invisibility effect in other games

Were there any games of Doom's era other than idtech engine games that implemented an invisibility effect like Doom's (ie a snowy shadow)?

Probably not. Doom might be unique with that particular effect.

That's quite a stretch, but I recall Epic Pinball had, among others, a "transparent glass" effect for the pinball (which I presume is what id were originally trying to achieve).

Maes said:

(which I presume is what id were originally trying to achieve).

Why do you presume that id were trying to achieve something different than the fuzz effect they ended up with?

Deathmatch Classic if you get the Ring of Shadows :
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_weapons_and_items_in_Deathmatch_Classic#Ring_of_Shadows
EDIT : and if you meant Invulnerability
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_weapons_and_items_in_Deathmatch_Classic#Protection

Well, the usual portrayal of invisibility in movies and the such is a glassy diffraction effect, with light intensity usually being only slightly or not affected at all, but with the contours of the seen-through objects being subtly altered, as if viewed through a lens with surface defects or a bumpy glass marble.



Taking into account the limitations of the Doom engine, I think that the elements are there: they were trying to simulate this effect by sampling nearby pixels, and limiting the light intensity by picking another colormap. Now, by and large, this does seem to function: you indeed get a "shimmering" effect, and at least at low resolutions and at some distance, the effect is quite convincing.

However due to limitations in how much processing they could apply for the effect to remain usable in real-time, they couldn't quite fix some side-effects of it (like visible wavy patterns or excessive darkening due to internal feedback) or make it look more refined, which really make it look poor in higher resolutions.

EpicPinball could get away with it because it only had to render a single pinball.

DMGUYDZ64 said:

Deathmatch Classic if you get the Ring of Shadows :
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_weapons_and_items_in_Deathmatch_Classic#Ring_of_Shadows

Isn't that just a normal partial invisibility, as opposed to a Doom-like fuzz?

scifista42 said:

Isn't that just a normal partial invisibility, as opposed to a Doom-like fuzz?

Oh ,you're talking about total invisibility ?

DMGUYDZ64 said:

Oh ,you're talking about total invisibility ?

We're talking about this particular visual effect: (known as "fuzzy" render style)

Daggerfall used a similar effect at least for its water.

scifista42 said:

Why do you presume that id were trying to achieve something different than the fuzz effect they ended up with?

Linguica theorised about it, btw:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1335541

Turns out I may have been a bit wrong about the Daggerfall water.

The dungeon water effect in Daggerfall (different from outdoors water) is strange. It seems to figure out which part of the buffer to apply the effect to and then just use a mask to apply an effect that's independent of the pixels being rendered. The result is a noise effect that has parallax like a sky. It's just odd.

Gauntlet Dark Legends had an invisibility artifact you picked up which activated instantly. You were granted immunity from monsters ever caring about you, i.e. targeting other players or wandering randomly. They only attacked if you walked straight into them to initiate close combat in which you might lose health. The whole game was about mowing down enemies, arcade style, so keep that in mind. In all the levels, you had to kill basically every singly enemy in order to capture all the treasure items, potions, and powerups. So there was extra motivation to be quick and efficient. Invisibility enhanced this.

Descent: it cloaks you similar to the Doom specter, maybe better. To the robots, you make them think you're at the last position where you made noise, so they keep firing there (or disengage if not there), until you make noise again and they change their target there, and so on.

Lol darknation, is that taken from some 1994 WAD's easter egg? Ya know, when a few grainy and heavily dithered pixels on a texture were enough to get our juices running ;-)