Idea: noise indicator

[Roy]

A very important aspect of the game is noise management, but unfortunately it is very difficult for a player to understand how noisy he or she is being. The only in-game indication that I know of is the spell descriptions. Otherwise, there is no non-spoiler way to know that, say, fighting has noise of X, or that in the tombs noise is amplified by Y.

So, what if there were a "noise indicator" on the GUI? One idea might be to have a histogram of the last 10 turns, scaled to the ambient noise of the floor?

[Jeremiah]

Until today I didn't know that noise levels were different in different branches, so yes, sounds like a good idea.

[jejorda2]

Replace the on-screen player hp bar and mp bar with a last turn and last 10 turn noise bar? With the numbers right there, I never look at the bar graphs.

[Psieye]

The bars are useful to quickly gauge your situation, especially in console where you don't have a minibar. I'm sure there's space somewhere else to put the noise indicator, even if it isn't a bar histogram.

[ebarrett]

But is the world ready to know that punching things in dragon form is louder than shatter?

Replace the on-screen player hp bar and mp bar with a last turn and last 10 turn noise bar? With the numbers right there, I never look at the bar graphs.

you silly tilespeople

[jejorda2]

I'm talking about the equals signs beside the HP fraction that turn into hyphens as you take damage:

That's certainly there in console, but if you didn't notice it, it may be less than useful to more than just me.
Not that there's room for a full on histogram there, but the two lines could represent something different.

Per-turn hunger rate would be interesting to see, bu then I'd probably obsess over how magic dart uses less hunger than hitting things with a quarterstaff.

[dpeg]

Perhaps a better way would be to indicate loud actions with a secondary message, and especially if they woke something up. E.g. "[shatter message] This was very loud. You hear [a|some|many] scream[s]."

[galehar]

you already get the shouting feedback

[Psieye]

you already get the shouting feedback

The extreme case would be in Tomb:3. A lot of players have no idea how to do it safely because they don't know:
1) Noise travels further in Tomb/Crypt
2) Hitting things also makes noise (it's usually not loud enough to attract things from outside LOS)
3) Mummies start asleep but wake up without ever making noise


We already have some in-game information on how loud spells are, but we don't have anything on how loud melee hits are. Information on ambient noise in branches is also missing - if the concept was introduced somewhere then people could be expected to figure out that Lair is loud whereas Crypt is quiet but right now it's a spoiler-only concept.

If we wanted to avoid big UI re-design works, a few messages would go a long way:
- "You enter the Lair of Beasts. A loud ambience of animal calls can be heard" vs "You enter the Crypt. The absolute silence weighs down on you."
- "You open the monster like a pillowcase!!! The attack makes a loud, meaty noise."

[galehar]

Information on ambient noise in branches is also missing - if the concept was introduced somewhere then people could be expected to figure out that Lair is loud whereas Crypt is quiet but right now it's a spoiler-only concept.

I think the last time this was brought up, the consensus was more about removing branch-specific ambient noise rather than document it.

[njvack]

I think the last time this was brought up, the consensus was more about removing branch-specific ambient noise rather than document it.

Good lord yes. Until this thread I had absolutely no idea it was even a thing.

Beyond that, "You hear a shout! You hear an angry hiss!" is pretty good feedback that you just did something noisy.

I do think it should be possible to find out spell noise from the "z" menu; in a lot of cases, it's more important than hunger or power -- sometimes it's hard to remember what caused offscreen shouts in the past.

Maybe the "z*" menu could let you access spell descriptions instead of casting? Yes, I know about "I" but I repeatedly expect z* to act like the shop interface.

[Psieye]

Beyond that, "You hear a shout! You hear an angry hiss!" is pretty good feedback that you just did something noisy.

2 edge cases:
1) You made so much noise and all the resulting shouts are beyond your "hearing radius"
2) You woke up something that doesn't shout


While not essential knowledge, it would be good to know how loud a shout is (as loud as meph? Bolt of fire level?) and how loud a big 2h melee hit is. I happen to recall from an old commit log that 2h weapons were tweaked to not be louder than shouts and I've observed that a sheep exclaiming in Lair can be heard up to around range 8~10 (because other things stayed asleep beyond that radius). Right now you have an unreliable binary clue on "I made some noise" and while you most certainly shouldn't need in-depth knowledge of how the noise engine works, a little bit more in-game information on noise would be much appreciated.

[Roderic]

I was thinking on a bar indicating the noise the latest action did, just like the equalizer bars, but just for all the frequency band.

[Jeremiah]

Do spells consistently make the same amount of noise? I've got the impression that IMB makes more noise when it explodes than when it does not, but I could be wrong.

[siggboy]

A noise indicator is a lovely idea.

Right now an important game concept is hidden from the player. If there's a sophisticated emulation of noise and ambience, then there should be some indicator of it in the game.

Some things can be hidden away (e.g. damage and armour formulas; it's not something a person could intuitively derive). Ambience and noise is something which is very intuitive in an actual dungeon, and should not be undiscoverable as right now. I'm very surprised there are big differences between branches in this regard. I had no idea that Lair was noisy by default.

Therefore the game should (a) give more information about ambient noise in general (Psieye gave great examples above) and (b) give more information about the noise that player actions make. I'm not sure about the histogram (it seems not very intuitive to most people), but there also should be some kind of live information.

[Roy]

By the way, I used the term "histogram" incorrectly; I really meant a bar chart showing the noise level for each of the last few turns. My concern with showing only the last turn is that it is easy to take several turns quickly and miss an important loud noise.

[o_O]

Its not like noise is a hard to understand concept. Things hear loud noises, unless there are louder noises. Feedback of some sort would be nice.

[Wahaha]

I've never felt the need to know exactly how much noise I'm making because there's pretty much never a reason to know exactly how much noise you're making. Most (almost all really?) loud actions already have some sort of indication that they make a lot of noise in their message. That's on top of all spells having their noise in the description. After a player has learned how much noise actions make (this isn't hard if you actually pay attention to how much noise your actions make. You can easily tell how much noise melee fighting makes after 1 game) there's not much reason to have a noise indicator in the ui. If there were to be some kind of noise meter it should be a text description of the last turn, something like
Noise: A bit loud

[byrel]

After a player has learned how much noise actions make (this isn't hard if you actually pay attention to how much noise your actions make. You can easily tell how much noise melee fighting makes after 1 game)

I completely disagree. I can and have played tons of melee characters, and still don't have a good feel for how much noise I'm making. How far can monsters hear an endgame demon trident? How about a normal trident? Sure, a +3 +17 antimagic executioner's axe of pwnage is going to be at least shout volume. But is it as loud as Lightning Bolt? Or Mephitic?

I don't know these answers. And I've ascended three times, been playing for six months, and am generally quite cautious about noise. I think an indicator (maybe a rolling average of the last five turns?) of sound heard would be excellent. It would also give some information about how close that 'unpleasant' explosion is. And so on. (It obviously can't be too precise; with blink, echolocation is possible and grindy.)

[mumra]

(It obviously can't be too precise; with blink, echolocation is possible and grindy.)

Clearly Bat Form should get an echolocation ability.

[siggboy]

Clearly Bat Form should get an echolocation ability.

That actually sounds like a good idea (no pun intended).

Oh, and do "pwnage" weapons really make more noise? There's no in-game hint of that fact either.

[nicolae]

Clearly Bat Form should get an echolocation ability.

That actually sounds like a good idea (no pun intended).

Oh, and do "pwnage" weapons really make more noise? There's no in-game hint of that fact either.

More damage = more noise, and setting off electrocution in water is very noisy too.

[galehar]

It's not that simple. Monsters make noise too. Should we only display player's noise? What if I throw a dart at an inner flamed orc and it explodes? When I cast a fireball, do I display the casting noise or the explosion (and they have a different source location)? Also, walls and doors attenuate sound. If you're really curious about how it works, you can have generated html showing noise propagation in debug mode (sorry, don't remember the specifics and can't look it up right now).

[One-Eyed Jack]

Well, the fireball spell (for example) already has a noise listed in its description, which is separate from the noise it causes at the point of impact (I assume). The idea, I assume, it to generalize the spellcasting noise descriptors to other actions, and make them apparent in the basic view screen.

[njvack]

It's not that simple. Monsters make noise too. Should we only display player's noise?

Noise at the player's location. I have no idea if this information is readily available

All the stuff about how noise gets attenuated through walls and doors and whatnot can be mysterious, but it'd be nice to know that {elec} is loud in water but not on land and whether hitting a dude with a big mace is loud compared to Iron Shot and whether those things are loud compared to just being a minotaur walking around in a suit of plate.

My feeling is that noise and stealth are a little too obscure at the moment -- they're actually really important even if you aren't stabbing, but you need to work pretty hard to spade out the mechanics.

[galehar]

Well, the fireball spell (for example) already has a noise listed in its description, which is separate from the noise it causes at the point of impact (I assume). The idea, I assume, it to generalize the spellcasting noise descriptors to other actions, and make them apparent in the basic view screen.

No, the noise description take into account the explosion.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Well, my point was just that however the logic of spell noise works could perhaps be applied to other player actions (although if circumstances make this very difficult to adjudicate another solution might be preferable).

[siggboy]

The noise mechanics seem to be very sophisticated internally, according to what galehar said. This sophistication must be more apparent to the unspoiled player. It doesn't have to be perfect, but the player should at least be aware at any point in the game how noisy the immediate environment (player location) is. There could also be a representation of external noises (compass, heat map, something along these lines).

[Psieye]

There could also be a representation of external noises (compass, heat map, something along these lines).

Too much detail, the player doesn't need to know all this detail. A little extra added to the "you hear a shout [from SE]" to bring it up to what we get with alarm traps would be nice, but nothing extravagant along your lines.

Likewise, the player damn well ought to be able to estimate how noise travels with regards to walls and such. The whole reason the noise engine is sophisticated is to replicate intuitive noise travel that doesn't need spoiling.

[siggboy]

There could also be a representation of external noises (compass, heat map, something along these lines).

Too much detail, the player doesn't need to know all this detail. A little extra added to the "you hear a shout [from SE]" to bring it up to what we get with alarm traps would be nice, but nothing extravagant along your lines.

Likewise, the player damn well ought to be able to estimate how noise travels with regards to walls and such. The whole reason the noise engine is sophisticated is to replicate intuitive noise travel that doesn't need spoiling.

Yes, but right now the intuitive noise travel is not represented in the game at all. "You hear a bark x4" with no qualifying information is not intuitive.

Your idea of "from [SE]" comes pretty close to a "compass indicator" already. The game "Cataclysm" (zombie survival RL) does it like this, and it works. It's very important in that game, but not much less important in DCSS.

The heat map is very detailed and very geeky, probably too detailed for most players. It could be made optional, however (as an overlay or second screen).

Giving directions where the sounds come from (as you suggest), and to provide more information about how loud you are would be a big step in the right direction already.

[Galefury]

A little extra added to the "you hear a shout [from SE]" to bring it up to what we get with alarm traps would be nice

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=5851
Sadly there are a few issues left that I would have to fix up, and people didn't seem very enthusiastic about the idea, so I didn't do that. Mostly the direction info feels a little weird because it doesn't care about walls and I cant change that. I should probably at least make a patch that has all the fixes I did, like missing silence checks and stuff like that.

Likewise, the player damn well ought to be able to estimate how noise travels with regards to walls and such. The whole reason the noise engine is sophisticated is to replicate intuitive noise travel that doesn't need spoiling.

It's only sophisticated for stuff the monsters hear. Anything that prints a message to the player ("You hear a shout", etc.) doesn't care about walls at all, and often doesn't care about other things, like silence. Many of these messages don't even care about distance.

[Psieye]

Ahh, that is useful to know: there is asymmetry in noise reaching monsters vs noise reaching your ears. In which case the distance and loudness feedback for noise heard by the player isn't so relevant, though the direction of shouts would still be nice. If off-screen melee hits also generated this message then I think that'd be enough of a hint to players that monsters may hear your epic 2h weapon connecting with some monster's anatomy.

[galehar]

I should probably at least make a patch that has all the fixes I did, like missing silence checks and stuff like that.

Yes, you should do that . This patch is almost good enough to go in.
While reviewing it I realized the asymmetry between player and monster noise. At first I thought it was an issue, but probably not. Using complicated propagation for monster noise would have a noticeable performance impact for little gain anyway.

So, propagation of monster noise is simplistic. They have a range and ignore terrain, if you're close enough, you can hear it. Could be improved by showing noise source direction. Player noise use to work the same way, but a new propagation system was implemented a few version ago. It doesn't simulate true noise propagation, but approximate it using a flood fill. Imagine it spreading through the dungeon like water. It goes through walls and doors but looses a lot of intensity doing so.

And to answer the OP, yes, a noise indicator could be good. I'd say only a line in the status area showing the maximum noise level heard by the player during the last turn, using the same adjectives as in the spell description. Eg: Noise: Very Loud
I don't think we need anything more complicated on the UI.

[Psieye]

I'd say only a line in the status area showing the maximum noise level heard by the player during the last turn, using the same adjectives as in the spell description. Eg: Noise: Very Loud

That would be very satisfactory, yes.

[byrel]

Sure! Personally, I'd prefer a rolling average of 2-3 turns, but one turn: Very Loud, a Whisper, or Silent as the GRAVE would be very nice.

[siggboy]

OK, when is this going into trunk? :)

[njvack]

Shortly after you submit a patch to Mantis

[rebthor]

Well, the fireball spell (for example) already has a noise listed in its description, which is separate from the noise it causes at the point of impact (I assume). The idea, I assume, it to generalize the spellcasting noise descriptors to other actions, and make them apparent in the basic view screen.

No, the noise description take into account the explosion.

As does LRD, IIRC. Which is a little confusing, because they are really noisy, but they make that noise at the point of impact and not at the caster, which means you can fire them around a corner and then walk away with pretty high hopes of not getting noticed. Compare that to shatter or tornado which centers around you.

Not sure how launchers work. Do they make sound at the source or at the impact or both?