VERY frustrating that as well as being very quiet indeed n terms of passenger numbers , new street also seems to have no station announcements!! Total rubbish frankly given how they even managed them in openBVE, and how old is that game!!
Yes New Street should be an almost constant cacophony of semi intelligible announcements, usually mentioning every train except the late running one you're waiting for.
On Cathcart you do get safety and general information announcements. You would have thought in this day and age they could develop an app within the game for text to speech, that sounds reasonably authentic and script in announcements, if there are issues using the real announcements.
I vaguely recall something about not being able to record real announcements due to copyright issues at certain stations, though there are some brief in- station and onboard announcements on Cathcart, as you say. I doubt that DTG gave much thought to making their own in-house, if that were even possible.
Can we assume, then, that " Rush Hour " hasn't reached Birmingham yet. Yet another route to add to BML and Harlem etc., missing that feature, which was so enthusiastically promoted last year.
Sounds are copyrighted so they can't just record the audio from the station and use it in game. They need permission from the toc and the person who recorded their voices for station announcements. After all, dtg don't want to get caught in copyright infringement and all that. In terms of in house announcements, it probably is easy to record but difficult to actually implement. There are many sound issues and other limitations that would not make it possible since sounds take up space and memory and dtg can't include all sounds in a dlc.
I think the copyright is the major issue. SCR hired the original voice over artists to do annouments for thier fictional routes. This has the added bonus that there were no tocs to deal with but they managed to put it in a roblox game.
There is no reason why DTG can't hire an actor to record the announcements. Train announcements are merely informational, and information is not subject to copyright.
They probably can record in house, but it probably comes down to implementation and making sure there are no memory issues, other sound issues or just issues in general. There's obviously the channel limit so not all sounds can play at once, but idk how much of an effect that has. But yea, there probably are technical challenges dtg have to overcome for that to be possible.
My suggestion of text to speech still holds merit. Obviously you need to avoid the monotone "Cylon" (original) effect that the Amiga text emulator produced, but even if you got a real person doing it, the recording will need to be passed through several filters to give an authentic outside but from tinny speakers effect.
andy if your on PC there is a mod u can try its very good patch for cross city londonmaidland is one of the people behind it
No I'm on ps4, it just astonishes me that openBVE were able to pull it off and yet years down the line DTG can't.