If you enjoyed this, there's also a good breakdown of the techniques used to build Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/170524064/The-Making-of-Shadow-of-the-Colossus" rel="nofollow">http://www.scribd.com/doc/170524064/The-Making-of-Shadow-of-...</a><p>It goes into detail about things like how the inverse kinematics work, and rendering layers of translucent textured polygon shells for its fur effects since programmable shaders weren't possible on the hardware.
Fantastic! I remember reading this a couple of years ago and saying "huh, that's cool" but I make games now and it's much more interesting to read having had to write shaders and make similar sorts of compromises, I especially like the closest source shadows and semi-dynamic tassles on the spears.<p>On a less technical note it's amazing how going with the cell-shaded look has made the game age <i>so well</i> even the original non-HD gamecube game still looks great today.
Zelda games have a lot of interesting implementation details. You might also be interested in Twilight Princess Eyes Breakdown: <a href="http://www.benjones.us/twilight-princess-eyes-breakdown/" rel="nofollow">http://www.benjones.us/twilight-princess-eyes-breakdown/</a>
I remember just stopping and watching the waves in awe. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was charmed by them<p>"this animated wave material is one of my all time favorite fx in game art"
I forgot how pretty that game was. Shame it fell apart 2/3 of the way through, like so many games seem to do.<p>Incidentally if you like this kind of thing, and you haven't played Fez yet, then well, the rest of your sunday is sorted.
It seems to me that the artistic portion of Wind Waker was given a little more attention than the technical one. The lack of instancing/batching when rendering grass or the lack of efficient culling outside, for instance, surely doesn't match the care with which the artists designed the lighting or splatted sea materials.<p>Still, great analysis.
Are these same kind of techniques applicable to mobile devices or is the hardware just not there yet? I've always wondered about whether console development and mobile development have converged or not yet.