Game Developer Deep Dives is an ongoing series that aims to shed light on specific design, artistic, or technical features of a video game, to show how seemingly simple and fundamental design decisions are actually not so simple.
Previous episodes covered topics such as the decidedly elegant artistic direction of Without blood, How GOG Updated Alpha Protocol for modern digital publishingAND how Ishtar Games approached designing a new race of dwarves in The Last Spell.
In this edition, Inkle’s Joseph Humfrey tells us how the studio managed to offer players a dynamic photo mode in a 2D game.
Who doesn't love a high-quality photo mode in a stunning game? They've mostly been the domain of ultra-realistic rendered 3D games, allowing players to set up virtual cameras like high-end DSLRs, dial in exposure settings, and focus like a pro. But we decided to add a photo mode to our 2D indie game, A Song of the Highlands. Does adding a photo mode to a 2D game make sense? Surprisingly, yes! But only if the player is given the tools to create more than just a screenshot.
In inkle I have many responsibilities, but one of them is that of artistic director in our various projects. Since we made 80 daysI tried to make “every frame a painting”, a concept popularized by the YouTube series Each frame a painting by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou. The idea is that you could take any frame of a movie and hang it on the wall because the cinematography is so beautifully executed. For 80 daysEven though the game is mostly text-based, I wanted every moment to feel like a 1930s art deco travel poster. (The people behind Monument Valley, a contemporary of 80 daysThey felt similarly. They loved the idea that any level in the game would look stunning as a piece of art on the wall.)
A screenshot from 80 Days. Images via Inkle.
A Photo Mode takes things a step further, inviting players to contribute their creative input to the framing and composition of a shot. While Monument Valley is inherently beautiful (and in fact, they have a built-in snapshot button), a photo mode puts the onus on the player to find and bring out moments of beauty. I would argue that photo mode has been limited to 3D games, not because they are prettier, but because the six degrees of freedom are essential to providing that freedom of expression.
Photography fascinates me because it communicates an idea without direct control over the subject. You can line up a photo to juxtapose contradictory objects or create a sense of movement in a two-dimensional frame. You can tell a story using spatial relationships: a small ship on a vast ocean under a vast sky; the claustrophobic space between skyscrapers; or a hawk caught dead in the center, just before it closes its talons around a sparrow. Photography is about choosing your moment in time and space and finding a point of view that forces the viewer to see what you want to show them, finding beauty even in the mundane. That's what we allow players to do in A Song of the HighlandsYou can't control the mountains, where they are, or what ruins surround you, unless you move your feet.
Overlapping rugged terrain levels in the Unity editor. Image via Inkle.
Our secret with A Song of the Highlands is that it’s not fully 2D. It’s built in 3D in Unity, using our custom tools to stack tens of thousands of flat levels over kilometers on the Z-axis. When you start the game, the mountains in the background are actually all the game’s future levels, stretching away from you, leading to your goal: the lighthouse out at sea. Most of those thousands of flat levels are traversable—that’s the “if you see it, you can go there” of 2D games! Our protagonist Moira can jump between individual levels, wherever they touch. (I’d call it 2.5D, except that decent people on the internet have told me that 2.5D is strictly defined as fully 3D art with movement limited to a 2D plane. So should we reclaim the term “2.4D”?)
This extra dimension allows for a richer ability to position the camera. While the player is not given full rotational control, the freedom to slide the camera on three separate axes gives them creative control over the alignment and framing of objects in the world. The camera can also be moved to positions that the in-game camera never reaches naturally, such as close-ups of Moira's face.
Concept art for Highland Song. Image via Paul Scott Canavan.
While we hadn’t planned on including a photo mode from day one, we always aimed for a painterly art style, making the screenshots look like digital concept art from artists like Craig Mullins. We worked with the brilliant Paul Scott Canavan to develop the overall art direction, creating layered fragments of paintings at various scales, whether it was wisps of grass, detailed rocks, or impressionistic textured paint splatters. Rendering these fragments at a range of scales meant we could pull the camera in and out dramatically, while maintaining the overall style and visibility of individual brush strokes.
At inkle we love a good day-night cycle in our games, and this was especially important when we were rendering the mountains of Scotland. A big part of the beauty of the Highlands comes from the ever-changing light and notoriously changeable weather. So a key feature of our custom graphics technology had to be able to cope with all possible permutations of time of day, fog, cloud cover and of course rain and snow. For example, we have a custom fog algorithm that uses multiple stops of color blended over camera distance, and this gradient is then interpolated over both time of day and weather type. This is not physically based rendering; it is completely artist driven to allow us to handcraft the color palette in all conditions.
The color palette used in A Highland Song. Image via Inkle.
Our photo mode reflects this and gives the player control over it: it allows players to step outside the narrative reality of the game and play God with all the lighting and weather variables, allowing for a wide range of visual effects. We also allow players to make basic adjustments to exposure and tint in the final image.
All of this control gives players a lot of creative freedom, well beyond just taking a screenshot. One really fun feature that we’re particularly proud of is the ability to choose lines of dialogue for Moira, our protagonist. The game remembers the last ten lines she’s spoken, allowing players to cycle through them. While you can’t put words into her mouth, you can change what she’s saying at any given moment based on her past lines. This gives players some creative control with interesting restrictions, while still keeping the character’s primary voice. For example, if she just said “Christ on a bike!” after falling a couple minutes ago, you could reuse the line as a huge eagle swoops down on her on a mountaintop, creating your own composition with elements provided by the game.
Image via Inkle.
Most games also apply these creative constraints to camera movement, and A Song of the Highlands is no exception. We limit camera movement to keep Moira in the frame and prevent players from getting a peek at the behind-the-scenes magic of the game. Since we unload levels as the player progresses, we need to make sure the camera can't move too far back, avoiding any awkward exposure.
We're really glad we chose to incorporate a Photo mode into A Song of the Highlands (just a couple of weeks before release, no less!). It may not be for every 2D game, but with enough creative freedom, it can be of tremendous value. It provides an extra layer of enjoyment for fans, who then share their work on social media, bringing the game to a new audience.