Thread by @Arvydas_B

A quick #UI doodle for #screenshotsaturday

and a THREAD:

On stealth gauges, detection meters and some nerdy #UX thoughts on modern stealth

I'd like to talk about visibility meters.

In my mockup for a pretend stealth game it's presented as this drama mask.

The idea for it to be gradually filled from right to left the more our player character is exposed to light or becomes more noticeable in any other way

Functionally this serves the same purpose as the stealth meter in early Splinter Cell games.

splintercell.fandom.com/wiki/Stealth_M…

I'm talking about this fella:

Important to remember that this is not a detection meter.

Maxing out the stealth gauge doesn't automatically mean that you've been detected, since you need an enemy NPC to actually see you in this state first

It works just like the Light Gem in Thief 1-3
thief.fandom.com/wiki/Light_Gem

Both of these examples were observed in this GMTK video on enemy awareness in stealth games:

In both Thief and Splinter Cell these neat little pieces of HUD help to evaluate how well hidden the player character is.

However there are no systems in these games that visually convey precise enemy awareness to the player.

This is exactly what detection meters do nowadays.

You've probably seen these in a lot of contemporary action adventure titles and they are really useful.

These detection meters may take different forms but they serve the same purpose - visually tell the player that they are being spotted from a particular direction.

Which is great!

But.

This doesn't tell us anything about how well hidden the player character actually is. Which may lead to some confusion.

There were a lot of instances in Dishonored 2 when I thought it was:

- Dark enough
- Far enough
- Cluttered enough

To be hidden completely, however the guards could still spot me. Since the stealth system didn't account for these parameters, when I intuitively thought it would

You could say that this mechanic is a direct evolution of MGS exclamation marks that appear on noise distractions and while crossing an NPCs line of sight.

So stealth gauges and detection meters represent different systems.

The one is for showing the current player state, the other is for NPC awareness.

So my question is - why have we collectively ditched the stealth gauges?

Ironically the only titles I can think of that have some form of stealth gauge still present are the last 2 Splinter Cell games.

However both of them seem to treat player visibility as a binary state - visible/sorta invisible.

Which might look a bit comical at times.

Is it too confusing to have separate but somewhat similar gauges present on a single screen? Maybe. This definitely needs more research and testing.

I personally would love to see more robust stealth systems be tried and have them be presented with cool UI solutions.