Boost your screenshot game with Photo Mode!
I’m Katie, community hype machine for Voidpoint and Ion Fury, and I’m here to tell you a little bit about my favorite new feature in Ion Fury: Aftershock — Photo Mode!
Photo Mode began as a wish. I adore the recent shift in games to facilitate taking screenshots—it’s gone beyond the shortcut keybind to dump a HUD-covered JPEG into a subfolder. Now we’ve got in-game camera tools that make taking dramatic shots incredibly easy. Players and creators have the opportunity to bring their creativity to a lot of games and communities using virtual photography.
Ion Fury is a beautiful game, and I mentioned to the team how it would be helpful for generating screens and media to have an in-game photo mode. I wanted to capture how great it looks, but I was frustrated by having to work around the console. Having easy, accessible photo capture tools in a game encourages players to share their content, either through Steam or through social media channels.
Imagine my excitement when Jonathan Strander, lead designer on Ion Fury: Aftershock, surprised me with a complete photo mode to try. If you’ve enjoyed the videos, gifs, and screenshots Voidpoint has shared over the summer, you have Strander to thank for it.
Let me walk you through the basics of Ion Fury’s newest community tool.
In order to access Photo Mode, you’ll hit the [BACKSPACE] key and the controls will appear on the top of the screen.
This automatically pauses the action and lets you freely fly to the perfect picture spot, but it’s got some other features that will help you capture what you want, like some toggle options for the HUD, and individual screen elements, like the weapon hands and crosshair. Movement is WASD, but you can move up using [SPACE] and down with [CTRL]. You can go high up and capture a wide cityscape, or crouch down to get some low-angle drama.
My favorite options control the enemy AI. By default, enemies are dumb to your presence in photo mode. But if you want your screenshot or video to contain some action, you can wake them up and let them move on patrol by choosing [4] Awake AI. If you want them to follow and shoot you (don’t worry—you can’t be killed while in this mode), choose [5] Aware AI. Watch Heskel’s scumbags fire at nothing.
You can also show Shelly’s sprite in third-person. Pair that with the mode’s ability to slow down time by toggling [7], and you can recreate your favorite John Woo movies right in Ion Fury.
When you’ve set up your scene and you’re ready to snap a photo, hide the mode overlay with [0] and hit your screenshot key. If you’re finished with it, you can exit Photo Mode and you’ll go back to where you left off.
It’s so exciting to see the retro tech of Build incorporate a modern virtual photography mode. I can’t wait to see what the community captures with this new tool. Be sure to share all your beautiful new shots with us!
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