Tears of the Kingdom avoids downloading from the sky to the depths

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features a massive world, but loading isn’t something players have to worry about as they traverse Hyrule. Even when you’re moving from the sky to the depths, everything happens seamlessly. And now, as part of a talk at the Computer Entertainment Development Conference (CEDEC), we’re able to learn more about how that’s achieved.

While Breath of the Wild was originally aimed at the Wii U and featured a flat 2D world, Nintendo has taken things to another level now that it’s only working on the more powerful Switch hardware. However, things haven’t been easy at all. As I mentioned, Famitsu And share it by AutomatonOne issue the developers had to deal with early on was the long loading between the surface and underground, which caused the game to freeze at times.

One tactic Nintendo used to address this issue was to leverage a profiling tool to measure and analyze game performance. This made the team aware of which items were taking longer to load and preventing smooth transitions. These items were then assigned a “free time,” and would only load when no other loading was occurring. Data that wasn’t needed immediately was also deferred.

Additionally, the developers tried to reduce the number of files that had to be loaded. The team came up with a system that determines which objects and terrain parts would not be part of the player’s field of view, based on Link’s location. Some textures also saw lower resolution, assuming there would be no negative impact.

In addition to everything we just mentioned, Nintendo has come up with a way to get a jump start on the loading. The game is able to find all the files needed to load before the player descends underground. It then loads once the player encounters a “potential waypoint to the underground” such as a large hole in the ground.

The islands in the sky also used similar prediction methods. The islands were divided into large story-related islands, islands that served as transit points to other islands, and islands with challenges, such as “How do I get there?” The game would then be able to determine which islands would be loaded (or unloaded in favor of another island) based on the player’s actions and location.

Another thing that was discussed during this conversation was the Rupee bulletin board that the team used throughout the development process. You can read about that here.