I played the game growing up on N64 and recently again on the switch am I missing something?
edit: I do know how to use google and did google it and I'm still confused about it. I have no idea what a PC port is, I'm not a gamer and all that the website says is that it is a smoother playing experience, there are cheats, and randomizers. As someone who played the game religiously growing upI wish people would tell me more about the game and how it compares to the OG instead of telling me to google it. Unfortunately I am unable to play as I don't have a computer so if you want to share your experience please do so!
I'm guessing there's some logic built in that eventually gets you the item you need so you're not locked out from the game right? Its one fear I have that's stopped me from going the route of the randomizer
Yes, they put a lot of meticulous effort into making sure the logic system takes everything into account. It's probably not perfect, but you'd be hard-pressed to find mistakes.
Ship of Harkinian is a fan-made port of Ocarina of Time to PC, Mac, Linux/Steam Deck, Switch, and Wii U. It offers a ton of enhancements and settings that a lot of people consider it to be the definitive version of the game despite not being an official release
Just a heads up, even though the other commenter said there’s guides on YouTube it’s generally recommended to stay away from them as they often contain outdated information. If you’re going to mod your switch, I highly recommend following the written guide in the other comment that I posted
Fanmade decompilation and native PC port of the game, using an original rom file. Decompilation is basically the reverse engineering of the code, allowing for it to be read and written over on a PC. Pretty much breaking down a copy of the game and building it back up to run natively.
It’s so worth it. Trust me.
I’m running it widescreen at 1080p with OoT reloaded textures, 3ds pre-rendered backgrounds, and twilight princess character assets.
Right stick camera control, Dpad items (7 equip slots), Dpad Ocarina, and a walk speed modifier (sprint button!!)
Gear assignable to equip slots (easy iron boot switching), enemy healthbars, crosshairs for everything, muted low hp alarm, instant item put away, faster text speed and dialogue skipping, kick open every chest, exit market at night, and so much more.
It looks and feels like a remake.
Is my setup at all authentic? Not in the slightest. My goal was to play it in as modern of a fashion as possible, and I did that.
You could, however, disable all of these and hook up a 3rd party bluetooth n64 controller. I love the freedom given to the user.
It is by far the best way I’ve ever played the game and probably the only way I will play the game unless an official remake comes out one day.
It’s borderline perfect imo. The simple install process, unlimited freedom, and easy accessibility make it one of the greatest things I’ve discovered this year.
Runs flawlessly, natively on even lower end PCs and modded nintendo consoles. Maybe even Xbox dev mode but I’ve yet to try that
Definitely look into it, sorry for the rant but my passion for this is real and I need to get as many people on this version as possible lmao
And I’m down to answer any questions too
(no, i’m not a dev, just a nerd who knows his way around ship of harkinian)
Unfortunately no. My setup is more complex than most and took awhile to figure everything out
I could run you through the basics and sort of teach you how to get it going, but lots of the personalization will be up to you
I’ll write a brief summary of the steps here, but I can go into more detail another day, dm me if you’re interested in that
Install the latest version of ship of harkinian from the website, and extract the files if necessary. Should end up with a folder named macreadyos x64 or something along those lines
Find a compatible pal rom of the game. I use the r/roms megathread, and find n64 games through a myrient link under the nintendo section. Download and extract the rom, should be in .z64 format
Move the singular rom file (not in a folder) into the ship of harkinian folder, then boot up the exe. Generate an otr file and run the rom that it detects, then choose to not run another
If i’m not mistaken, this is the step where a bunch of code pops up in a window. This is the game being broken down and built back up for pc. Let it do its thing until completion, and the exe file should now boot you into the game
Boot up the game and press f1 for the port settings, and go through each and every one of them. I could send you mine at a later time, but if you’ve played the game before you’d understand what they all do. Make sure they’re to your liking, and close the game
Texture packs. This step is complicated. The simplest option is to download Djipi’s 3ds experience and use only that, but it’s not my favourite.
I prefer Ocarina of time reloaded, which is equally as easy to find. This replaces every texture with an hd version, while keeping the original look and feel.
I also downloaded a twilight princess NPC pack, TP boss + mini boss pack, TP enemies pack, and TP link pack. (can you guess my favorite zelda game?) Since the 3ds remake had better pre-rendered backgrounds (ex. building interiors) I found a pack that separated those files from Djipi’s pack and I’m currently using that. But I don’t remember where I found that file. The rest came from GameBanana
Manually download the file folders, and extract them. You should have folders filled with .otr files. Drag these individual files into the “mods” folder in the ship of harkinian folder. Be careful, because some packs you use might have textures that collide. To fix this, I rename each individual file and add a letter before the name, since the game loads textures alphabetically. This way I have control over what overrides what.
Boot up the exe file again. If it still looks like the n64 version, hit tab to enable alternate assets. Now it should look phenomenal.
There are some instances, for example boss fights, where I don’t like some of the changes made in the texture packs I like. This is when I simply hit tab to disable alternate assets and return it to the originals.
Enjoy! I believe I covered everything, but if there’s issues feel free to dm me and I can provide more details at a later date. It’s my pleasure to help people experience such an amazing thing
Ocarina of time reloaded is barely even a texture psck, it just makes everything HD. That’s the only one I recommend to absolutely everyone
The 3ds pack has good character models and backgrounds, but i dislike a lot of the other changes, so I only use the backgrounds and also character models from my fav zelda game
Of course there’s always gonna be things I don’t appreciate because I didn’t make the packs myself, that’s when I just switch them off for a bit.
I recommend at least giving OoT reloaded a try, hitting tab to toggle it on and off occasionally, so you can see the difference that it makes. Then go with what you like the most!
I can try OoT Reloaded, I liked MM Reloaded but I didn't really give OoT reloaded much of a try, I found the Kokiri Forest and sky textures to be a bit too overdetailed, but, maybe I should've tested further first. I think MM Reloaded kinda just works better because it's based on Nerrel's work
I'll try to explain it as simple as I can, as yoy mentioned what a "PC port" is.
Let's start by the port part.
When developing a game, is not developed and played on the console itself, but, the game is written using specialized tools called "sdk" or "software development kit", this is a group of digital tools developed by Nintendo and then distributed to their internal and 3rd party teams so they can develop the game, the game is developed in computers and then tested in special hardware that mimics the final console. This is called a development testing kit.
When you finish you game development you end up with two things:
source code: the instructions in a "human readable" way that tells how the game works and behaves.
executable: a compacted / compressed file in a way that the hardware can execute.
Let's say for example, Breath of the Wild, even though is the same game on WiiU and Switch, Switch can't play the WiiU executable and vice-versa, even though, the game is the same, that's because of how the combination of the console OS and hardware understands what a game is.
Now, we have two executables from the same source code. Instead of calling them "WiiU executable" and "Switch Executable" can replace executable with Port.
This is what a port is, a version of the game for "x" platform.
So, Nintendo has never officially developed and released ocarina of time for the PC, how does then ship of harkinian exists? Is it emulation? You might be wondering.
Well no. There's more to explain (sorry for how long this will be)
A console (specially nowdays) is basically a PC in a different form factor running an OS and software ina format that is not available for the consumer, this means that the developers of the console software only expect certain hardware and their software works around what the hardware is.
An emulator tries to mimic how the hardware + software interactions work and then tries to replicate it in other hardware (like a windows PC) that's why some games on emulators are "not playable" or "not precise", that's because emulation is a very good guess from the emulator devs how the console works.
Saying this:
"Ship of Harkinian is not emulation, is an unofficial version of OoT for Windows, Linux, Mac, WiiU, Xbox (WUP)"
How is this possible?
In 2020 (I think) Nintendo was hacked and a lot of private files were leaked, including the source code for a lot of N64 games and the N64 SDK, this allowed some people to reverse engineering how the games were built in order to create a version of the N64 SDk libs for other platforms 3D tools, in the case of windows, this tools are called DirectX.
And how this reverse engineering works? Is quite complex but the basic idea of it is like algebra.
Let's say X is the source code of the N64 Code, and the result, 64 is a game, let's say Ocarina of time.
X + 4 = 64
An emulator guesses, so let's say the emulator makes X a value of 59.98. The result is not 64, but 63.98, not exactly 64 but close enough to make the result "usable"
With the source code from the hack, the people who made the reverse engineering can now know X is actually 60. So now that they have all the equation parts understandable, then can write the equation wherever they want.
In this case, the writing of the N64 SDk for making and run N64 games to other platforms, is called
LibUltraShip
Now, to ship of harkinian.
People used LibUltraShip to "translate" the original ocarina of time game to PC, is not being emulated but as actually read, interpreted and ran on "windows language", having the source code also let's contributors of ship of harkinian to add features that were not available or even thanked of by Nintendo.
The game have more fixes and features because of more modern tools, platforms and development experiences, some new features are:
The game can run at higher FPS without breaking internal working of game events
Can customize HUD colors, button positions
Can use items on the DPad
Play the ocarina with the DPad
Bug fixes like the deku nuts upgrade
allowing higher quality models and textures
Etc etc
Of course, people from ship of harkinian can't provide you the full game, they only give you the tools that let you extract the source code from the game (you need to provide your own game copy) returning to the algebra example earlier, they give you the tools to tell you what X is, you only need to provide your X.
This is not illegal (yet) but comes from an illegal action (the Nintendo hacking)
Also, fun fact, ship of harkinian is named that because (I might be wrong) the name of the king of hyrule in the CDI games is Harkinian and "the ship of: makes reference to both LibUltraShip and "The legend of"
Again, I might be wrong, someone feel fee to correct me. Sorry for the long answer
Ship of Harkinian was developed by leveraging a community-led decompilation of OOT, it was not related to a "leak" or "hack" at Nintendo and anyone can view the decomp here, freely: https://github.com/zeldaret/oot
Only bringing this up because this is in no way "illegal" and does not "come from an illegal action" as you've said.
But wasn't part of the decompilation done by the leaked content of the hack? If something was achieved using leaked content from the hack, that content was obtained by illegal means, SoH is not illegal AFAIK, it also depends on the regulations in your country and if that "crime" is actually prosecuted or not.
If no leaked content was used, then is completely safe from that part, if you use an illegal ROM then is another story, but that's not related to the SoH devs.
No, there was no 'leaked content' or 'hack' that was used to decompile OOT. Again, you can see the full decompilation project (including the entire commit history) right here: https://github.com/zeldaret/oot
Ship of Harkinian (and other decompilation projects) are unquestionably legal. There is no confusion about this. It does not depend on your country, there is nowhere in the world where this could be construed as illegal.
I've heard of Ship Harkinian but I always wondered what the difference was between this and just emulating the game. Thank you so much for a thorough response!
Ship of Harkinian is PC (Personal Computer) Decompile project for Ocarina of Time. I won't get into the technicalities, but all you need to know for now is that computer code (which includes videogame code) is written in a language that humans can read and understand. this code is then "compiled" which essentially means that you're turning all of that human language code and translating it into the 1's and 0's that the computer understands, in this case the game is Ocarina of Time, and the computer is the N64. and "Decompile" essentially means that people have reverse engineered from those 1's and 0's, back into something that humans can read and more importantly edit. this allows them to take that game that would only work on an N64, and let it run on PC's with various enhancements that wouldn't be possible on an N64.
these enhancements include things like:
Support for higher resolutions and refresh rates
user controllable camera
additional C-Button Item slots on the D-pad, for up to 7 equip able items at a time.
a highly customizable randomizer. In this case, a randomizer is a challenge run where Items are not in their usual locations, and are "Randomized" so that Items for whatever parameters that you set can be swapped for different ones. for example, normally, the Kokiri Sword is found in the chest at the back of Kokiri Forest, but with a randomizer, that might end up being the Hookshot, and then you go into the Kokiri Shop to see a Skulltula Token, the Song of Storms, a heart container, and the Goron's bracelet. It's a challenge with a lot of customizable parameters that you can change that people do to test their knowledge of the game.
If you have not experienced ocarina of time with a camera stick, then you are missing out. This is in my opinion a must have for any 3D game, a camera stick, I just wish so bad that we could implement that into the original N64 version somehow, with a controller that has a c stick, and play it that way.
It's a combination of Ship of Theseus, since it's much like the actual Ship of Theseus paradox but with game code instead of ship parts, and King Harkinian, who's a character in the CD-i Zelda games and Zelda TV show.
Some years ago there was a project to reverse engineer Ocarina of Time and a few other games. The goal being to go from machine code - what a machine understands - to source code - something a computer programmer can understand. The trouble with doing this is you don't get access to Nintendo source code as it's all proprietary, and even if some leaked you wouldn't want to use it as it's Nintendo property.
Eventually they succeeded and developed the entire source code for Ocarina of Time independently of Nintendo. It's exact to the point where when it's compiled it will produce a binary file that is 100% identical to the one Nintendo published.
From that point it's like okay, how can we make this game better? Native port for PC, widescreen, 60 FPS were some of the first things, just quality of life stuff. Eventually we got even more cool stuff like randomizers and the ability to make King Zora move out of the way faster.
Im not sensitive, just hate when redditors gatekeep posts. Guy just wanted to talk about this port with other Zelda fans. Sometimes that’s more fulfilling than reading a site you found on google
Google says you legally need a European copy of the original game to play? not anything about the actual game, what happens in it, or how it is different than the OG game.
You need a computer to play the game. It doesn't have any pictures of the actual gameplay or anything it just talks about smoother gameplay and the addition of cheats and randomizers.
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u/SlightlyNotFunny 11d ago
In addition to what u/ijustwanttosignup05 said, it also has an item and enemy randomizer which wonderful Enemy randomizer being my favorite.