First of all, a single programmer had developed almost the entire RT2 code base. With Tropico, the staff of Poptop had nearly doubled in size. Each new programmer immediately faced the daunting task of getting a grasp of the RT2 code before he could even begin to make the modifications necessary to create Tropico.

O.K., so we added a feature that allowed us to show off the graphics even if it didn't help gameplay. What's the big deal? The deal is that we pre-scaled all of the images for the various zooms beforehand and stored them in the data file, so these high-resolution close-up graphics ate up as much space as all the other zoom levels' graphics combined. We spent a full 50 percent of our graphics budget on this one feature. As we got deep into the project, it became apparent that memory and CD file space budgets were going to be tight, but we had invested too much into this feature to be comfortable with cutting it. Ultimately, we had to cut other features to create space, features which would have improved the game. Rotatable buildings, more unit animations, and repeating animations on the buildings (such as blinking lights and moving machinery) all had to be cut to make room.

Looking back, it is apparent that tossing out Zoom 0 and putting in more gameplay-friendly features would have been a big net improvement to the overall game.