Voice Range Colors

[Arlaton]

Kind of a simple wish, but with the distance that voices travel and the thin walls and floors of Kada El's, I sometimes lose the people I am talking to in the flood of conversations. I'd like to see an option to have text that is closer to you be in a separate color. So maybe I could have the first quarter of the distance of my hearing range white and the rest slightly a blueish off-white. Thus when it gets too noisy I can more easily tune out the people I shouldn't be hearing very well in the din of the crowd.

[Eliseth]

I like this idea, large crowds can be difficult to keep track of. I also think a /whisper command would be nice, so that you can talk softly without having to /tell.

[Lolitra, Celorrim Purrty Twins]

I thought this had been discussed.  I think that walls should not allow sound to travel through them - but if you /listen at a door or window you should be able to hear all or part of a conversation.   The use of /wisper should make the circle of hearing smaller, as /shout makes it larger... and /listen could make it so you can 'eavesdrop' from afar with a growing skill?

[Raa]

I think that walls should not allow sound to travel through them - but if you /listen at a door or window you should be able to hear all or part of a conversation.

I don't know if there are soundproof walls in Yliakum... Sound travels through solid objects. And wooden walls like those in the tavern are pretty thin, so I'd think you'd be able to hear what's going on in another room pretty easily. Even through stone walls. You can't hear through them as well, but you should still be able to hear voices. (I might be overexaggerating since I have Super Ears.)

[Beniel]

In that case we should have different coloured text for chat that travels through walls and chat that is a certain distance away from us (with the possibility of them being either the same or different colours to each other).

[freeharte]

Actually, shouldn't it be difficult to distinguish conversations when a lot of people are speaking at once?  More distant voices tend to get drowned out by nearer ones.

[Arlaton]

Actually, shouldn't it be difficult to distinguish conversations when a lot of people are speaking at once?  More distant voices tend to get drowned out by nearer ones.

Exactly, thats why we should be able to "hear" the nearer ones better by different font color and as was mentioned, I want to be able to focus on the conversation near me, not follow a conversation on the other side of a noisy tavern. Also, as mentioned before, this coloring can easily be made alongside the whisper mechanic that is also needed.

While I like the idea of text not being able to move through walls easily, that would probably be really difficult to do, especially with how sound would move around corners and through doorways.

[freeharte]

Hmmm...  Maybe if the text got dimmer (or smaller) and harder to read, the further away the speaker?

[Dreamcrafter]

I think a simple variation in text color would go a long way... and be pretty easy to implement.  Fancier stuff seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth, but the color variation is a great idea!

 

The only other thing I'd like to note is... maybe muffle sound through -floors-?  It's odd to hear people who are talking on the third floor of the tavern when you're in the barroom.  Walls, I can deal with hearing through.  Floors... that's odd.  I suppose this could be covered by the 'color' rule, though.

[Mlato]

Hmmm...  Maybe if the text got dimmer (or smaller) and harder to read, the further away the speaker?

I think that idea would make more sense than changing the color of the text. But, I think that that suggestion could get affected by some "voice range radius" which could be changed to represent how far the character wants to be heard. But I think something more or less similar to that "voice range radius" idea has already been discussed somewhere on these forums.

Ah, here's a link to that thread:
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=24938.0