Visual Hearing Mode

[Siori]

So the game is supposed to be hard, I love it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite meant to be this hard.  I can hear basically everything or think I do but I am hard of hearing. Watching videos of others playing I realized that, well -- maybe I'm supposed to hear those wolves/bears a bit further away than I do. As it stands right now wolves I can mostly hear them growl -- but nothing else. So I turn, and they are basically landing on my face. Ooops. 

I'm currently compensating by spinning in paranoid circles and hoping I can just spot them... 

If you ever have the chance to enable some sort of optional visual mode, a quick screen blink (from the direction of important sounds) or some icon blink in a vauge-ish area, would be fairly useful. As long as it goes "oh, hey, you should maybe look around" I'd be wicked happy.

Edit for clarification:

I know the wolves yip when running away from me, and they growl immediately preceding an attack. The only reason I think they are probably making some sound I don't hear is because I can see videos of people where they say "I think there's a wolf over this ridge somewhere" and sure enough there is and they can alter their route to avoid them. Whatever it is that alerted these players to the wolfs presence is absent for me. 

[JoE Smash]

When a wolf hears something,(often it's you) but they don't know where you are yet they often howl. Like the way a wolf howls at the moon. It is more of a higher pitched sound, so it may be out of your auditory range...

Sometimes if an animal is close, but not yet in visual range, (like just over a ridge) if you stop moving you can hear their steps in the snow....but it's faint.

When a wolf hears AND sees you, they bark like a dog and walk towards you. You can then keep moving away from them and they will follow you. At this point if you approach them, they will size you up and generally attack.

If you start backing up you have some options. You can drop a piece of meat you don't want (I usually cancel eating when I get to the last .10 kilos of meat). You can light a flare and hope they reconsider....sometimes they don't. Usually if I have a few sticks on me I squat and try to make a fire real fast. Making a fire generally scares them off. Then I throw a few sticks in and pull a torch out, and then scurry to the closest enterable structure.

Often times in the videos though if the player is experienced in the region they are playing in and says, "I think there is a wolf over this ridge." It is because the wolves have certain areas where they usually can be found. The player may have just been in an area where there often is a wolf there, and they know it...

I am not beneath using maps. For Coastal Highway I check two maps. One I like because it has impassable terrain areas, but it doesn't have the wolf spots on it. The other map I have has a lot of wolf spawn locations on it, the wolves are not always there....but it gives me an idea of where there may be a wolf.

 

[JAFO]

This is the second request I've seen for a way to visually convey important sounds, for the hearing impaired.

@Patrick Carlson, I know it's going to be a tricky task, given the rich soundscape of TLD, but please ask the team what could be done in this regard. A lot of us players are getting older, and hearing loss is one of those sad things we all have to deal with. (I'm lucky that my own hearing loss is only around 10-15%, in just one ear, but I know it's going to get worse as time goes by.) TLD is one of those games where audio cues are far more critically important than most games, and it would be a shame if we had to quit playing, just because we got older.

 

19 hours ago, Siori said:

So the game is supposed to be hard, I love it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite meant to be this hard.  I can hear basically everything or think I do but I am hard of hearing. Watching videos of others playing I realized that, well -- maybe I'm supposed to hear those wolves/bears a bit further away than I do. As it stands right now wolves I can mostly hear them growl -- but nothing else. So I turn, and they are basically landing on my face. Ooops. 

I'm currently compensating by spinning in paranoid circles and hoping I can just spot them... 

If you ever have the chance to enable some sort of optional visual mode, a quick screen blink (from the direction of important sounds) or some icon blink in a vauge-ish area, would be fairly useful. As long as it goes "oh, hey, you should maybe look around" I'd be wicked happy.

Edit for clarification:

I know the wolves yip when running away from me, and they growl immediately preceding an attack. The only reason I think they are probably making some sound I don't hear is because I can see videos of people where they say "I think there's a wolf over this ridge somewhere" and sure enough there is and they can alter their route to avoid them. Whatever it is that alerted these players to the wolfs presence is absent for me. 

@Siori, yes, there audio cues (various types of animal footsteps, the heavy breathing of bears, 'bear crows', etc) that you're probably missing. It gets complicated because the soundscape in TLD is a multi-layered thing. For example, there are at least half a dozen different levels of wind noise, and the stronger sounds often drown out things like footsteps, so that even those with excellent hearing will miss them. Or you'll just barely hear something, but you're not sure what, or where. Random bird calls further complicate things. A big part of the fear-factor of the game is built on the concept of "Did I just hear something, or was that my imagination?", "Was that a wolf, or my stomach growling?", and so on.

Visual cues would remove most of the uncertainty..  and understandably, getting rid of the uncertainty factor is something Hinterland are loath to do. But I do hope that something could be done, that could be enabled/disabled in settings, to assist the hard of hearing in enjoying the game.

 

All that said, there is something that might help you, right now.

Always play while wearing a set of headphones. Ideally, 5.1 or 7.1 surround capable. Even players with excellent hearing will tell you how, without headphones, it's very easy to miss audio cues in TLD, and that headphones helped their gameplay immensely. I can vouch for this myself. I can play pretty well with regular PC speakers, but I do far better with a set of surround headphones, so that now I seldom play without them. And surround is definitely the way to go. It enables you to know if something is behind or ahead of you, not just left or right, and by rotating in a circle (not "spinning", that's too fast) it's possible to get a pretty good fix on the direction to the sound source.

If you're not sure if they'll help, see if you can borrow a pair to try out. If it improves things, you'll know it won't be a waste of money to get a good quality set for yourself.

Good luck!

Edit: And welcome to the forums!

[Siori]

@JAFO Yes, I do wear surround sound headphones. They are somewhat old at this point but are a turtle beach set with a customized sound profile/audio-switching that the folks at the company were willing to make for me from my hearing test results. So I absolutely play better than I used to without them in most games. By spinning I did mean slowly rotating and stopping to eliminate most noises I make myself. I do realize it is an important aspect of the game, too often not know where things are coming from. I'd hate to see that ruined even for myself. 

@JoE Smash I never knew wolves howled in the game. It was actually something I looked forward too since wolves have such an excellent tone/range of songs they make in real life. Unfortunately, it does seem that it is entirely outside my range. Which is odd, since I do hear birds on occasion. Actually, I think I just hear crows. Are there other birds? As for your suggestions to drop meat, flares, and torches. I've got that part down pat assuming I'm in an area I know well and can see them in time to react. I often walk around with either in my hand so I can light ASAP. I fare better in open areas (mystery lake) but in a wooded environment, I've taken to walking on the highest ridges so that I can see in all directions as best as possible.  I don't hear much of anything until the wolf is close enough to have already sized me up and growled. 

Funny story, or funny to me at least. Playing on the easiest of easy modes, I was hearing a yip, when the animal ran away. This led me to believe they were not wolves but coyotes or perhaps foxes in the distance. Of course, I'd hear this on mystery lake on a beautiful sunny day. So imagine my surprise when I get into the normal mode and realize, oh, that sounded nothing like a wolf... but here it is, attacking me. Then it runs away and yips, again like a coyote. 

I have yet to hear a bear at all. I have no idea what sounds (if any) they make. I've seen one, and eventually, I suppose I'll take a stroll down to it to see what happens. For posterity sake. It makes me wonder what other sounds I might be completely oblivious to. I have tried using maps or made mental notes of where the spawns might be. 

As for how to go about doing this without taking a critical element away from the game, I might suggest an icon that doesn't indicate direction but functions similarly to the icon for wind-protected places. Even just a quick flash of a non-specific animal, for sounds far in the distance, and having it hold a few seconds longer to indicate a louder animal sound. By being non-specific (bird, wolf, bear) the uncertainty still exists. All it would convey is that there is "a sound" and the length of its display giving an idea of distance but not direction. Leaving the player to be paranoid and/or find out where/what. 

Edit: In the case of natural wind-noise drowning out what could be other animal noises. In those instances, I'd have a wind-noise icon (for the benefit of those who can't realize/hear that wind would normally block out other sounds in the game). In these cases it would be perfectly natural to not hear - because the wind has increased in volume. I know theres the wind-protected, smell icon, but I can't seem  to recall if theres one for strong-wind noises.
 

[JoE Smash]

The crows are the only bird I believe I have heard in the game, there does not appear to be any song birds or anything nice on sunrises. I am pretty sure. Me being able to hear well of course means I don't listen and pay attention to sounds as much as I probably should, lol. What I mean is if I was blind, I would probably be more aware of the soundtrack to the game and would know for sure if there was bird song, lol.

I am pretty sure the only animal sounds in the game are from animals present in the game and the only birds I have seen are the carrion crows.

Apparently if you Google "The long dark weather" there are weather crows. When three crows fly directly over your head in a straight line, it means the weather is about to change. I literally just learned that today. I believe crows may also fly in the direction of something that just died, whether you killed it, a wolf killed it, or a bear killed it.

Yes, wolves in the game seem to yip when frightened like a scared dog, and I assure you they howl.

Bunnies just make snow crushing sounds as they move, until you hit them with a rock or snap their necks. Then they let out a high pitched scream.

Bears make a lot of noise walking on the snow, and when they rear up on their hind legs they make typical bear growling noises...

It would be nice for your sake if they implemented some visual cues for noises. You are obviously welcome to request it. I believe this is the wish list forum (I didn't check). If so this request is as valid as any other, if not more so.

[Siori]

This thread is in wishlist unless I'm utterly mistaken

[Carbon]

@JoE Smash: those maps should be hidden...kind of a spoiler.

[JAFO]

When it comes to bird sounds, in addition to crows and 'bear crows', there are loons, owls, and at least 2 other species that, not living in North America, I don't recognise.

1 hour ago, JoE Smash said:

I believe crows may also fly in the direction of something that just died, whether you killed it, a wolf killed it, or a bear killed it.

Nope.. only for weather changes.

1 hour ago, JoE Smash said:

Bears make a lot of noise walking on the snow, and when they rear up on their hind legs they make typical bear growling noises...

When wandering about looking for food, the bears make a kind of heavy breathing, snuffly grunting noise. The best way to hear it is to be crouched in a hunters blind when a bear is nearby.. Unnamed Pond being ideal for this.

[Carbon]

 *Wolf walking* Ok. Now what? Run...where? Which direction? Am I going to run toward it? Do I have to run or just crouch? Is it that close?

 In order for a subtitled sound cue to be of any use at all you would have to be told from where the sound is emanating; being that there is no compass or N/S/E/W directions in the game, you would then have to be told "Wolf walking at your 3 o'clock" or similar. Then you would have to be told the approximate range or distance to compensate for the differences in volume derived from proximity.

 Past his would be a mini-map option with predators shown.

[JAFO]

5 minutes ago, Carbon said:

Then you would have to be told the approximate range or distance to compensate for the differences in volume derived from proximity.

That's the other complication I meant to mention before, but forgot.. the distance-related drop in volume. It all adds up to a very complex problem.

[Carbon]

 I truly empathize with the OP and hope that something works out, but the only viable solution I can see is indeed a mini-map. This however seems to work against one of the fundamental tensions in the game; say what you want about the wolves but knowing where they are and where they are going in real-time would make for a far less interesting game.

 So, perhaps an option to toggle a mini-map but I don't expect the devs to want to do this very eagerly.

[Siori]

MAG (a dead fps game) had one of t he best on screen hearing indicators I ever saw. In this image, a 360 radial appears around the center. 

white=very-soft-sound
yellow=medium-volume
red=fucking-loud 

The distance was indicated by the intensity of the color, and also a sound like a focused gunshot might have been yellow but a narrow more specific band of it. Whereas a larger gunfight with multiple guns firing would have been a wider yellow band. It did tell you on occasion via icons in the direction of the sound if there were things like landmines (beeps). Edit: You also had an idea of what weapon was firing after a while because it was super responsive and started/stopped with the sound. So you knew a sniper-rife shot as opposed to a silenced handgun because of the quickness that it flashed.

What I had suggested was something similar where an icon would display at various edges of the screen, and maybe opacity indicating volume.

You really don't need a minimap, just a snowflake icon to indicate snow-crunching. It's size, color, or position on the screen.

ex: A tiny faded wolf icon appears on the left side of the screen then fades away (the wolf has stopped making a sound). You turn to look and there's a ridge you begin to creep forward. Now you're facing the last known spot, and the wolf icon is now at the top of the screen it holds a little brighter, the wolf might be howling... It vanishes (the wolf has stopped making noise) then re-appears brighter but now in the upper-right corner of the screen. The wolf is stalking you, but it's gone silent. Suddenly a snowflake icon appears on the left, and the wolf icon is bright red. You turn, and there he is growling.

This method approximates what a person might actually hear, without being as obvious as a mini-map about it. It leaves as much of the tension/mystery for an HOH player, as it should for a hearing player -- assuming it is done well. In fact by it being on the edges of the screen, you're also approximating how distracted a player can get sometimes. We focus narrowly on certain things and a hearing player might ignore sounds. If we failed to see the icon...

[JAFO]

7 hours ago, Siori said:

MAG (a dead fps game) had one of t he best on screen hearing indicators I ever saw.

That does sound like a workable system.. hopefully, the devs will take this idea on board.

[JoE Smash]

On Sunday, July 09, 2017 at 11:39 AM, Siori said:

MAG (a dead fps game) had one of t he best on screen hearing indicators I ever saw. In this image, a 360 radial appears around the center. 

white=very-soft-sound
yellow=medium-volume
red=fucking-loud 

The distance was indicated by the intensity of the color, and also a sound like a focused gunshot might have been yellow but a narrow more specific band of it. Whereas a larger gunfight with multiple guns firing would have been a wider yellow band. It did tell you on occasion via icons in the direction of the sound if there were things like landmines (beeps). Edit: You also had an idea of what weapon was firing after a while because it was super responsive and started/stopped with the sound. So you knew a sniper-rife shot as opposed to a silenced handgun because of the quickness that it flashed.

What I had suggested was something similar where an icon would display at various edges of the screen, and maybe opacity indicating volume.

You really don't need a minimap, just a snowflake icon to indicate snow-crunching. It's size, color, or position on the screen.

ex: A tiny faded wolf icon appears on the left side of the screen then fades away (the wolf has stopped making a sound). You turn to look and there's a ridge you begin to creep forward. Now you're facing the last known spot, and the wolf icon is now at the top of the screen it holds a little brighter, the wolf might be howling... It vanishes (the wolf has stopped making noise) then re-appears brighter but now in the upper-right corner of the screen. The wolf is stalking you, but it's gone silent. Suddenly a snowflake icon appears on the left, and the wolf icon is bright red. You turn, and there he is growling.

This method approximates what a person might actually hear, without being as obvious as a mini-map about it. It leaves as much of the tension/mystery for an HOH player, as it should for a hearing player -- assuming it is done well. In fact by it being on the edges of the screen, you're also approximating how distracted a player can get sometimes. We focus narrowly on certain things and a hearing player might ignore sounds. If we failed to see the icon...

Idea seconded for the hearing impared. Don't want to exclude a group of gamers. Obviously the system should be able to be enabled/disabled via options like the carpal tunnel search setting we have...