I was looking around the forums and got slightly curious about this.. i used the search feature didn't really find anything on it. I suggest there should be some way to determine noise levels, Be that as a meter, sound waves on screen.. etc. It just seems like a decent idea to me. sorry if this has been brought up before.

They've brought this up before, I can't remember where. But they don't like the ideas of meters, be they health meters, noise meters, hunger etc.
I think the line was "you don't have meters in real life, why have them in PZ?"

I'll post a link if I find it

Here is the original discussion, I think. It was a bit controversial - split between 'in real life, there's no meter' and 'in real life, you've got directional hearing to a degree that simply can't be indicated by sounds in-game'.

Yeah they don't like that and besides it's not to realistic, more scary not knowing if you are attracting the horde. You know?

So, you're saying . . . if we added a literal sound meter as an item . . .

Quickly, gather the scientists! We will begin work immediately

No need for scientists. Image here! There are decibel meters already. Hell there is even an iphone app that does it. Not sure how accurate it is but it's possible that the player could come across it a meter but not likely.

Yes . . . Yes! It has begun!

We'll ruin the game with realism.

Meters You Say? Nah, I Perfer To Go Without It.

This is a useful feature for the aforementioned reasons. Compensation for something that's lost in translation, being a computer game.

However, we could easily just tie this to an easier difficulty.

*Equips whitetip cane.*
*Tap* Concentric circles of color caress the various structures within twenty feet
*Tap* . . .

It'd be nice if reality worked like that, though.

That sentence reminds me of that 'black kid saying "So you're saying that..."' meme.

I still think the best way to do this would be to have comic style onomatopoeia sounds. That way you'd hear them for real (through your speakers) and see where the sound came from on screen at the same time. The trick would be to try and make the sound text look relatively scary.

ARGH! Damn your signature D:<