14 DAY TRIAL // Developer Sucker Punch spruced up the open-world superhero simulator InFamous Second Son earlier this month, with a patch introducing the brilliant Photo Mode.
The Internet started to pile up the fruits of InFamous Second Son players' labor, the feature taking off in a way nobody expected, spreading from gaming forums and blogs to other social media outlets like virtual wildfire.
The feature allows players to create some incredible in-game imagery, and the latest PlayStation Blog reveals the story behind the increasingly famous mode in InFamous Second Son, from the man behind the entire notion, Sucker Punch Senior Software Engineer Matt Durasoff.
Durasoff started off by pointing out that there is nothing novel about setting up grandiose screenshots in good-looking games, and that the team has always done this internally, from the beginning of the development cycle.
The motivation to add the possibility as a player feature came completely from the game's fans, as the community started sharing "awesome shots" without making use of any special tools. As such, the team thought of ways to aid them create more stunning content, and the decision to let the player control more than just the UI visibility quickly came up.
The Photo Mode itself is a simple tool that opens up the game engine a little and lets players tweak the visuals the way the developers themselves used to do it internally. Support for the manipulation of camera positioning, depth of field, color grading and others was always an integral part of the game engine, and it was only a matter of creating a proper interface in order for gamers to be able to make use of it.
The real lengthy work behind the feature was the construction of the game world and characters, as well as the engine that breathes life into them, which amounted to hundreds of years of cumulated work, compared to the few days that the interface required.
"We know that people love to share photos; we know pausing the clock and looking at the FX in-flight is mesmerizing; we know the game has an insane level of detail. But the magnitude of the response and what people are doing with it has blown us away," Durasoff confessed.
He went on to say that the secret to taking a great image in Photo Mode is the same as the secret to taking a great photograph in any medium, with the most important aspect being that every picture should tell a story.
If you want to see what all the hubbub is about, have a look at this gallery of InFamous Second Son set-up shots.