Further detailing what we should expect in Destiny update 1.1.2 when it launches before the House of Wolves expansion, Bungie’s latest Weekly Update focused on the audio and visual changes they previously teased.
For the audio portion, Bungie Head of Audio Jay Weinland talked about some of the new Settings coming in 1.1.2, including the ability to adjust Chat Volume and Game Volume:
We’ve put a lot of thought into the best way to answer player feedback when it comes to audio. It’s been clear that there are times when you want to elevate the voices of your friends above the mix. Chat Volume is a setting that will let you adjust the players on your team in a range from 50% up to +125%. Game Volume adjusts all in-game dialogue, sounds effects, and music as one cohesive unit in a range from 0% to 100%. Keep in mind that Chat Volume adjusts the chat volume out of your speakers but not out of your chat headset (you should have your own volume for that).
As for the in-game music, you’ll be able to select Muted and then “the music will be excluded from the mix altogether,” allowing you to listen to your own music.
Weinland also teased “a fun little audio Easter egg to the game. It’ll be in there, somewhere. Once the update is live, see if you can find it…”
Switching to visual changes in update 1.1.2, User Interface Engineering Lead Brad Fish discussed making Destiny more colorblind-friendly with the Colorblind Mode:
Destiny relies on color to communicate some pretty important information to the player, particularly in the user interface. You may not have trouble distinguishing the red blips on the motion tracker from the red surface of Mars, for example, but chances are you know someone who does. Our solution for this subset of our community is a proper “Colorblind Mode” for Destiny. Adapting the existing user interface to support various color blind modes turned out to be a fairly complex challenge, but we managed to build a flexible toolkit for our designers that helped them do just that with minimally-invasive surgery and no negative impact to existing functionality. I’m extremely excited for players to get their hands on this!
Technical Artist Nate Hawbaker talked about the solution they’ve implemented to help colorblind players, while also showing off a screenshot of Deuteranopia Mode coming in 1.1.2:
To provide a better solution, we increased the contrast between the colors we do have in the perceived palette. We hope the new modes enable more players to make quick decisions about the elements in the game that are most important. Since there is no such thing as a blue ammo drop, prioritizing the difference in shades was easier.
New settings to the HUD will also help with environmental awareness for colorblind players (from left to right, you can see Standard Mode, a simulated Dueteranopic View, and Dueteranopia Mode):
Expect to hear more about update 1.1.2 in next week’s Weekly Update.
[Source: Bungie]
