Zelda’s Game Engine

One Hundred Tenth Post: Zelda’s Game Engine

Many of you, the readers, have probably played or at least heard of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” game by Nintendo. This is one of the best designed games of all time. It took the new 3D elements of the hardware’s capabilities and produced the best player control of any game in the genre. The way the game implemented the new players environment and control of the 3D world is what sold the game. The game combined an action game with role playing and puzzles. But the focus here is on its engine and how advanced it must be.

The thing is with PC games is that eventually some of the games engines is usually ported to open source once the game is no longer profitable. This is not so with console games (especially Nintendo). They usually do not share their intellectual property. Well at least the programmers at Id software release the old games for the PC in order to promote learning.

But here is the interesting question: What if Nintendo (or other game company such as Epic (Unreal Tournament)) released a level editor that contained more elements than just a shooter and had options that added puzzle elements such as moving blocks, lighting torches, tripping switches similar to Ocarina of Time. Sure this elements are probably possible for advanced programmers, but it still would be easier with options available in the level editor.

This is just something that I am thinking about when I start to learn about Unreal. I am beginning to think about how I can turn my ideas into a workable mod. Though I am just starting and everything is related to level design and modeling, I would like to add more elements such as strategy and problem solving to the pieces of the game I want to eventually be able to build. You have to build your ideas on what the engine is programmed to do and also the amount of technical knowledge about game design you have.