Really great idea. I'd be surprised if Toady didn't have something like this already planned. It would certainly help. If you can hear it, you should know about it. And there should be a way to know about it.
All those times you 'hear' combat going on, but can't for the life of you find it? It should appear when you scan your surroundings.
Trees (Forests) and hills should block LoS obviously, but you should, at the very least return with something like one of these:
- Off to the north you hear the sounds of combat, but a thickly forested hillside blocks your view.
Let's travel closer to try to get a better look!- To the north-northeast you can make out a few figures fighting.
Though the only point of disagreement would be that you should only know the name of a place if you've been there, perhaps a few times. If you're off adventuring in the dark regions of the map, you should, at best, get vague, non-descriptive bits.
- There appears to be a small town far to the north along the horizon.
- Far to the south-southeast you can just make out The Hills of Suffering
In fact, stuff like that may be completely moot. The point is to find things locally, you don't really need to find anything that far, because the majority of us probably will not be travelling solely through adventure mode in the local screens, but using the Travel Screen.
Maybe a way in the init files to turn On or Off extra-descriptive scanning like that, in the case people would prefer to travel locally, rather than quickly.
Peaks (perhaps even volcanoes), chasms, rifts, pits, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, waterfalls, wild animals, travellers, caravans, migrants, etc. should all be noticeable. If you can't see them, certainly you can
hear them.
Obviously, some listed there you won't hear. A stream you should be able to hear when you are somewhat close to, but a major river you should be able to hear from quite a way off. A waterfall? Should be able to hear that a very long way off. Migrants, caravans, and wildlife all make sounds, and should be able to be heard, and thusly, it should appear when scanning (assuming you can't see them. If you can see them, then it should just return a 'you see' string instead of a 'you hear' string).
To get
too in-depth about this subject, "Line of Sound" should play a part. As Line of Sight, a hill would block the town behind it, or a forest could block a man walking through it, "Line of Sound"
could allow interference between different things making sounds. You can hear a waterfall to the north, but you might not be able to make out the sounds of combat going on right near the waterfall, and the ducks that are swimming in the river near the waterfall, you definately wouldn't be able to hear them quacking over that much noise. Decibel ratings for different kind of sounds to see if they can be heard over something else, perhaps?
- Close to the west you can make out a faint quacking sound.
- A short distance to the south you see a few migrants making their way northwest.
- Far to the east you can make out the faint roaring sound of a distant waterfall.
Author
Topic: Horizons (Read 2166 times)