Ultimate Screenshot Mode

(as with all of my pictures in posts, click on it to make it bigger and more perdy. It will open in a new window)

Wow. Just WOW!

I have never been a big screenshot person. I wish I did better at it but I always tend to miss the right moments as I am focused on playing the game and not capturing specific things. As a gaming blogger I need to enbe better at that. Some, such as Bhagpuss at Inventory Full, seems to have an endless trove of amazing screenshots to put into his posts. Heck, TAGN has a whole website dedicated to EVE screenshots and even wins awards (on purpose and by accident) for sharing them. Screenshots are a nice way to breakup the monotony of text in blogging. I have been trying to share more in my posts when I think of it.

Playing Warframe, I noticed there was a weird word under the “appearance” tab of my frame when I was doing some color editing for my skin for my Rhino frame. It said “Captura” and I assumed it was some sort of screenshot for the frame I was working on. Turns out it is much, much more than that. It allows you to load an area and create scenes to take pictures – with a ton of options. Kind of like when they load the dojo in the Matrix. This makes a lot of sense as I have often complained that even my own screenshots of Warframe have my frame taking up big chunks of the screen. I did a little bit of playing this morning with some of the options. First off, the best part, is getting a “free camera” mode.

Here I drew my bow, then clicked “Toggle free camera” and it froze the scene and allowed me to pan around.

While not a huge difference from the first, I clicked “advance timeline slowly” and “hide menu” so you can see my Sentinel rotated around (looking for enemies as he is apt to do) and that introduced a new light source to the picture.

Speaking of light sources – I toggled “3 light setup” and it loks as though it introduced a new light  source from the angle I have the current camera, highlighting the shapes and colors on his back.

and because it’s the holiday season (and because its an option) I changed the 3 light setup to a green fill light with a red rim light to see what effect that would have. Very cool.

Here I messed with the “Field of View” which now gave more to see. Distance and Depth changed the blur factor. At this point I noticed the “Kill Enemies” box at the bottom, and scrolled down to learn that I could spawn chosen enemies into my scene!

The issue I had when I spawned an enemy and toggled off the “free camera” is that they react like normal enemies. They started attacking. I re-toggled the camera and captured this moment that the Heavy Grineer was smashing the floor with an AOE attack. Because I wasn’t too far away.

Here is the other angle of it.  I think the warped effect is part of the AOE damage attack, not sure. This is all very new.

I am amazed, to be honest, and while I only spent 10 minutes messing with it this morning there are 5 base “scenes” you can load (and can unlock more) and this is a game within the game – capturing the minds of those chasing the ultimate screenshot you can just set it up yourself. I do want to learn and read more about it – I’d love to spawn multiple enemies, for example, and show you the Rhino stomp picture I promised. Trouble is my Sentinel attacked and killed this one before I could spawn another – and they spawn the enemies right on top of you so setting up several in a circle might be a challenge.

I think this is yet another brilliant add on to an already wonderful game. I am looking forward to exploring it more. I can’t recall many games having this feature but believe it is a great addition. Does you know of other games that do this well?

6 comments / Add your comment below

  1. I’ve seen a few games with this feature (Skyforge, Black Desert, and Horizon Zero Dawn off the top of my head), but I have to say as a screenshot fanatic I’m not a fan. It feels like cheating. The thrill of screenshotting is being able to capture the perfect shot in the heat of the moment.

    1. Don’t most people just record and then go back and make a “stillshot” from the video anyway? That’s cheating too! =)

      I did some googling, and what some players have been able to do with the Captura program is exceptional. Intimidating too, but amazing shots.

      But yes, definitely not natural – you can tell they are staged. I think that is part of the point though (like food photography – you want the steak to look better than it really does on the plate in the restaurant).

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