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Hisymak

Why the "invisibility" powerup does not make you "really" invisible in many games?

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I played a bunch of games, which somehow featured an "invisibility" powerup, or something close to that. However, in many such games, I got bugged and annoyed because I was not "really" invisible and monsters were still able to see me, aim me and shoot me even when they were not supposed to.

One typical example is Doom's "Partial invisibility", which is, eh, even called partial. I always found this artifact very underwhelming and useless for most of the time, because monsters could still sight me and become active when they saw me. However, this powerup affects monster's aiming, which can help mostly in case of hitscanners, and also causes more infighting, otherwise it's not very helpful.

I also remember a Skulltag powerup "invisibility" (https://wiki.zandronum.com/SkullTag_Spheres#Invisibility_Sphere). I did not play deathmatch, but I barely remember I tried it in a level with monsters, and it also did not have a reliable effect and monsters could still see and aim me.

Then there is Quake and its Ring of Shadows. This one is pretty close. When I have it, monsters won't sight me and become active when I even walk just in front of them. However, when I shoot a monster, it will become active and will be able to aim and shoot me. This is something I didn't really understand, especially during my childhood. It would make more sense to me if for example monsters became confused and started shooting in random directions, not being able to precisely locate me.

And lastly, the good example where "invisibility" really works as I imagine it, is GTA2. There it is actually very useful and valuable item.

Why you think in many games you can be still "seen" by monsters while being invisible? Maybe because the "invisibility" would otherwise be an overpowered powerup?

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I'm just gonna echo your complaints, it's like the devs of so many games got cold feet or something at the last minute when implementing invisibility items.. Just let me be invisible damnit! Why do there always have to be all these lame caveats and drawbacks? It's so odd how taboo the idea of a true invisibility powerup seems to be.

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If I remade the powerup, I'd make it last a bit shorter, but you are trully invisible and monsters randomly shoot around, but never aim at you (except for melee, they still know "where" you are). When you shoot you become visible very briefly. It would be like invulnerability, but better.

And it can be balanced for deathmatch by putting mostly, if not only, rapid fire guns in maps with it, so that the holder can be seen most of the time they are shooting

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Shout-out to Quake and Blood for having actual invisibility power-ups.

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I think that, yes, it would otherwise be too powerful if the player went truly undetected with it on, hence why many restrictions would need to be imposed upon it to prevent that. In Doom it's mediocre insofar as it makes things worse in many cases - it tends to benefit the player only when dealing with hitscanners, the rest of the enemies become more unpredictable this way.

 

I think Blood's cloak and the DX1 mod TNM got the ability right.

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Perhaps the most useless occurrence of invisibility powerups/special abilities is in fighting games: it kinda makes sense when the AI is using it vs a player, it might be borderline useful for PvP matches (if you don't lose track of your own player and if it's not just a "partial" invisibility as well...) but utterly useless vs the AI, except as an additional handicap you want to place on yourself.

 

In almost all fighting games, using an invisibility special move doesn't make you invisible or seem to confuse or misdirect the AI one bit. I guess coding a genuine "puzzled" behavior, especially when the AI knows perfectly well where you are, is too much to ask. Kinda like RTS games, where the AI doesn't really need to explore the map and scout for your base.

 

At least in Doom it does something but exploiting it well is, as usual, a quite subtle task.

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2 hours ago, Maes said:

Perhaps the most useless occurrence of invisibility powerups/special abilities is in fighting games: it kinda makes sense when the AI is using it vs a player, it might be borderline useful for PvP matches (if you don't lose track of your own player and if it's not just a "partial" invisibility as well...) but utterly useless vs the AI, except as an additional handicap you want to place on yourself.

 

In almost all fighting games, using an invisibility special move doesn't make you invisible or seem to confuse or misdirect the AI one bit. I guess coding a genuine "puzzled" behavior, especially when the AI knows perfectly well where you are, is too much to ask. Kinda like RTS games, where the AI doesn't really need to explore the map and scout for your base.

 

At least in Doom it does something but exploiting it well is, as usual, a quite subtle task.

This reminds me of those old school strategy games too: many of them had fog-of-war mechanics that didn't apply to the enemy at all.

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To answer the OP, I believe the reason is that it's either:

  1. meant more as a PvP/multiplayer thing (unless the game has an explicit stealth mechanic)

  2. hard to code a convincing "confused", "puzzled" etc. response in enemy AI

  3. hard to justify given existing game mechanics

  4. could be abused with no reasonable counter (at least according to the developers initial evaluation).

 

For an example of #3, consider what happens in Doom: monsters are alerted and can track you down just fine even when "invisible", but OTOH they are also alerted and can track you down just fine simply by you punching the air half a map away from them with no direct LOS, unless specially arranged.

 

For an example of #2 combined with #3, what would happen if monsters really couldn't see you/track you effectively, but were still alerted by your noises? Would they enter an aimless "wandering" mode of sorts and only retaliate individually if directly attacked? Sure..plausible, but given how simple the combat system in Doom is, it wouldn't really fit in. FWIW such a situation can arise as the result of bugs, unusual REJECT maps etc.

 

For an example of #4, in Warcraft II you were not allowed to cast Invisibility on kamikaze/demo units (could take down a building in one or two hits), causing them to explode immediately (justified lamely by saying that their explosives were "too unstable").

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I think most of your points are specific to single player, but it has limited use there. The AI knows you’re there. The partial invisibility really shines in deathmatch, to the point that some people cry (literally) when map designers put them in their deathmatch levels because they consider it unfair. If you know how to best utilize it in deathmatch, you’ll notice that human players have a hard time seeing the blurry marine, Especially in dark lighting. The player with the high visibility goggles will have an upper hand against a player with partial invisibility, though. 
 

While it doesn’t make you invisible, the holoduke in Duke 3D has a similar effect in deathmatch. You can trick people into believing it’s you, they waste ammo and give away their position. So it sort of helps hide you, if you know how to best utilize the power-up. The holoduke has limited to no use in single player, though. Oh, and, the night vision goggles can tell the difference between a real player and a fake one. 

Edited by Gerolf

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I still love Descent's cloaking device, and it's probably my invisibility powerup, and alongside Blood's is one of the few times in a game where I'm actually happy if I see an invisibility powerup.

 

There's smoke and mirrors to it, it is really hard to make AI respond to invisibility entirely convincingly, so there's oddities like the AI knowing exactly when you uncloaked even if they can't see it, but while the cloaking device is running, enemies will only respond to sound and will try to fire at the point where you last made a sound. It also cancels out the effects of homing missiles, which alone would be worth the price of admission, but being able to carefully herd monsters accelerates it to my favorite invisibility powerup

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Sure, in deathmatch/multiplayer it's where the invulnerability powerup shines in Doom.

 

Then again, a thread I made some years ago about player "camouflage" based on the colour of the player skin/surroundings or even its size didn't seem to go down well/struck some nerves, for some reason. And yet it's basically just a lesser version of partial invisibility *shrug*

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Want to know a game with a super overpowered invisibility power? The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In that game, there's an enchantment effect called Chameleon. When applied to a clothing item with a max level gem, you get 20% invisibility. Apply it to 5 pieces of gear to obtain 100% invisibility as a constant effect. You can stroll around the whole map, no enemy can see you, you can steal anything, etc.

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I actually like Doom's partial invisibility. When I'm having a long range battle with some demons, it definitely helps me worry less, specially with hitscanners. But most of the time, it seems like mappers just shove an invisibility sphere into a small room, or in the middle of a ton of monsters, or in other examples like E1M5's invisibility orb, it comes right before that dark exit area, which makes seeing yourself in the strobe light room very difficult, and because of the architecture of the room, ultimately pointless. Partial invisibility in doom can be good and bad in certain situations, but I always grab it anyways because ooh! floating ball with color! 

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well doom doesn't have full invisibility but doesn't have fully invisible enemies either

quake's invisibility is supposed to be quite similar: they can "see your eyeballs" (because otherwise how would you see etc etc) so they basically see you when you're close

I don't understand what you guys mean by "the AI knows where you are"

 

And then there's other games like the Deus Exs, Thiefs, and many more, where you kinda have full invisibility but it lasts a sneeze at best. Absolutely worthless (except for NPCs. For NPCs or NPCs in cutscenes it lasts like forever)

 

On 12/15/2020 at 6:09 PM, Nevander said:

...there's an enchantment effect called Chameleon. When applied to a clothing item with a max level gem, you get 20% invisibility. Apply it to 5 pieces of gear to obtain 100% invisibility as a constant effect. You can stroll around the whole map, no enemy can see you, you can steal anything, etc.

Amazing

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13 hours ago, jupiter_ex said:

I don't understand what you guys mean by "the AI knows where you are

 

They AI knows exactly your X,Y and Z coordinates at any given time, not only in Doom, but practically in any game -it's part of the game's status, so why not. See The All Seeing AI for more info. Each monster in Doom is simply attracted to your present location on the map, on any given tic, and the only thing slowing their progress down is their speed, whether they can fly or not, and the architecture (as well as their evasive way of moving around). In fact, partial invisibility doesn't impede the monster's tracking one bit: all monsters will keep converging on your position, relentlessly, even if their shots are deliberately misaimed.

 

It's quite a challenge for the developers to code/fake a behavior that would have the AI ignore or use that information less effectively ("acting confused/puzzled"), and instead having to discover/track the player by different means. Usually overlaps with The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. In some cases they don't bother at all to code a different AI behavior for "invisible" players, thus making it more of a PvP thing.

 

Edit: FWIW, there was a project posted here some time ago where somebody tried to train some Doom bots to utilize purely synthetic vision (visually processing just what an actual player would see) and actual learning AI in order to navigate maps and locate targets, without using any engine "inside info" at all. Turns out, that's quite hard to do and very handicapping to the resulting A.I.

Edited by Maes

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14 hours ago, Maes said:

They AI knows exactly...

 

Well, a little bit of bait on my side. That's my point exactly. The IA doesn't have to "know where you are", otherwise the invisibility is purely cosmetic (a transparent effect on your character, an indicating overlay, sfx, whatever) for the player. I mean, I'd say, the core of an invisibility powerup implementation is precisely for the IA to stop knowing (or stop reacting to) where you are.

 

14 hours ago, Maes said:

It's quite a challenge for the developers to code...

 

I find this very hard to believe. Not to boast anything but I've been working as a game developer for different companies for the last over 10 years, even in some very well known AAA titles. (what I mean is, I've been immersed in the gamedev scene for quite long) and I don't see why it would be any hard to implement this.

Don't get me wrong, I agree a lot with tvtropes usually, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing here

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14 hours ago, Maes said:

Edit: FWIW, there was a project posted here some time ago where somebody tried to train some Doom bots to utilize purely synthetic vision (visually processing just what an actual player would see) and actual learning AI in order to navigate maps and locate targets, without using any engine "inside info" at all. Turns out, that's quite hard to do and very handicapping to the resulting A.I.

 

sorry didn't see this.

But this borders on experimental. Rendering a view frustum (idk how the doom engine works) for every single monster, then using computer vision (blob detecion etc) to recognize entities / navigate spaces is insanely expensive, specially for a game like doom, and is the wrong implementation, more an extravaganza than anything else.

 

You want super simple invisibility in a game like doom/quake? Make the enemies behave just like they behave when the player's not around. There. Super basic invisibility.

Maybe I'm not understanding what kind of invisibility you guys wanted. Want the enemies looking around and scratching their heads asking "where's the player"? Still can be implemented, when the player's in their vicinity.

The game, clearly, has all the data about the player, that doesn't mean it has to use it.

EDIT: sorry to have derailed the thread. Nevermind me

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57 minutes ago, jupiter_ex said:

 

Don't get me wrong, I agree a lot with tvtropes usually, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing here

Well, consider that a lot of the examples are about games we'd call "classic", today, including Doom. So not much CPU time and/or developer "elbow grease" to spare in order to implement what is, in the end, a minor feature of a game whose main focus would not justify such an investment.

 

Throw in some dev laziness, tight deadlines or even outright trolling the player, and most of the time we got a half-assed "invisibility" with our games, as the tvtropes page lists countless examples. Hell, they still allow "invisibility" moves in fighting games where they do diddly squat vs the AI in ALL of them.

 

regardless (yes, that's a word) of how much you or me claim that we could have/have done a better job ;-)

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11 hours ago, Maes said:

regardless (yes, that's a word)

Well, of course it is :P

Considering the context of the post I think you were trying to type something else, kinda like a thing that happened in a different thread.

It seems like Doomworld still makes it so ir regardless (if written as one word) turns into just regardless.

 

As for the topic of the thread, I have nothing to mention, sorry to say!

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I just did invisibility powerup recently. Right now it makes the monsters have smaller chance of waking up, but if you stand near the monsters long enough, they'll notice you. Their attack chance is halved, so they attack less frequently, but otherwise they'll fire exactly where you are, so if you don't move, you get hit.

 

Might change/improve it later. In earlier project I had code that made the enemies throw/move an invisible goal object around the level that that move toward to. This goal object is moved to the location the enemy thinks player (or other target) is at. If they don't see player, there's more randomness to the location of the goal object. So they'll try to guess where player might be. I think it might have included code that allowed them to guess better if player made sounds.

 

Sure the current invisibility effect on monsters is useful too, since there's less projectiles to worry about dodging.

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