It's very hard to understand why solutions to many "preserved collection" rolling stock sound problems (in TSW 2) are still listed as "In Planning" in the latest RoadMap. How can DTG sell add-ons with completely broken train sounds? You really never tested them before release? Those problems must be in the category "highest priority fixes" to be honest. It's a shame, DTG! How long this "planning" will take?
Sound and dynamics have meant my abandonment of TSW2 - and I had all the DLC - and now spend all my time on Trainsimulator upon which all my Chritmas and New Year sim budget has been spent on.
The sound development has still evolved a lot and some newest train models are almost perfect. German shunter BR 363 for example. It is very good, only problem I found - the lack of bogie rolling sound. Many players probably don't notice this but yes - there's no any rolling sounds. Brittish Class 08 sounds were my favorite in TSW 1. Caltrain pack's EMD GP38-2 sounds are very good too, well done loco model. But many others lack in-cab bogie rolling sounds and that's annoying.
The sounds in the game are without doubt critical to immersion. Sadly, a lot of routes, even the newer ones are lacking due to various issues such as balancing or accuracy of the sound. I beg DTG to double down on the sound, but I appreciate that’s easier said than done.
One of the most bizarre sound issues I found was that horn got detached from locomotive and stayed at one side of the track in an endless loop. After that no horn sound was available at all. I have seen that with preserved collection and also at sand patch this week. Bell sounds are also distorted to a high pitch sound in some cases where objects are nearby and you pan view around locomotive. To be fair with DTG they had already acknowledged that preserved collection had issues and they are being handled by Adam if I´m not wrong. The reason for the low priority may be the amount of things to check, not only the sounds. But yes, that was a big mistake for the release and it has not been fixed during 4 months. For me sounds are very important as in some cases as the BR143 the locomotive is not usable as it´s completely silent. Cheers
So one of the TSG developers actually explained the sound issue in great detail over on the german forums. Basically it is not sound files but coded sound which has been completely messed up due to the UE version upgrade. According to him in order to fix this it would take abhorrent amounts of time and effort and he would not do it even if he was paid for it, because it is that complicated and tedious. And as I understand he has been involved with the german loco sounds for some time now with DTG, the latest being the 363 which sounds perfect. I get that it is annoying but they are going to fix it even if it takes time. Sure it is especially bad considering these dlc are sold for full price but still I found that his explanation was quite relatable. Do with this information as you please, I still play these locos with bad sound and can wait for DTG to fix them one by one.
Thank you for sharing this! This sounds reasonable to me, I think we all know some examples of software where a specific function is located somewhere else after an update... However even if it requires a huge amount of work I do hope that it's possible to make some progress here in the next couple of months. Sometimes a workaround (at least on xbox) for me is switching through the cameras but not always... and engines like the 146 still are enjoyed best being muted. :/
Sounds will be fixed as from now, they said repeatedly they were going to port them in and then fix major problems then minor ones TO me sound is minor because I don't listen anyway, I usually have the radio on in the background
Interestingly, I managed to get rid of the annoying howling of the 146 occasionally. But so far I could not replecate how. And it returns after you have stopped at a station. I thought it was camera or speed, but as said, not able to replicate. Basically I was going with the 146 top speed at HMA and HRR and suddenly the howling was gone randomly. It was absolute bliss
I think they need to do a full review of all the sounds and re-do them as if it were a new release, and not just from specific bug reports about sound. An example of what could happen without a comprehensive approach is a specific bug report gets picked up about a sound issue on one locomotive, an issue that actually several locomotives have, but only the loco from the initial bug report gets looked at. Subsequent posts adding that other locos have the same issue appear not to be read. This happened with the sun missing on both PS4 and Xbox. Only the bug report from PS4 was picked up. Someone had mentioned somewhere on the forum that it was also missing on xbox, but that was missed, and the people fixing it on PS4 didn’t think to check it on xbox just to be sure. I find it quite hard to believe that nobody within DTG had noticed that the sun was also missing on xbox. In the current state of things, every piece of loco DLC needs the sound revised, with reference to several sources, those being the initial reference material from when the DLC was built first time, the way the locos sounded in TSW2020, and specific and general observations from bug reports for TSW2. This could be a massive task of course but it will iron out the audio issues to a better standard and with less work overall. There is a dedicated drive to go through every train and make it usable in the livery designer. There needs to be the same dedication to go through every train and get the sound right, which is actually much more important.
Interesting to mention that "Great Western Railway - London Paddington to Reading" loco/train sounds were updated successfully when this pack appeared in TSW 2 Preserved Collection. Job very well done. Why were those German packs just rushed out without sound fixes?? Hard to understand.
DTG said they weren't going to fix anything that didn't "break the game" ie stop it working. Maybe when they transposed GWE it did break but the others worked (within a given range of "work")
It was mentioned once that they were able to find someone who is well versed with sound coding and that is a british rail enthusiast. They also said that he would not want to work on anything else other than british dlc, thus we have the great improved sounds for GWE but so far no real progress on the sounds of german or american dlc.
