crunched by greedy deadlines and insecure working conditions."
And every time we look at a massive failure in both reception, quality and/ profit it boils down to "The people we constantly crunched by greedy deadlines and insecure working conditions."
And oftentimes it really is just that simple.
Kinda seems like there might be a lesson to be learnt there, But what do I know.
It's frankly insane to me that this has been the case time and again, yet somehow so many greedy publishers/executives still don't get it.
@@svenbtbthey never fckn do. Imagine cyberpunk came out not a buggy mess
Great video! Games with a complex physics sandbox have some of the most fun emergent gameplay in recent memory, even if it's unintentional like launching horses off rocks in Skyrim. How developers make these physics sandboxes work is super interesting, and I'm glad you guys did a video on it.
Nintendo practically invented modern game development (processes and game design itself) and many of those same key innovators are still working on development or actively supervising and mentoring the next generation. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Nintendo achieves things other studios would never dare attempt. I don't think it's hyperbole, but I'm sure most of the game developer community (who have been in the business for a while) admire Nintendo. They are simply on another level.
Pissing-fire-man was the perfect shot to end the video on.
now i feel sad that i somehow cheesed my way past those doors! i can't remember solving the second one.
great video-- highlighting the value of stable labor for a stable game is so so important!
I just did this section and I also didn't appreciate the door mechanisms. I just held the door open for a while, then used the Recall ability to hold the doors open long enough to get out with the object I was carrying.
We need more videos like this to teach players just how impressive modern day games are, and how much we take that for granted. It would only help the player expectations which damage the dev cycle.
This just made me respect game developers more than what I usually had. Their grasp with physics and math is amazing.
Not my university newspaper popping up at 12:31!! Shout out the Observer
The churn of developers is massive problem as to why so many AAA studios can't make games like Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo, for all their problems, has retained and built up and insanely talented core staff who have decades of experience at this point. Institutional memory is a thing, and it matters.
it was very educational, I didn't even think that this bridge was so special but when you think about it, it is actually a development miracle
Actually it isn't.
Yeah I’m convinced some of the programming in TOTK is just straight up black magic
Even the physics in HL Alyx with being able to hold a container full of objects and not have them explode out of the container was mind blowing to me after playing so much GMod
Realistic over realism is the Zelda motto, and this game shows it more than ever
The best description I've heard was that it's Breath of the Wild fused with GMod
As a programmer in corporate America it’s common knowledge that there are two industries you don’t want to be in: marketing and video games. And of the two, video games are worse. Marketing firms may work you to death on throwaway project after throwaway project, but at least there’s money in it. Video game studios take your nights and weekends for literal years, string you along with constant delays, look for any excuse not to pay you, and then pull your name from the credits because you quit a month before release.
Not speaking from experience here. Corporate software may not be as “fun” as video games, but at least I get to spend my evenings at home with my kids.
Yeah, as much as I'd love to work in games I think it would probably be miserable unless you get REALLY lucky. I can just make games at home in my free time.
As always, you folks focus on the real issues even in the fun videos! Love it.
Simone Blessing us with her wisdom from the void is just goals
god what a good game. i always love the videos where we get to learn about how games are made, i could've watched this for hours
I just went through that part where you have to rebuild the door with the wheel and I absolutely did not figure that out I used my reverse time to open it long enough to jam my vehicle through it 😂😅
Great video, love the industry piece at the end, retaining talent is an underrated aspect of Nintendo
Perfect timing for releasing this video since we learned today that Mario Wonder didn't have a deadline in the early stages of development. More companies should give time to their developers to complete their vision
Awesome video. I was really stunned in game when I saw that chain-wheel- pull sliding door mechanism. I have no background in game development or physics, and it STILL blew my mind. I think that door was the single most complex bit of calculations I've ever seen in a video game to date. Nintendo really is awesome.
I would love more videos but if they're of this calibre, take as much time between postings as you need. ❤ Simone rocks!
11:55 It is astonishing that this is how someone had to make a game.
This is how large companies force their workers to make most games
This was a great summary, have just got the game and am blown away by the physics, lets also not forget the hardware its running on. Also, it takes a special mind to come up with that last construction shown!
I've been wondering how guns work in games for the past few weeks. It was a very nice surprise to learn it here. Oh, and that ten apple boy line was the funniest thing I've heard in ages. Good on y'all.
I think TOTK is the most fun i've had in a video game, ever. You can literally spend an endless amount of time building and engineering different kinds of contraptions, come up with some insanely creative vehicles, weapons and tools, and EVERYTHING in this game just works so perfectly, it feels like all this advanced physics shouldn't be even possible.
Truly a masterclass of game development
Such a good video, great guests and subject, and Simone had the riz going, it was nice seeing yall in studio filming and standing in front of the famous black background as well, thanks Polyfam
Really well done video! Informative, fun, and you brought in really great sources
I work in software development. I second the point about contractors not being a replacement for full time devs. I don’t work in games but we are experiencing the same problem. We get contractors that cost more an hour than a senior dev. The on-boarding of new contractors is not instant. One dev is not swap out-able for another. I honestly don’t think companies can see the long term benefits of investing in talent over the short term numbers.
This video really reminded me about Little Big Planet and how innovative it was.
One of my favorite games of all time 😭 -Simone
My only experience in this field was an OpenGL demo w/ the physics library Bullet. I coded it such that I could spawn balls of various sizes and launch them at speed relative to their size. Just getting that working had me feeling like a mad genius. ToTK is a god damned triumph
Super cool video! Thanks for talking about how the industry treats people.
Thank you for touching upon the serious labor problem the industry has. Game developers deserve proper compensation & health coverage when making these amazing games we all love and enjoy! (As of now Sag Aftra is helping to call a vote to strike for the game industry, so if they go on strike PLEASE support them!)
The shortage of senior staff is the reason why we're seeing more transaction platforms than finished games.
oh, cole used to work on rockets? big deal, bet he's never even stuck 4 rockets to a hot air balloon and set himself on fire in the process. absolute scrub.
I'll have you know I set myself on fire in MANY different ways. And in the game.
@@mechtroidProductions damn, in that case I have no choice but to respect you
This is my go-to method for going vertical in the game if there aren't any fallen stones or watchtowers around.
Baguette boy! I've got nothing to add
Man this game really made me appreciate how awesome a game can be nowadays if people just let them work. I would say it was worth the wait. I´ve been playing competitive Warzone and Call of Duty and they have a 1 year cycle between games. Every single time there is a new game, there is like 20 things that doesn´t work or either they are not acknowledged by the industry. It´s exhausting to try to make content or compete in a game that doesn´t work as it is supposed to do. Never the less I think Nintendo just shook the whole industry by making this game.
The big difference I noticed between American game studios and Japanese game studios:
American game developers work on short 1 - 3 year contracts as freelancers.
While Japanese game developers get signed on to actual game studios and essentially gain permanent employment for the rest of their careers.
Japanese devs just work on the next video game project right after finishing a previous one, with the same studio.
I prefer the Japanese method more in game development. It provides stability of a job rather than the uncertainty of where I, as a game developer, am gonna get my next paycheque after only a few years.
Even Western game studios like Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft constantly shuffles out their employees after every few years.
Nintendo with BOTW: We revolutionized open world games
Nintendo with TOTK: We revolutionized video game physics
The more we see and observe, the more the work in TOTK (not just the physics) seems out of this world.
The physics engine is so good that even above the normal build limit it still works as normal
It also dynamically changes objects based on their size, like fans can push more the bigger they are
Love the ending commentary on labor practices. I've never pursued a career in games despite having applicable skills and interest in the field bc I don't trust that I would be supported in HAVING a career by any studio I worked for.
I'm not saying I'm special-far from it. What I'm saying is, how many people out there are just like me? People who would love to be in this industry but stay away because of the exploitation of its workers.
The treatment itself discourages junior and mid-level workers from becoming the next generation of senior talent, but the reputation of said treatment limits how much of the next generation of junior talent even emerges.
Great video, thank you for uploading! Keep up the good content!
oooooooooo simone vid about physics!!!! love 2 hear about fluid dynamics and collisions from the Wet Correspondent
What an amazing duo and video, well done
That build at the end should probably consult a urologist...
Nice job with this video, it was really interesting and the part about gaming industry labor problems is quite similar to the cinema industry (VFX).
It makes complete sense that making cool things and getting them to run efficiently takes a lot of know-how and experience, particularly in math and programming. Shame that some companies are not trying to build up that collective experience. From what I've read, a company can only learn from mistakes and iterate on their production process if people with the knowledge to do that stick around and are allowed to speak up. And that applies to more than just the games industry.
that bridge was also almost possible for me as a player. I got the idea right from the beginning, but execution failed so hard, I think no other shrine puzzle took me so long to work.
The credits for totk being so damn long is why it's so beautiful
I will always want the next Zelda game as fast as possible but I will always know that when I buy it and I have it it's going to be what the developers envisioned and that's why I love them so much
When will there be an open source physics library that can simulate bridges and chains efficiently?
Not only the physic. Basically it can run on Switch with all dem backgrounds which can load from sky to depths. And everything sums up less than 20 GB file size, despite it was even bigger than Breath of the Wild is even crazier. One would think with added layers (Sky and Depths) it would sum up at least twice of Breath of the Wild size, but it didn't 🤯
It really is so impressive
There is a quote from a musician that goes something like " once you free your mind of the concept of (music) being "proper" and "correct", then you can whatever you want. There is no preconception of what is right". I used to think that nintendo is very strict but mario and zelda prove me wrong time after time. even though these franchises are worth billions, they never stop to push the limits and break conventions. I think everyone should really study Iwata's philosophy on shaping the culture within nintendo. among his many many many quotes there is one that goes like "if we ever come to a disagreement, please follow your opinion first and not mine" (while talking with game devs). He knew that you cant set limits on creative people and expect them to be creative.
Oh damn, judging by this video, once again the games industry is so similar to tv and film with its so reliant on abusing young talent until they just can't do it any more
13:37 that’s one big Zonai d-vice 😉
Love your videos🎉
It’s great that you took the time at the end to describe the underlying problem of subcontracting developers. Well said!
9:43 "I mean, actually that sounds kinda fun" lol
What a great concept that turned into a great video! Yee haw Simone 👏🏻
TOTK uses an updated version of Havok (the same physics engine as Half-Life 2), which is interestingly owned by Microsoft. I wonder how much was off the shelf and how much Nintendo had to add to it themselves. Garry's Mod has a lot of similar physics interactions.
Where did you get word that it uses Havok?
@@user-be3qc7re9o Nintendo mentioned it in their breath of the wild GDC talk and datamining totk shows they used a more recent version than botw
@@HavingFunTimes I see.
Yeah, I just lifted the door with ultrahand and then recalled it to run through
I have been playing Nintendo games since 1989. I have owned most of their systems and handhelds and have played most of their flagship titles. Nintendo is synonymous with quality. I would easily rather wait an extra year for a quality game, than get the game faster and it's full of bugs and gameplay glitches. I am not saying that every Nintendo game is perfect, just that they have a reputation for bringing their "A game" to the table every time. Some of their ideas are weird, wacky or ahead of their time, but they always put out a quality product that can be enjoyed by most. I look forward to seeing what Nintendo does with Metroid Prime 4 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
For the 2024 Paris Olympics, there better be a dancing bread boy doing the same canned animation around every fountain and statue.
They must.
13:34 Burning Man was wild this year
Great video on the labor effects of specialized game engineers. I also suggest Noita to all that want physics on all objects
This is super duper interesting! Remember when Nintendo dropped those "behind the scenes/making of" videos for BOTW back in the day? In 1 of those videos they talked about the physics and what not, n I remember them having a real tough time with creating the wind. At 1 point they had made a tiny adjustment, and the wind was so strong it blew almost EVERYTHING away. They were using a pot to test wind strength, iirc. That was such an interesting video. I had no idea physics creation was such an intricate and difficult thing.
I honestly like when physics acts in crazy unpredictable ways
I struggles with that particul bridge shrin, I dont know why it never worked for me but I ended up having to cheese it
She’s one of the best hosts
3:46 when they ask you if you can implement an extra exception case to the game logic.
i just laughed at the expression. its accurate yet expresses the mood.
actually those 3 people are excellent viewpoints to explain this. well done 👏
The fact that this runs on a Nintendo Switch, a heavily underpowered tablet by 2023 standards (and even by 2017's standards...), is so much more impressive.
I mean the GPU was pretty good for 2017 mobile standards, but the RAM is such a bottleneck sadly for many games. Really hard to develope around it
@@otozinclus3593 The GPU yes, but the CPU not at all, and your point about the RAM is also valid.
This makes games like TotK even more impressive.
@@MK73DS The CPU is actually rarely a bottleneck in most games. It's usually really just the Memory.
Many games don't utilize the GPU and CPU to 100%
@@otozinclus3593 They actually do, first just watch the video you're commenting on. They explain how computationally intensive this physics is. Second, use any Switch frequency monitor or overclocking tool, you'll get a nice bump in performance for raising GPU clocks alone in most graphically intensive games (like Zelda BotW and TotK).
The memory bottleneck is real but it doesn't mean the CPU and GPU are rarely bottlenecks either. They all are depending on the game, and big games like TotK can use the CPU at 100%. Also, the CPU is used to decompress data, which may not increase fps but will increase the loading speed (not just levels, but also loading of textures, musics and other assets while playing). A faster CPU may achieve faster decompression which can result in less pop-in.
@@MK73DS Overclocking GPU does help, but far less than overclocking the RAM.
And yes, if you look at frequencies, GPU and CPU are in tons of areas not fully utilized. There are areas where they are, but most don't. That's why I said "rarely" a bottleneck. It does happen, just not often
Great watch!
My anxiety went through the roof at the sight of that giant Caelid dog. You can't do that to a person, Polygon!!!
Listen, if I had to suffer through it so do you
incredibly well done vid!
4:07 Distracted by the extremely cursed 275 HP Pharah footage from early Overwatch
the dev's final statement is very telling. This is one of the main reasons why so many games suck now, i feel. whether its art, writing, programing, or design, contract labor makes it so no one knows what the hell is going on after 2 years.
“ he’s a 10 apple boy “ got me 😂😂