Ability to silence audible alerts from anywhere
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:12 pm
I often use programmable speakers to sound alerts for various things. I usually use global playback because 1) without it, it's difficult to tell if a new alert activates since the UI only shows one alert icon and has no other visual indicator of new alerts beyond the first, and 2) it's something that needs my attention. However, I also often want to silence them because it sometimes takes time to address them and the sound gets obnoxious. I prefer not to mute the game because 1) that silences any other new alerts and 2) I like playing with sound.
To that end I'd like to be able to silence an alert from wherever I am. The way I would like it to work, specifically (edit: except for idea 1b below), is: When an alert is silenced, it stays silenced until it deactivates then activates again, but only after it's been deactive for at least 1 second.
That rule is intended to allow effective silencing of alerts that are produced in response to threshold crossings of values with a lot of noise in them (where there can be a period of rapid deactivation and reactivation of the alert during the transition, and silencing the alert should not be frustrating during this type of event).
However, the issue is, I can't think of the UI I'd like for this, since currently all active alerts are grouped together under one icon and the main UI screen doesn't really have anything in place to select single alerts. Let's talk about this.
I have two rough ideas although I'm not sure how great they are:
Idea 1: Click the alert icon to just silence every alert that is currently playing a sound. This is pretty straightforward, easy to learn, and probably what I'd generally want to do anyways.
Edit: Idea 1b: Click the alert icon to mute/unmute alerts in general. This also seems intuitive and eliminates the need for that 1 second deactivation time logic I described above. New alerts wouldn't produce sounds while alerts were muted, but when unmuted you'd hear them all again. It also means it's stateless wrt specific alerts, and if that's an implementation benefit then hopefully it increases the chances of getting this feature. This one is growing on me as my favorite./Edit
Idea 2: To silence an alert, look at the map, and click the flashing icon on the map to silence that specific alert. This gives a bit more control at the cost of tedium. The map is the only place I can think of with distinct alert indicators for each alert, but I don't know if there's actually value in having this extra control.
That's all I got.
To that end I'd like to be able to silence an alert from wherever I am. The way I would like it to work, specifically (edit: except for idea 1b below), is: When an alert is silenced, it stays silenced until it deactivates then activates again, but only after it's been deactive for at least 1 second.
That rule is intended to allow effective silencing of alerts that are produced in response to threshold crossings of values with a lot of noise in them (where there can be a period of rapid deactivation and reactivation of the alert during the transition, and silencing the alert should not be frustrating during this type of event).
However, the issue is, I can't think of the UI I'd like for this, since currently all active alerts are grouped together under one icon and the main UI screen doesn't really have anything in place to select single alerts. Let's talk about this.
I have two rough ideas although I'm not sure how great they are:
Idea 1: Click the alert icon to just silence every alert that is currently playing a sound. This is pretty straightforward, easy to learn, and probably what I'd generally want to do anyways.
Edit: Idea 1b: Click the alert icon to mute/unmute alerts in general. This also seems intuitive and eliminates the need for that 1 second deactivation time logic I described above. New alerts wouldn't produce sounds while alerts were muted, but when unmuted you'd hear them all again. It also means it's stateless wrt specific alerts, and if that's an implementation benefit then hopefully it increases the chances of getting this feature. This one is growing on me as my favorite./Edit
Idea 2: To silence an alert, look at the map, and click the flashing icon on the map to silence that specific alert. This gives a bit more control at the cost of tedium. The map is the only place I can think of with distinct alert indicators for each alert, but I don't know if there's actually value in having this extra control.
That's all I got.
