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City Of Heroes Announces Visual Sounds!

01 Apr, 2008

City of Heroes to implement a new comic book feature!

imageApril 1st, 2008 - NCsoft NorCal is proud to announce a new feature for the City of Heroes® and City of Villains® games; that of Visual Sounds. Visual Sounds are based on the comic book staple of onomatopoeia, or the use of a word to replace a sound. Classic comic book examples are “Pow” and “Ka-Boom!” in colourful bubbles while heroes and villains are slugging it out. City of Heroes takes a huge stride forward by replacing simple sounds with the exciting new visual medium of Visual Sounds.

image“I know it sounds crazy,” said Brian Clayton, the Executive Producer and head of the NC NorCal office, “but our research shows that a lot of people are building their own computers nowadays, and sometimes you forget to purchase speakers or headphones. Our market is those gamers who want a full gaming experience without having to listen to the game.” Visual Sounds will be included in the upcoming Issue 12, which is being re-christened “Issue 12: Pow, Biff, Boom, Bam!” in honour of this new system.

“I have always been an advocate of using the theatre of the mind,” said Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, Lead Designer on the titles. “When you read a book, you give the characters their own voices, and when you watch a movie based on that book you can’t help but be disappointed when what your mind came up with was better. That’s the way this system works. Whatever sounds we put into the game can’t imagecompare to what you can imagine with your own mind, so why even try?”

Ken Morse, the Lead Artist on the title was excited. “It’s going to be a lot more work for our department, but I think the end results are totally worth it.” He said. Players can optionally disable the Visual Sounds in the options menu, but are encouraged to keep them on, as all the sounds in the game are being removed to make room on the players’ hard drives for the new Visual Sound graphics.

Posted by GhostRaptor at 10:39
 

0Posted by Greater Light on 01 Apr at 11:32

Ooh! Wow!

Can’t wait for Issue 12 now.

...Wait, what’s the date again?

0Posted by Neutronic Girl on 01 Apr at 11:57

This isnt april fools right? :S

0Posted by Axe on 01 Apr at 12:13

Isn’t it funny this story was posted April 1st? ;D

0Posted by Rob on 01 Apr at 13:20

Wow...an article posted on April 1st.

They should have gone for something a little more believable.

0Posted by drago on 01 Apr at 14:03

hmmm I smell an Aprils fool here

0Posted by swp21 on 01 Apr at 14:07

hmmm given the date that this is posted i’m going to avoid getting too excited about it yet, after all we all know from the forums how tricky the devs can be.

0Posted by ArmourGeddon on 01 Apr at 14:20

hmm posted at 10.39 on April 1st.

Damn comedians lol

0Posted by cyberknight on 01 Apr at 14:58

Sounds a good idea as long as those who want to can turn the FX off in the options as some people will find this distracting

0Posted by Spindles on 01 Apr at 15:17

ROTFL

Very funny! :D

0Posted by dark terror on 01 Apr at 15:18

this really should be optional for visual sounds or audiio sounds. i might be wrong but from what i have read it seems that the audio sounds are being removed from the game and if this is the case i for 1 will opt out of playing the game again. WoW here i come

0Posted by Artic-fire on 01 Apr at 15:22

wooooow, this is by far the best update so far!!
only it’d be better if the guns went ‘braaap’

0Posted by dan on 01 Apr at 15:24

Isn’t that a little harsh?
I understand that some players will want the comic style words but what about the players that will want the sounds and not the comic style words? at the bottom, it says “players are encouraged to keep the comic words on as all sounds in the game are being removed”

So ur saying this is gonna happen, even if you don’t want them. u can just play in silence instead?!

If i’m wrong and you can turn these comic words off and keep the sounds then i’m sorry for asking but if you have to have the comic words or no sound then I think thats a mistake, a mistake like Sony made with Star wars online, and look what happended to them when they didn’t listen and ask about changes...! they lost around 400,000+ users

0Posted by Steve Hargreaves on 01 Apr at 15:40

And they say penguins can fly now.
BBC TV show actual footage on daytime tv !st April 2008.

sfe-e (smiles from ear to ear)

0Posted by Alex on 01 Apr at 15:46

Nice april fools!

Almost had me :D

0Posted by ric caine on 01 Apr at 15:47

not being funny but that is the most stupid thing you could of done, totally against it, cant be doing with that wen its hand on hand combat in pvp, will be clouded with ZAP, N KABLAM, i wont be able to see wot i am hitting. whats next, brain freeze moments with hero thoughts ?

0Posted by ??? on 01 Apr at 16:36

BA-DOOOOOOM!! April Fools!!

0Posted by Ryu Akuma on 01 Apr at 16:50

A simple yet brilliant touch! well done guys!

0Posted by FoZ on 01 Apr at 17:13

Haha!

Happy April Fools day everyone!

0Posted by Umbra on 01 Apr at 19:10

HAHAHA

I’d love it it were true,

but: APRIL FOOLS LOLOLOLOLOL111oneoneeleven

0Posted by Ammon on 01 Apr at 19:48

Almost.

Then I remembered when it was posted.  LOL

0Posted by flame herald on 01 Apr at 20:13

holy biff,boch, boff batman, wear back to the 1960,s wink

0Posted by Dark Anarchy on 01 Apr at 20:28

Why?

This to me is a stupid idea

0Posted by Infurnus on 01 Apr at 21:05

in my gods honest opinion, removing the sound all together will ruin it, and imagine having a 50vs50 supergroup rumble (not that that actually happens) all the Booms Biffs and ratta-tat-tat’s going on, you’ll only see half of your screen!

0Posted by Malfunction on 01 Apr at 21:21

Cool, Can’t wait to Zappp, Splat, Ka-pow and Biff my enemies. :LOL:

0Posted by Last Son on 01 Apr at 21:38

hope this is not an april fool that will be awsome

0Posted by Lord DeuxMak on 01 Apr at 22:10

LOL! April´s Fool!!!

0Posted by Tycho on 02 Apr at 02:46

This is great!! a good friend of mine lost his hearing a long time ago and well i kinda felt bad for him because the sound effects in this game are brilliant. This is perfect for him, Kudos on adding this guy’s this is why i like the CoX Staff.

0Posted by kelv on 02 Apr at 16:19

Haha Nearly had me best april fools ever

I’ll let my bro find out himself rasberry rasberry

0Posted by Phoenix on 02 Apr at 16:59

If this is a april fools joke, its absolutely brillaint. Good work. If it isnt, this idea is completely insultive to this game, whats next, shaded cell 12bit graphics? If it is true god i hope it can be turned off

0Posted by Baaleos on 02 Apr at 17:49

It has a link at the bottom of the article to the wiki article about april fools- Obvious April Fools.

But I have to say, they should have been bit more tasteful. Alot of people would stop playing the game if audio sound effects went away.

0Posted by psiwave on 02 Apr at 18:01

what a shit idea, i hope u can like take it off!!

0Posted by Stordarth on 02 Apr at 22:55

This is quite clearly an april fool. I dont for one minute see the devs renaming an entire issue for the sake of something so minor. despite the april fool element, however, I do actually think the visual audio is a good idea, so long as you keep the real audio along with it. even in the old batman episodes, you could still hear the collision of fists along with the visual representation.

0Posted by Xander Duskwood on 03 Apr at 08:51

Too bad this is an aprils fool :(

Would be so cool to actually have visual sounds… would kick WoW real hard (in the face).
Seriously… add it to the game as an optional feature smile In I13 perhaps?

0Posted by Andrew Connor on 03 Apr at 09:10

I think the give away for me was the line that reads:
the upcoming Issue 12, which is being re-christened “Issue 12: Pow, Biff, Boom, Bam!”
That had me ROTFLMAO!  Then I read the date to be sure!  grin Great one guys, keep the gags coming.....how about next year an in-game Fool grin

0Posted by Flame Fire on 03 Apr at 11:28

You know, you kinda had alot of positive feedback with this. Maybe it should be more than a April fools. But deffinatly keep the sounds already! lol.

0Posted by Akhillius on 03 Apr at 21:14

Quite funny really. This has to be april fools!

0Posted by Marcara on 04 Apr at 20:53

I too believe that if they mean they’re getting rid of sounds completely, that’s a bit annoying. I liked them, and I know many other did too. If there is going to be choice between sounds and this, then that good, but getting rid of them to play silently, not a great idea.

0Posted by Ben on 04 Apr at 21:47

To be honest
I LOVE IT
Its a great idea and I’d love to see it in the game, the only thing I’d say is let us use this, or the sounds, or both. And yes I do sometimes play the game with the sounds turned off so it would be awesome

I’m sad it is probably just an april fools

0Posted by CJ on 10 Apr at 22:02

i wouldn’t mind the idea of Visual/Audio but i would only wanna keep it a few minutes
we best be allowed to take it off....
excaim  confused cool grin

0Posted by TheHyra on 11 Apr at 23:27

if this was real, it would have been a good idea… but if you were implememnting this… i’d actually rather you didn’t… the game has quite a ‘realistic’ feel… especially when we heroes have to take the monorail to work every morning XD

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