Paralives' Photo Mode
Happy Thursday everybody! Hope you are having a good one! Today I wanted to show you something that we hope you’ll be using to capture great shots of the game, the Photo Mode! We're currently hard at work on the core live mode features under the summer heat but this is a little something that we’ve quickly done in our spare time since it will be very useful for us to showcase the game and for players eventually as well!
Photo Mode Basics
Put simply, the Photo Mode is a special mode where time is stopped and you have greater control on characters, the time of day and other settings in order to take special pictures of the game that you then can share - potentially on Twitter. You can open photo mode at any spot in the game and I’ve decided to demonstrate its use in the rooms we have built for the Paramaker showcase video!
Just entered Photo Mode here...!
While in Photo Mode, you can move your characters around, have them play different animations, tweak the position of items, change the time of day to get different lighting profiles and even add characters from outside your household, just to take that perfect shot! The user interface still has room to be improved, but we’ve already used it to take some pretty funny pictures internally. When you leave Photo Mode, everything is put back how it was, so you can take more liberties with your pictures.
I used the Photo Mode to place some characters, set their animations and the time of day before capturing this picture!
In Photo Mode, you can move and rotate characters easily to place them as you wish and create the scene you have in mind. Note that if you are reading this post from the Patreon mobile app, this animated GIF and the following ones might not play for you.
Any animation from the game can be chosen as well as a specific time in the animation, allowing players to get creative and make any situation they can imagine!
In Photo Mode, time is frozen and you can select the time of the day. Yes, this building has no roof!
Filters, Effects and More!
Another nice thing we can do with the Photo Mode is to give players options to customize the photos they are taking. Frames, stickers, filters and other camera effects will allow for some next-level shots!
Frames will allow you to put a border around your picture, the pictures you take can be cropped to the size of the frame.
Stickers are images you can move around on the screen to add some charm to the scene.
Filters, like black and white and sepia will give a distinct feel to your screenshots.
Special effects like depth of field or bloom will help make the picture more cinematic
Bonus: new effects, frames, stickers and filter presets can be created by modders in the mod system!
Sebastian didn’t get to participate in today’s photoshoot. (This picture uses a black frame, a black-and-white filter and the Paralives Logo as a sticker!)
Here are some of the other filters that we like!
Fish eye
Faded print
Alternate reality
Color pop (green in this case)
This was a really fun feature to create, and it’s really fun to play around with it too! Also, it will make our life easier when capturing scenes from the game and players will be able to use it to share great moments from their gameplay sessions. I hope you enjoyed this first look at our Photo Mode and that you’ll have a great weekend!
Jérémie out.
Edit - May 11, 2023: This post is now public, feel free to share it!
Comments (61)
Love this. I really hope that taking group photos and individual photos is something that is easy to do in the game. I love having family photos in my game. Just for the memories as they age but also looks more real. Having a photo album that they could actually look through in addition to photos on the wall. And digital photo frames that hold lots of photos. Having an in game photographer to take pictures of your group would be fun and also a great career.
this looks SO fun to play with!!! you guys are really amazing in what you do
This is incredible! Amazing customization. Second the Polaroid idea, it'd be cute especially in a kid or teen's room or a photographer who is obsessed with vintage stuff. Be cool to have it as a career and they can build different cameras like pinhole cameras.
This is great, it looks really fun! But will we be able to place these photos (in frames and such) in game?
That is sooo cool !! :D
Amazing!
Something that would be super awesome is to be able to take the photos we create and easily make it a family portrait we can hang up in our parahomes 💗💗💗
Love the customization! It really got my mind racing on what sort of group photos I could do. Wedding photos, school parties, hangouts with friends and family reunions etc. Is there a Polaroid option? Also since you could change the animation poses with that drop down box, are you adding some photo poses or ways to make the cc poses easier to use? Also are y'all thinking of creating group poses (ones that have two or more people touching one another, ex group hug or arms around each others shoulders etc.) vs individual poses for each Para?
This is absolutely amazing!
That's awsome I wish we have more face customisation options so my para doesn't end up looking exactly like other paras
Yes, we will be adding more and more noses, mouths, eyes, skin details on the face, etc
This is awesome! We will still have the ability to take "live" photos in game without going into the photo mode? For example, during a proposal I may want to capture it as it happens instead of posing them.
Yes, you will be able to take a screenshot at any time!
I love this!
Just imagine the stories you could tell! With an built in animation pool/customizable animations as well, the sky is limitless! Omg this is exciting news~
This is really awesome, I can't wait!
WOW!
I just can't believe how amazing this game is already💚
Yes yes YES!! I also second being able to actually hang the photos in the house like having a family photo collection in the hallway! It really brings the characters and their lives to life. Or having a boyfriend/girlfriend's picture on your nightstand or like a Japanese shrine to a loved one with a photo of them.
Yandere Simulator in Paralives, just without the extremely problematic developer.
absolutely fantastic
This is going to be so good for storytelling, thank you!!
oh wow, I already can imagine what shots I would make with this ;) I love it also want to ask how will work with animals example while riding a horse will be can move or rotate or u still figuring it out?
This was probably asked so if so please ignore it but can we use photo mode to make family portraits to hang in game?
This looks great! Something I didn't know I wanted. A couple of questions: - Can the taken photos be used in-game, like hanging them on the wall or placing them on a table etc? - Will it be possible to sort of 'tag' the paras in the pic so that if someone looks at it, they'll think of (or reminisce) the paras in the pic - Can paras make copies of the pic to share/gift to other paras?
A live mode video was mentioned weeks (possibly months) ago, I'm wondering where the progress for that is? This is all very nice but the live mode is very important and I wanted to have a look at it.
They’re working on it! Creating games take time and they’re a small team.
Can you easily use the pictures you take, in photomode, as pictures to hang in your paralives home?
Paralives will ship with its own machinima generator included... as opposed to That Other Game™ which IS the machinima generator :P This may sound like I'm joking, but I'm actually thankful. It sends the message that Paralives will be more than triggering animations to tell a story, since Photo Mode is separate from Game/Live Mode [I don't know what's the terminology chosen for this mode]. And so, even though I will probably have little use for Photo Mode myself*, considering my personal preferences, I think that's going to enrich the game overall. *Although... who knows ? Maybe I'm gonna find out I actually want to use it. But on paper at least, I don't think I'm the target audience for it.
Holy crap, so i've been looking for a tool to get into making webcomics with for a long time, and i think i might have just found it. A few suggestions, though, would it be possible to mix and match poses and face expressions? What about when something happens during gameplay, and you want to capture it, but it's long gone, can you implement a universal time slider so that you can pinpoint the exact frame you want to capture?
The universal time slider is actually a pretty unique idea.
I LOVE this!!! Woohoo!!!! =D
Awesome showcase as usual, but i just wanted to throw this out there for anyone who might need to know this: if you're like me and you can't play GIFs on the mobile app and you also don't have a PC, just read the post from the email you get sent, the GIFs work there! Hope it helps :)
Reminds me of the photo studio in Animal Crossing!
COLOR! POP! Love that feature. <3
I love this so much and I can’t wait to use it!! You all are working so hard and it shows. Quick question, it says any animation from the game can be used, does that include ones where the characters are interacting with each other, like hugging, slow dancing, etc.?
Having multi-character animations is something we still have to look into and it is not possible at the moment in the photo mode. It might be possible to use them but need to place the characters manually, or we might be able to have them work out of the box, we'll see in the future!
Omg! Once again not something I expected, but something I imagine I won't be able to live without once I've had it lol
This is FANTASTIC! What a great addition!!!
I’m blown away by this! 🤯 A dream come true 🤩 One of the things I wanted the most in the game, and you've made it even better than I imagined! 📸 Thank you for your hard work!!
I can't express my excitement enough! 😍
AMAZING!
Combining this with the possibility to upload your own pictures into the game, this is so amazing, I am really hyped!
This is amazing! I can already see me using this tons for family reunions, weddings, and royal portraits. I really like the faded print filter too.
Oh this will be perfect for family photos!! So cute
This is a fantastic addition that has made games like Ghost of Tsushima easy and fun to promote online by the user base. It seems obvious but I’ll go ahead and suggest it anyway: please include a function to allow players to turn any photo they take into a framed portrait that can be hung on the walls of the Para’s home!
We might not have a feature to directly turn a photo into a framed portrait, but it will be very easy to import them as the photos can be used like any other picture on your computer!
This will be so fun to use while playing a photographer parafolk!!
i'm nearly in tears over how amazing this system is, !!! WOW ! yall just keep knocking them out of the park, i gotta say. and this is still early in development but everything is so refined. it seems clear that lots of energy goes into solving All (or As Many) problems as possible before moving to the next stage. it's truly an honour to see the work of such a thorough and well-organised team!!
I agree 😍 It feels like they are very passionate about what they are doing, and everything we've seen so far had been so amazing! Still trying to not get my expectations too high, because every game has its flaws, but it looks very promising so far! 😁
You guys never cease to amaze me!
Would be even cooler if modders could add things like pose packs for specific things. I love the Sims 3 equestrian community with all the pose packs and incredible horse related mods they make incredibly looking pictures
It will be possible to add new animations and poses via the mod system, yes!
This is what I imagined! Thank you, its wonderful
You guys really think of everything!
The photoshoot area reminds me so much to the sims 2 <3. Also cool idea with all those variables we can change, it reminds to the photoshoot island in Animal Crossing, so good to show up your paras or if you make custom content.
This combined with the adding custom images to paintings will make family photos so much easier to make. Awesome work 🙏
I hope there will be an option to add it directly to your Paras inventory though, so you can put up the photo with everyone tagged in it and the Paras could, like, reminisce when looking at it
This will be so good for family photos! I can't wait :)
Such beautiful photos! And such a cool mechanic! I love seeing the games progress and applaud all of your hard work this is amazing
Thank you!