Yep, there are a ton of huge / game-breaking bugs. But it did take quite a while (10+ years) and a lot of people to find many of them. The fact that people really love to speed run the game certainly was a huge factor in finding these subtle bugs, not to mention technology like emulators really accelerated the process, especially when it came to finding, for example, the correct frame to leave Gohma's room for the wrong-warp to Ganon's castle (it's a frame perfect trick). I would imagine that most games made at the time, if subjected to the same level of scrutiny, would display near or the same level of brokenness. Donkey Kong 64 certainly comes to mind. I don't think this is indicative of inexperienced programmers.
And then we have to think of the system limitations at the time and the fact that the N64 was a pretty new system with a new way of displaying graphics. It was a pretty big paradigm shift and yes, for the first 3D Zelda game it, like all games, could have benefitted from more time.
A lot of the bugs with the game have to do with messing with memory and exploiting pointer arithmetic. Using pointer manipulation to handle cutscene / area changes as well as items on the C-buttons obviously isn't ideal but sure as hell saved space compared to alternative solutions. There is very little error checking (for buffer overflows and 'impossible' situations such as having a deku stick on 'B') for what I would imagine to be performance concerns as well as simply good time management.
To your point, absolutely. Very few people for the first few years encountered any such bugs. The first real speed run of the game came in 2003, 5 years after its release. Even that run featured very few bugs; it was mostly route optimization and practice. The latest wrong warp glitch which enables you to jump from Deku Tree to Ganon's Castle was found in 2012. That's a full 14 years after the game's release.
If anything, this speaks more to the dedication of speed runners and glitch finders that the incompetency of OoT programmers.
And then we have to think of the system limitations at the time and the fact that the N64 was a pretty new system with a new way of displaying graphics. It was a pretty big paradigm shift and yes, for the first 3D Zelda game it, like all games, could have benefitted from more time.
A lot of the bugs with the game have to do with messing with memory and exploiting pointer arithmetic. Using pointer manipulation to handle cutscene / area changes as well as items on the C-buttons obviously isn't ideal but sure as hell saved space compared to alternative solutions. There is very little error checking (for buffer overflows and 'impossible' situations such as having a deku stick on 'B') for what I would imagine to be performance concerns as well as simply good time management.
To your point, absolutely. Very few people for the first few years encountered any such bugs. The first real speed run of the game came in 2003, 5 years after its release. Even that run featured very few bugs; it was mostly route optimization and practice. The latest wrong warp glitch which enables you to jump from Deku Tree to Ganon's Castle was found in 2012. That's a full 14 years after the game's release.
If anything, this speaks more to the dedication of speed runners and glitch finders that the incompetency of OoT programmers.