ZDoom

Download Test Version
Factotum Compatibility Test
Final Doomer Compat. Test
Eriguns 1 Compat. Test
Eriguns 2 Compat. Test

Spoiler: Thankyou to the following for their help:

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Gez, Arctangent, gwHero, Nash, Dawnbreez + EddieMann!

You've just awoken in the Hangar that started it all, except this time it appears to be completely devoid of life. In short time however you notice there is something dreadful soaking the air: you can still hear the things. Maybe 'devoid of life' really means 'full of death'. With that realisation your relief descends back into horror and you hasten for the armor shrine upstairs. But as you round the corner you are held back by gunfire seeming to be coming from mid-air! You fire randomly to dispatch these invisible foes and make your way to the pedestal where a different kind of armor awaits...

So the concept is:
This energy-based armor has a thermal visor for you to see the invisible monsters but you can only supply power to one or the other until you possess some cells. Reaching that point it becomes a balancing act of conserving your ammo for both the thermal vision and the Plasma Gun/BFG. However if you run out of cells and the visor is in use, it will confiscate and chew through your armor once again. And when you're out of both armor and cells, you're running blind without the thermal vision! Sounds frustrating enough to be almost enjoyable? I'm hoping so

Spoiler: Progress:

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What has been done:
-The thermal vision already works fine for all three possessed soldiers, imps, both demons and lost souls.
-A lens shutter effect occurs when switching between normal and thermal spectrum modes.
-Heat signatures fade out for corpses and in for reviving monsters.
-Unintentional quirk: Spectres lens heat mapped monsters
-Still uses a CVar to toggle but only once it has been picked up. Must bind "toggle thermalcam" to the key of your choice.
-Basic resource logic is done.

What needs doin':
-Shifting the code away from it's CVar toggle and into a powerup/inventory system.
-Dictating the logic behind the energy consumption of the visor.
-Heat mapping for the larger monsters and barrels.
-Maybe some adjustments to the HUD to display what is being used.

Once this is complete, and assuming it's even possible, I have an idea to improve the gameplay for multiplayer as well.

Here's an outdated video.

Distant enemies:

Looks *very* interesting.

Cheers
I'm not very knowledgable at ZScript and think I might be doing things a funny way, but hopefully I'll get some corrective feedback once it's out there
I just need to get it to suck armor/cells and then I'll be uploading a test version.

The first test version is done and has been linked in the OP. It still needs a lot of work but the fundamentals are there. I hope it can still provide a challenge in the meantime

Edit: Oh and make sure to bind "toggle thermalcam" to a key!

Interesting. Predator the Doom Mod.

Heh heh, well the Spectres in this are sort of cloaked too. I should have put two-and-two together before now and just made a Predator TC

Just some casual thoughts:

What if certain monsters randomly dropped cells on their death to help prolong the thermal vision?
What if the non-spectre monsters used the faux-lensing effect only when moving but just in the normal light spectrum?
Should those only be enabled in easy modes?
Should there be a powerup which temporarily allows the spectrums to intertwine? Maybe during a berserk run?

I think the 'invisible while stationary' and 'lensing while moving' thing could be interesting in deathmatch too...

This is a pretty cool idea! Any chance on making the enemies sound a lot scarier or something to go with the scare tactics of being invisible?

Can you define scarier? It might be something I could do...

Just making the basic enemy alert, attack and idle sounds creepier, deeper. That way it'd be more of a shock to encounter to them. I don't have any specific examples at the moment, but stuff like the Doom 3 or Doom 64 noises tend to be creepier, in my opinion. I've also seen people use Necromorph sounds from Dead Space to good effect (check out the Fearrific mod for Doom for some examples).

I'm not sure I want to exchange out the default sound samples but I'd be happy to pitch shift them lower. But I am interested in adding new randomly delayed idle sounds

Actually you've given me another idea: What if they don't see you until you're at melee distance when they are invisible. That would make them much sneakier! And combine that with the potentially added idle noises it could give the player a chance to "shadow" crawl in certain situations.

Edit: Or maybe the possessed humans (who could still be half in your spectrum) don't make a 'see' sound even though they can. So you have to make the decision whether to engage them which risks alerting the demons or take the hits from the former humans in order to sneak through that section. If you're lucky it might trigger some in-fighting as well

Yeah, I think anything that turns them more into ambush predators would be good. Ideally you'd want to know they're nearby in the room somewhere, but not where right away.

The one thing I'd like right now is for it to be made weapon-mod compatible. This would work really well with Factotum, I think. As of right now, though, adding other mods doesn't seem to work very well.

Compatibility isn't something I've even considered and I'm not sure if the code is robust enough yet (Although if I leave something like that too late am I painting myself into a corner?) But ideally it would be great and I'll be sure to check out Factotum