Idea to make the use of sound more interesting

[Erdie]

In Eternal lands there are certain distances where a player is able to see annother character, monster or enemy. Of course the distance depends on the stats and the type of the object, daytime and certain other parameters. As far as I know the conditon if a sound of a object is observable is exactly related to visiblity of an object (If you can see it, you can hear it).

My idea is, like in real life, that the audio perception of the sound of an object would be possible over longer distances than the visual perception, so if there is a monster around you can hear it before it is visible. This means you might be warned by the sound of something in advance, which gives you a strategic advantage in dangerous situations if you are using sound. It would even make the games more exciting in certain situations. And at the end it would be a real motivation for players to use sound!

What do you think about this idea?

[bluap]

I like the idea but I wonder how it might work.  I'm not that familiar with the sound code but the volume is based on the distance to the creature.  So, if the client has the actor, you can control the volume.  However, the server only sends actors to the client that are in range.  I presume that is based on the visibility of the creature, so there would have to be an extended range for when the server sends actors, and the client would have play sounds for some actors while not making them visible.  Again, I'm making a few guesses here so others probably have a better idea of how it might work.

[vinoveritas]

Well you can hear invisible people in game, i tested that a long time ago as i had suspected that was one way stivy did know there was someone comming, and everyone has a different preception circle so maybe the server sends out when a actor comes on to the client when its a big circle and then has different acting on it when it gets to sound handling or visibility handling

anyway i fear regardless on what you do there you open up that people will modify client to cheat

[Erdie]

A possible solution to prevent cheating could be that the information the server is  sending to the client is done without any coordinates, that mean, just the information that "there is a dragon in audio range" is sent but you don´t know where it comes from. It does not matter if someone will modify the client, he will not get more information like that. Even you visualize it, it would not give any advantages beyond the fact that you know, there is something around you. A visualization would look like a circle of the range.

 

Of course with that information, you can´t generate a directional sound. If you want that, the server could send just a vector without the amount information. In that case, any further processing by modified client will give you significant more information that the fact that there is a creature in a defined direction but unknown distance.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Erdie