Subway car sounds

[Stan2003]

Hello everybody! I am new to the sound design and I have a little question here. I have made a subway car and now I'd like to attach announsator sounds to it. (For instance, one push of the button gives "Station name..." telled, next push gives "Next station...", hopefully you know what I mean.) Is it possible to implement in MSTS, and if so, please give me a hint how!

Thanks!

[pacmancreator]

RE: Subway car sounds

It is somewhat possible...

The London Underground R Stock ( I think) has something like that, where it has fooled the sim into thinking that the station announcement was a bell...

It was very simple. just when you pressed the "B" button, a voice came on that said, "Mind the Gap, Mind the Gap".

I know that in the upcoming Surfliner Route, you'll be able to hear station announcements as you go by, but then again, that's just a sound rescource.

Either way, I really don't think that it is too possible to have the station announcements change, but, if you want, just replace the bell sounds with something prototypical like:

(Push "B") "The next station is kkkkkzzzzzzzzz"

That way, it does sound somewhat realistic!

-Matt, future Cirque Du Soleil singer

-Crime: It's my anti drug ;-)

-Creating Pac-Man comics for the humorless people out there

[Jeff_Ashton]

RE: Subway car sounds

If you have a different wav file for each station, you can put them into a stream with "PlayOneShot" and "Sequential Selection" instructions that are triggered by pressing the b key. Thus each time you pres b it will (should?) play the next wav file in the sequence.

Of course, it will only work correctly for one specific player service, and I doubt it would work correctly if you saved an activity part way through and reloaded.

I suppose in theory you could set up any number of station announcement sms file variations and just do a quick sms file swap before starting the game.

Jeff

[sniper297]

RE: Subway car sounds

I was just thinking about that too. I wouldn't want to replace the "okay to proceed" with the polite mechanical recording they use now on the CTA, I'd rather use the old garbled tinny slurred conductor's announcements they used to have.

One potential might be to make a sound region object, change it so it's audible in the passenger and cabviews too, and make the .sms play one shot when the player approaches within 10 meters or whatever works. Set one alongside the tracks far enough so it don't get triggered by the opposite track, and when the player tripped each object it would announce the name of the next station. You can't really tell the sound is coming from outside anyway if the cab and passenger views are activated, and you could control what recording is played when by the placement of each sound region marker.

[Stooopid_person]

RE: Subway car sounds

>You can't really tell
>the sound is coming from outside anyway

You could if you were in the outside views...

[scefhwil]

RE: Subway car sounds

I think you're on the right approach sniper. I'd add that you would want to Deactivate ExternalView as well.

There is one big issue though. I've experimented with this in the past. It is to do with the way the sms calculates distances. The Activation distance shouldn't be too small as this determines when the scripting of the sms file is loaded by the sim. I'd say use 50m. The PlayOneShots should then be triggered by a very short distance. The value of this is the critical bit. The distance the sim measures is the true 3D distance between the co-ordinates of the sound source and the camara position. Now when the RE saves a sound source it always places it on the ground. In Cab or Passenger view the head hieght is about 3m above track level, so I found that a min distance of 4m was needed, as 3m didn't trigger. But using a distance of 4m also meant that if I past a sound source on an adjacent track it still triggered. No this really becomes an issue depending on your track layout. I was using UK Finescale. I haven't tried this using default.

I found a work around though. Whilst the RE saves the sound source at ground level you can edit the level in the .ws file afterwards to a raised level. I raised mine by 3m. When you re-enter the RE the sound source remains at it's elevated level, ie up in the air. As long as you don't select it again it's level is preserved. I then used a 2m trigger distance. Now only trains on the right track triggered it.

Here's my suggested scripting:-

ScalabiltyGroup( 1
Activation (
CabCam ()
PassengerCam ()
Distance ( 50 )
)
Deactivation (
ExternalCam ()
Distance ( 50 )
)
Streams ( 1
Stream (
Priority ( 6 )
Volume ( 1.0 )
Triggers ( 1
Variable_Trigger ( Distance_Dec_Past 2
PlayOneShot ( 1
File ( "announcement.wav" -1 )
SelectionMethod ( RandomSelection )
)
)
)
)
)
)

[Palal]

RE: Subway car sounds

The only way I found possible to actually get station announcements to play was by creating sound regions, not sound sources.

When you create sound sources, it doesn't play the sound uniformly. However, there's one problem with sound regions: the sounds not played from the beginning. So say I have a sound, "Next stop Main Street", it starts playing "Main Street. [pause] Next stop Main Street." All would be good, except sometimes it chops off the M or adds the p. You get the point.
One more problem: If the train passes the region too quickly, the announcements won't play all the way through.

I hope that MSTS2 will give us some more dynamic control over sounds. I want to be able to do station announcements as well as dynamic train destinations (both visual and auditory).

One more thing: there are about 5-6 buttons to which you can assign sounds:
B
P
X (most subways don't use sand anyway)
Z

[space]


Here's an SMS file for a sound region that I've been experimenting with.