Hyrule Interviews

I thought I was looking at my notifications tab and this was the top post on the list, so my brain ran with it

Oh no you were, I was the one who got confused lol

Yeah thank you! Your huge history is still super helpful as a source of interviews, I work my way through more of your footnotes whenever I get the chance!

Aonuma: We developed a game called Marvelous which used the Satellaview almost eight years ago. In that game, we had a quest where you would collect stamps while listening to a radio which gave you clues. We took that idea and reproduced it by using connectivity instead. Tsuchiyama: During the initial planning stage, we were using a woman in a passenger seat of a car, giving you vague directions on where to find the items. Almost like dealing with an annoying backseat driver who is giving you horrible directions as you try to reach your destination without losing your patience. Producers suggested we tie this in with the Zelda franchise, and soon enough Navi Trackers was born.

Aonuma & Tsuchiyama on Navi Trackers' Marvelous origins, 2004

Source: N-Sider

#Zelda
#AonumaQuote
#TsuchiyamaQuote

In case it wasn't clear:

I strongly condemn Arad's brutal pro-genocide stance towards the Palestinian people, and am disgusted by Nintendo's willingness to have an outspoken proponent of ethnic cleansing produce their film.

PEOPLE: - Avi Arad, age 75. Producer of the upcoming The Legend of Zelda film. QUOTE: Arad: “I am a dual citizen of Israel and the United States. I was born and raised in Israel and moved to the United States in 1969. I proudly served in the Israeli military [from 1965-1968].” ”Every day, Hamas churns out misinformation. They inflate casualty numbers and make false accusations to smear Israel’s reputation.” ”The blood of all those killed in this war, both Palestinians and Israelis, is on Hamas’ hands. Hamas does not want peace. Hamas wants the death of Jews and the death of the democratic state of Israel.”

Arad on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, 2024.

Source: The Wrap

#AradQuote

www.notion.so/24741fe961fd...

The team agreed with you it seems:
shmuplations.com/zeldalttp/

Miyamoto on the original open-ended vision for A Link to the Past, 1992. Source: Shmuplations #Zelda #ALinktothePastQuote #MiyamotoQuote https://www.notion.so/bdf016370eb14b94aa2be3c4cc3dcaf6

Miyamoto on the original open-ended vision for A Link to the Past, 1992.

Source: Shmuplations

#Zelda
#ALinktothePastQuote
#MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/bdf016370eb1...

bsky.app/profile/chri...

PEOPLE: - Chris Hackney, age 42. The English voice of Rauru in Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Hackney: Please tell Nintendo (and all other developers/studios/manufacturers) that you want physical only, on-the-cartridge/disc media. [link to a Nintendo survey] To be clear, I mean "physical only" when it comes to these stupid key card things. Digital? Fine. Physical? Better. Key card? The worst of both. Also, physical boxes with a download code? EFF. OFF.

Hackney on digital key cards, 2025.

Source: Social Media

#NintendoSwitch2Quote
#HackneyQuote

www.notion.so/24541fe961fd...

PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 46. Creator of Zelda and Mario. Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department. QUOTE: Q: [Asks about the newly announced Playstation 2] Miyamoto: You can never trust completely what hardware manufacturers say. You should maybe believe only a tenth of what those manufacturers say. … Will the improvement in hardware quality actually improve the quality of the gameplay experience?

Miyamoto on trusting hardware manufacturers and the PS2, 1999.

Source: Games Business

#SonyPlaystation2Quote
#MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/21d41fe961fd...

I had seen this earlier but forgot to add it, thanks for the reminder!

This translation is now open for public access!

Read here: goodblood.games/ootmiyamotoq...

@hyruleinterviews.bsky.social @zeldadungeon.net @zeldauniverse.bsky.social

In other games, have you ever seen physics objects that go through each other, or get stuck inside each other and start vibrating, or shoot off at a million MPH? Those can easily happen from the kind of mix and match we’re talking about

I think the zonai stabilizer IS still fully controlled by the physics simulation, so that’s probably different.

YouTube video by Game Developers Conference Tunes of the Kingdom: Evolving Physics and Sounds for ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’

Takayama shares some footage of hilarious physics bugs from before they had this all figured out in his GDC talk (at this timestamp 10:16):

youtu.be/N-dPDsLTrTE?...

A couple years back I was asked to contribute to an article by @woodwould.bsky.social at Games Radar, where game devs were sharing their thoughts about why Tears of the Kingdom was so impressive. I talked about the physics design, which blew me away

www.gamesradar.com/23-game-deve...

This meant that even stuff like doors in shrines had to be built functionally. Instead of the simple work of animating a door opening, they had to separately build a door and hinges, then connect them with physics constraints.

Objects in TOTK had to be actually engineered from simple machines

Some info:

Dynamic Rigid Body: An object whose movement is driven by a physics simulation.

Kinematic Rigid Body: An object whose movement is driven by a set animation.

Most games have both of these, but they can interact poorly. TOTK avoided this by making everything from dynamic objects

PEOPLE: - Takahiro Takayama. Physics Programming Lead for Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Takayama: A world with a high degree of freedom requires everything to be physics driven. Every single thing [in Tears of the Kingdom] without exception is built with dynamic rigid bodies and constraints [instead of with kinematic rigid bodies]. And this is what allowed us to create a world in which players can freely translate their creativity and imagination into action without destroying the world.

PEOPLE: - Takahiro Takayama. Physics Programming Lead for Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Takayama: Take the wheel [Zonai component in Tears of the Kingdom]. It's comprised of three rigid bodies: the wheel, motor, and shaft. Instead of the shaft connecting directly with the wheel, it holds up the motor. The torque from the motor transfers to the wheel's rigid body, causing it to rotate, and the friction between the ground and the wheel creates the driving force.

Some Takayama quotes about how every object in Tears of the Kingdom is built with functional simulated physics, 2024

Source: Game Developers Conference (GDC)

#Zelda
#TearsoftheKingdomQuote
#TakayamaQuote

www.notion.so/5daa8b399c3d...

A screenshot of Tears of the Kingdom with debug voxel view turned on, and a line of the voxels are highlighted red, connecting the source of a sound -- a fire -- to Link.

And here's an image showing how the audio source uses the voxels to find a path to the player character, which helps drive audio volume, reverb, etc.

A screenshot from Tears of the Kingdom, showing a cave and terrain on a sky island. On the right is the same screenshot with a debug voxel rendering mode.

Full-size version of those images.

Notice how the voxels are a lower resolution (bigger) for the ground than for the cliff.

PEOPLE: - Junya Osada. Sound Programmer for Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Osada: [Tears of the Kingdom] has complicated terrain such as caves. Sound obstruction and occlusion are important when creating a more realistic Hyrule. … To depict a 3D world, the terrain contains voxel information. Each voxel stores terrain information such as whether its coordinates are located indoors, or near the water's surface, [or whether it’s possible to use Ascend]. Sound uses these voxels too, to search for sound paths. … In this game, the sound system performs calculations for the audio listener based on the camera's position, but searches for sound paths between the sound force and Link’s position. This is why sound changes when you go behind a wall.

Osada on audio occlusion in Tears of the Kingdom, 2024.

Source: Game Developers Conference (GDC)

#Zelda
#TearsoftheKingdomQuote
#OsadaQuote

www.notion.so/5daa8b399c3d...

Oooh, always love to see another Good Blood translation. Thanks for the heads up!

YouTube video by NintendoComplete Mario Bros. (Arcade) Playthrough

For those unfamiliar with the Mario Bros arcade game (NOT to be confused with Super Mario Bros.), here's what the gameplay looked like

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5z...

PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director of Mario Bros. (1983). Creator of Zelda & Mario. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: Iwata: So without any risk to yourself, you could defeat your enemies simply by hitting them from below [in Mario Bros.] Miyamoto: And that made it a really cowardly kind of game. So then we made it so that you hit the enemies from below before going up to deliver the decisive blow. That's when we thought about what kind of creature could withstand being struck from below and would eventually recover. We racked our brains thinking what we could use… Iwata: And that's how you came up with the turtle! [laughs] Miyamoto: The turtle was the only solution! [laughs] Strike it from below and it flips over! Leave it for a while and it rights itself!

MIyamoto on how they came up with turtle enemies for Mario Bros., 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#MarioBrosQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #IwataQuote

www.notion.so/309b8c772861...

PEOPLE: - Junya Osada. Sound Programmer for Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Osada: It is common to depict sounds moving farther away by using a distance attenuation curve for volume with distance taken on the horizontal axis. But that doesn't mean just lowering the volume is enough. Not only do we lower the volume, but we also apply [low-pass] filters that muffle the sound, and reverb to blend it with the ambient sounds of the environment. In doing so we can make it feel like the sound is realistically moving farther away. Another method that works well is preparing both short and long distance sounds and cross-fading them according to distance.

Osada on some common sound attenuation techniques, 2024.

Source: Game Developers Conference (GDC)

#Zelda
#TearsoftheKingdomQuote
#OsadaQuote

www.notion.so/5daa8b399c3d...

PEOPLE: - Ann Lin. Localization Animal Crossing: City Folk and Spirit Tracks. QUOTE: Q: We heard that you worked until 3 A.M. last night [on Animal Crossing: City Folk]. Lin: Yeah. Q: How was that? Lin: It's kind of fun toward the end. You get loopy. Q: So everything written after midnight is awesome? Ann: Um... yes.

Lin on working late, 2008.

Source: Nintendo Power

#AnimalCrossingCityFolkQuote
#LinQuote

www.notion.so/1f241fe961fd...

PEOPLE: - Takahiro Takayama. Physics Programming Lead for Tears of the Kingdom. QUOTE: Takayama: [In the Tears of the Kingdom engine,] when we assign a material property to an object, such as wood, metal, stone and so on, that object’s mass and moment of inertia are automatically calculated. The volume necessary for that calculation is in turn calculated based on that object’s shape. But there are times when an automatic calculation doesn't fit our needs. And in those cases, we work with the artists and game designers to make adjustments. For example, objects like boards and slabs are actually thicker than those in the real world … to make them easier to see or control. If the mass for these objects were calculated based on the shape as is they would become way too heavy.

Takayama on how they set physics parameters for objects in Tears of the Kingdom, 2024.

Source: Game Developers Conference (GDC)

#Zelda
#TearsoftheKingdomQuote
#TakayamaQuote

www.notion.so/5daa8b399c3d...

PEOPLE: - Hidemaro Fujibayashi, age 28. Director of Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 48. General Producer for Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons. - Yoichi Yamada, age 37. Supervisor for Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons. QUOTE: Fujibayashi: When I met Mr. Miyamoto, I clearly understood that there’s a logic behind the games he thinks up. Understanding that was a huge learning experience for [the Oracles] team. Another thing was that Mr. Yamada would ask us “What’s this character’s name?” about characters we’d just randomly put in the game. Giving those characters a name really brings them to life and the staff’s attachment to them evolves, too. ”You should name your characters”… such a simple sounding idea really opened my eyes to something important. This is just one example, but I feel like I was taught the secret to Nintendo’s “warm game feel”.

Fujibayashi on Nintendo's warm game feel, 2001.

Source: Game Design Gazette

#Zelda
#OracleofSeasonsQuote, #OracleofAgesQuote
#FujibayashiQuote, #MiyamotoQuote, #YamadaQuote

www.notion.so/57ba82218914...