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> Some of them are specific to Link’s latest adventure, including things like Riju’s lightning ability, which lets the player target enemies with a bow and bring down a lighting strike wherever the arrow lands.

I'm sure I've seen this mechanic about twenty years ago somewhere.

> Link and the objects he rides on move together at the same speed, rather than Link being technically stationary on top of a moving object as is common in the physics of other games.

This is just how physics work. Aside from the absurdity of trying to patent "simulating basic physics" , I'm sure simulations for this have been written countless times in the past decades.

The sad thing about this is that stupid patents are often accepted just fine, and Nintendo can later try and enforce them against some little studio that can't afford the lawyers to defend itself.



> I'm sure I've seen this mechanic about twenty years ago somewhere.

I've indeed seen this multiple times for example in Skyrim [1] and in Minecraft (trough mods)

I think I've seen every concept listed in the article before. Let's hope they don't get much out of it.

1: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Arcane_Archer_Pack_Items#Lig...


> Minecraft (trough mods)

Modding isn't even needed, the Channeling enchantment for tridents does this: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Channeling


>> Link and the objects he rides on move together at the same speed, rather than Link being technically stationary on top of a moving object as is common in the physics of other games.

>This is just how physics work. Aside from the absurdity of trying to patent "simulating basic physics" , I'm sure simulations for this have been written countless times in the past decades.

It's not even a simulation with say, friction (which would be simulating physics). It's literally sample code from PhysX fifteen years ago, where if you're standing on a physics object, your speed = physics object's speed, at every simulation frame.

They've been granted a patent on code so simple a CS grad with a game dev specialisation writes for class.


There needs to be penalty for filing patents that are utter shit. At the very minimum, trying to actually enforce such patents should constitute abuse of process or malicious prosecution.


This. Patents (excepting those describing otherwise unreproducible inventions) have no real downsides.




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