originally going to be green, but the developers worried he would blend in with grass, so they eventually changed him to purple. During development of Spyro, Insomniac had a very close relationship with Crash Bandicoot creator and fellow PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, who had their office located directly across the hall from theirs. The two developers frequently worked together, playing early builds of each other's games and later sharing game technology. As a result, a demo of Crash Bandicoot: Warped was hidden in Spyro, and vice versa. Design Spyro the Dragon was unique compared to other 3D platform games of the time; Spyro's ability to glide allowed him to travel long distances in the air, meaning that the player could cross almost an entire level if starting from a high enough point. While this made designing levels more difficult for the team, it also meant that levels could be made more open-ended and explorative in nature. To make Spyro’s controls feel fluid, Matt Whiting—a NASA engineer who specialized in flight controls—was brought on to help with programming camera movement as well Spyro's movement controls. The game's camera was particularly challenging; initially, it always followed directly behind Spyro, but the resulting high-speed movements were found to make several playtesters feel nauseous. This was most evident with Spyro's basic jump, which triggered the camera to quickly tilt up and down, compared by Whiting to the motion of a rocking boat; this was ultimately tweaked so that the camera would stay steady. Spyro was coded with efficiency in mind, as 3D rendering technology was new at the time and the game had to fit the limited specifications of the PlayStation. Around 80% of the game's code was written using Assembly, while other parts were programmed in C due to its simplicity and speed. Graphics Spyro the Dragon made use of a 3D panoramic engine, developed by Alex Hastings, that could display far-away objects by utilizing varying levels of detail, a method of rendering which was new and unexplored at the time. The developers believed that the engine would be fitting for the game, as it could allow for more expansive levels that could take advantage of the character's abilities, such as gliding. This dynamic system, used to complement the large and sprawling environments, generated two different versions of a level; one version rendered in high detail and the other a simpler, textureless render.