Why Tears of the Kingdom’s physics are amazing

The gameplay video of the lava bridge that was all over social media in May is still a popular one. Tears of the Kingdom: The Legend of Zelda. Developers were impressed by the game’s robust physics engine, noting that getting something like this to work in a game is an incredibly difficult task.

What is the reason for this?

What I learned from two developers who work with game physics Tears Of The KingdomWhat makes this game stand out?

If you play games you probably have an idea of what I mean when I say “physics” but it’s worth going over the fundamentals because, like most aspects of game development, the more you think about physics the more complicated it gets and the more miraculous it seems.

Any object that can move in a game is either an animation or a physical object.

“[Physics] covers things like collision, movement, acceleration, even character controls,” software engineer Cole Wardell told me. “A lot of it is trying to solve these very complex equations in a way that is both fast and does not cause a lot of error.”

Game physics are tough because there’s a lot of math going on to make us believe that a digital rock is falling to the digital ground in a way that doesn’t break our immersion.

The immersive nature of the game is what makes it so popular. Tears Of The Kingdom’s physics are trickier than most. The player’s interactions are complex. Wardell shows how chains connected to rotating tires are used to open a door.

The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us The following are some of the most popular ways to get in touch with each otherIn games, a pulley-like system like this would either be an animation that was premade, or it would fake the effect of the chains on the doors.

“But later on in that, in that dungeon,” Wardell said, “you’re given just wheels, and the chains are hanging there, and you have to build it yourself.” After expermenting with the door, he was able to find other ways to lift it by attaching the hanging chains to different points.

“That bridge and the chain are really the same thing,” Wardell said. “Because if you think about it, all of them are a bunch of segments connected by hinges. That’s how ropes are done in a game engine.”

A functional video game rope or chain isn’t a continuous object — it’s basically tons of segments, and when one of them moves, the others react. It’s easy to create a “ha” with this. Chain reaction where the whole thing freaks out because every segment is reacting to every other segment’s movement ad infinitum. That’s why most games don’t prioritize rope collision.

Tears Of The Kingdom doesn’t fully prioritize rope collision either. Your horse cart’s chains can easily clip around objects. And the chains that lift this stone door aren’t available in other parts of the world, certainly not as portable Zonai devices. They’re too complex to use outside of this curated scenario.

“It felt like the programmers had extra time, and were just flexing on the people that knew what was going on,” Wardell said. “It almost felt like a little nod from the developers to people who work on engines going, ‘Yeah, yeah, this thing is pretty cool. It’s possible to do great things. It’s that stable.’”

The bridge was also impressive because of its stability. Shayna, the game’s producer, told me about what she saw in the video. Moon has worked previously on God of WarThe following are some examples of how to get started: God of War Ragnarok.

“The most critical thing is that it all is working,” Moon said.

The player is able to pull the bridge around using interacting objects.

“There are so many different things interacting,” Moon added. “Like, all of that stuff is really impressive. And it’s the polish and the stability, like the lack of bugs, that really makes it stand out.”

All would be doing it if they were simple. But also, everyone doesn’t need to.

These physics interactions, while special in their own right, are also effective. Tears Of The KingdomBecause the game is so popular What is the best way to get in touch with us?The physics object and the creation of marvelous contraptions. Physics is a fascinating subject. You can also useYou can sing. That’s not true of every game.

“Game developers make choices every day of development,” Moon said. “And most of those choices revolve around, ‘How do we get to the experience we want the player to have?’”

There is no need for all games to use a complex engine. Moon says that part of this is because the physics engine has to be so complex. Tears Of The KingdomThe developers seemed to have had the time they needed to achieve their goal.

The game’s producer Eiji Aonuma said in an interview with The Washington Post that Tears Of The KingdomThe team delayed it by an entire year in order to continue working on the game. Shayna said they would be surprised if that year wasn’t devoted to optimizing these physics interactions that make up so much of the game.

“We are really kneecapping ourselves by our overreliance on contract labor,” Moon said. “I personally, at a time, was working on a game that was expected to have about a two-to-three-year development cycle. And I was able to hire but I was hiring contractors.”

Moon hired contractors to work for him over a 18-month period. Moon hired more contractors after letting the first contractors go.

“I said to my manager, ‘So, we’re going to lose these people right as we’re starting to finalize this game, and I’m going to have to bring on new people and teach them how all of this works,’” Moon said. “And my manager basically said, ‘Yep, that is what we’re gonna have to deal with.’ […] The way that we work, the way that we burn people out, is really undercutting our future, because the games industry is only going to get bigger.”

What are the benefits of using a Tears Of The KingdomIt’s amazing that this team was able to spend the necessary time to solve all these problems. Nintendo created a game that has a robust physics engine. You can create Beyblades, EVAs, Mad Max cars or almost any other object you could imagine.

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