Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/6960
February 2010 12 n n n n Gaming often assumes the predatorial POV of an at- tacker (think Jaws). Working almost exclu- sively in Autodesk's 3ds Max, the team found that it was not easy to interject these cin- ematic camera techniques—borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and Da- vid Lynch—into a video game. In one scene, for example, when Alan races up a mountain through a thick stand of trees and frantically tries to start an elevator at the edge of cliff as the dark forces close in behind him, the cam- era assumes the predatorial POV of the antag- onists, much like you'd see in a horror movie. "Although these alternating POV shots are key devices for building up suspense in a thriller, you need to be extremely careful whenever you do this," warns Lehtinen. "It cannot feel like a random interruption; rather, it should flow flu- idly and enhance the immersion and intrigue, and not disrupt the gameplay experience." Sometimes scenes cut to slow motion, to enhance the reveal of a threat, like the dark forces or the police helicopter. "One key ele- ment is to interweave the camera and slow- motion pans into the combat itself, when the player has a near-miss moment, for instance," explains Lehtinen. In fact, Alan Wake uses a wide range of shots: camera moves from first to third person, to a variety of reveal cameras, cinematic shots, player-triggered look-at cam- eras, and POV shots—and utilizes the full cin- ematic range in the cut-scenes. "e key thing to remember is that games are an interactive medium, and the use of the camera must respect this," Lehtinen cau- tions. "e player must feel in control and comfortable, so all the camera pans and ac- tion feel intuitive and fair. Taking the con- trols from the player should be done in a way that feels rewarding and comfortable. When a camera flows effortlessly between all these situations and the player can still focus on the action, drama, and emotion, you have done a good job." Noir Lighting As Alan's flashlight beam slices through the night, the blackened silhouettes of people and trees loom ghostly against the movie-blue darkness and mist of the forest. e game also employs a real-time weather and day-and- night cycle to heighten the drama of a scene, using rain and fog to infuse the photography with a sense of dread and foreboding. With its dramatic use of noir lighting and shadow, setting, and weather, Alan Wake relies heavily on the lighting conventions of the hor- ror and thriller genre. Even though the game has its roots in realistic environments, Rem- edy has chosen to use movie realism. Aside from the practical lighting in the scene—that is, natural light from the sun, moon, lamps, and so forth—the team used additional lights to make the characters pop against the back- ground. Sometimes they would even use a light to underline an important location. "Because the camera follows Alan's subjec- tive point of view, we can take these liberties, and if the player enjoys it more, that is all the reason we need," says Lehtinen. "It's important that the lighting feels dramatic and works on a narrative level, which is far more important in a story-driven experience than accuracy or hyper-realism." Of course, hyper-realism would be an impos- sibility for a game that is primarily played in the dark of night. After all, the player wouldn't be able to see anything. "Light is a combat tool and a safe haven in the night; it also reveals things as they truly are and offers clues for the player. So a light source is a key functional aspect as well as a symbolic and mythological pillar," says Lehtin- en. Total darkness obviously does not lend itself to action gameplay; you need to be able to navigate, flee, and fight, just as you need to be able to see something during the night scenes of a film. e team found that the best way to forge the illusion of night often was to combine classic movie "night blue" lighting with fog and other effects, which yielded a world of thrilling shadows, shapes, and silhouettes. e light-based gameplay not only made real-time day and night cycles important, but also real-time dynamic HDR lighting that could simulate complex environmental ef- fects, such as sunsets, twilight, morning mist, and so forth. ick, flowing clouds ride on dynamic wind patterns, which send the low- lying fog scattering through the trees, filter- ing the moonlight into a deep shade of blue that glistens off the hard-packed snow. "It was crucial to show a high dynamic range in the lighting," says Lehtinen. "And all of it needed to work seamlessly within our dynamic envi- ronments, which can go from day to night, switching from clear, night skies to foggy and stormy conditions, where clouds dash across the sky, in time-lapse style, and the foliage sways violently." To accomplish this, the Remedy crew, work- ing in Max, began with the goal of achieving fully dynamic HDR lighting throughout the entire game. is was so challenging that they went through numerous failed experiments in the process of perfecting the engine's lighting. Initially, the team had a forward renderer that combined up to four lights per affected surface to one pass, but in the end, the only thing that gave them the performance with the number of lights they wanted was deferred lighting. In order to achieve that dark, ominous, moody atmospheric lighting, the engine had to be completely dynamic and adjustable. Essentially, every rendering parameter could be changed on the fly, from the color values of the sun, to the amount of clouds, fogginess, and so forth. On top of that is a flexible post- processing pipeline, which draws inspiration from contemporary effects used in movies and TV. From auto-exposure and bloom, to tone map operations, everything could be changed in real time. "ese effects really make or break the picture, so much so that turning tone map- ping and bloom off would make the graphics feel flat in comparison," Lehtinen says. Because all the parameters are exposed and adjustable in every gameplay situation, the Alan Wake's plot fuses fiction and reality, as the main character finds himself living the nightmarish story of his new novel. Remedy Entertainment borrowed camera techniques, set dressing, and sounds from the film world to build up tension and suspense in the game.