Howdy, exofarmers! Can y’all believe the Making it Home update drops tomorrow?! We’re practically jumping outta our boots with excitement!
New Additions to Photo Mode
Today, for our final devlog before the update, we’re sitting down to chat with Cornelis – Lead Technical UI Designer, Writer, and Co-Founder – about the new features coming to the in-game Photo Mode.
Howdy, Cornelis! What kinda things have you been wrangling with on this project?
I’ve been taking the lead on the design and development of the new updates and additions to Photo Mode! This involves figuring out what settings and features could add the most value, before prototyping these and testing them internally. After seeing what works (and what doesn’t…), I begin the final implementation and involve artists and programmers where needed.
Tell us about all the new updates to Photo Mode, will ya?
Nine new updates and additions are coming to Photo Mode with the Making it Home Update:
- Stamps: We’ve upped the ante from just two stamps to a whopping 20!
- Stamp Position: Choose from nine different spots on the screen to place one of those new stamps.
- Frame: What was once “Cinematic Mode” is now “Frame” – with four extra options added. More ways to frame your epic shots!
- Player Signature: Give yourself some well-deserved credit by adding your Player ID to your screenshots.
- Composition Grid: Easily line up those perfect shots with a handy 3×3 grid overlay!
- Camera Path: Save up to 15 camera positions and create a smooth sequence by pressing play. Perfect for capturing the action!
- Mech/Exofarmer Emotes: Strike a pose! Use the new Emotes Feature to activate emotes in Photo Mode and pose your character just right.
- Mech/Exofarmer Emote Position: Emote animations are frozen in Photo Mode to make it easier to get the desired shots. Now you can position them exactly where you want!
- Time Freeze: When entering Photo Mode in single-player – time stands still! Characters and effects freeze in place, making it easier to capture dynamic shots.
Wow, that’s a lot of new features! Wrangling those into shape must’ve been quite the task. What’s been the biggest challenge?
One of our main goals with the Photo Mode – and also its greatest challenge – is to keep the experience as approachable as possible. Virtual photography can quite easily get convoluted and complicated due to the endless possibilities in the form of ratios, alignments, lights, values… to only name a few. We don’t want to scare any curious newcomers away with too many options! But we also want to give our community as many fun and interesting settings as possible, to allow them to take the most expressive shots! This balancing act is, and will probably continue to be, the biggest challenge to overcome.
Now, how are you hoping to see our community use these new features?
Aside from new cool photos, I’m hoping to see a lot of interesting videos and GIFs due to the new Camera Path and Time Freeze features! I think there are a lot of opportunities here to make really dynamic-looking content in poses and positions we haven’t seen before.
To wrap this up, what can we hope to see in Photo Mode in the future?
There has been some testing on having the exofarmer character’s head follow the camera position, allowing more selfie-style photos – which I think could be very cool! So here’s hoping we get around to it in the near future!
What features are y’all most excited about? Hop on our Discord server and let us know! And for the love of mechs, do NOT forget to tune in for the new update tomorrow, ya hear?!
Happy farming!
