A native PC AOT recompilation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, with a modern NRI/Vulkan renderer, a single-screen interface and customizable graphics. Echoes of Time is TriAevum's Ocarina of Time 3D project; executables, data folders and package names keep the TriAevum name.

Current release: v0.8.0-beta.1.2 for Windows (ZIP) and Linux (AppImage and Flatpak). It is a beta: back up your saves, and read the release notes before assuming something is a feature.

Credit Where It Belongs

Before the shaders, settings and excessive grass: Echoes of Time would not exist in its current form without TopScreen, now SingleScreen, developed by rlgcarrot. Its single-screen experience is reimplemented here for our runtime, but the vision, care and tremendous work behind it deserve a special thank-you. Please consider buying rlgcarrot a coffee to support that fantastic work.

The HD interface comes from OoT3D Vanilla UI/HUD by chubbycubby, which Forge downloads for your game's language with your consent, and the file selection follows the single-screen design of Ocarina Reframed by OTPR26.

The ambient occlusion that makes the grass look like it belongs to the ground is MXAO from iMMERSE by Pascal Gilcher (Marty's Mods), integrated and adapted with his explicit permission. Thank you for lending TriAevum a piece of work that took years to get this good.

Just as essential are Azahar, Ship of Harkinian, libultraship, NVIDIA NRI, and the SDL controller-mapping community. And, of course, Nintendo and Grezzo, who created the original game. Full credits and licenses.

Forge can also apply an optional mod on your machine: Vanilla+ - Link Remodel And HD Item Models by HugAMuffin (testing by Fado, M-1 and seiunsky_1084; tooling by Jameriquiah). TriAevum does not distribute it: Forge downloads the author's original archive when you turn it on (details).

Separately licensed material. Three parts are not covered by TriAevum's GPL and keep their authors' terms:

iMMERSE / MXAO (Pascal Gilcher): "All rights reserved". The module is built as its own library, shipped beside the runtime, and TriAevum uses it under a permission granted to this project only. That permission does not pass to forks, recipients or other projects; redistribute TriAevum without the module unless the author has given you his own. See LICENSE_SCOPE.md and the module's LICENSE-iMMERSE.txt.
OoT3D Vanilla UI/HUD (chubbycubby): CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Packages contain none of its files; Forge downloads the author's original archive from GameBanana on your request and keeps it in your private data folder. See LICENSES/OoT3D-Vanilla-UI-HUD.md.
Vanilla+ - Link Remodel And HD Item Models (HugAMuffin): CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Same arrangement: downloaded from GameBanana only when you turn it on, never redistributed by TriAevum. See LICENSES/Vanilla-Plus-Link-Remodel.md.

About

Echoes of Time is an AOT recomp in the same general spirit as the Xbox 360 recomp projects. I just ended up spending most of my time on the renderer instead of, you know, actually playing the game. The goal is to push the visuals further without completely losing the original look.

Development of this project is entirely AI-assisted, under human direction. That describes the TriAevum-specific work, not the mature donor projects and libraries it builds on: Azahar, Ship of Harkinian, NRI and others. Aside from those foundations, you could fairly call this concentrated AI slop. Apparently, even AI slop can still consume several months of your life.

Install

Requires Windows or Linux x64, a Vulkan-capable GPU with current drivers, and your own supported decrypted ROM. Forge accepts .3ds and .cci and checks the contents, not just the filename.

It should work with any personal EUR or USA ROM dump (original or Rev 1), provided it is decrypted and in .cci or .3ds format. Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese releases are not supported yet. See ROM compatibility details.

Windows

Download the Windows-x64 ZIP, not GitHub's source-code archive, and extract it into a writable folder. Besides README.md and LICENSE, its only file is TriAevumForge.exe; everything else is in subfolders.
Run TriAevumForge.exe and select your decrypted ROM. The HD font is included. For the HD HUD and menus, leave Download the HD textures checked (chubbycubby's OoT3D Vanilla UI/HUD, in the language your ROM boots in; if the download fails, select the zip from the mod page yourself).
When setup finishes, choose Launch game. Setup places TriAevum.exe beside Forge; afterwards, use TriAevum.exe.

Keep the folder path reasonably short: Windows still has a 259-character path limit, and Forge now tells you how many characters to give back instead of letting Windows find out for you.

Linux and Steam Deck

Both packages are qualified on a desktop with an AMD GPU (Mesa RADV); earlier betas were qualified on NVIDIA's proprietary driver.

AppImage: download the Linux-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable in your file manager or with chmod +x TriAevum-*.AppImage, open it and select your decrypted ROM in Forge. --forge reopens preparation; --appimage-extract-and-run works on systems without FUSE. Your data lives in $XDG_DATA_HOME/TriAevum (normally ~/.local/share/TriAevum).
Flatpak: flatpak install --user TriAevum-*-Linux-x86_64.flatpak, then launch TriAevum from your applications menu. Your data lives in ~/.var/app/io.github.coccofresco.TriAevum/.

On Steam Deck, prepare in Desktop Mode, then add the same AppImage as a non-Steam game. Use Steam Input's Gamepad layout without Proton. Physical Steam Deck and Gaming Mode testing have not yet been performed; the AMD qualification machine is a desktop.

No compiler or SDK is needed. No ROM or original game assets are included. Forge prepares the bundled shaders for your GPU during setup (a few minutes the first time on a machine); shaders encountered later are cached while playing. An Internet connection is only needed for the optional HD interface pack and mods. Back up your saves, settings and prepared data: data/ beside the Windows application, or the Linux folders above.

Graphics and controls

Cel/toon shading and outlines, as a preset you can leave off.
Ambient occlusion, shadows, water reflections and anti-aliasing, with the expensive ones at half resolution so 4K no longer requires an upscaler.
Real widescreen framing, selectable aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, original 5:3) and configurable field of view.
60/90 FPS visual interpolation of the original 30 Hz game state. Game logic and gameplay speed remain unchanged; this is not 60/90 Hz physics. Input is sampled late, so Link jumps when you press the button, not shortly after.
Azahar-compatible custom textures and texture dumping, plus the optional Vanilla+ Link remodel as a local overlay.
Reimplemented SingleScreen HUD, pause menus, ocarina and Sheikah Stone Visions on one screen, and Ocarina Reframed's file selection.
Configurable gameplay free camera and photo mode, keyboard/mouse and controller inputs.
Named settings profiles, audio and save states.
Procedural grass. A lot of grass. Possibly too much grass, now within a VRAM budget so it stays where you left it.

Press Esc (or R3 on a pad) for the in-game menu: the everyday settings, navigated with the D-pad or sticks, A to select, B to go back, LB / RB for the tabs, or with the mouse, while the game keeps running. Press F1 for every setting. F2 temporarily disables the main added graphics effects, then restores them without losing your configuration. Most of the presentation is configurable, so if my artistic decisions offend you personally, you can probably undo them. Effects can be expensive; adjust them to suit your GPU.

Screenshots

Captured directly from the renderer's framebuffer during beta.1.2 development on Windows, with the default graphics profile, the HD interface pack and the toon preset off. The night title screen comes from the released package's own qualification run.

<table> <tr> <td width="50%"><img src="docs/images/beta12-kokiri.jpg" width="100%" alt="Kokiri Forest at dawn with the HUD, Link facing the Kokiri at the shop entrance"></td> <td width="50%"><img src="docs/images/beta12-hyrule-field.jpg" width="100%" alt="Hyrule Field with the grass covering the plain up to Lon Lon Ranch"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Kokiri Forest, grass and ambient occlusion on</td> <td align="center">Hyrule Field, now with grass that stays put</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-file-select.jpg" width="100%" alt="The single-screen file selection with Link on his pedestal on the right"></td> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-ocarina.jpg" width="100%" alt="Link playing Zelda's Lullaby with the song name and note staff on screen"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">File selection in the Ocarina Reframed layout</td> <td align="center">Ocarina with the melody browser on one screen</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-temple-of-time.jpg" width="100%" alt="Link in the Temple of Time with the HUD and the C-button items"></td> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-credits.jpg" width="100%" alt="Zelda in the castle courtyard during the ending"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Temple of Time</td> <td align="center">The ending credits, which no longer crash</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-menu.jpg" width="100%" alt="The in-game settings menu open over Kokiri Forest, on the Video tab"></td> <td><img src="docs/images/beta12-intro-night.jpg" width="100%" alt="Link riding Epona across Hyrule Field under the moon in the title intro"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Esc / R3 in-game menu, game still running behind it</td> <td align="center">Title intro at night, from the released package</td> </tr> </table>

Testing and contributing

This is an experimental beta, not a fully tested port. Gameplay testing covers the early parts of the game on the developer's side; reporters have since taken it all the way to the credits, which is how the credits got fixed. The USA adapter has been checked through installation, the title intro and file selection, not a full playthrough. Linux is qualified on an AMD (Mesa RADV) desktop; Windows AMD drivers remain untested by us. I find tweaking shaders considerably more entertaining than finishing Zelda again, so people willing to actually play through it are especially welcome.

Please report issues with the version, ROM input/revision, GPU/driver, settings, steps to reproduce and logs/oot3d_native_game.log. Normal in-game save files are particularly useful for problems later in the game. Review logs for personal information before sharing; do not upload ROMs, extracted assets or memory savestates containing game code.

Contributions, experiments and forks taking the renderer in other directions are welcome. Community contributors and PR credits are recorded separately from the original AI-assisted development. Longer term, I would like to explore a proper ray-tracing path and finish features still in the traditional state known as "technically implemented". Ray tracing is a wishlist item, not a feature of this release.

Release notes and known limitations; earlier releases.

Source and license

Original contributions are licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. Third-party components retain their own licenses and notices: license scope and third-party notices. See the release and build contract for source availability and developer packaging, and the source map for where the main components live.

TriAevum is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.

Worst case scenario, at least we got more grass.

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