So, obviously, stuff in game makes noise. Sometimes, it’s even nice enough to tell you that you hear the sound of glass breaking, or just a general “whump”. This is good. But it could be a lot better.
What I would like to see is, on the right side of my HUD, the word “noise” written vertically. Each letter would have its own color, and each color would be for a different noise level, with “N” being last turn, “O” being the turn before that, and so on.
So what we’d have is a simple display of the noise that was made over the past five turns. This would give us a clear view of how MUCH noise a window smash makes, compared to, for example, running a car.
I’d also be interested to know how much noise gets made by stuff without having to code-dive/ask someone who knows how to code-dive to code-dive for me.
Exactly. Accessibility of information is the big thing. I don’t need to know the exact numbers all the time (although being able to look them up or turn on that option would be nice), but I do want to know if my actions would be classified as a soft silence, a mild ruckus or an unspeakably loud din.
Loudest noise close to you, definitely. The main point is to alert players to how much noise THEY are making. A few squares would be enough to include vehicles, smashed things, or if a zombie barrels through the plate glass window you were standing next to.
The current system of “to the northeast, you hear glass breaking!” works just fine for telling players where other noises are coming from. If you wanted to improve on that, though, perhaps small modifiers for “FAR to the northeast, you hear glass breaking”, or “NEARBY, to the northeast, you hear glass breaking”. That way, the really loud noises that reach players at a long distance will be recognizable as having come from far away, while other noises from nearby will be noticeable as more relevant threats.
As I was typing that, another idea struck me. Perception could be used to tell if a character actually knows how far away a sound is, or even what direction it’s from. A low perception might mean that you still hear the glass shatter, but have no idea if it was close by, or where it came from.
Indeed. frankly I always take the light step perk, but the one thing that really gets me is how much noise do my normal steps make, and how much noise does someone with light step make?
Let us know how much noise that we, the player are making-- and as for other noises, probably the loudest within a map tile of you-- sounds do actually carry pretty far. Anything closer than that should probably be given a ‘nearby!’ description like argus said, because closer noises would always have priority.
Throwing my support behind the idea. That Noise bar might not be the most intuitive way to indicate it, but I can’t think of a better idea myself.
As for light step, back in whales day I recall that a player is always generating 8 noise, unless they have light step, then they only generate 4. And that every 1 point of noise could be heard 1 tile away.
[quote=“Greiger, post:7, topic:474”]Throwing my support behind the idea. That Noise bar might not be the most intuitive way to indicate it, but I can’t think of a better idea myself.
As for light step, back in whales day I recall that a player is always generating 8 noise, unless they have light step, then they only generate 4. And that every 1 point of noise could be heard 1 tile away.[/quote]
Aside from explicitly telling the player that sort of information, having a graph isn’t a bad idea–there simply isn’t enough player feedback on how sneaky they’re being. I know I consider Light Step mandatory. (Trifurcating one’s legs just isn’t reliable*, and speed is still useful.)
*Not sure if you fixed this already, but Leg Tentacles ought to push off footgear. How does one wear one’s Sneakers with three “feet” per leg?