Give the player heightened sense of hearing

How can I improve hearing abilities of the player? To give an example, say, the player finds an object that when picked up, improves their hearing skills, and they can hear distant objects. Is there a way to increase the “hearing radius” of the player or do I have to increase the falloff radius of each and every sound?

It’s going to be the same logic as for how people are doing area of effect spells, for example. Set a sphere on the character, check for collisions, and adjust the radius of sounds that collide.

E.g. Area of Effect spell/abilities collision handling - C++ Gameplay Programming - Unreal Engine Forums

<edit> Assuming you’re doing single player. If it’s multi-player, it will be a little more complex, as you don’t want players who are near the player with the buff to accidentally benefit from it (of course, you could just call it a bug-as-a-feature: the item’s buff is an AOE buff :wink: ) </edit>