German announcements from noir

I believe that announcements are big part of immersion especially on stopping passenger trains, so I started filling the gap in TSW with my own creations. As there is no simple way how to bring announcements into the game itself, we'll be using Soundpad, a simple tool sold for €5 on Steam, which allows us to have new keybinds in the game when running in the background.

The announcements are synthetised using TTSMaker, but I tried to follow the real announcements when possible, so you will not get only a simple list of stations, but also various local quirks and landmarks that are advertised in the trains in reality, for example "Nächste Station: Radebeul-Ost. Karl-May-Museum. Übergangsmöglichkeit zur Schmalspurbahn in Richtung Moritzburg und Radeburg."

As usual from me, take this as a first version and I will be looking forward to your feedback before I continue with the project in larger scale. While it may not seem like it, already the first pack of four routes has 533 sounds in it, so there was lot of passion invested into it already. To be able to continue produce them at such large scale, I do not currently intend to add gongs or any speaker-like filters to the files.

Showcase

Some showcases in full route videos:

• Rapid Transit
• Salzburg-Rosenheim
• Hamburg-Lübeck
• Frankfurt-Fulda
• Dresden-Chemnitz

Included content

In first version, four routes are available: Nahverkehr Dresden, Kinzigtalbahn, Pfälzische Ludwigsbahn and Maintalbahn.

In second version, five more classic routes are available: Haupstrecke Rhein-Ruhr, München-Augsburg, Rhein-Ruhr Osten, Ruhr-Sieg Nord and SFS Köln-Aachen, each of those including destinations from both their standard and community timetables.

In third version, five more new routes are available: Bremen-Oldenburg, Tharandter Rampe, Frankfurt S-Bahn, Main-Spessart Bahn and Rosenheim-Salzburg.

In fourth version, additions are: Dresden-Leipzig (extended for RB31, RB50, S4), Hamburg-Lübeck (RE8, RE80, RB81, RE83, RE85), Kassel-Würzburg (selection of 12 long distance destinations), Niddertalbahn (modern RB34), Rapid Transit (S2, S4, RE13), Stuttgart-Heilbronn (S5 and local trains) as well as extended selection of miscellanious announcements about delays and disruptions.

Installation and usage

• You will need to get Soundpad, paid but cheap tool available on Steam (you can also check the raw soundfiles in the archive before buying it).
• Unpack the provided archive somewhere (I use %steamapps%/common/Soundpad/sounds/tsw-noir/, but it shouldn't matter).
• In Soundpad, load the announcements by File - Load sound list.
• In left column pick the route and line you want to play.
• In the right column click on the first announcement from where you want to start playing them.
• At the bottom of the window you should see hotbar with few buttons for special announcements.

You may need to set the keybinds by yourself (File - Settings - Hotkeys), what I find to work best for me is:

• Num 8 for Select next file
• Num 5 for Play selected file

In addition, I use keybinds for the hotbar buttons (simply right click on the hotbar buttons and select Assign a hotkey):

• Num 4 for "Exit on the left"
• Num 6 for "Exit on the right"

From the third version, I have reduced the clutter with repeating line announcements - there will only be one fixed to the first position on most routes. You can set a shortcut by right clicking it, this will then keep that shortcut active across all the lines, and you can easily use it to launch the line announcement without breaking the selection of current stop announcement. I use Num 3 for that.

These are global shortcuts, so now even without leaving TSW, you can simply on approach to station press Num 8 to move to next station, Num 5 to play the station announcement and with Num 4/6 announce on which side is the platform. Happy driving! 🙂

My other projects

Check out also my other projects that help with immersion, like Ebula-inspired timetables, Classic paper timetables, or Freight train calculator. If you like my work and want to support me in continuing, you can buy me a coffee here. 🙂

Tags: announcements germany soundpad