Update: Photo Processing
July 28, 2023
Photography has been part of the game since 2019, but the photos themselves were somewhat ephemeral. After the click of the camera, the image itself disappeared from the game world and appeared in a permanent archive on the public-facing website. This was cool, in that otherwise-undocumented and invisible moments from inside the game world could produce a kind of permanent record visible outside of the game.
However, the fact that photographs worked this way was a little magical and weird. You put photo paper into the camera, but took nothing out. After taking a photo, you ended up with an empty camera.
While it was cool that in-depth photo chemistry was represented in the game (making photo-sensitive silver nitrate solution from scratch), some important real-world steps were omitted. What about fixing the negative? What about making positives?
The photo chemicals in the game start out clear and become dark when they get exposed to light. Essentially, light breaks up the molecules, releasing elemental silver. When more light produces a darker spot on the paper, we get a negative image.
Of course, once you have a negative, you're not done yet. If you wave it around out in the open, it will get exposed to more light, making it darker and darker. By soaking it in a fixer, the remaining unexposed photo chemicals are dissolved, which halts the darkening process. After that, you have a negative that is safe to look at under normal lighting conditions.
To get a positive, you need to make a contact print with another piece of photo paper. The light areas in the negative let more light through, which creates darker areas in the positive print. And of course, you need to fix the positive too before looking at it. After that, you have your finished photograph.
All that said, photographs, both positive and negative, are now objects in the game that can be stored, traded, moved from place to place, and looked at by whoever handles them. A full-resolution version pops into view on the client whenever you handle a photograph.
And by using one negative to make multiple contact prints, you can duplicate a photograph as many times as you want.
Imagine visiting an abandoned village and rifling through a storage box to find photographs of the people who used to live there. Imagine viewing a photograph of your own great great grandmother. These things, and more, are possible now.
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