Wolves smell, rabbits hear, and buddy, I hurt people....

[Kriegson]

Just a thought in the event we should ever get to play as races other than rabbits officially; How to represent the senses.

Sound would be the easiest to portray by simply allowing a player to hear a creature moving about and whatnot from a greater distance than with others, though this might not work so well with people without surround sound or headphones. So perhaps some visual aid is also in order.
Perhaps something like a hit indicator in most FPS games, where every time a creature makes a sound, you get an indicator in the direction where they are briefly.

Sight (for those with better sight than average, like my aforementioned ravens) could produce an outline around a character that is moving, that grows stronger the faster they move. Like birds of prey this would simulate attention on quickly moving potential prey.

Smell for wolves and the like, I was thinking a sort of ephemeral wisp stretching from your character, into the direction of the smell. Each race would have a corresponding color to their wisp which becomes more clearly defined (color starts as white or grey) the closer you get.
Likewise, blood is red and becomes more definitive than other scents from a longer range.
A weak (Distant) scent will fade in and out slightly, making it tricky to follow but giving you a general idea. A strong scent (Close or bloody) may stretch the wisp from your character directly to the source.

[Samthere]

I think with sound just increasing the game audio wouldn't work too well, as (like you said) you can't assume players are all using their sound to the full extent, and it'd also be disconcerting once you got used to the meaning of the sound volume. I think something like you said - an FPS hit indicator - could work. Perhaps that for sufficiently loud noises, and then a smaller "sound radar" that lights up to different brightnesses based on the volume, showing the location. This would, of course, require more work to make sounds work with the map. For example, if you're in a twisting tunnel, you'd only know the sound location somewhere deep in the tunnel as around a corner, rather than the radar pinpointing it for you.

Improved sight, if it's used somewhere, would probably work well the way you said it - some visual effect on moving objects.

Improved smell is probably the toughest due to the way it works. The problem with this is it should only work if smell particles reach you, and that requires smell particles to be modeled. Wind, other smells, etc, would all interfere, and just smelling something isn't enough to tell you where it is. It'd take the character moving their nose around and smelling in multiple places to identify which direction a smell is coming from. I'm not sure I have a great suggestion, but perhaps there could simply be head movements when a smell is encountered, and the direction is given.

[Kriegson]

@sam

My biggest problem though is the complexity some of these and the additional elements may require. I imagine vision could be done simply enough, but sound and scent, especially if you want to involve the terrain and elements, are complex to a degree that I don't think is even being done in any game.

I wonder what system wolves and whatnot currently use to smell blood...assuming they do....if anything the way the senses are portrayed to the player will have to be tied to how the game engine itself uses the various detection methods.

[Samthere]

Absolutely, I was just thinking of an ideal representation. It's a shame the "simulation" has to be run all on one computer - as in we can't have the engine just do the world stuff and then have separate brains for each creature running on their own power!

[Uberbeard]

Earlier last year we had a conversation not unlike this about how gameplay, multiplayer or otherwise, could be affected by the different races. I proposed an Assassin's Creed 'vision mode' would be an effective method to augment the visuals of an area. Even if it was merely a case of holding a button to draw up smoke trails that follow characters around for smell, or wave forms that help to indicate where a sound is coming from.

[Skillkill107]

Well another way is to handle it with a radar like Metal Gear Solid 4 where sound visual, range and smell were shown as circles with the wind's affect on scent would turn a circle into an oval like shape, with different terrain helping or hindering the circles, as well as keeping the existing vison cones. It doesn't sound too tasking if optimized properly

[kayosiii]

I like the idea of using scent - I would graphically represent it quite differently or rather I wouldn't represent it directly. When a character picks up a scent they go through a sniffing the air animation (flair nostrils etc) then point their heads in the direction of the smell.

Internally I would represent scent as a cone that eminates from the character and travels in the direction that the wind is blowing. Each scene would need some sort of indication of wind direction, falling leaves, snow flakes, flags etc. This would make it a lot harder to sneak up on somebody from the downwind side and would add some interesting strategic challenges to the game. It could be used for instant as a subtle clue that your character is about to be ambushed.