Skip to content

HookLink 1.8

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@dsi-hub dsi-hub released this 11 Nov 19:52
· 2 commits to main since this release
v1.8
2762f22

Ocarina of Time now builds as a native Mac app as well as an iPhone app. 1.8 also brings:

  • a new launcher inside the game (iPhone and Mac)
  • frame rate modes with frame generation
  • more touch-control options
  • a memory safety cutoff
  • better frame pacing
  • a new look for HookLink
  • 64 engine commits from nxnative

Everything on iPhone was played on an iPhone 18 Pro Max (iOS 27.2) in test builds. The Mac app and the iPhone 16 Pro have not been played yet. Please share your game log (Extras → Export game log) if something looks or runs wrong.

🖥️ New: a native Mac app (experimental)

HookLink can build the game as a double-clickable app for your Apple silicon Mac, not only for an iPhone.

  • How: in Choose device, pick This Mac (M…), then Build. The Install and Copy game files steps are skipped, because the game's files go inside the app. When the build is done, Play offers Open the game and Show in Finder. The app is called Ocarina of Time (HookLink).app and sits in HookLink's build folder; you can move it to Applications.
  • How it runs:
    • Docked mode at a 1440p output, with dynamic resolution on.
    • Real game speed below 60 fps, the same frame-step fix as on the iPhone.
    • The shaders are compiled for your Mac's own GPU.
  • Controls:
    • Keyboard and controllers both work. The keyboard is player 1 together with the first controller.
    • Shift + arrow keys move the camera (the right stick).
  • Launcher: the same Settings / Play / Extras launcher as the iPhone. On the Mac, Extras opens the saves folder, the logs and the cheats folder in Finder. It also has cloud saves, Reset to tested defaults and the credits.
  • Status: new and untested. It has been built, but nobody has played it yet. Expect rough edges and please open an issue with your log. iPhone-only settings (touch controls, Wide view) aren't shown on the Mac.

New: the game's launcher (iPhone and Mac)

When you open the game you now get a menu with three tabs before it starts: Settings · Play · Extras. It opens on Play, in the middle. Switch tabs with L / R on a controller, or by tapping.

  • Play
    • Left side: the game's icon, its title, the version and a gold Play button.
    • Right side, "How it will run": your frame rate mode, dynamic resolution, Wide view, touch controls style and free storage. Tap a row to jump to that setting.
    • A warning appears when your phone has less than 25 GB free.
    • Before playing, the launcher checks your cloud save. If both copies changed, it asks which one to keep.
  • Settings: every option in one list with a description panel. Each one says when it takes effect.
  • Extras
    • Export saves: sends a copy of your save folder to Files, AirDrop or another app. Your save stays on the phone.
    • Import a save: pick a save folder, or a folder that holds one. Your current save is backed up to save-backups first. Unzip a .zip in Files before importing it.
    • Export game log: the log to attach to bug reports.
    • Cloud saves: turn iCloud sync on or off.
    • Cheats: cheat files you put in the game's cheats folder (Files → On My iPhone → the game → cheats) are listed and switched on here. HookLink doesn't ship any cheats.
    • Reset to tested defaults: see below.
    • Credits.

New: Frame rate mode

One choice in Settings → Game replaces the old frame rate settings:

Mode What it does
60 fps Full 60 fps, the most demanding. Busy areas dip and the phone gets warm (see Known issues).
30 fps steady A locked, even 30 with steady frame pacing. Coolest and longest battery life.
30 fps + frame generation (default) The game draws a steady 30, and Apple's MetalFX frame interpolation makes a frame between each two, so the screen shows 60. It's much less work and heat than real 60, with a little more input delay; very fast motion can smear slightly. On our iPhone 18 Pro Max it looked like 60 fps with no visible smearing, and it stayed smooth through Hyrule Field.
60 fps + frame generation (experimental) The game aims for 60 and frame generation doubles it on a 120 Hz ProMotion screen. In our test it sat at about 35 fps in busy areas, so it isn't recommended yet.

The game keeps real speed in every mode.

New: tested defaults

Reset to tested defaults (Extras) sets the best settings we found, and new installs start with them:

  • Frame rate mode: 30 fps + frame generation.
  • Game's upscaler: MetalFX. Apple's upscaler gives the same picture for far less GPU time than the game's own upscaling network. An iPhone 17 Pro player found the game's own one too heavy (issue #3).
  • Everything else goes back to its default.

Settings you changed yourself are kept when you update. Settings you never touched move to the new defaults.

Touch controls (iPhone)

  • Layouts: Mobile (a floating stick, camera on the right half of the screen, a D-pad), 3D, 2D and tap. Any controller works too.
  • New: Touch controls opacity. A slider in Settings → Controls from 20% to 100%. Every on-screen button, the stick and the menu button fade together. Takes effect the next time the game starts.
  • Fixed: the Mobile layout under Classic and Forest. Before, it always looked glassy. Now its keys, stick ring and menu button are flat keys in the theme's own colours and rims. The Glass theme keeps the glass look.

Wide view (still experimental)

Wide view fills the whole iPhone screen, with no black bars, by widening the 3D view (off by default).

  • New in 1.8: the game now lays out its screen at the wider width, so the HUD and menus should keep their normal size instead of stretching sideways. The 3D camera is never widened twice. This hasn't been confirmed on a phone yet, so please send a screenshot or log either way.
  • It still draws about a fifth more pixels, so it's slower and warmer than the normal view.

Memory: a safety cutoff

1.7 gave the game an 8 GB address space and turned off its mapping limit to fix the white screen after the Master Sword. 1.8 keeps that and adds a last-resort cutoff. The engine refuses new memory when the game already holds 10 GB, or when less than 768 MB is left before iOS's limit for the app. The game then frees its own cached memory instead of iOS closing it.

1.8 uses more memory than 1.7: about 6.4–6.9 GB in our test.

Frame pacing

On iPhone, the thread that hands each finished frame to the screen now declares its own frame deadline to iOS. In Hyrule Field and the adult world, iOS had been keeping that thread on the slow efficiency cores (1.3–1.7 GHz instead of about 3.7). How much this helps hasn't been measured yet.

HookLink (the Mac app you build with)

  • A new look, after the game's file-select screen:
    • Each step is a pill button with its status.
    • The panel sits at 80% opacity over a drawn sky with clouds.
    • The lettering is sharper.
  • "Choose your iPhone" is now "Choose device", with:
    • iPhone 18 Pro / Pro Max: tested.
    • iPhone 17 family: a player runs it on a 17 Pro, with 30 fps + frame generation recommended.
    • iPhone 16 Pro / 16 Pro Max (A18 Pro): new, untested. These have 8 GB of memory, so the game may close in busy areas.
    • This Mac: new, untested. See above.
  • The README's status table, requirements and credits are updated.

From nxnative (64 commits)

The ones that matter for Ocarina of Time and for building:

  • Building
    • .NET is no longer needed: the shader translator and the file extractor come as native executables.
    • Shaders are finished in worker processes, so a cold build uses every core of your Mac.
    • Mac shaders are compiled for the Mac's minimum macOS, so every Mac gets the same result.
  • Graphics
    • Movies played into linear textures are no longer black.
    • Textures whose width isn't a whole number of tiles keep the game's padding.
    • NaN or infinite colours under a zero blend weight no longer show, matching the console.
    • New multisample textures start cleared.
    • A view keeps its parent texture alive.
    • Unused border corrections are compiled out of pipelines.
  • CPU and stutter
    • The submissions of one frame share a command allocator.
    • Argument blocks whose only change is a uniform binding are patched instead of encoded again.
    • Uniform reads are bounded once per binding instead of on every read.
    • Pipeline bases the archives lack are remembered for the run.
    • Short sleeps become polls.
    • Vertex-attribute conversions are kept while their source is unchanged.
  • Memory: textures resized by dynamic resolution take recycled memory instead of new Metal memory each time.
  • Saves:
    • When both the cloud save and this device's save changed, the launcher asks which to keep.
    • The launcher waits for a cloud save iCloud has only listed.
    • Automated runs never sync with your cloud save.
  • Controllers:
    • A controller with a second, silent device entry stays one player.
    • Switch 2 controllers can join with a button press.
    • Touch works after leaving the dock.
    • DualSense haptics keep both handles.
  • From cheemu21's kid-with-sword-remake: the steady 30 fps (V17) and the frame generation work (X2–X9) the frame rate modes are built on.

Known issues

  • Plain 60 fps restarted an iPhone 18 Pro Max once in Hyrule Field (the GPU stopped responding and iOS restarted). Use 30 fps + frame generation (the default) until we find the cause. If it happens to you, open the game again afterwards and send the log from Extras → Export game log.
  • 60 fps + frame generation reaches only about 35 fps in busy areas.
  • Wide view is slower, and its HUD fix is unconfirmed (see above).
  • Memory: 1.8 uses more memory than 1.7.
  • Movies and subtitles can drift apart below 60 fps.
  • Untested: the Mac app and the iPhone 16 Pro have not been played yet.
  • Surfaces: some can still show as flat single-colour shapes.

To update

  • iPhone: open HookLink and click Update and rebuild on the update banner, then install the new app over the old one. Your saves and game files stay on the phone.
  • Rebuild time: this update changes the shaders, so every shader is compiled again, which took about 2 hours on our Mac. Keep the Mac awake and plugged in while it runs, because sleep pauses it.
  • First start: "Preparing shaders" takes a few minutes. If the first session after that feels slow, close the game fully and reopen it.
  • Mac app: a separate build. Choose This Mac under Choose device and build. The iPhone build and its files aren't touched.

Credits

  • seedds and nxnative's contributors for nxnative, which all of this runs on.
  • cheemu21 for kid-with-sword-remake: the steady 30 fps, frame generation and the 8 GB memory layout, plus the inspiration for the touch controls.
  • ednofedulo and the kid-with-sword contributors.
  • oliverames for the frame-step fixes and iPhone testing.
  • gunvalk for the frame-step finding.
  • vladbondarenko97 for the wide-view sites.
  • PromethOps and LeonardoBai12 for their nxnative pull requests.
  • Everyone who tested and sent logs.

Engine: dsi-hub/nxnative hooklink at 8fbead96. The release holds only the HookLink app: you build the game from your own dump.

Assets 3
Loading