Hiding versus Invisibility

An interesting discussion on hiding ensued in a PvP thread. So as not to get buried in an irrelevant topic I've created a new thread. See the original at
https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum...-bringing-risk-back-into-the-game.2710/page-3
In a nutshell, I proposed that invisibility be replaced with camouflage.
Camouflage clothing could be crafted.
Clever hiding location is important.
A hidden player could be perceived with slow and practiced examination of the scene.

The objections were that invisibility is used to escape pursuers and that computer display is not sufficiently subtle to support this.

My apologies to Owain and jondavis if I have glossed over or misconstrued anything they said. I encourage everyone to read the original thread.

 

This is an interesting distinction. I'll have to give some thought to how to implement hiding.

 

Jondavis's comment about hiding from a dragon presents an interesting problem. When I proposed this I was thinking about other players and did not consider hiding from NPCs. Since an NPC is obviously not using human vision how does one hide from them without some switch saying "I'm not here", the type of switch that is easily attached to becoming invisible?

 

Yes. My experience has been that you can't hide from NPC's and Mobs.
In real life, movement gives us away. If you can break line-of-sight and stop moving, you can sometimes hide from a pursuer.
How would the game determine I had broken line-of-sight with the dragon? I suspect if I ran around a large tree and jumped into a bush, the dragon would run around the tree and gobble up the bush and me with all my crunchy goodness.

Punching a "hide button" would be a game mechanic that would allow me to simulate that, but that gives the appearance of turning invisible. And I guess from the dragon's point of view, I would be turning invisible. If I use that same button while being pursued by an evil PK, perhaps it would have no effect. The game would make a check, determine that no NPC was involved, and do nothing. Then it would be up to my camouflage suit and lack of movement to escape notice.

 

I don't mind sneaking around with camouflage.
I would just like a way to escape.
In UO you would just run far enough away or off the screen from the other player and hide.
Yea many times he would be standing right next to you when he gave up the hunt.
I think going invisible is needed as a means to escape. If not that then what?
The other way in UO was to recall but it sounds like that is out.

 

Every game implements hiding from NPC / mobs. At very least there's some kind of agro radius which may also be affected by LoS. There are many single player games where stealth is most of the point to the game.

Hiding is only complicated in multiplayer PvP games where there's no sense of "sides." So the game doesn't know who you're supposed to be hiding from and who you're supposed to see.

 

Giving my fancy flight, I'd say that dragons don't see nearly as well as they smell and that to hide from a dragon you douse yourself in Eau de Rotten Log - as you would for all long-nosed creatures. Creatures with big ears means being motionless. Big eyes would count how many pixel match the background. Big eyes, big ears and big nose means there ain't no hiding from this goon.

 

You can kinda see how hiding worked here.

NPC creatures would stop chasing him and go after someone else and players would sometimes know where he is at.

 

I don't object to starting this new thread at all. In fact, it's probably a good idea not to hijack the original thread, since the discussion had strayed.

My objection to Mugly's approach is technical rather than one of role playing or gaming in general. If there is a hiding skill, whether that includes camoflage or some other mechanism, computer screens are inadequate to the task of simulating that you don't see the hidden person. The way that games get past that issue is that they just don't display the hidden person, so instead of a hiding person, you have an invisible person.

I understand that there are realism issues here as well, but if you are simulating that you don't see someone because they have successfully hidden, you pretty much have to not render that person in the scene.

However, in his post, Mugly also says , "A hidden player could be perceived with slow and practiced examination of the scene."

There, I think we may have a mechanism that can resolve the conundrum.

In UO, there was a 'detect hidden' skill that served as a counter to both the hiding skill and the invisibility spell. There was also a 'reveal' spell, but I don't recall if that would work against someone who was hidden as well as against someone who was magically concealed. With respect to the 'detect hidden' skill, I think it had both an active and a passive mode. If you actively invoked the skill, you had a higher chance of revealing a hider, depending both upon your skill and on the skill level of the hider or the magery skill of the person casting the invisibility spell. Passively, the probability was lower, but still possible.

In Mugly's example, if you are running down the road, there is no 'slow practiced examination of the scene', so the person hiding remains hidden (invisible). If you stop however, face the suspected hider directly, and focus your attention for a period of time on the spot where they are hiding, your chances increase. Again, your probability increases with your observational skill, and decreases with the skill of the hider. I've read stories of military snipers in gillie suits who have been trod upon, yet have remain unseen, so high skill results in concealment that is difficult to detect.

I think this serves to address the technical issue I've identified (you have to make the hider invisible to simulate a hidden character), but still lends greater realism, in that if you focus on the spot where the person is hiding, your chances of detecting the hidden person greatly improve.

You do have to focus directly on the spot, however, and not just face the general direction. Detail can only be discerned in the fovea of the human eye. Peripheral vision is blurry (20/200 or so, rather than 20/20), and is more useful to detect motion rather than the detail necessary to reveal someone hiding. I presume we will have some sort of cross hair or aiming reference for things like archery. So, to perform a "slow and practiced examination of the scene", you would have to place that aiming reference on the hidden character for a period of time. Distance should also be a factor, so the farther away you are, the less likely you are to reveal someone hiding. Use of a UO like tracking skill could help as well, to indicate the presence of someone hiding, and the general direction of the hider.

 

I drew some inspiration from my experience in two games. They both involved the hunting of herbs. In UO reagents would sometime be tucked under something else and only a couple of pixels would be visible, making it difficult to see. In A Tale in the Desert desirable herbs would often be hidden among other plants. You had to get close, often spin the camera to see them. UO had a fixed camera, ATitD was 3D with a zoomable camera. In both games it took considerable effort to find the herbs.

Owain may be right. Players are not herbs and may be more visible than a small plant regardless of clothing or position. But at least some things can be hidden pretty darn well without making them invisible.

 

Jondavis has a genuine concern - how to escape without the use of recall or invisibility. How about a Doppelganger spell? It would create a temporary image of you to act as a decoy while you scurried off in another direction. Poor dragon. Nothing but a mouthful of air and static electricity.

 

For PvE, it's largely a matter of leash length, unless Portalarium is going to grant detection to NPCs. Over the years, PvE leash lengths have only gotten shorter and shorter, so I don't expect any great changes there.

For PvP, there's only one fundamental thing that matters; when a player becomes hidden or invisible, is that character still visible to the client process? Why does this matter?

In varying games over the years since Meridian59, persistent multiplayer online developers have used a few different "tricks" to try and simulate if someone else is visible or not. One of these is a transparent texture. Ok, sounds good, except the player can locally adjust that texture in memory to be bright neon pink. Now, anyone who is hidden or invisible is actually easier to see.

In short, a hidden or invisible player must be undetectable by the client, or they will be visible to players that will cheat with local texture modification.
Now, presuming that's not the trick used, if the hidden/invisible player is in any way still represented to the client process, they will also be made visible via some method.
It is very important that in OPO mode, players who are hidden/invisible are truly removed from the scene in the technical sense. The rest of the modes it's not as important as OPO.

All the other "extras" like detection and revealing, and time limited footprints, and all the rest are great and fine, as long as that fundamental technical challenge is dealt with right from the start.

 

So can Camouflage work in pvp with texture cheat tools?
and two
If someone did go invisible would he be able to see himself if undetectable by the client?

 

If camouflage uses a texture to hide, it will be hacked with a texture cheat.
You don't need to hide the hider from themselves. Only other clients.

 

And using camouflage on an NPC is basically going invisible right?

 

Well if you mean PvE now, it's less of an issue, and a different set of problems to solve. Perception by NPCs can be handled in a variety of ways, including a trigger radius for detection checks. Essentially there can be different levels of "I see you" for NPCs, not all of which include immediate path-to-target for attack.

 

The way I think hiding should work is like this...

The prerequisite to using the hiding skill would be to stand in good hiding spot where you'd be mostly obscured to another player just because of your natural surroundings. This would be behind an object, in dark shadows, or both. You'd then use your hiding skill, and if successful, disappear completely -- invisible -- until the other player moves to where you're no longer naturally obscured -- and so can see you -- or something else breaks your cover.

Whether your cover can be broken might depend on your stealth skill. Looking through your inventory may break your cover if you're low level at stealth, because the other player would hear you rifling through your bags. If you're high level, you'd be able to get away with it.

Crouching, crawling, and so on, would help you fit into smaller spaces for hiding, where the object you're hiding behind is shorter, or the shadows are smaller.

 

So lets say there is a camouflage skill, when used you go invisible to other players but to an NPC you go by their rules.
So maybe hiding from another player while to close to an NPC might reveal you.
Or if the other player has a dog that will track you down and find you.

So what I'm saying is maybe camouflage can be used against NPC's but to another player you just go invisible to avoid texture cheats.
That might solve some issues since your still trying to sneak around NPC's and players could depend more on them to find other players.

 

If we're going to talk about different types of hiding, there's hiding from sight, hiding from sound, and hiding from smell.

Bears are always a great example, because they have poor eyesight, but ridiculously good sense of smell. A bear would always smell you, if you could be smelled.
It seems reasonable that a player adept at stealth would need to hide from prying eyes, ears, and noses, depending on their situation.
For a guard dog, their sense of color eyesight is poor, so visual camo might work, but hearing and smell, they've got you.
While large humanoids may have extremely good vision, but poor hearing or smell.
In any case, all three aspects of detection and concealment could be implemented in SotA via a variety of different mechanisms and UI techniques.
This also ties in with luring, tempting and distraction.

 

I've said before that I would love other ways to get by NPC's without killing them, luring, tempting and distraction sound like some fun ways to do that.
And having skills like those might make hiding more fun and challenging.

You could be hiding from another player with a ogre heading your way, while the player turns around you throw some food down the path, the ogre stops at the food and you stay hidden a little longer.