NOISE GENERATION
Player actions producing sound that AI hears — footsteps on gravel, gunshots ringing across the map, a knocked-over bottle — making audio a stealth dimension parallel to sight.
- SOLO-DEV COST MEDIUM
- TIMING REAL-TIME
- COMMON IN STEALTH · SURVIVAL-HORROR · SHOOTER · IMMERSIVE-SIM
Thief pioneered surface-dependent footstep noise (moss arrows exist to silence floors), Metal Gear Solid propagates gunshot alerts through guard networks, The Last of Us lets you throw and sprint with distinct sound radii that clickers navigate by exclusively, and extraction shooters like Hunt: Showdown weaponize environmental noise (crows, dogs, glass) into an information war between players. Designers simulate noise because sound makes stealth continuous and honest: sight is binary (in cone or not), but noise scales with the player's chosen speed and tools — walk-run-sprint becomes a permanent risk dial the player operates every second — and it justifies loadout texture (silencers, soft boots, loud powerful weapons as real trade-offs). Noise also enables blind-enemy designs and lets the environment itself be a minefield of alarms. Key decisions: how noise is visualized (radius rings and indicator icons versus trusting audio design — the visualization question is the accessibility question), what propagates through walls and how far, and whether AI investigates, triangulates, or just alerts. Pitfall: invisible inconsistency — when sprinting past one guard is fine but a slow walk alerts another, and the player can't perceive why, the entire dimension reads as random; noise rules need either ruthless consistency or explicit UI, because unlike light, players can't see sound.
SEEN IN
- THIEF
- THE LAST OF US PART II
- HUNT: SHOWDOWN