Alright, stealth in most games is pretty simple. There are only so many variables when you are dealing with pre-defined locations and/or opponents.

We are not dealing with pre-defined locations or opponents.

And in fact, stealth, and more broadly, deception, is one of the most central and one of the most complex parts of life. Virtually every animal in existance uses deception to an extent, and not all of it comes in the form of stealth. So. Time to get to work on figuring this out in a way that will prevent both our computers and Bashi from exploding, or turning into a giant squid of anger in Bashi's case.

To Be Discussed:
Sensors and there effect on deception
Deception through mimicary
Deception through behaivior (Moving stealthy)
Large scale deception (See: Moving of Alexandria Harbor in WWII)
Differentiation and confusion, AKA Taht Zebra thing
Deception through exploitive instincts (Frilled lizards and startled cats are good examples here)

This is a very important aspect that we should discuss. To add my two cents, I think that stealth in space should also be discussed. Anyone ever stopped to think how unrealistic are "sensors" that pretty much every sci-fi work features? What do they sense?
I think that on early space travel (when we stil are relatively "realistic" knowing where ships are and what planets are made off should be a major challenge, and it'd become easier as you progress through the tech tree into scientomagical mechanisms (gravitron sensors anyone? )

I think that we have to think about what makes the senses sense the most. Sight is most reactive to colour, shape and movement, to different extents depending on the type of eye. So having the colour that is sensed be similar to the colour of the surroundings would help. Moving slowly would make it less likely to be seen, too. Shape is tricky. If you have a similar shape to something that is common in your surroundings you aren't noticed? That may be hard to code... With sound, quieter is better. Smell is basically unhideable unless if you roll in something, but even that is only temporary. Feel? Less is better to avoid being felt. Can't hide electrosense, but you can stop moving and thus producing them (except for those your organs give off). And echolocation would be a matter of shape yet again.

As for things outside of sensory camouflage, i have no idea. Having a sudden change in shape should give a shock to an enemy, like with frilled-neck lizards and certain butterflies and moths. But what is this shock, how do we calculate it and does it have any lasting effects? I think mimicry would be covered with the shape thing (it all hinges on that, doesn't it?).

What if it grabbed the creatures in orthostatic position, and did three shots of them in frontal, lateral and horizontal planes, and then compared the 2d images between each other?

I've got a few for optical sensors:
Fading with the terrain: We can simply raytrace the ground or whatever is the creature living on, get it's texture's average color value and compare it with average color of the organism. For flying organisms, we could get color of the planet's atmosphere.
Sneaking: Get the organism's height and speed. The lower, the better.
Mimicry/Zebra confusion: Quite difficult, if not to impossible, to implement into the game. I think we should just include a bunch of different "camo" patterns, such as stripes, spots, or similar.

From these factors, a coefficient would be made, wich would then be compared against the looking organism's eye "quality" (with added penalty for distance or bad weather conditions).


Now, that is eyes. Alaska already did a good job on the rest, so is it all?

Djohaal wrote:

What if it grabbed the creatures in orthostatic position, and did three shots of them in frontal, lateral and horizontal planes, and then compared the 2d images between each other?

Don't forget that every organism evolves, and each time it evolves, it will all have to be recalculated. It would be okay for a few species, but there will be quite a lot of them (around a hundred, it will fluctate as species will split and die off).

We could refine this problem to only include comparison between Organisms that the onlooking Organism actually encounters.

For Batesian Mimicry (in terms of colouration and pattern), since the skin pattern system that we are using for the OE (As far as I remember) supports a uniform system of colouration and patterns. We would only have to compare the difference between the two Organism's data (but I have no idea how it would be programmed) based on the other Organism's eyesight (for example, if colour or shape is most important).