Stealth vs. invisibility

Currently, the way things work in the game is that stealth (Camouflage) and invisibility (Vanish) are visually the same. We get a ghosted avatar with a blurry predator effect, as in the following image --



This makes sense for invisibility. But, personally, the way I imagine stealth working is for the game to blend the avatar into his surroundings based on the amount of Cover and the degree of Darkness -- and shadow should also count as Cover for the purposes of stealth.

I don't know where the devs are going with this, but I just wanted to illustrate what I meant. Maybe it might give them ideas, maybe they totally disagree with this or its impractical. But I just wanted to lay out my idea of where it could go.

So, as an example, I created the next few images in Photoshop, with the avatar rendered in two layers over the background. The bottom layer was just an overlay with varying degree of opacity. The top layer used the 'Darker Color' filter, to make sure the avatar stood out more over lighter backgrounds, in order to continue to give him a sense of presence -- just camouflaged into the surroundings -- rather than make him look ghosted out.

0% Cover, 100% Opacity


50% Cover, 50% Opacity


75% Cover, 25% Opacity


100% Cover, 0% Opacity


Now, there are other ways to modify this. For instance, you can put the ghosted effect underneath the camouflage effect -- this would make the outline of the figure "pop out" more, which would both make it more visible and harm the stealth effect. I created some examples with the ghosted effect shown with different degrees of opacity.

Camouflage 100%, Ghosting 25%


Camouflage 100%, Ghosting 50%


Camouflage 100%, Ghosting 100%


One thing going on in my examples is that darker or more complex surroundings even with 100% Cover will always hide you better than bright and simple surroundings. This is how it should work, in my opinion. Although, it would depend on what you were wearing. Wearing all white clothes would let you blend into white surroundings better. Wearing all black clothes would let you blend into darkness better.

Also, like I said, I think shadow should also doubly count as Cover, so if you stealth in 100% shadow, you'd get 100% Cover and virtually blend into the darkness, especially if you were wearing black. The only thing that possibly might undo this is the Night Vision spell (depending on how it works).

Two other conditions of stealth should exist, I think --

- Your nameplate should disappear unless stealth is broken, like in invisibility.

- Game sounds you make should be muted, unless stealth is broken. This would make sense given the skill name "Silent Movement." The idea behind this is would be that avatars other than the player could make footstep sounds, but subterfuge stealth skill would mute them. This would also give stealth an advantage over invisibility -- since invisibility wouldn't mute your movement sounds -- and possibly also create an incentive to use invisibility and stealth at the same time.

One challenge not mentioned is camera angle, because theoretically, a generous camera angle might expose someone under cover. Not 100% sure what to do with this, but I think there are ways of addressing it, even if (barring a more elegant solution) it just means toning down any 'Darker Color' filter under cover, so the avatar could blend better into non-dark surroundings.

 

I had been thinking of a smiliar system too but at this stage of game development this is probably too complex to realize and too low on priority list.

 

Stealth should be stealth and invisibility should be invisibility.

1. The amount of the Predator effect for stealth need to be drastically reduced, especially for the beginning.
With skill 1 you should having problems to see anything what makes you hiding. Maybe skill 1 is 1%???
With growing levels the stealth increase , level 100 should you maybe have the predator effect as it is now.
Stealth should be easy to reveal and moving while stealth should be very slow,
like max encumbrance or break if you begin to run.

2. Vanish is something completely useless, it should let you take no aggro and hide 100%
To maybe go afk in emergency while mobs are around and you don't want to aggro a mob and just pause.

3. Shadowwalk is magic and the invisibility should increase with skill.
Skill 1 maybe is like 50% stealth (it uses reagencies, stealth doesn't)
But on 100 you should be completely invisible and to reveal it it need a higher skill in reveal hidden.
Moving should be normal.

Stealth is a physical trick, Shadowwalk is magic.

 

You're treating the character as a flat 2D image, transparency doesn't work like that in 3D because it's applied to the surface.

You could write a shader that renders only the polygons facing the camera, but any polygon that would overlap one another (like clothing, face covering eyes and teeth, or hair in front of your face, etc) would make it look weird.

With that said, your general idea is sound. What I propose is that invisibility keeps the refraction effect:


and play with the strength of the fresnel (the old targeting effect we had before the bullseye) based on the skill level. So low invisibility skill = more prominent effect.

... while stealth keeps its flat shade similar to:

but make the effect darker or lighter based on how likely you'd be spotted... like the eyeball in Oblivion or the gem in Thief.


But make it more like:

< Stealth ---- More likely to be spotted >

 

@Gix,

Well I was thinking about shaders, but not exactly sure about how it would be done. But yea, your example looks like its the right direction. The point would just be to make it look like you're fading into the shadows. And because the effect would only be in place when you're in cover or in shadow, it wouldn't matter too much how it looked like when you were out in the open -- because, in the open, the visual would break off. The only trick is to make sure as much as possible that it doesn't look too weird if you're not completely in cover.

 

@Gix,

Some type of chameleon effect would also be interesting, but I'm not sure how nicely it would work.