No passenger announcements, but giggling goblins... To be honest, Really would have preferred if the audio team had spent the time getting an absolutely necessary functionality for a route like this (and probably all future DLCs since it needs to be built into the core as Matt previously said) into the game/DLC than wasting it on that nonsense, which in the end didn't even made it into the final release. A big drawback for me, because otherwise the scenery seems to be well done this time.
I would rather they had put the time into making the rest of the North London Line to go with it. A decent length route rather than a sawn off stump.
Adding a short giggling sound is a lot less work than making more route length or adding announcements. Some people on this forum have a weird sense of how much work is needed to do something.
In the stream, Matt said that they kind of implemented a mechanism at which distance/radius the audio of the giggling is triggered. Adding that all of that didn't even end up in the game. I agree the basic idea is funny and I would applause to it in any other game, but for a train simulator absolutely not necessary. All I said is that the time were better spent on finally getting the so often talked core functionality for passenger announcements into the game other future (first and third party) routes could benefit of as well.
Yes I know that. Just adding to the view that someone, somewhere at DTG seems to have their priorities a bit askew from the mainstream.
The proximity for triggering the sound will be a value in a parameter box, like the triggering of any environment sound, and standard in the game engine editor.
They didn't had to develop anything. They just need to add an ambient sound and set the properties for distance. All the functionality is already there, becasue, as the game is concerned, there is no difference between a goblin making ambient sound and an i.e. excavator ambient sound. Also doing announcement isn't realy an audio guy job, as first DTG needs to implement core functionality that will add support for announcement to be available for TSW routes, and that isn't audio guys job, but a programmers/system guys job. Only after that is done can audio guys take this system and actually record the station announcements. It's insane how quickly some of you get triggered by people working on these routes having little bit of fun and experimenting with the EXISTING systems in a new way.
Well, there is a difference between a sound a static actor emits, and the sound of a collectible, which maybe only emits the sound when not being found yet. I remember playing in Steep (a singing tree) or GTA Online (jingles bells on approaching a snowmen) where objectives only had a sound emitting when the object or collectible is not reached yet, after it has been reached the sound disappeared. So a mechnism would be needed that only emits the sound based upon the condition whether or not the collectible has been found/ aka the player has reached its approximity. Something completely different to a static noise of traffic or other atmosphere sounds which is always there or does emit its sound on a preprogrammed interval. By the way, I would say noone in this discussion really knows how it was handled behind the curtains, so I would leave all of this to comment by the actual developers. Same goes for here. Noone of us really knows how departments are separated and work together. The audio team does need to only have something to do with going out and recording sounds. They may have more to do/cooperate with the actual programmers to get the feature in Unreal Engine working and to bring that into the game. They can have all the fun with the routes they want to, but in the end it's a product to sell and we are the customers paying for it. And I, as one of them, would have preferred not wasting time and seemed to set priorities on goblin sounds as rather getting a proper passenger announcement system into the route like Just Trains and Rivet Games did so well. The scenery of the route is very well this time (props to DTG!) but the missing announcements simply ruin the immersion for a rapid transit line like that for me. If that were provided, I wouldn't complain about the fun gimmick of goblin sounds.
Within Dovetail Games, and I know you might laugh at this, Audio Designer and Software Engineer are different jobs. Developing a complete announcement system is a Software Engineer's job (and they're working on it presently). This functionality has been in the game since about 2017. I won't comment on other things.
No, it's absolutely okay. It could be handled a bit different somewhere else, where audio engineers indeed kind of need to work on the developement level as well. Just a question. Thank you for clarifying. Good to know. Well, Dovetail didn't teached us to do anything related to audio in the PC Editor forum, so this is where questions come up I guess if you're interested in the topic. Well anyways, nothing wrong talking about it. One thing I always wonder about when Matt says that the passenger announcement system you are working on has to be built into the core game is the concern of why is that necessary exactly? Why is it not possible to simply use the same technique Rivet Games and Just Trains use for their announcements and incorporate this one into your new first party routes? Wouldn't that not only save time for your departments on other things to work on but simply get the costumers asking for that feature the thing that they want?
I'd rather it get done in core, it's then permanently in and can be done for ALL routes where necessary, if it's route by route then we could be in the situation where the feature will appear in one route but not another because "we ran out of development time" - I mean, wouldn't be the first time a new feature has appeared in one route and not another. Nah, get it in core and it's all done with.
Yes, I'm with you on that point. However, when will we finally have passenger announcements in first party content then if we wait for the moment once they created the best functional system for it? Could take years still. A lot of people are missing passenger announcements since years already and especially for transit rapid routes with stations every kilometer or so like this one here, it didn't do it justice to not having them in. The route looks really good and the amount of detail I could see in the preview stream seems really outstanding. Not impossiblely enhancable, but a really good step forward. A shame that a basic train sim feature like that is still a not existing thing, neither at the release of TSW4 nor a half year after it.
Delivering a complete system in core means that implementing it on every relevant station in the future should be as simple as providing the appropriate sound files for new locations and dropping a single component into the station blueprint. It also has to be fast, memory efficient (which, by the way, is the key issue with the existing systems 3rd parties have used) and futureproof. Yes you can build (in blueprint) a system that will provide some functionality for some stations, if you spend a few days per station, but a lot of my job is making sure that new features aren't major time sinks for development. If a new feature adds 2 weeks of time to the production of a route, it's going to find itself at risk of being skipped for time. I want every feature to be on by default if possible, I want new features to be plug and play otherwise. Yes it's a shame that we don't have the system now, but once available adding it to past content would be a one day job rather than a two week job.
Appreciate that Will. Just rather frustrating we are being asked to part with £25 for what should have been the whole NLL/Goblin route as per TSC (though the scenarios are a bit of a bodge across the two different versions) and as I noted earlier in another thread would have made it a Day One purchase for me, as opposed to waiting for 50% off. And I quite appreciate the work and dedication that’s gone into making what looks to be a nice route and train. Just that dedication needs to be channeled by whoever makes the decision about green lighting a route project, something that is really going to appeal to many of us who now have TSW (and TSC) stuffed with route content which barely gets touched as it is.
I just work here man, my involvement with this content started with fixing a nasty signalling bug four months ago and that was pretty well all I did until I got a chance to take the 710 for a spin a few days ago, discovered I was a lousy overground driver and retreated to the familiar safety of the 72 tube stock.
Thank you very much for clarifying, Will. That makes sense to me now. I think one problem also is occupied developers you have to get at least the alternative way Rivet and JT do working for your first party content. I'm personally very interested about the passenger announcement system Rivet and JT used and would like to implement that on the route I'm currently building as well. If it isn't too complex, maybe I could help you out getting a passenger announcement system ready for this route in Unreal, if I would know how it works. Yes I know this is crazy, but just saying, my offer is here. Problem is that the costumers don't exactly know that whether or not you consider adding the announcements as an upgrade to older routes once you have the system done. Exactly this was my question in the Q&A thread, but I guess it didn't got answered completely by Matt during the stream (did not had time yet to completey watch the 2 hours stream). Edit: No Alex just clarified a "no plans" here: Q: Are you adding passenger announcements to this route in the future? We currently don't have any plans to introduce this feature, we will let you know if that changes. For the release, there won't be on-board announcements on the Class 710.
If the TSW forums had more giggling goblins and fewer grumpy trolls then it would be a much better place to hang out...
It made me laugh, Matt described the Giggling Goblins as you drive the train and it was everywhere and he said it was annoying, so annoying LOL, made me laugh a lot!
