How do you guys usually go about it? I came up with drawing a black quad and alpha it in. Never did this before...so i was wondering

yup.

~Main

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Colt "MainRoach" McAnlis
Programmer
www.badheat.com/sinewave

That would be my way, too.

You could code all your rendered objects to be rendered with a darkness factor so that your whole scene renders itself darker, but peh why do that when an alpha quad would render so quickly?

This is also how I would do a brightness flare for a nearby explosion or sunlight, or a red flash for taking damage.

Sounds good

Using fog to do a fade has a nice effect too

fog sounds much better to me

using fog doesnt cause a uniform fade, just to warn you.

Things in the distance will fade faster in a 3D area. I like the effect, but its not ideal for all fades.

Cant seem to get the blending functions right - can someone post the code.

You can use screen door transparancy instead...

Just stripple a polygon with no pattern, and add a radom dot each time you render, and it should seem like its fading out...

More of a 16-bit console effect, but it looks cool...

K, i think i got it:
members.rogers.com/ramrajb/Downloads/LOTR-TT.ZIP

tell me if there are any blending problems - i sort of used some blending params in places they wernt ment to. Something like:
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_COLOR,GL_DST_COLOR);

but the blend works fine.

I like that poly stripple idea, btw - it would make a neat effect...but not for this specific demo