Perfect Dark Zero - Development

Development

Development of Perfect Dark Zero began on the Nintendo GameCube with a very small team of roughly eight people. At the time, Nintendo had a 49% stake in Rare, making Rare a Nintendo second-party developer. According to lead designer Chris Tilston, "It was basically prototyping, finding out where we could go and how we could get there." The multiplayer mode was initially designed to be played offline because the team was told the GameCube would not support online play, even though some modem adapters were produced by Conexant later. In 2002, Rare was fully purchased by Microsoft. As a result, the project was transferred to the Xbox and the multiplayer was redesigned to support the Xbox Live online gaming service. Tilston revealed that at one point they got to 50 players online simultaneously, but the graphics "just couldn't handle it."

When the Xbox 360 was conceived, it gave the developers more possibilities to include what they always wanted, since the initial version of the game pushed the original Xbox hardware very hard. Tilston credited the new hardware for allowing them to create the game's unique co-operative mode, which was one of the first that could be played via Xbox Live. According to Duncan Botwood, who was responsible for most of the multiplayer, "It was quite an effort to put it in, to be honest. You have to cater for a number of eventualities you just don't get normally. We think we pulled it off, and because we pulled it off, other people might feel inspired to put the effort in, and we think that's a good thing. The co-op over Live, yeah, we're very proud of that... we're proud indeed."

Perfect Dark Zero is also one of the first games to use the Havok's HydraCore physics engine, which was specifically designed for multi-core video game systems such as the Xbox 360. Additionally, the game's renderer engine employs more advanced graphic technologies than was possible in the previous generation, including parallax mapping, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, and high dynamic range. Joanna Dark, the protagonist of the Perfect Dark games, was redesigned by UK manga artist Wil Overton. Early pictures suggested the character would employ a cartoony graphical style, but the designers ultimately returned to a more realistic depiction. To make her more memorable, Overton also decided to add more distinctive details, including a star tattoo on the left side of her neck and a "choppy" hairstyle.

The cover mode was designed to enhance the stealth aspect of the game, and the third-person perspective was needed to get into and get out of quickly. It also allowed players to see the character they were playing. The idea of bringing the game into a total third-person perspective was rejected as the shooting "works better" in first-person view, explained Tilston. Like Rare's earlier first-person shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, developers decided not to include a jumping function since they felt it goes against the nature of the genre. Botwood pointed out that it can "look damn stupid when you see other players doing it". For this reason, the team implemmented moves such as climbing obstacles or, more specifically, the combat roll, which makes players harder to hit since it breaks the game's auto-aim lock. The transition between first and third-person view with some moves took a lot of work so that they did not become disorientating. A first-person roll was implemented at one time, though it was eventually dropped.

The game was intended to be a launch title for the Xbox 360. As a result, the last stage of development was very challenging and several intended features were canceled so that the game could meet the launch deadline. The number of players in multiplayer matches had to be reduced from 50 to 32, which was still twice the standard, and a "dataDyne TV" mode that would have allowed players to upload and watch multiplayer matches over Xbox Live was eventually rejected. Final development for the Xbox 360 was very rushed. The order was given to produce the discs five days before the Microsoft certification was complete. Rare later stated they felt very confident they would pass, but it was a significant risk producing 700,000 disks if a bug turned up. According to Botwood, "very few people believed we could make launch, but everything came together in time and it was out there for day one."

The actual development of the game took overall five years to complete and spanned three platforms: the Nintendo GameCube, the Microsoft Xbox and the Xbox 360. Tilston remarked that, throughout the course of development, they noticed how the video game industry had evolved as computing and graphics power increased, and how earlier games like GoldenEye 007 and Donkey Kong Country where their development costs were minimal could easily be profitable with a few programmers. Tilston also revealed that the team behind Perfect Dark Zero was composed of roughly 25 people for most of the project, which was "ridiculously" small compared to the current standards where there are 100 or 200 people working on a team. Despite this, Perfect Dark Zero, from a development cost, made four times its money back.