The two-shot1.3
You on one spot of the screen and the target on another, with the camera working out where to stand to keep you both there. What each setting does to the picture, what gives when the target comes too close, and what the stick does at the frame's edge.
A two-shot is the lock's framing: you on one spot, the target on another, and the camera moving to keep you both there while you fight. You say where the two spots are; the camera works out the angle and the height that put you both on them, every frame, using the lock's camera's arm and lens.
The spots#
Player's Spot and Target's Spot are percentages of the screen, the same way composition counts: X across, Y down, so a smaller Y is higher up. The defaults put you on the lower-left third (33.3, 66.7) and the target on the upper-right one (66.7, 33.3). When the camera is on your other side, both mirror.
The point on you that goes on your spot is the middle of your capsule (or the camera's Pivot Socket). The camera's Pivot Offset doesn't move it, so one preset frames the same on every camera. Point On The Target picks the target's: Same Height As The Player sits two characters of a size level, Its Origin takes its own origin, and Middle Of Its Bounds takes the middle of its body. Raised By lifts it. A target with lock points uses the lock point instead.
When the target comes close#
From far off, the camera stands behind you and the target sits where you asked. As the target closes in, holding both spots takes more and more turning, and something has to give.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Come Round No More Than | How far the camera may come round to the side to keep both spots. 180 comes round as far as it takes; 0 stays behind you and lets the target drift in over your shoulder. |
| Tilt No Further Than | How far the camera may tilt up or down to keep the target at its height on screen. Past it, the target's height gives. |
| When Too Close | Let The Spots Give keeps the camera where it is; Come In Closer brings it in, no closer than Closest Arm, before the spots give. |
| Never Further Than | The furthest the camera may ever stand from you, whatever a group or a giant asks. For corridors and low ceilings. 0 is no limit. |
Where something gives, the preview's red line shows how far the target ends up from its ring. Every shipped lock-on whose shot turns keeps Come Round No More Than at 0, so the camera stays behind you the way a lock without a preset does. How far round it stands to begin with is the spots' doing: the further apart they are across the screen, the more side-on the shot.
The line#
The line between you and the target is the one film keeps to: stay on one side of it and the two of you never swap sides of the screen. Rule says which side the camera keeps:
| Rule | The camera |
|---|---|
| Hold Its Side | Stays on the side it started on. |
| Always The Open Side | Starts on whichever side has more room, and moves to the other when it opens up. |
| Follow The Shoulder | Takes the camera's shoulder, so the shoulder swap button swaps the side. |
| Player Places The Target | The stick moves the target round the screen, and the camera keeps them wherever they're put. |
Swap Shoulders lets the lock cross over on its own: walled in, or to frame a new target from its other side. Off, the lock never takes you across. A crossing it makes swings round behind you over Crossing Takes rather than cutting, and Rise While Crossing arcs it over the top. Sliding across with the stick is yours either way (see the stick, below).
The stick#
What The Stick Does while the two-shot holds the camera:
| Mode | The stick |
|---|---|
| Steer And Keep It | Pushed sideways, slides you and the target across the screen opposite ways, through the middle to your other shoulder, the way a lock without a preset moves; up and down turn the shot, up to Turn Up To. It stays where you let go. Never switches target. |
| Nudge And Spring Back | Looks round a little, up to Turn Up To, and the shot springs back over Springs Back Over when you let go. |
| Pull Away To Switch Target | A nudge that switches. Hold the shot pulled out past Counts Once Pulled Past for Switches After Holding For, and the lock moves to the next target that way; let go sooner and it springs back. One switch a pull. |
| Orbit Around The Pair | Swings the camera round the two of you, both always on screen. |
| Fully Directed | Does nothing. The camera is entirely the shot's. |
| Push To Switch Target | A push to one side switches to the next target that way. The camera doesn't move. |
Steer And Keep It is what the shipped lock-ons use, Soulslike apart. You Slide Opposite says how much of a sideways push slides the two of you across rather than turning the shot with you held on your spot: at 100, the default, you move as far as the target does, the other way, so the pair stays balanced on screen. Push on and you meet in the middle, with the camera behind you, and carry on to your other shoulder. Nothing is timed and nothing decides it for you: the lock keeps the side you're on, a new target is framed there, and the camera's own shoulder goes with you, so letting go leaves you on it. The two of you slide as far as the group's Keep Inside box, easing into its edge. At 0 the push turns the shot instead, as up and down always do.
Turn Up To is 30 degrees across and 18 up or down out of the box, the same as a Rig's Player Offset, which is how far a lock without a preset lets you steer. A turn goes over with the shot when the camera crosses the line, mirrored, so the target ends up as far from the middle on the other side. Drifts Back At brings it home over time if you'd rather it didn't stay, Back To The Spots On A New Target starts each new target afresh, and Recenter Camera puts it back on the spots on the side you're on.
Go deeperWhy it slides
A lock without a preset frames with its Rig: the view looks at the target and the Rig's Framing Subject shift puts you as far the other side of the middle as the target is. Push the view one way and the target goes one way and you the other, through the middle and out again, so the shoulder changes without anything ever deciding to swap it. A two-shot places you itself, so that shift gives way under it; You Slide Opposite does the same job inside the two-shot. It moves the spots apart or together, the way Orbit Around The Pair does, and which side of the line the camera is on is simply which side of the middle you are.
With Player Places The Target, the stick moves the target round the screen and you slide opposite it as it goes, rather than swapping sides once it passes the middle.
Go deeperWhy half its reach and a second
Pull Away To Switch Target counts a pull once the shot is past half its reach, and switches once it's been held there a second. Both are Enhanced Input's own figures: half its travel is where a stick counts as pressed, and a second is how long its Hold trigger waits. The clock only runs while the stick is still pushing outwards, so a pull let go just short of the second never switches.
At the frame's edge#
Steer far enough and the target reaches the edge of the frame. At The Frame's Edge says what happens there, at the group's Keep Inside box:
| Choice | At the edge |
|---|---|
| Stop The Stick | The stick stops, so the target goes anywhere inside the box and never past it. How far that is follows the lens: a few degrees on a long lens, most of Turn Up To on a wide one. Every shipped lock-on stops. |
| Make Room | The stick keeps its whole reach, and the camera stands back or widens the lens just enough to keep the target in, by the group's Make Room By, Pull Back Up To and Widen Up To. Past the most it may make, it stops after all. |
| Let It Go | Nothing stops it: the stick can take the target out of the frame. |
Go deeperHow the stick keeps the target in
Every frame the camera works out how far the stick may turn the shot each way before the target reaches the box, on the shot as it stands. It halves the gap between where the stick is and the end of its reach twelve times, which finds the edge to well under a hundredth of a degree, and holds the stick there.
Making room, it works that out for the most room the shot may make, so the stick may go as far as that keeps the target in, and the camera stands back or widens towards it. The camera eases out on its own clock, though, and a wall behind can hold it in, so the turn on screen only ever goes as far as the camera, standing where it is now, keeps the target in. Push hard and the turn waits for the room rather than showing the target leaving.
Nothing in it was tuned by eye: the edge is the box the group's fit already keeps everyone inside, and the reach is Turn Up To.
Steering up and down#
As you steer the shot, the lock's camera answers the way it answers a look: its Pitch Response stands it back or brings it in and widens or narrows the lens, and its Looking Up and Looking Down move the two of you on screen. While Turning moves you as you swing the shot round. All of it is measured from where the shot rests, so a shot you haven't steered is exactly as framed. A preset changes any of it by adding Pitch Response or Composition As You Steer under its Camera; left out, they're the player's camera's own.
Following them#
Follows says how the camera keeps up as you both move. Damped turns with some weight, at the Rig's own pace when Same Weight As The Rig is on, or over Settle Time when it's off. Exact Every Frame is on the shot every frame, tight, and every stumble shows. Leading Their Movement frames where you're both heading, Lead By seconds ahead, so you see the space opening up in front of the movement.
Limits put hard edges on where the shot may look, a yaw range and a pitch range, measured from the line between you, from your facing, or from the world.
Soft locks and held angles#
Who Turns The Camera is on the preset. The Lock turns it to hold the two-shot. You (Soft Lock) leaves the camera to you: the lock only slides the middle of the shot in between you and pulls back to keep everyone in. You, On Automatic Locks does that on a lock made for you, such as auto lock in a fight, and turns the camera when you locked on yourself.
A camera that holds its own angle (top-down, isometric, side-on, or a lock with Hold An Angle ticked) frames a lock the soft way too, whoever turns: the view keeps its angle, the middle of the shot slides to Middle Of The Shot of the way from you to the target, and the arm is fitted to keep you both inside the box. A lock that brings a held angle in from a camera that turns frames that way from its first frame: the view swings from yours to the held one, never towards the target on the way, and the arm is fitted for the view it's heading for.
The preview#
Every Lock-On Preset opens with its shot drawn: you and a made-up target to scale, through the camera the shot settles on, with your spots as rings. Drag a ring and the spot moves with it, in the preset and in a lock you're playing. Under the diagram, Shot Preview sets up the made-up fight: how far off the target stands, how much higher, how big, how many others are in it and where. It also plays the preset's effects over the diagram, at any moment of a made-up lock, with the same rise and fall the game gives them.
Where the stick steers the shot, a hollow diamond marks where the target lands with the stick held all the way each way, with how far the stick turned. Where the frame's edge stopped it, the diamond sits on the box and says how far it could have gone, "24 of 30 deg"; making room, it says how far back the camera stood or how much wider the lens went. Hollow squares mark where Looking Up and Looking Down move you, and the line under the diagram says the same in words.
With Solve The Two-Shot off, the diagram draws the camera as the lock leaves it instead, looking at the target with you on the camera's own spot, and Without The Two-Shot draws how quickly it turns there.
A Rig that a Lock-On Preset starts from gets a Show switch in its own preview, to draw the lock with the Rig you're editing.
Go deeperHow the camera finds the angle
For two points and two spots there is one camera direction, at a given distance and lens, that puts each point on its spot. The two-shot works that direction out directly each frame rather than searching for it, from where you are, where the target is, the arm and the lens. When no direction does it within the limits, the target's height gives first, then its place across slides in towards yours, in that order, so you always stay exactly on your spot.
The preview draws its picture with the same solve, and the test suite stands the real camera in the same made-up fight and checks the two agree for every shipped preset. It steers the real camera each way as well, and checks the hollow diamonds and cameras against where it ends up.
Go deeperTurn You To Face The Target
For a character that faces wherever its controller points, Turn You To Face The Target turns you towards the target, and forward on the stick then moves you towards it rather than into the screen. Leave it off when your character faces its target by itself: the Game Animation Sample does, through TargetedActor.