Shipwright

Ship of Harkinian is a native port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to modern computers and the Nintendo Switch. It lets you play the game at higher framerates and resolutions on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Switch hardware. The project does not include any of the original game's data or music, so you must supply your own legally obtained copy of the game ROM to use it.

Getting started is straightforward. You verify your ROM using a compatibility checker on the project's website, download the latest release, and launch the executable. On Windows and Linux the game extracts the assets from your ROM automatically on first launch. On Switch, you run the PC version first to generate the asset archive files, then copy those to your SD card alongside the Switch executable.

Under the hood, the project is built on a custom compatibility layer called libultraship. The original Nintendo 64 game was developed using Nintendo's official SDK called libultra, and libultraship reimplements that same set of functions so the game code can run on modern operating systems without rewriting it from scratch. The project also depends on work done by a separate community effort that decompiled the original game's code. Supported graphics backends are DirectX 11 on Windows, OpenGL on all platforms, and Metal on macOS.

The game supports custom asset packs distributed as .otr archive files, which you drop into a mods folder. Tools for creating those archives and a Blender plugin for working with the game's 3D formats are linked from the README. Instructions for compiling the project from source are in the docs directory.