You're obvioulsy working on this from a technological angle, but I'm going to deviate slightly and mention Second Sight. It used a psionic power for invisibility, called "Charm". It was a psychic interference thing that kept enemies from noticing your character. You could walk right past guards and civilians without being acknowledged. But light still bounced off of you, so cameras or laser grids or whatever could in fact detect you.

Limitted duration, linked to your stamina, and the neat "feedback" problem (if you tried to charm someone that already knew you were there, it wouldn't take and you'd get a massive jolt of psionic feedback) made it a surprisingly deep and useful, but not all-powerful, ability.

I remember you talking about psionic systems playing a role in your game world, so I thought I'd throw this out. It could cover the "allies can see each other" feature more elegantly than cloaking fields would, and offers a number of workarounds in the form of non-neural detectors, psionic overrides (If you concentrate really, really hard, you can see them) and straight-up booby traps.

Iron Chef's suggestion made me remember an episode of the X-Files where this guy could become invisible by temporarily disabling just the exact spot of a person's eyes that was seing him. People wouldn't notice because the brain can make up for small pieces of missing information from the eyes without even a hint of warning.
This was of course a kind of psionic power.
I think it might fit well into a game because you have to aim the power at someone to make them unable to see you, and aiming it at multiple targets might be difficult. You might be concentrating on a guard, and then another one suddenly walks by.
You'll also alarm people if you get too close, because they will become temporarily blind: when a whole eye can't see because you had to disrupt it entirely, not just a small spot, you *do* notice it.

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Original post by Ketchaval Saving on art assets? :)

They have to appear some time, wise guy. :P Could have lots more enemies than the level's poly limit would smoothly allow, though...

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Original post by Jotaf If you have to face the wall every time you encounter a guard, or "close your eyes", and suddenly you lose a degree of control and are forced to rely primarily on your hearing (try to picture that in your head), THAT's a nice catch.

Hmmm... I just don't see this playing out all that well. You end up with two experiences. Either you stare at the wall for awhile, turn around, and are lucky enough for the guy to have passed, or you don't do it well enough and get wacked... while staring at a wall. Hide in shadows works in the stealth games because at least you can see the bad guy.

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Original post by Ultimaking If you are talking about enemies having invisibility, i personally dont find a lot of enjoyment in suddenly dying, and seeing that there was an invisible enemy there the whole time.

Have you ever played Halo with all players invisible? It can be really fun and suspenseful. However, I have to admit that one big drawback to the idea would be eye strain in trying to suss out where the enemy is, and death by sudden strike.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage You have one filter that detects body heat, one that detects electronic signatures, and one that tracks movement. I think. SInce the spies have clever ways to hide and some active camo like what you describe, these have to be cycled through almost constantly to catch the little buggers. Predator's vision in the AvP games is like this (and you can be blind to warning signs if you stay in one mode too long). I have mixed feelings about view switching. On the one hand, choice is always good. But sometimes I've wished for a user controlled cycling mode. That mode, however, would relieve the player of some of the risk of managing how they use a resource. Not sure about that, overall...

If this is hi-tech, why bother with the whole cycling thing? Your onboard computer can monitor the inputs for all filters simultaneously and hilight the interesting stuff. There's no real work involved for the user (other than acquiring the filters).

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Original post by Dobbs If this is hi-tech, why bother with the whole cycling thing?

There's actually no good reason other than to create a tactical vulnerability. The idea is to give an option to the player so that they feel like they have choice in the world. Here it again becomes a question of "is it better to be realistic or fantastical?"