UltraTears

UltraTears builds a native version of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (version 1.4.3) for Windows, Linux and the Steam Deck from your own copy of the game. It is not an emulator: the game's code is translated to native code ahead of time, and its shaders and textures are prepared when the game is built, not while you play.

[!IMPORTANT] No game files are included. You need your own copy of the game with update 1.4.3, dumped from your own console as plain exefs and romfs folders. This project provides no game files, keys, firmware or dumping tools, and UltraTears decrypts nothing. Everything made from the game is made on your PC, for your own use: do not share it.

UltraTears is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda and Tears of the Kingdom are trademarks of Nintendo.

Report problems on Issues with ultratears.log from the game folder.

Installing

You need: Windows 10/11 or Linux (kernel 6.7+, glibc 2.34+; SteamOS 3 has both), a graphics card with a current Vulkan 1.3 driver, 16 GB of RAM, 4 GB of video memory, about 40 GB free, and your dump:

dump\
├── exefs\   main, subsdk0, sdk, main.npdm, ...
└── romfs\   about 304,000 files, 16 GB

Windows

1. Download UltraTears-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip from Releases and extract it into its own folder.
2. Start UltraTears Launcher.exe. If SmartScreen warns about it, choose More info → Run anyway.
3. Choose the folder with exefs and romfs and click Prepare the game. It builds the game once, about 30 minutes.
4. Click Play.

To play on a Steam Deck, choose For Linux (Steam Deck) or Both platforms next to Prepare the game: you get UltraTears-SteamDeck.tar (about 28 GB), which you extract on the Deck and start as below, from step 4.

Linux and Steam Deck

1. Download UltraTears.AppImage from Releases. On a Steam Deck, do this in Desktop Mode.
2. In the file's Properties, on the Permissions tab, turn on Allow executing file as program, then start it.
3. Choose the folder with exefs and romfs and click Prepare the game.
4. When the game is prepared, add UltraTears.AppImage from the game folder to Steam as a non-Steam game. With --play in its launch options it starts the game directly, without the launcher. Start the game from Gaming Mode.

The launcher finds new versions itself and rebuilds only what changed; saves in userdata are kept. On Linux you can also put a newer UltraTears.AppImage into the game folder in place of the old one: the launcher then offers the update.

The controller's button layout follows the Switch (A is the right button); on the Steam Deck it follows the Deck's own labels (A is the bottom button).

Keyboard and mouse: WASD move, the mouse (or the arrow keys) turns the camera and aims, E = A, Left Shift = B, Space = X, left click / T = Y, Q = L, R = R, right click / Z = ZL, F / X = ZR, Esc = + (menu), Tab / M = − (map), Left Ctrl / C = stick buttons, 1 2 3 4 = d-pad (left, up, right, down; the mouse's side buttons are left and right), F11 or Alt+Enter full screen. Holding L, the mouse picks an ability; holding a d-pad key, the wheel or moving the mouse sideways steps through weapons, shields and materials. Mouse sensitivity, the bow's and inverted up and down are on the Keyboard page of the launcher's Controls tab.

Both can be changed in the launcher's Controls tab: every button and key (mouse buttons too), and the controller's layout (Nintendo: A is the right button; Xbox / Steam Deck: A is the bottom one). The game's button prompts follow your layout and bindings. The Sticks and gyro page sets each stick's and the gyro's dead zone, for a stick that drifts.

On the launcher's General tab:

• Scene scale: the scene can be drawn below the screen's resolution and upscaled with FSR 1 (the game's own) or FSR 3.1 (temporal, sharper and steadier in motion), or drawn at full size (None).
• Anti-aliasing (without FSR 3.1, which anti-aliases by itself): the game's FXAA, SMAA (smoother edges for little GPU time) or Off.

Mods made for the Switch emulators work as they are. In the launcher's Mods tab click Open mods folder and unpack each mod into a folder of its own there, so that its romfs, exefs or cheats folder sits directly in it (atmosphere/contents/0100F2C0115B6000/... works too). The same tab turns each mod and each cheat on or off and sets the mods' order: when two mods change the same file, the one higher in the list wins. Mods and cheats need no rebuild of the game.

• RomFS mods (textures, models, text, ...), ExeFS patches (.ips, .pchtxt) and Atmosphere cheats (.txt named by the game's build ID) for game version 1.4.3.
• Patches and cheats that change the game's code are prepared when you press Play, a few seconds when they changed. On Linux and the Steam Deck this needs the game folder set up by the AppImage; in a folder made on Windows for the Deck, only RomFS mods and cheats that change data work.
• A texture from a mod causes a short hitch the first time it is seen.

For Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean the game uses the Switch's own system fonts. They are part of the console's system software, not of the game, so the port can't make them from the dump. Without them the game stops when it starts in one of these languages; all other languages don't need them.

Put the console's shared font files, taken from your own Switch, into sysdata\fonts\ next to exefs and romfs in your dump folder before Prepare the game (or later straight into data\fonts\ in the game folder):

dump\
└── sysdata\fonts\   0-standard.bfttf, 1-chinese-simplified.bfttf, 2-chinese-simplified-extension.bfttf,
                     3-chinese-traditional.bfttf, 4-korean.bfttf, 5-nintendo-extension.bfttf

Put in all six; the game reads only the ones it asks for.

Building from source

Install Git and Python 3, then:

git clone https://github.com/kuraeow/ultratears.git
cd ultratears
python tools/setup.py --dump D:\path\to\dump

The setup downloads the tools it lacks and makes the complete game folder in build\, launcher included, as in a release. Start build\UltraTears Launcher.exe. Without --dump it takes the dump from dump\ in the repository. Options, Linux and how it works: BUILDING.md. Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md.

Legal

• Nothing of the game is in this repository or in a release: no code (also none translated from it), assets, shaders, textures, fonts, keys or firmware. All of that is made from your dump, on your PC.
• No Nintendo SDK code or headers are used: the system and graphics layers are UltraTears' own.
• The source holds only the facts needed to run the game: addresses, hashes, short instruction replacements.
• The name, emblem, icon and cover are the author's own work and are not under the GPL: assets/BRANDING.md. Third-party code: third_party/README.md.