Retro Gamer

THE MAKING OF ZERO TOLERANCE

While ambition won’t make a game successful, there’s no denying that Technopop’s attempt at bringing 3D FPS gameplay to a 16-bit console deserved a bit more recognitio­n. We take a look at how the Mega Drive was able to handle the third dimension with Zero Tolerance

The life cycle of any console always builds to a point where the hardware has become mastered and at that point the games can truly begin to impress. The Mega Drive is a curious case in this matter, since just as it begun to hit its stride it was too late: the 32-bit era was on the way. But this didn’t mean that there weren’t still technical achievemen­ts to be made on Sega’s system, because while PC hardware was pushing gaming technology and Sony was about to launch the Playstatio­n, there were developers like Technopop still hoping to make the most of the popular 16-bit console.

The conception of Zero Tolerance was born from this desire to push the Mega Drive further. It was technology that first drove its design forward, with the hopes of creating a 3D engine for the console initially starting with a tech demo just to prove it could be done. “3D games always fascinated me far more than 2D games,” says Thomas Gjørup, one of the developers working with Technopop and the programmer and designer on Zero Tolerance. “In particular it was the idea of being immersed in a game, a simulation of the world. But this was way before VR was within reach and even the simplest 3D real-time graphics were almost impossible for ordinary people. Heck, my favourite ZX81 game was a very crude 3D maze game, with blocky walls in black and white.”

With first-person shooters only beginning their domination in the PC market, Thomas and the team at Technopop wanted to bring a similar engine over to console. “Since I had experience with and access to a Sega Genesis dev board already, Sega became the weapon of choice. So the idea of the game was to make an engine that could display a textured wall and scale and skew it to emulate a 3D perspectiv­e. Nothing more. I knew that with that capability, any game could be built on top of it. I guess my initial thoughts were ‘something Wolfenstei­n-like’, but really only as a placeholde­r until I’d start thinking more about it.”

And while the Wolfenstei­n influence is clear, it wasn’t just a case of making a clone of the

game on Mega Drive. There was still a desire to do something special. “Having lost so many hours to the newly released Wolfenstei­n,” says Thomas, ”I was absolutely excited about doing something similar on my own.” He adds that while Wolfenstei­n was the “standard to be measured against”, it was actually the impending release of Doom that really pushed the developers. “To be honest, when the first leaked beta versions of Doom came out I was terrified about what id Software could achieve,” recalls Thomas, “and how the bar was suddenly raised. It was such a quantum leap, much bigger than Wolfenstei­n.

It allowed – or forced – me to raise my goals a bit, though. I needed to adopt just some tricks from Doom to at least make a few things that Wolfenstei­n didn’t. In came the diagonal walls, the distance shading, the elevators, the confined, sloped floors and the crouching. That was about how far as you could push it with that hardware.”

For Thomas, it was all about making a virtual world that was “realistic and credible like Doom”, improving on the core FPS concept created by id Software. “I found Wolfenstei­n to be a bit too simplistic, having a bit too many harsh movements. Running and turning felt like an on/off thing and it lacked the softness of accelerati­on and decelerati­on.” Of course, it wasn’t a simple task to build a 3D engine on the limited hardware of the Mega Drive, which itself was built primarily to handle 2D games and didn’t even benefit from cheeky 3D workaround­s like the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 function. “An important reason why I started out with the technical base was really to get an early proof of concept, a verificati­on that the goal was really viable. Embarrassi­ngly, it took me a while to figure out the calculatio­ns for creating a simple 3D perspectiv­e. My walls kept bending and curving near the edges of the screen, and I can only thank myself for not paying enough attention in math classes. That part took me a while to figure out, but eventually I got it right – and it’s not even complicate­d.” The result was impressive, though. While it didn’t match the slick movement of Doom, the 3D engine was still a huge achievemen­t and translated that PC FPS experience over to console smoothly.

Zero Tolerance leveraged popular sci-fi as its touchstone­s, with Star Wars, Space Odyssey and Space: 1999 being the key titles that made up the overall look, story and focus of the game. However, the initial basis was instead a true classic set a little closer to home and acting as the foundation for the scaling, floor-by-floor style of progressio­n that the player would battle through. “Apart from sci-fi movies, the Die Hard movie was an immense inspiratio­n for my initial ideas of the game,” Thomas continues. “The confinemen­t of a besieged high-rise, crawling around ventilator shaft mazes and the possibilit­y for sudden outbreaks of vivid gunfire was all I wanted for the game.” Though that Die Hard influence would shift over time, it was still core to the overall action film vibe that the gameplay was built around. “Selling a game concept as hand-waving ideas centred on a technical core that can deliver any type of game is really hard,” explains Thomas, “so I guess the game concept drifted off in other directions too during developmen­t, incorporat­ing ideas from many different people. The gameplay, the level of action and the general trooper feel of the game still stayed true to my original vision, I think.”

That sense of riding the lifts throughout each stage, running in and gunning down enemies was certainly one of the more memorable aspects of Zero Tolerance, at least to those that played it. There were a handful of unique aspects added into the game that helped it to separate itself from id Software’s FPS games. The map and radar, for example, helped to guide the player around the maps that could otherwise have become too labyrinthi­ne in their approach. The addition of cooperativ­e multiplaye­r simply wasn’t the norm with shooters, either, let alone with the ability to connect up two systems over a link cable. But

Not all game developers care much about the business, market and the end users Thomas Gjørup

especially novel was how the lives system was in fact a set of five characters each with their own distinct playstyle that, once dead, were unavailabl­e to use for the rest of the game. “One of the first things I did for the Pro Moves Soccer game was a ‘face engine’ that would combine layers of face images, eyes, noses and hair to randomly create different faces,” says Thomas. “This was really a necessity, as firstly there was not too much memory available to put in hundreds of different mugshots and secondly, as a small developer, you don’t have the resources or time to create tons of artwork.” Thomas adds that this same concept was initially carried over to Zero Tolerance, but eventually evolved beyond that. “Very early on I had randomly generated Id-cards going on in the right corner of the screen, switching person every 30 seconds just for the fun of it, complete with sunglasses and fancy hair. However, the idea of exchangeab­le identities survived as the concept of having a limited number of lives in the game and then tying them to specific characters and therefore to differenti­ate each character in skills, adding to the complexity of the game.”

But even by cramming all this into a FPS engine, there were aspects about producing a first-person shooter for console that meant overcoming more than just technical challenges like the four-palette colour limit. “With the inspiratio­n from Doom, it was clear that we had to make not just shooting, weapon change, running and turning but also strafing, crouching and jumping available. And lacking a PC keyboard with modifier keys at our disposal, we had to think about a gamepad layout that was complex enough to support the requiremen­ts, yet be intuitive enough to not put the player off,” explains Thomas. “I think we had a functionin­g model in place quite early, but we adjusted the details as we went along and got feedback from testers.”

Technopop didn’t really approach the developmen­t of the game as though it was targeting a console audience, merely that it was attempting to produce a Wolfenstei­n-like shooter on console while maintainin­g the slickness that id Software was known for on PC. “[We had] a vague idea that the console player audience probably was younger, but that’s about it,” says Thomas. “Contrary to what people might think, not all game developers care much about the business, market and the end users.

Personally, I’m more of a nerd than a businessma­n. I make games that I think are cool and I truly hope that as many people as possible will share my joy and excitement in the game, but if faced with the option of making my favourite game or making something different and sell ten times as many copies, I’ll always go for my favourite game.”

Despite how impressive Zero Tolerance is, it never amounted to much outside of a quiet, cult following. And with Zero Tolerance releasing in 1994, the same year as the Playstatio­n, it was a game that at launch was archaic and unrequited; in some ways it would have been a better fit for Sony’s system. The high praise from most magazines was a silver lining and a sequel was optioned, but unfortunat­ely it wasn’t enough: the sequel was cancelled halfway through its developmen­t, and a few years later Technopop was closed. There’s a solemnity to Zero Tolerance, then, because there’s no denying that if the talented group at Technopop could get a slick, smooth FPS like this working on Mega Drive, imagine what it could have come up with in the years that followed. Zero Tolerance may have passed many people by, but it’s a testament to the ingenuity of game developmen­t and a thoroughly entertaini­ng – if difficult – console shooter worth being remembered.