Why Tears of the Kingdom's physics are so mind-blowing
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Date: 2023-12-10
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Comments and reviews: 30
-DarkH4X0
I'd argue that Nintendo purposely chooses their console hardware not to be as powerful as others just to flex on how good they are at optimazing games hahah.
Jokes aside, I really believe that having some sorts of hardware limitation inevitably obligates developers to think outside the box in order to squeeze everything they can out of the hardware. Some of the best older games, hevly relied on various tricks in terms of optimization, let's just think about the super efficient inverse square root algorithm in Doom, or the fact that the whole Crash Bandicoot peculiar gameplay was born due to hw limitations, having the camera always behind the moving character, without freedom of movement enabled the devs to optimize the polygons and texture resolution to the fixed camera distance, moreover allowing to deallocate from memory all the no more visible areas behind the camera, therefore saving space.
Nintendo's always been known for all these kind of tricks, in Mario Galaxy there were some shaders and sliding textures simulating water, that to some people not knowing might have looked as same sort of physics engine simulation, whereas it's often all about clever math tricks requiring much less resource consumption.
Speaking of resource management and optimization, a nice project that brings hardware limitation to its peak is Pico8, a simulated fantasy console, with lots of constraints where people need to optimize everything in order to even display some pixels on screen without exceeding memory limits, nonetheless many talented devs have been able to create some really nice game experiences (e. g. Celeste) and the games are in the end so small that are basically just png files of few kilobytes.
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I'd argue that Nintendo purposely chooses their console hardware not to be as powerful as others just to flex on how good they are at optimazing games hahah.
Jokes aside, I really believe that having some sorts of hardware limitation inevitably obligates developers to think outside the box in order to squeeze everything they can out of the hardware. Some of the best older games, hevly relied on various tricks in terms of optimization, let's just think about the super efficient inverse square root algorithm in Doom, or the fact that the whole Crash Bandicoot peculiar gameplay was born due to hw limitations, having the camera always behind the moving character, without freedom of movement enabled the devs to optimize the polygons and texture resolution to the fixed camera distance, moreover allowing to deallocate from memory all the no more visible areas behind the camera, therefore saving space.
Nintendo's always been known for all these kind of tricks, in Mario Galaxy there were some shaders and sliding textures simulating water, that to some people not knowing might have looked as same sort of physics engine simulation, whereas it's often all about clever math tricks requiring much less resource consumption.
Speaking of resource management and optimization, a nice project that brings hardware limitation to its peak is Pico8, a simulated fantasy console, with lots of constraints where people need to optimize everything in order to even display some pixels on screen without exceeding memory limits, nonetheless many talented devs have been able to create some really nice game experiences (e. g. Celeste) and the games are in the end so small that are basically just png files of few kilobytes.
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-xenohiraeth
The attention given to jobs in the games industry is very important. Nintendo is what I consider the leader in the industry in terms of Employee retention and satisfaction.
Nintendo is very unique in the industry in that they value their talent and make proactive efforts to retain them without the need of pressure from employees. Their executives are the lowest paid in the industry even by Japanese standards. They gave their developers raises when inflation and cost of living became an issue over the past year. They give developers the time they need to create a great product which can result in job satisfaction rarely found in other parts of the industry. In times of struggle the employees are sheltered from the pressure with executives taking pay cuts and and taking responsibility for business failures. Every other cost cutting measure will be taken before layoffs. They are a Last Resort.
A lot of game companies particularly in corporate America need to adopt this sustainable method running their business. It results in happier employees, business stability and sustainability and top tier, quality products like Tears of the Kingdom.
One last note on Nintendo. Contract work has been a struggle for them just as much as any other company. Work needs to be done industry wide to ensure that contractors can find their place in a full time position and truly elevate their careers.
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The attention given to jobs in the games industry is very important. Nintendo is what I consider the leader in the industry in terms of Employee retention and satisfaction.
Nintendo is very unique in the industry in that they value their talent and make proactive efforts to retain them without the need of pressure from employees. Their executives are the lowest paid in the industry even by Japanese standards. They gave their developers raises when inflation and cost of living became an issue over the past year. They give developers the time they need to create a great product which can result in job satisfaction rarely found in other parts of the industry. In times of struggle the employees are sheltered from the pressure with executives taking pay cuts and and taking responsibility for business failures. Every other cost cutting measure will be taken before layoffs. They are a Last Resort.
A lot of game companies particularly in corporate America need to adopt this sustainable method running their business. It results in happier employees, business stability and sustainability and top tier, quality products like Tears of the Kingdom.
One last note on Nintendo. Contract work has been a struggle for them just as much as any other company. Work needs to be done industry wide to ensure that contractors can find their place in a full time position and truly elevate their careers.
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-jawaring4367
lmao what? The game's physics are frustrating and dated. Trying to get anything to work intuitively in this game is impossible, and even when you understand how the physics work (center of gravity only, no aerodynamic physics, the terrible building mechanics, forced loss of momentum in lateral direction to intentionally slow players down) trying to make a device do what it should is a huge hassle. The best parts of this game's physics are the unintentional glitches in the physics engine, just like in BotW.
Once again, despite Nintendo's inability to keep up with modern games, they have managed to accidentally create a bunch of bugs that are fun to exploit. Unfortunately this time around they are patching most of the fun out of the game without making any actual improvements to their bad mechanics.
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lmao what? The game's physics are frustrating and dated. Trying to get anything to work intuitively in this game is impossible, and even when you understand how the physics work (center of gravity only, no aerodynamic physics, the terrible building mechanics, forced loss of momentum in lateral direction to intentionally slow players down) trying to make a device do what it should is a huge hassle. The best parts of this game's physics are the unintentional glitches in the physics engine, just like in BotW.
Once again, despite Nintendo's inability to keep up with modern games, they have managed to accidentally create a bunch of bugs that are fun to exploit. Unfortunately this time around they are patching most of the fun out of the game without making any actual improvements to their bad mechanics.
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-mr. bennett108
All I can say to the final point of this video is this: I work in a very small, ethically run code shop with full time employees, a standard work-week, and especially no crunch. We alson have a bunch of long-term contractors that aren't indie, we contract a shop that uses full-timers. It's taken us over 7 years to get to a truly deliverable product (we delivered a janky mess at year 3. At our team size, it would have taken a game shop half as long or less for roughly the same quality of output and usability. Ethical coding is like building a bridge, not writing a novel. If you go faster than the limits of person writing it, something is going to give, and it's usually the quality of the product or the sanity of the developer, not the pocketbook of the bankroller.
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All I can say to the final point of this video is this: I work in a very small, ethically run code shop with full time employees, a standard work-week, and especially no crunch. We alson have a bunch of long-term contractors that aren't indie, we contract a shop that uses full-timers. It's taken us over 7 years to get to a truly deliverable product (we delivered a janky mess at year 3. At our team size, it would have taken a game shop half as long or less for roughly the same quality of output and usability. Ethical coding is like building a bridge, not writing a novel. If you go faster than the limits of person writing it, something is going to give, and it's usually the quality of the product or the sanity of the developer, not the pocketbook of the bankroller.
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-McKueen
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.
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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.
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-warriorlink8612
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.
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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.
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-Reegareth
13: 00 honestly this is such wisdom. Big corporations are running the development of So many games and they just don't care about the games or the people making them. They just want profits. And it's leading to worse and worse games and a lot of talent is leaving the industry because they aren't taking good enough care of them. Nintendo and Larian Studios are two cases of not doing this. Indie developers are also in this same position. They aren't beholden to some larger corporate entity breathing down their neck for the sake of profit and are more focused on creating something they love and are proud of. This is where real innovation and quality experiences come from IMO.
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13: 00 honestly this is such wisdom. Big corporations are running the development of So many games and they just don't care about the games or the people making them. They just want profits. And it's leading to worse and worse games and a lot of talent is leaving the industry because they aren't taking good enough care of them. Nintendo and Larian Studios are two cases of not doing this. Indie developers are also in this same position. They aren't beholden to some larger corporate entity breathing down their neck for the sake of profit and are more focused on creating something they love and are proud of. This is where real innovation and quality experiences come from IMO.
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-kutulukutu
I would much rather wait an extra year or two for an amazing game with fun glitches than to overwork creative minds to the point of breaking for a game that may not even load on day one. Quality over quantity is real. Yo, if we all stop buying these games at launch and wait until they're all patched, guess what? They'll stop releasing their Beta builds and promising to fix them. They'll start releasing actual, finished product again. TOTK had glitches Nintendo didn't like. That's those updates. No game breaking bugs. Glitches. Because the damn game was finished upon release. FOMO is for the weak.
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I would much rather wait an extra year or two for an amazing game with fun glitches than to overwork creative minds to the point of breaking for a game that may not even load on day one. Quality over quantity is real. Yo, if we all stop buying these games at launch and wait until they're all patched, guess what? They'll stop releasing their Beta builds and promising to fix them. They'll start releasing actual, finished product again. TOTK had glitches Nintendo didn't like. That's those updates. No game breaking bugs. Glitches. Because the damn game was finished upon release. FOMO is for the weak.
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-xlr84XC
There is something extremely subtle that I have to point out. The regular 3 piece 2 fan/steering stick hover bike where the fans are set up in line front to back-
The fans both spin in the same direction. This gives the hoverbike a VERY slight rightward tilt. This applies in real life as there is angular momentum from the fans. In real life engineers may set fans up with opposite spins to counter this. I have found it absolutely impossible to make a hoverbike that doesn-t have that ever so tiny rightward tilt. I don-t know other people-s experiences. But this blew my mind.
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There is something extremely subtle that I have to point out. The regular 3 piece 2 fan/steering stick hover bike where the fans are set up in line front to back-
The fans both spin in the same direction. This gives the hoverbike a VERY slight rightward tilt. This applies in real life as there is angular momentum from the fans. In real life engineers may set fans up with opposite spins to counter this. I have found it absolutely impossible to make a hoverbike that doesn-t have that ever so tiny rightward tilt. I don-t know other people-s experiences. But this blew my mind.
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-r3gret2079
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.
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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.
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-TheMiszla
I'm a 3D Graphics for Games student and I will be going away for an internship in February and then finding a job afterwards. I have lots of graduate friends who just can't find a job in games, even tho they are perfectly qualified. The words in the end really hit me. I know it's a problem. I always thought -that's how the industry works-. But if the PRODUCER doesn't wanna do it and doesn't think it's a good idea, then I feel like EVERYBODY knows is bad. Why do we keep doing that?
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I'm a 3D Graphics for Games student and I will be going away for an internship in February and then finding a job afterwards. I have lots of graduate friends who just can't find a job in games, even tho they are perfectly qualified. The words in the end really hit me. I know it's a problem. I always thought -that's how the industry works-. But if the PRODUCER doesn't wanna do it and doesn't think it's a good idea, then I feel like EVERYBODY knows is bad. Why do we keep doing that?
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-WhaleTank
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.
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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.
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-waffler-yz3gw
i remember in that bar in half life alyx i threw a bottle at the curtain and i yelled so loud when it actually got wet, then spent the next 10 minutes just goggling over the liquid shaders. that game barely ran at times on my (admittedly pretty mid) laptop but DAMN was it fun
edit: i also wanna say the combine were done SO dirty compared to half life 2, so sluggish and underutilized but their animations are stuff of the future
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i remember in that bar in half life alyx i threw a bottle at the curtain and i yelled so loud when it actually got wet, then spent the next 10 minutes just goggling over the liquid shaders. that game barely ran at times on my (admittedly pretty mid) laptop but DAMN was it fun
edit: i also wanna say the combine were done SO dirty compared to half life 2, so sluggish and underutilized but their animations are stuff of the future
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-iamateapot418
The game is great and you can feel the enormous dedication of the entire development team every second of the game. But between all the praise for the game physics, I would have expected to hear at least a mention of the real backbone of this whole physics system: the Havok engine. Even though it was perfectly used and adapted (and even heavily modified) by the Nintendo team, it's not their creation. Give Havok some credits.
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The game is great and you can feel the enormous dedication of the entire development team every second of the game. But between all the praise for the game physics, I would have expected to hear at least a mention of the real backbone of this whole physics system: the Havok engine. Even though it was perfectly used and adapted (and even heavily modified) by the Nintendo team, it's not their creation. Give Havok some credits.
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-ShadowSamba
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
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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
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-ddud4966
Just like the Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom uses the Havok physics engine, just like countless other games. All the cool physics gameplay in TOTK, like the collapsible bridge, it's just Havok primitives, rigid body colliders and joints, etc. They just make use of it really well and probably had to do a ton of tuning and made smart choices about how much to constrain things.
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Just like the Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom uses the Havok physics engine, just like countless other games. All the cool physics gameplay in TOTK, like the collapsible bridge, it's just Havok primitives, rigid body colliders and joints, etc. They just make use of it really well and probably had to do a ton of tuning and made smart choices about how much to constrain things.
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polygon
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 -
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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 -
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-zemocon2868
PS4 is a lot more powerful console than Switch. There was never a PS4 game with TotK- level physics. It's possible there won't be one for PS5 either.
So, what the hell do the specs even matter? It doesn't matter what the imagined -Great Physics Game- for PS5 can do if it doesn't exist.
The Switch is the most powerful console on the market.
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PS4 is a lot more powerful console than Switch. There was never a PS4 game with TotK- level physics. It's possible there won't be one for PS5 either.
So, what the hell do the specs even matter? It doesn't matter what the imagined -Great Physics Game- for PS5 can do if it doesn't exist.
The Switch is the most powerful console on the market.
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-hestuu
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
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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
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-Jeremyb2023
The comments near the end about the problems with the video game industry seem to be a good explanation for why Nintendo is doing so well! I recently read that Super Mario Wonder was not given a timetable at all. that they were given as much time as they neede to make the game right. I think it's going to be amazing!
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The comments near the end about the problems with the video game industry seem to be a good explanation for why Nintendo is doing so well! I recently read that Super Mario Wonder was not given a timetable at all. that they were given as much time as they neede to make the game right. I think it's going to be amazing!
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-kevin-bf4ww
the bridge was a canned/controlled animation that they tried their absolute hardest to stop you from stealing out of the incredibly constrained conditions in the shrine
they didnt even give you the wheels and platform seperately, they're contained to one bridge driving engine for you to use
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the bridge was a canned/controlled animation that they tried their absolute hardest to stop you from stealing out of the incredibly constrained conditions in the shrine
they didnt even give you the wheels and platform seperately, they're contained to one bridge driving engine for you to use
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-user-qc3pf8xn2g
Somewhat upsetting that a games sequel (Zelda should never have direct sequels) took six years plus to make, cost $10 dollars more than it should, but did so little to change the game.
It could have been extended DLC for BotW if greed wasn't the motivating factor for its creation.
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Somewhat upsetting that a games sequel (Zelda should never have direct sequels) took six years plus to make, cost $10 dollars more than it should, but did so little to change the game.
It could have been extended DLC for BotW if greed wasn't the motivating factor for its creation.
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-rodneylives
Nice video for the information and the epilogue about underpaying people and relying on contract labor. Bad video for the editing down (a little more continuity of information would have helped, I think) and the annoying Tiktok-like sound and visual effects.
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Nice video for the information and the epilogue about underpaying people and relying on contract labor. Bad video for the editing down (a little more continuity of information would have helped, I think) and the annoying Tiktok-like sound and visual effects.
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-heromedley
this is why nintendo has almost 100% retention rate is that in order for them to keep outputting highly polished games they have to cultivate senior developers instead of hiring a massive team and laying all of them off when the product fails
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this is why nintendo has almost 100% retention rate is that in order for them to keep outputting highly polished games they have to cultivate senior developers instead of hiring a massive team and laying all of them off when the product fails
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-hexcodeff6624
This was a 14 minute video with 2 examples given really shallow and not all that insightful explanations to how they work and instead of some better educational material we got a 4 minute epilogue about the state of the industry.
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This was a 14 minute video with 2 examples given really shallow and not all that insightful explanations to how they work and instead of some better educational material we got a 4 minute epilogue about the state of the industry.
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-c4shguy224
it's absolutely insane that a game as technically demanding as tears of the kingdom can even run on the hardware of the switch. hardware that, may i remind you, was already incredibly underpowered when it came out 6 YEARS AGO.
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it's absolutely insane that a game as technically demanding as tears of the kingdom can even run on the hardware of the switch. hardware that, may i remind you, was already incredibly underpowered when it came out 6 YEARS AGO.
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polygon
Mind blowing? Lol you can-t even lift a sled with ultrahand if there-s an Apple on it yet he can lift a whole house. What kind of physics is that. - still my favourite game but the game has no real physics. As far as I can tell.
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Mind blowing? Lol you can-t even lift a sled with ultrahand if there-s an Apple on it yet he can lift a whole house. What kind of physics is that. - still my favourite game but the game has no real physics. As far as I can tell.
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-VaporSprite
6: 09 I'm sorry to be that guy, but Americans pronouncing latin words like English really annoys me -
Cool video though, it's nice to see things that are impressive only to engineers get some praise in mainstream media!
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6: 09 I'm sorry to be that guy, but Americans pronouncing latin words like English really annoys me -
Cool video though, it's nice to see things that are impressive only to engineers get some praise in mainstream media!
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polygon
For the life of me, I couldn't get the pulleys to work. I knew there was a complex process happening to make it work so realistically. Glad they offer more options to solve it so you don't get stuck and break the experience.
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For the life of me, I couldn't get the pulleys to work. I knew there was a complex process happening to make it work so realistically. Glad they offer more options to solve it so you don't get stuck and break the experience.
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polygon
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.
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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.
reply
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