Hi all!
Recently i have been thinking about how sound works in the game and thought up a neat improvement that would not only increase immersion, but also somewhat the difficulty of the game. I checked that there are some topics for Sound to add specific effects, but here i will be talking about mechanics not the quality of the sounds.
Firstly, the current system is somewhat okay, but it lacks a few key elements, which i will describe and explain further in examples. We need two factors representing sound: Sound Propagation and Sound Dampening with a variety of uses:
1. EQUIPMENT SOUND PROPAGATION - is the natural ability of an item to generate sound. If it's a weapon, simply how loud it is. If it's armor, how loud it is when walking (i'll talk about decreasing it with stealth and other things later on), but most importantly boots. Sneakers or "Cloth Wraps" will most likely not generate much sound, but when you walk around in Formal Boots, Iron Studded or Mocasins, then i expect each step to be quite loud in solid ground.
2. BLOCK SOUND PROPAGATION - Similar as above, but coming from blocks you walk over. If you walk over creaky wooden floors, no matter what kind of footwear you have, it should squeak, similarly to bushy forest floors or snow fields crunching. We might as well add to it branches rustling when moving too close to trees or bushes in a similar way, just like walking over trash or shattered glass. Some of these things might require additional "blocks" like "Forest Floor" full of pinecones, but might include anything people come up with. As trash and glass are a different block, it might simply accumulate with the block underneath - glass against a metal floor might be louder than against a carpet.
3. EQUIPMENT SOUND DAMPENING - is the natural ability of an item to dampen the sound from the outside source. Wearing soft and squishy footwear should have a positive Dampening, allowing to decrease the Block Sound Propagation, so you can move more stealthily. Wearing rigid or heavy boots should have a negative Dampening, meaning it increases the Block Sound Propagation (imagine walking through glass with soft boots and heavily stomping them with something heavy). Something to keep in mind is that soft boots shouldn't damp the sound of gun shots or opening a door.
4. BLOCK SOUND DAMPENING - Similar as above but depends on the blocks. This is not associated with propagation directly though. Compare carpets the rigid floors. One will simply dampen the sound of the footsteps, while the other will reverbrate them, with both of them not propagating sound by themselves. Short grass or dirt blocks might dampen the footsteps, but walking through longer grass might generate a rustling sound (propagation). Creaky Wooden Floor might not only Propagate a creaking sound, but the wooden boards being rigid might echo the footsteps. Something to keep in mind is that a carpet shouldn't damp the sound of eating, chest opening or gun shots.
In short, we have two new factors that help spread and dampen the sounds, influencing each other to some extent. Nonetheless we need something more... and that is a new flag for all the sounds, something similar to "CAN_PLAYER_DAMP_SOUND". This should be pretty straightforward - small config whether the player in its full potential can Dampen a specific sound. Might be a YES/NO or a number with percentage.
- SOUNDS A PLAYER CAN DAMP: Crunches from the terrain (being stealthy feels like checking where and how you put your foot down), Foot Echo from rigid floors, walking over Glass/Trash, opening/closing inventory (mostly stealth), reloading (mostly stealth), opening/closing doors (mostly stealth), etc.
- SOUNDS A BLOCK CAN DAMP: Foot Echo from rigid boots
- SOUNDS A PLAYER OR BLOCKS CANNOT DAMP: Wooden Floor Squeaking (being stealthy won't help, as you don't know which "floorboard" squeaks), zombie sounds (pretty obvious), gun shots, opening storage containers (although i feel a cardboard box should generate less sound than opening a wooden or metal chest), opening workstations, driving a vehicle with engine, etc.
As you can see, it's not a small change, but quite interesting. Some of the ideas about sound have already been implemented in a different way (walking over trash and glass, wooden floors that are destroyed when you walk over them and they generate sound, etc.). Nonetheless, this would enhance and improve everything associated with sound propagation. It would need additional testing whether Zombies should also use these mechanics (IMHO yeah) and how much it would influence their "waking up" or perhaps how much some POIs need to be adjusted. On the other hand, this could allow for a more intricate POI route generation, with some wooden floors not creaking, some creaking, having to wear soft boots for stealth missions, etc.
Please comment what you think of this suggestion Additionally, we can discuss which actions we should allow for the player to dampen due to stealth and which not, because currently going into stealth means anything player does is somewhat muffled.
Maybe she was dressed as some other trader?